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[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 152.—VOL. III.      SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1886.      PRICE 1½_d._]




SEALSKIN COATS, ALIVE AND DEAD.


The ladies of England, who, living at home at ease, shield themselves
from the inclemency of our not very rigorous winters in their elegant
sealskin coats, think little, and know less, of the curious animal
from which their beautiful garment is taken, and of the peculiar
circumstances of its habitat and capture. Nor can their ignorance
be deemed much of a reproach, seeing that until recently, even
scientists were accustomed to regard the fur-seal as but a variety of
the hair-seal, not unknown on the shores of Scotland, and abounding
in the North and West Atlantic. But the two are quite dissimilar in
their individuality and character, and as Mr H. W. Elliott, of the
Smithsonian Institute of the United States—to whom we are chiefly
indebted for the substance of this article—says, ‘the truth connected
with the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads on the
islands of Aleutian Alaska, is far stranger than fiction.’ Mr Elliott
spent three years in continuous observations on the spot, and is the
first to afford us a complete and trustworthy view of the strange
eventful history.

The fur-seal formerly abounded in the southern hemisphere on the
borders of the Antarctic Circle; but reckless killing has well-nigh
exterminated it there, and now, one may say that the only habitat of
commercial importance is in that portion of the North Pacific which
washes the Aleutian division of Alaska; and even here, the range
is practically confined to four comparatively small islands. These
islands were discovered by the Russian navigator Pribylov in 1786,
and are still called by his name. They lie about two hundred miles
due north of the group usually called the Aleutian Islands, off the
western extremity of the Alaska peninsula. The Pribylov Islands rest
in the very heart of Behring Sea, but far enough south to be free
from permanent ice-floes, and thus to escape the ravages of the polar
bear; while also far enough from the mainland and inhabited islands to
be free from the attacks of the primitive races. Thus the seals had
collected and bred there for countless ages, undisturbed by beast or
man, until the Russians first broke in upon their preserves. They have
been the objects of constant attention and pursuit ever since.

There are three kinds of seals. The _Phoca vitulina_ is the common
hair-seal, which may often be seen on our north-western shores, which
the fishing-vessels of Dundee, of Hull, of Peterhead, and of Greenock,
go out to Greenland and Labrador to catch every season for the sake
of the oil—the skin being of little value—and specimens of which,
alive or stuffed, we may fairly assume every one of our readers has
seen somewhere or other. There is probably not an aquarium of the
country which has not a family of them. Then there is the _Eumetopias
stelleri_, which the Russians call ‘Seevitchie,’ and which is known
to our mariners as the ‘sea-lion.’ This and the walrus, which may be
considered akin, are found in all the circumpolar regions. Lastly,
there is the _Callorhinus ursinus_, called ‘Kantickie’ by the Russians,
which is the true fur-seal, and which is the subject of our sketch.
It has no generic affinity with the others, and is of quite different
habits. As has been said, it is now found only on four islands of
Behring Sea.

Of the fur-seal, it has been said that there is no known animal on
land or water which can take higher physical rank, or which exhibits
a higher order of instinct, closely approaching human intelligence.
The male fur-seal is in his full prime at six or seven years of age,
and will then measure from six and a half to seven and a half feet
from snout to tail. He will weigh between four hundred and six hundred
pounds—the latter weight, however, being found only in older animals,
and not very frequently. He has a small head, with a muzzle and jaws
not unlike both in size and form to those of a pure Newfoundland dog.
The lips, however, are firm, and pressed together like those of man,
and the large eyes of blue-gray are capable of expressing both soft and
fierce emotions. On the upper lip he has a long moustache of grayish
bristles, which are often long enough to extend over his shoulder. He
swims with his head high over the water, and on land walks with an
undulating carriage and head erect. If frightened, he will run as fast
as a man, but not very far—thirty or forty yards sufficing to exhaust
his wind. The hind-feet are longer than the fore-feet or flippers, and
in shape are very like the human foot elongated to twenty inches or so,
and with the instep flattened. There are three toes on the hind-feet;
but the fore-flippers are fingerless hands some eight or ten inches
broad.

The female fur-seal is from four to four and a half feet in length
from snout to tail, lithe in form, without the heavy covering of fat
round the shoulders which the male has, and with beautiful, gentle,
intelligent, dark-blue eyes. She will weigh from fifty to a hundred
pounds, according to her condition. Her manners are as amiable as her
eyes, and she never fights with her neighbours, as her quarrelsome lord
and master does. The cow-seal has but one voice—a sort of bleating
half-way between the cry of a calf and that of an old sheep—and this
is used for calling the young, which, curiously enough, are known as
‘pups,’ although the mothers are ‘cows,’ and the fathers ‘bulls.’ The
male seal, however, has four voices. One is for battle, and resembles
the puffing of a labouring locomotive; another is a hoarse loud roar;
a third is a sort of low gurgle or growl; and a fourth, a sort of
chuckle, half-hiss, half-whistle. The breeding-grounds are called
‘rookeries,’ and there, during the season, the din of roars, puffs,
growls, and whistles from countless thousands of vigorous ‘bulls,’ is
ceaseless, and in volume has been compared to the boom of Niagara.

It is odd that the breeding-place of ‘bulls’ and ‘cows’ should be
called ‘rookeries,’ but so it is. The first to arrive at these
rookeries are the bull-seals, and the season begins about the first of
May. As it is ‘First come, first served,’ and as there is an unwritten
law among them that a bull requires a clear space of from six to eight
feet square for the accommodation of himself and family, there is much
scrambling and fighting for plots, and the late arrivals may be driven
away without being allowed a landing-place at all. They fight with
great strength and courage—only the adult males, however—running at
each other with averted heads, and then seizing each other with their
teeth. The battles are often long, and the wounds severe; but these
soon heal; and an adventurous ‘bull’ thinks nothing of forty or fifty
desperate combats in a season. While fighting, they utter both their
roar and their whistle, the hair is sent flying in all directions, and
the eyes gleam with angry fire. It is said that in a seal-fight there
is always an offensive and a defensive party, and that if the latter
is beaten, he simply vacates his position to the victor, who does not
follow his foe, but lies down on the conquered territory and gives vent
to his chuckle.

Although the cows are amiable, they are not particularly demonstrative
to their infants, which are born immediately after the females are
located in the rookeries. Twins are very rare, and mothers always
suckle their own young. The pups do not know their own mothers, and if
separated from them, will take with the greatest alacrity to the first
kindly cow which will console them with her rich creamy and abundant
milk. The pups, for the first three months after birth, are jet black
in colour, and bleat in a minor key after the fashion of the cows. At
birth, a pup will weigh three or four pounds, and measure twelve or
fourteen inches in length. Curiously enough, the pup-seal cannot swim,
and even if he is several weeks old, will helplessly sink, if thrown
into the water. But about the second week of August begins one of the
most curious episodes of seal-life—the education of the young. By the
time he has counted six weeks or so of life, the pup-seal begins to
feel an inclination to play on the margin of the sea, where, as the
waves flow and recede, the shore is alternately covered and uncovered.
The baby-seal finds that thousands and thousands and tens of thousands
of his fellow-babies have been smitten with the same curiosity about
the sea almost simultaneously with himself, and that the beach is
swarming with tumbling, floundering, gurgling, whistling, playful, yet
nervous young animals. By-and-by, one plucks up courage to try a plunge
in the deeper surf; others follow; one gets carried beyond his depth,
and in frantic struggles to reach the shore again, discovers that he
has a power of locomotion even in the water. It is but feeble; and when
a kindly wave chucks him out of harm’s way on to the rocks, he is blown
and exhausted. But he takes a short sleep, and then has another go; and
after a few more efforts, finds, to his great delight, that he is even
more at home in the water than on the land. For the next few weeks
the coast-waters of the islands are black with the little fat bodies
revelling in their new-found power, and gamboling among the breakers
like children on the grass. It used to be believed by the old sailors
that the parent seals drove their young ones into the water and taught
them forcibly to swim; but more recent and careful observation places
it beyond doubt that the parents take no part whatever in the process
of education, but leave the young ones to learn the battle of life for
themselves.

By the time the breeding season is over, all the young seals have
become able-bodied swimmers. By this time, too, the pups have grown
to thirty or forty pounds-weight, and have changed the black coat of
infancy for the thick, gray, hairy coat of youth. At this age, the
coats of both male and female are similar; indeed, not until the third
year do they assume their permanent differences. The outer coat of the
full-grown bull is of a dark-brown colour, and the hairs are short and
crisp; beneath, like the down under the feathers of a bird, is the
close, soft, elastic fur, so esteemed by man, or rather woman. The
full-grown cows, as they come into the rookeries at the beginning of
the season, are of a dull, dirty-gray colour, which, after they have
been a short time on land, changes to a rich steely gray on the back,
and snow-white on the chest and belly; but after a few weeks the white
changes into a dull ruddy colour, and the steel gray into a brownish
gray. The breeding season is over by the end of July; the families
begin to break up, and the rookeries to be disorganised during August.
By the middle of September, all order and distinction is lost, and the
young ones have commenced life on their own account. By the end of
October, all the mature seals have left the islands; and by the end of
November, even the youngest have disappeared.

Whither? That is one of the conundrums of nature, as is also the
question, where do the seals die? It is certain that none perish from
natural causes on the islands, and all that is known of their doings
elsewhere is, that they seem usually to shape a southern course. They
are lost in the vast mazes of the Pacific, not to be seen of man again
until the following summer. They have natural enemies in sharks and
other submarine animals of prey; but it is not thought that their
numbers suffer much diminution on this account. Their own food is fish,
and Mr Elliott has calculated that an adult male seal will consume
forty pounds, and an adult female ten to twelve pounds, per day, of
fresh fish. Taking, with the young ones, an average of ten pounds per
day each, and the numbers annually frequenting the rookeries of the
Pribylov Islands—which have been ascertained by careful measurement and
estimate at about four millions and three-quarters—we have a total of
six millions of tons of fish consumed every year by the fur-seals! The
figures are stupendous, but they seem beyond doubt.

As to the now approximately known number of seals, there is no reason
to believe that it is any greater than it was when the islands were
first discovered; and while the number will not be decreased by the
present method of capture, it is not thought that it will increase. The
supply of fur-seals, then, may be taken as a fixed quantity, with a
known annual yield to man. That yield is restricted by the law of the
United States to one hundred thousand skins per annum. The government
holds the islands for the State and leases the right of capture to a
Company, who are permitted not to take a larger number than that just
mentioned. They employ the natives of the Aleutian Islands, who work
in gangs, under their chiefs, and receive forty cents, or one shilling
and eightpence, for every ‘pelt’ or hide they hand to the Company’s
officials. Government officers, again, keep a separate tally; so there
is a double check upon the Company, who cannot easily, even if they
wish, exceed their prescribed rights. As the annual birth-rate is
about one million, of which one half are males, the number annually
abstracted by man can have no appreciable effect in reducing the supply
or in affecting the natural increase. The average natural life of the
male seal is believed to be from fifteen to twenty years, and that of
the female, about ten years, so that deaths by man on the rookeries,
and from submarine foes during the winter, suffice to keep the race
within the bounds now known.

The men operate only on the haunts of the ‘bachelor’ seals. It is
presumed that about two-thirds of the males are not allowed to land
on the rookeries by the stronger and abler remanent, so that the
wants of man can be supplied without interfering with the operations
of the breeding-grounds. When the ‘bachelors’ are dozing about the
shores in the early summer, the natives get in quietly between them
and the sea. The seals on perceiving the men turn to run inland, and
are easily driven to the appointed killing-grounds. Three or four men
can easily guide and secure as many thousand seals, and the driving
is done leisurely, for if the animals become overheated, the fur is
injured. The men therefore allow them to rest from time to time, and
renew the drive by clattering and shouting, to startle the seals to
fresh exertions. They move with the docility of a flock of sheep, and
only the old bulls ever show fight. These last will occasionally make
a stand and act on the defensive; but as they are of little value
commercially, the bellicose oldsters are allowed to drop out and go
their own ways. It is only the animals between one and five years old
which are desired, for after the fifth year, the fur deteriorates, the
undergrowth becoming shorter and coarser. The thickest and finest pelts
are those of the third and fourth years. Beneath the skin is a dense
layer of oily blubber, which, unlike the blubber of the hair-seal, has
a very offensive odour.

The work of catching and pickling the pelts occupies June and July,
by which time the Company will have secured its legal number of one
hundred thousand, or as many short of the number as circumstances have
confined them to. After July, the seals begin to moult, and the skins
become of less and less value as the season advances. Altogether, three
hundred and ninety-eight persons are employed annually on the Pribylov
Islands in this work.

After the ‘catch’ is ended, the skins are taken in the Company’s
steamers to San Francisco, and thence nearly all or about nine-tenths
are shipped to London, for London has the monopoly of the preparation
of these furs for market. The skins as they come into England are
very different in appearance from what we see on the backs of our
lady-friends. They are indeed very unattractive; and all the coarse
stiff outer hair has to be carefully extracted before the rich
under-fur is seen. This last is then dyed and dressed. It is hurried
or defective dyeing and dressing which accounts for the variation in
prices of the finished furs, for there is little difference in the
original quality. The more careful and skilful the work of the furrier,
therefore, the dearer becomes the sealskin jacket.

The Alaska Commercial Company’s lease of the islands is for twenty
years from the 1st of May 1870, and they pay the government a rental of
eleven thousand pounds per annum for the islands, and a tax of eight
shillings for each sealskin, ten and sixpence for each fur-seal skin,
and fifty-five cents for every gallon of oil, shipped. The Company is
also bound to supply the inhabitants with a stipulated quantity of
dried fish, firewood, and salt; to maintain a school on each island for
the education of the natives; and not to sell or give any ‘distilled
spirituous liquors’ to the natives. We believe that the Company has in
only one year (1881) taken its full number of skins, the usual number
shipped being from ninety to ninety-five thousand. Between 1870 and
1881, the Company had paid the United States Treasury nearly three and
a half millions of dollars in rent and royalty.




BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.


CHAPTER XVI.

Consumed by conflicting emotions, and torn by a thousand hopes and
fears, Maxwell set out on his journey to Rome. At any hazards, he was
determined to commit no crime, and trusted to time and his own native
wit to show him a way out of the awful difficulty which lay before him.
All the old familiar country he passed through failed to interest him
now; he saw nothing but his own fate before his eyes; and the Eternal
City, which had once been a place of mystery and delight to him, now
looked to his distorted fancy like a tomb, every broken statue an
avenging finger, and every fractured column a solemn warning.

It was night when he arrived and secured apartments—the old ones he had
occupied in his student days, the happiest time in his life, he thought
now, as every ornament recalled this silent voice or that forgotten
memory slumbering in some corner of his brain. He could eat nothing;
the very air of the place was oppressive to him; so he put on his hat
and walked out into the streets, all alive with the citizens taking
their evening walk, and gay with light laughter over flirtations and
cigarette smoke. He wandered long and far, so far, that it was late
when he returned; and there, lying on the table, was a sealed packet,
bearing the device of the Order, and in the corner two crossed daggers.
He groaned as he opened it, knowing full well the packet contained the
hated ‘instructions,’ as they were called. He tore them open, read them
hastily, and then looked out of the window up to the silent stars. And
it was Visci, his old friend Carlo Visci, he was sent here—to murder!
The whole thing seemed like a ghastly dream. Visci, the truest-hearted
friend man ever had; Visci, the handsome genius, whose purse was ever
ready for a fellow-creature in need; the man who had sat at his table
times out of number; the student who was in his secrets; the man who
had saved his life, snatched him from the very jaws of death—from
the yellow waters of the Tiber. And this was the friend he was going
to stab in the back some dark night! A party of noisy, light-hearted
students passed down the street, some English voices amongst them,
coming vaguely to Maxwell’s ears, as he sat there looking on the fatal
documents, staring him in the face from the table.

‘Et tu, Brute!’

Maxwell looked up swiftly. And there, with one trembling forefinger
pointing to the open documents, stood the figure of a man with a look
of infinite sorrow on his face, as he gazed mournfully down upon the
table. He was young—not more than thirty, perhaps, and his aquiline
features bore the marks of much physical suffering. There were
something like tears in his eyes now.

‘Carlo! is it possible it is you?’ Maxwell cried, springing to his feet.

‘Yes, Fred, it is I, Carlo Visci, who stand before you. We are well
met, old friend; you have not far to seek to do your bidding now.
Strike! while I look the other way, for it is your task, I know.’

‘As there is a heaven above us, no!’ Maxwell faltered. ‘Never, my
friend! Do you think I would have come for this? Listen to me, Visci.
You evidently know why I am here; but sure as I am a man, never shall
my hand be the one to do you hurt. I have sworn it!’

‘I had expected something like this,’ Visci replied mournfully. ‘Yes, I
know why you came. You had best comply with my request. It would be a
kindness to me to kill me, as I stand here now.’

‘Visci, I swear to you that when I joined the Brotherhood, I was in the
blackest ignorance of its secret workings. When I was chosen for this
mission, I did not even comprehend what I had to do. Then they told me
Visci was a traitor. Even then, I did not know it was you. Standing
there in the room, I swore never to harm a hair of your head; and,
heaven help me, I never will!’

‘Yes, I am a traitor, like you,’ Visci smiled mournfully. ‘Like you,
I was deceived by claptrap talk of liberty and freedom; like you, I
was allotted to take vengeance on a traitor; and like you, I refused.
Better the secret dagger than the crime of fratricide upon one’s soul!’

‘Fratricide! I do not understand.’

‘I do not understand either. Frederick, the man I was detailed to
murder—for it is nothing else—is my only brother.—You start! But the
League does not countenance relationships. Flesh and blood and such
paltry ties are nothing to the friends of liberty, who are at heart the
sternest tyrants that ever the mouth of man execrated.—But what brings
you here? You can have only one object in coming here. I have told you
before it would be a kindness to end my existence.’

‘But why? And yet, when I come to look at you again, you have changed.’

‘I have changed,’ Visci echoed mournfully—‘changed in mind and body. My
heart is affected, diseased beyond all hope of remedy. I may die now,
at any moment; I cannot live four months.’

They sat down together, and fell to discussing old times when they were
happy careless students together, and Maxwell did not fail to notice
the painful breathing and quick gasping spasms of his friend, altered
almost beyond recognition from the gallant Visci of other days.

‘Salvarini advised me to come here. You remember him; he claims to be
a true friend of yours,’ Maxwell observed at length. ‘He said it would
gain time, and enable me to form my plans.—But tell me how you knew I
was in Rome. I have only just arrived.’

‘I had a sure warning. It came from the hand of Isodore herself.’

‘I have heard much of her; she seems all-powerful. But I thought she
was too stern a Leaguer to give you such friendly counsel. Have you
ever seen her? I hear she is very beautiful.’

‘Beautiful as the stars, I am told, and a noble-hearted woman too. She
is a sort of Queen of the League; but she uses her power well, ever
erring on the side of mercy. She has a history, report says—the old
story of a woman’s trustfulness and a man’s deceit. Poor Isodore! hers
is no bed of roses!’

‘And she put you on your guard?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Come, there must be
some good in a woman like that, though I cannot say I altogether like
your picture. I should like to see her.’

‘I should not be surprised if you did before many days. She is the one
to protect you from violence. With her sanction, you could laugh the
mandates of the League to scorn. Had I long to live, I should sue for
her protection, and wherever she may be, she would come to me. Even
now, if she comes to Rome, see her if you can and lay your case before
her.’

‘And shield myself behind a woman! That does not sound like the
chivalrous Visci of old. She is only a woman, after all.’

‘One in a million,’ Visci answered calmly. ‘If she holds out her right
hand to you, cling to it as a drowning desperate man does to a rock; it
is your only chance of salvation.—And now it is late. I must go.’

Despite his own better sense, Maxwell began to dwell upon the fact
of gaining assistance from the mysterious Isodore. At meetings of
the League in London, he had heard her name mentioned, and always
with the utmost reverence and affection. If she could not absolutely
relieve him from his undertaking, she could at anyrate shield him from
non-compliance with the mandate. Full of these cheerful thoughts, he
fell asleep.

He found his friend the following morning quite cheerful, but in the
daylight the ravages of disease were painfully apparent. The dark rings
under the eyes and the thin features bespoke nights of racking pain and
broken rest.

Visci noticed this and smiled gently. ‘Yes, I am changed,’ he said.
‘Sometimes, after a bad night, I hardly know myself. It is cruel, weary
work lying awake hour after hour fighting with the grim King. But I
have been singularly free from pain lately, and I am looking much
better than I have been.’

‘There might be a chance yet,’ Maxwell replied with a cheerfulness
wholly assumed, and thinking that this ‘looking better’ was the nearest
approach to death he had ever seen. ‘An absence from Rome, a change of
climate, has done wonders for people before now.’

Visci shook his head. ‘Not when the mainspring of life is broken,’
he said: ‘no human ingenuity, no miracle of surgery can mend that.
Maxwell, if they had deferred their vengeance long, they would have
been too late. Some inward monitor tells me I shall fail them yet.’

‘You will for me, Visci, you may depend upon that. Time is no object to
me.’

‘And if I should die and disappoint you of your revenge, how mad you
would be!’ Visci laughed. ‘It is a dreadful tragedy to me; it is a
very serious thing for you; and yet there is a comic side to it, as
there is in all things. Ah me! I cannot see the droll side of life as
I used; but when the bloodthirsty murderer sits down with his victim
tête-à-tête, discussing the crime, there is something laughable in it
after all.’

‘I daresay there is,’ Maxwell answered grimly, ‘though I am dense
enough not to notice it. To me, there is something horribly,
repulsively tragic about it, even to hear you discussing death in that
light way.’

‘Familiarity breeds contempt. Is not that one of your English
proverbs?’ Visci said airily.—‘But, my good Frederick,’ he continued,
lowering his voice to a solemn key, ‘the white horseman will not find
me unprepared, when he steals upon me, as he might at any moment. I am
ready. I do not make a parade of my religion, but I have tried to do
what is right and honest and honourable. I have faced death so often,
that I treat him lightly at times. But never fear that when he comes to
me for the last time’——

Maxwell pressed his friend’s hand in silent sympathy. ‘You always
were a good fellow, Visci,’ he said; ‘and if this hour must come so
speedily, tell me is there anything I can do for you when—when’——

‘I am dead? No reason to hesitate over the word. No, Maxwell; my house
is in order. I have no friends besides my brother; and he, I hope, is
far beyond the vengeance of the League now.’

‘Then there is nothing I can do for you in any way?’

‘No, I think not. But you are my principal care now; your life is far
more important than mine. I have written to Isodore, laying a statement
of all the facts before her; and if she is the woman I take her for,
she is sure to lose no time in getting here. Once under her protection,
you are safe; there will be no further cause for alarm.’

‘But it seems rather unmanly,’ Maxwell urged.

‘Unmanly!’ echoed Visci scornfully. ‘What has manliness to do with
fighting cowardly _vendetti_ in the dark? You must, you shall do it!’
he continued vehemently; but the exertion was too much for him, and
he swayed forward over the table as if he would fall. Presently, a
little colour crept into the pallid face, and he continued: ‘You see,
even that is too much for me. Maxwell, if you contradict me and get me
angry, my blood will be upon your head after all. Now, do listen to
reason.’

‘If my want of common-sense hurts you as much as that, certainly. But I
do not see how this mysterious princess can help me.’

‘Listen to me,’ Visci said solemnly. Then he laid all his schemes
before the other—his elaborate plans for his friend’s safety, designs
whose pure sacrifice of self were absolutely touching.

Maxwell began to take heart again. ‘You are very good,’ he said
gratefully, ‘to take all this infinite pains for me.’

‘In a like strait you would do the same for me, Fred.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell answered simply. ‘How Salvarini’s words come back to me
now! Do you remember, when I wanted to throw my insignia out of the
window that evening, the last we all spent together?’

‘I recollect. It was two days before little Genevieve disappeared,’
Visci answered sadly.—‘Do you know, I have never discovered any trace
of her or Lucrece. Poor child, poor little girl! I wonder where she is
now.’

‘Perhaps you may see her again some day.’

‘It has long been my dearest wish; but it will never be fulfilled now.
If ever you do see her once more, say that I’——

‘Visci!’

As the last words fell from the Italian’s lips, his head hung forward,
and he fell from his chair. For a moment he lay motionless, then raised
his face slightly and smiled. A thin stream of blood trickled down his
fair beard, staining it scarlet. He lay quietly on Maxwell’s shoulder.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said faintly. ‘It has come at last.—There are
tears in your eyes, Fred. Do not weep for me. Do not forget Carlo
Visci, when you see old friends; and when you meet little Genevieve,
tell her I forgave her, and to the last loved and grieved for
her.—Good-bye, old friend. Take hold of my hand. Let me look in your
honest face once more. It is not hard to die, Fred. Tell them that my
last words——Jesu, mercy!’

‘Speak to me, Carlo—speak to me!’

Never again on this side of the grave. And so the noble-hearted Italian
died; and on the third day they buried him in a simple grave under the
murmuring pines.

No call to remain longer now. One last solitary evening ramble, Maxwell
took outside the city wall ere his departure. As he walked along
wrapped in his own sad thoughts, he did not heed that his footsteps
were being dogged. Then with a sudden instinct of danger, he turned
round. The feet that followed stopped. ‘Who is there?’ he cried.

A muffled figure came towards him, and another stealthily from behind.
A crash, a blow, a fierce struggle for a moment, a man’s cry for help
borne idly on the breeze, a mist rising before the eyes, a thousand
stars dancing and tumbling, then deep, sleepy unconsciousness.

(_To be concluded next month._)




THE PLEASURES OF RUIN.


There must be many people to whom the above heading will be at once
suggestive of the famous chapter upon Snakes in Iceland; but to the
philosophical mind—and it is marvellous how philosophical one can
become under adversity—there are certain compensating advantages in
the state of ruin, which, if not quite so intense as the Pleasures of
Hope, or Memory, or Imagination, do much to reconcile us to the change
in our circumstances. The first feeling is one of extreme relief that
the whole thing is over and we are out of suspense. The smash has
come; writs and summonses have blossomed into sheriffs’ officers, and
the auctioneer, whose fell and inexorable hammer has made short work
of our goods and chattels; our wealthy friends have said that they
knew it would come to this; and Jones, who used to look dinners and
five-pound notes at us whenever he met us formerly, now crosses over
to the opposite side of the street. The cheap lodgings in the shady
neighbourhood have become hard and ineradicable facts, and we can look
about us at last and endeavour to make the best we can of the position.

You now have a newly acquired sense of freedom and independence
to which perhaps you have long been a stranger. It is no longer a
question of whether you shall dine at the _Bristol_ or the _Blue
Posts_, but in all likelihood the choice will lie between the _diner du
jour_ in Leicester Square, a chop, or Duke Humphrey. Nor, if you be a
married man, need you now vex your soul with the proper precedence of a
brigadier-general, an Indian judge, a colonial bishop, and a resident
commissioner from the Punjab, as has happened in the days gone by when
you gave a dinner. Nor will the varying merits of asparagus soup and
turtle, salmon mayonnaise and aspic of lobster, truffled turkey and
oyster-stuffed capon, and all the rest of it, come between you and
your night’s rest. Again, your circumstances are such that you are no
longer harassed by the touters for subscriptions, male and female, and
you find it therefore needless to discuss the comparative merits of the
claims put forward by the friends of the Cannibal Islanders for French
mustard, and by the friends of the Mayor of Little Pedlington for a new
pump in the market-place in honour of that excellent cheesemonger and
municipal chief.

When you go to the theatre or opera, you are no longer compelled to
pay fifty or a hundred per cent. for the privilege of receiving your
ticket from an agent, and you go to the pit, where, if the orange peel
and ginger beer and nuts are a bit of a nuisance at first, you are
not long in getting used to it; and at anyrate you are permitted to
hear the piece without being bored by one of Smith’s ‘good stories’
during Patti’s chief _aria_, or while Irving is giving some fine piece
of declamation. You discover sources of gratuitous amusement which
indifference has hitherto hidden from you. That glorious rotunda in
Bloomsbury, the British Museum Reading-room—the mausoleum of the mind
of the world—gives you opportunities for study and recreation of which
you have never before thought of availing yourself; and the treasures
of South Kensington and the National Gallery, which you have hitherto
neglected as ‘slow’ and ‘bad form,’ are now a source of delight to
you. The only fault that you can now find with the latter institution
is, that it spoils you for all the modern galleries about Pall Mall
and Piccadilly. You have a feeling of proprietorship now in the royal
parks, which you never had when you sauntered in the Row, or attended
the meet of the Coaching Club at the Magazine, or dawdled about the
Mall in St James’s Park on a Drawing-room day. You don’t attend these
‘functions’ now, for, though they are open to you as to the rest of
the world, you feel yourself rather out of the race. But you often
enjoy the air in the higher ground of Hyde Park, which you will come to
consider as bracing as the Sussex Downs; nor are you to be persuaded
that Burnham Beeches has a much finer show of trees than Kensington
Gardens.

But the time when you do really and thoroughly enjoy the Pleasures
of Ruin is when that delectable moment comes—which it inevitably
will, sooner or later—when a temporary, or, let us hope, it may be a
permanent, change in your fortunes takes place. Your book has found
a publisher; your picture a buyer; some one pays up an old debt; or
an unknown relative mentions your name in his will. Whatever it may
be, the keen appreciation of the benefits we formerly enjoyed which
our vicissitudes have taught us, and the knowledge we have acquired
of the dingier side of nature, give a remarkable zest to our return
to a brighter life. And if a man has good health and good spirits, he
will find that it is as true that ‘hope springs eternal in the human
breast,’ as that when things are at their worst they mend; and if he
is of an extra-hopeful disposition, he will welcome the increased
depression of his fortunes as a sure forerunner of a change of luck.




COUSIN GEORGE.


IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

All went well in the Smethby circle, indeed things had never before
gone so smoothly in that not unprosperous group. Harriet, it is true,
did not get more manageable in the Robert Crewe direction; she was
perfectly ready to flatter and please the Australian cousin, and had
an eye to the main chance as keen as others; but the young doctor was
not to be jeopardised. Thus Harriet might be regarded as an exception;
so, of course, might Mr Crewe; but after all, as he does not actually
appear in our narrative, he need not count for much.

There were frequent indications that the ridiculous disguise, the
absurd plea of poverty, at first put forth by Styles was being
gradually discarded—was ‘peeling off,’ Mr Joe said, with a happy
touch of description. But Mr Smethby would not see all these
indications—pretended not to notice any flaws; he would humour his
cousin just as long as the latter chose.

The proposed investment was still in favour, was about to be made,
indeed; and so earnest was Cousin George in the matter, that when
Smethby said he had given notice at the bank for his money, he
confidentially told him that if there was any difficulty about getting
it, his friend would advance the sum for a week or two—or for a year,
if Smethby would like it. The latter thanked him, but declined. Of
course he could see through this, as he had seen through the other
flimsy screens.

The bank was good enough, he explained, and so it was, for the money
was duly paid to him; and it was proposed that they should go up to
town together, Smethby and Cousin George, where the latter would see
his friend’s broker and arrange for the purchase of this stock.

In a confiding mood, not usual with him, Smethby had proposed that
Styles should send a cheque up, or go up with it by himself, if going
up were necessary; but the latter declined to do this. He seemed to
have a strange dislike to cheques or drafts, and as he said: ‘It was
not their way at the diggings; a man liked to look after his own
business there.’ So Cousin Nick must go with him.

He, Cousin George, had also asked Harriet what kind of bracelet she
preferred; for his friend had desired him to consult some lady’s taste,
as he, the friend, was thinking of making a little present. Harriet was
not proof against this temptation, so explained that amethyst bracelets
with amethyst pendants—or sapphire and diamonds, if she _did_ have her
choice—was what she liked. Cousin George, with a highly expressive
wink on hearing this, said his friend would be much obliged by her
opinion. He should perhaps see him on the next day but one when he,
Styles, and her father went to London.

‘All which means, my dear,’ said Smethby, when he had a chance of
whispering to his daughter, ‘that this farce is about to end. He means
to present me with the whole of these twenty thousand shares, and you
will have a present also. Beyond this, you will have an offer in plain
language—his language has already been plain enough to show what he
means; so, be a sensible girl, and don’t lose a chance the like of
which will not occur again, if you live for a hundred years.’

Harriet did not reply; there was indeed a recurrence of the pouting and
flouncing; she could not resist the jewelry; but when Robert Crewe was
endangered, she exhibited some of the old perverseness.

In the morning, Cousin George took a stroll into the town, as was his
habit. Smethby knew quite well that his eccentric relative went to the
post-office, whither his letters, as every one knew, were directed.
No one, however, pretended to suspect anything like this arrangement,
which was just as shallow and easily penetrated as his other schemes.
On his return, he was in higher spirits than usual; a little fitful,
perhaps, but certainly more jocular and fuller of sly allusions than he
had hitherto allowed himself to be. This was evidence enough, to such
a man as Smethby, to show that the end of the scheme was approaching.
He broached a capital joke—he undoubtedly so considered it—in the way
of a question as to what his cousin Nick would have thought of and
said to him, Styles, if he had come back from the diggings loaded with
shiners—‘Not one or two, Nick, but some scores of thousands, eh!—what
then, Nick?’ he exclaimed.

Smethby was of course acute enough to seize such a palpable chance,
so replied with the utmost heartiness and frankness, that, delighted
as he should have been at such good fortune, it never could have made
any difference in his feelings to his old friend and cousin, George
Styles. The latter grasped his hand at this, and seemed for the moment
almost overcome by his feelings. He was indeed about to say something,
which Smethby expected would prove a clearing-up avowal; but he checked
himself, and saying abruptly, ‘No; wait a day or two,’ turned the
conversation.

Yet, all through the day, there was an uneasiness in Cousin George’s
manner which could not escape the attention of those around him; and he
took several short strolls in the open air to soothe his nerves, which,
he admitted, seemed rather shaky. On the last occasion that he took his
saunter, it was in the twilight, and in the glance which he naturally
threw around him before entering the house, he could see, standing in
relief against the clear summer sky, the figures of two men, who were
apparently conversing earnestly as they paused on a knoll not far from
Mr Smethby’s residence.

Then Styles went in, and found the lamps were just lighted, the
curtains were drawn, while his host and his daughter, evidently in the
best of moods, were awaiting him. With a decision which was almost
like abruptness, Styles began about the visit to London on the morrow.
He explained, as he had done before, that until the transaction was
completed, he did not want any one, not even the broker, to know that
the stock was not entirely for his friend, who had promised to take
over all the disposable shares; and that was why he had asked Mr
Smethby to provide money instead of a cheque for the payment.

‘I understand,’ smiled Smethby; ‘and, as you know, I have arranged to
get notes in the morning. But here is the cheque, if that would suit
you—you can have it to-night, if you like.’

‘No; O no!’ returned Styles; but the response came so slowly, that it
seemed as if he had hesitated before deciding. ‘There will be no use in
that; so long as I can see the broker alone, that will do.’

‘Just as you please,’ said Mr Smethby. As he paused, a ring at the
street door was heard.

‘And now a word or two about that little villa my friend thought of
buying at Richmond,’ resumed Styles. ‘I had a letter this morning’——

‘If you please, sir,’ said the maid-servant, appearing at the door, ‘a
gentleman wishes to see you.’

‘To see me, or to see Mr Styles?’ asked her master. Another ring was
heard at the street door as he said this.

‘I believe I want to see both of you,’ said a voice behind the
servant, which voice being deep and harsh in its tone, and coming so
unexpectedly, made each person in the room start; ‘so I shall take the
liberty of coming in here,’ continued ‘the gentleman;’ then, suiting
the action to the word, he pushed past the attendant, and came close to
the table which filled the centre of the room.

All looked at him in amazement; while, before any one spoke, Mr Joe
and Mr Brooks, who had called just then to have a chat with Mr Styles,
also entered, and gazed at the stranger with as much astonishment as
was shown by their friends. The stranger was an elderly, grizzled, but
powerfully built man, with hard features, high cheek-bones, indented
nose, square jaws, hidden by his stiff iron-gray beard, and moustache.

‘You are Mr Smethby—Nicholas Smethby, I believe: in fact, I know it,’
said the man.—‘But may I ask who this is?’ pointing to Cousin George as
he spoke.

‘I really do not know what your business here is, or why you make this
inquiry,’ returned Smethby, a good deal nettled by the intrusion;
‘but I certainly am Nicholas Smethby, and this gentleman is Mr George
Styles. Have you any business with either of us?’

‘Did you ever see George Styles look like a cross between a
skittle-sharp and a stage smuggler?’ continued the visitor, ‘which is
what this fellow looks like.’

‘Do you mean’—— began Cousin George, but he spoke falteringly; while Mr
Joe and Mr Brooks, who stood behind the stranger, could see that the
speaker turned pale.

‘Yes; I do mean,’ interrupted the visitor; ‘and I mean a good deal
more than that, as you will find.’ He flourished an ugly-looking stick
which he carried, as if to give emphasis to these words.—‘As for you,
Nick Smethby, I am surprised and ashamed to think you could be such a
fool as to mistake a fellow like this for your own cousin—for _me_!’

Here every hearer started in reality; and Smethby, drawing a long
breath, looked from one to the other with an expression which clearly
showed that he did not mean to contest the announcement.

‘Do you think,’ resumed the new-comer, ‘that a man, after twenty years’
beating about the diggings, which I have had, could look as young as
he did when he started? which is pretty nearly what this fellow does,
in spite of his make-up.—I have come back with enough to pay you your
loan, Nick, but I have been down very low in my time. I have fought
two battles in the colonial ring, and I am going to show this fellow,
presently, how I won them.’

‘All this is dreadfully mysterious!’ exclaimed Smethby; ‘yet one thing
is clear enough: I will swear you are my cousin George Styles. But
then, who is this?—Yes, who are you, you impostor?’ he cried, turning
sharply upon his guest, who gasped once or twice, as though trying
to speak, but was paralysed by the new-comer, from whom he could not
remove his eyes.

‘Don’t trouble yourself about him yet,’ pursued the second Styles. ‘I
will just say what I have to say, and then I will get it all out of
him; you will see that. I fancy, however, I am only just in time. Is
it true that you have agreed to go up to London with this person and
invest a lot of money among his confederates?’

The ‘first cousin,’ as he may fairly be called, groaned at this;
while Mr Smethby uttered, as well he might, an ejaculation of intense
astonishment at finding his intentions and plans thus known to a man
whom he had not seen for twenty years.

‘I see you are surprised, Nick, and that our customer there feels he
is bowled out,’ said the stranger. ‘But after all, there is nothing
to wonder at in the matter. I inquired my way at the station—having
learnt your address from your old office—and a gentleman who overheard
me, kindly offered to show me the place. I told him who I was; and he
was just as much as flabbergasted as you are; but he was delighted
as well. He told me all about this’—— The speaker paused while he
cast a look of utter contempt at his predecessor, and then went on,
evidently unable to find an epithet suitably strong. ‘He told me he was
a doctor, by name Robert Crewe.’ (It was now Harriet’s turn to start
and change colour.) ‘We walked together to a point just below here,
where he turned off at the brow of a hill. He not only told me about
the impostor who was taking my name, but pointed him out as he slunk
in at the gate.’ (The unlucky cousin remembered, and groaned audibly
as he did so, the two men whom he had seen in converse on the rise
in the road.) ‘So here I am; and the first thing I mean to do is to
collar this fellow, and thrash him until he has not a sound inch of
skin on his carcase.—But don’t you turn pale, my dear.’ This was said
to Harriet, and the speaker raised his cap with a sort of reassuring
politeness. ‘Though I have come straight from the mines, I do not
forget what is due to a lady; and I shall take the fellow outside to
have his thrashing, and he shall have it now.’ With this, he made a
stride forward, and thrusting his huge hand inside the man’s collar,
clutched him with a grip which might have been of iron, and with a
single tug pulled him to his feet; but the victim seemed unable to
stand, and sank back on his chair all of a heap.

Harriet uttered a scream as the real Cousin George bent over the man,
evidently intent upon dragging him out by main force; while Mr Joe and
Mr Brooks seized his arm, and urged him not to be violent—Joe at the
same moment briefly introducing himself and his brother-in-law.

‘I am glad to see you again, anyhow, young Joe,’ returned Styles. ‘I
remember buying you a drum the last time I was in your company.—But you
had better let me settle this fellow at once.’

‘Spare me!’ whined the man. He could not speak comfortably with such a
grip on his collar and with such knuckles buried in his neck.

‘Why, what I am going to do is real mercy to you!’ retorted his captor.
‘You will be sore for a week or ten days, and then be as well as ever;
but if I give you over to the police—— Well, as you seem to dread a
simple licking so much, we will go to the police. Come on!’

Another tremendous tug here dragged up the unfortunate creature, who
broke into most despairing petitions, imploring that they would not
give him up to the police—_they_ knew him, he said.

‘Why, confound it! you do not suppose you are to be let off scot-free,
after such a game as this, do you?’ exclaimed the other, whose
astonishment was so clearly genuine, that Joe and Brooks could not
repress a smile.

‘I will confess everything; I throw myself on your mercy!’ urged the
man; ‘but don’t give me up to the police. I am sure to get it hot, if
you do.’

‘So you ought!’ ejaculated Styles.

‘I think if you were to quit your hold on his neck, he could speak
freer,’ said Mr Joe; ‘and I should really like to know how all this
came about.’

‘Ah! so he might,’ assented Styles, acting on the suggestion. ‘I can
easily catch hold of him again when I want him. I’ll bet he does not
give us the slip.’

In spite of the threat conveyed in the last speech, the culprit’s face
visibly brightened after Joe’s remark. Mr Smethby had remained silent
all this time, being not only confused with the unexpected revelation,
but a little ashamed, possibly, of his own management, which was so
over-cunning as to make him a readier prey to the swindler.

‘Well, go on,’ was the rough command of Styles. ‘Who are you? Where do
you come from?’

‘My name is John Smith,’ began the man. A furtive leer which he cast
upon the company as he said this, might have been involuntary; but
certain it is that none of those who saw it believed he was speaking
the truth. ‘I had got into trouble,’ he continued, ‘and wanted some
money for a fresh start. While I was at my wits’ end to get this, a
pal—a friend—who knew I had been in a difficulty, said’ (he paused
here, and glanced at Smethby)—‘he said there was a flat to be had at
Valeborough, if he was properly worked.—No offence, I hope, sir. It was
not me who said this; it was my friend.’

‘It was correct enough, whoever said it,’ replied Smethby, to whom the
remark had been addressed.

‘He knew a lot about the family affairs here,’ continued Smith: ‘he had
scraped about and picked the particulars up, till he thought he had got
quite enough to enable a man to act as the cousin they had not seen for
twenty years; but he owned he had not got the headpiece to keep the
game up for any time; so I was to be the cousin; and he was to be a
friend who knew me, and was to manage—as he did very well—to get hold
of Mr Smethby, as if by accident, and tell him all about the good luck
of his old friend Styles, and how he was going to try on a game with
his cousin Mr Smethby.’

‘I never thought I was such an idiot; but go on,’ said the host.

‘We raked up some money between us,’ resumed Smith; ‘but it was a hard
job to get enough, as of course I had to be pretty liberal; but luckily
this gentleman would not let me spend much.—However, I got a letter
this morning, saying that Ben—my friend—could not send another penny,
and that unless I could make a haul at once, the thing must burst up.
But the business was nearly ripe. I had prepared the way for persuading
my cousin, as I called him, to invest a lot of money, by dropping a
pretended letter from my stockbroker, which I knew they would find and
read. In fact, there was no difficulty all through; and I had arranged
for a visit to London to-morrow, so I was in hope that’——

‘That you could make the haul,’ said Smethby, as the other paused. ‘How
did you mean to do it, when I should be with you? I was to go to the
office, you know.’

‘I meant to take you to a place where you would wait in a room, while
I went into what you would think was only an inner office, but which I
knew had a way out,’ answered Smith. ‘In fact, if I had once touched
the money, there would have been an end of it.’

‘And your friend with the villa and the bracelets?’ asked Smethby.

‘All put in to make it seem more natural,’ said the man. ‘But I have
not robbed your place of a pennyworth ever since I have been here, I
assure you. I hope you will take that into consideration.’

He went on a little further, until he was interrupted by Styles, who
led him to the door—no force was now wanted—and telling him that he
would give him in charge to the nearest policeman if he ever saw him
again, pitched him out on the dark road, and then returned to the
circle he had left.

At first, Smethby was terribly chopfallen, but recovered ere long,
and joined in the laugh with which first ‘Cousin George’ and then the
others reviewed the past. Harriet was not the noisiest of the party,
but she was not the least happy, and ‘Cousin George’ appeared to have
taken a great fancy for her.

Styles paid his debt to ‘Nick Smethby’ that night, to prove, as he
said, that he was not another impostor, and said, besides, that
while he should not bother about amethyst bracelets or diamonds and
sapphires, yet, if that young doctor had the courage to get married
within three months, and a few hundreds would help him to get into
practice, why, he George Styles, had enough for such a purpose, and
Harriet should take care of it, until it was wanted.

Altogether, although rougher and coarser than the first cousin, this
second edition was a great improvement; and settling down as he did in
Valeborough, he was a regular visitor, not only at Mr Smethby’s but
at Dr Crewe’s, when the latter set up his own house, after an early
marriage to Miss Harriet.

And improvident and wild as George had once been, he was steady enough
in his friendships now, so he never left the little circle; and when
he died, his property—a good deal less than the hundreds of thousands
attributed to the first cousin—went to the children of Dr and Mrs
Crewe, with which cluster of young people he had always been a great
favourite.




AIR AS A MOTIVE FORCE.


In a recent number of the _Journal_ we touched on the various methods
of transmission of power, and showed how steam had been laid on
in mains in the streets of American towns, and a house-to-house
distribution thus effected. Loss has been found, however, to result
from leakage and condensation, and these defects have militated against
the system. Water under pressure has obtained extended application in
this country where power was required in docks and warehouses; but up
to the present time, a motor has not been introduced satisfying the
necessary requirements of economy sufficiently to render the system of
commercial value for supplying small power either for domestic purposes
or to the lesser industries. Bursting of pipes, through frost or other
cause, might result in serious damage, moreover, in dwelling-houses.

The problem of transmission of power may possibly find a solution in
electricity in the future; but as regards the present, suffice it to
say that the cost of production of such agency entirely precludes
it from entering into the field of competition. Attempts now being
made, in Paris and Birmingham, to distribute power by rarefied air
in the former, and by compressed air in the latter city, possess no
slight interest. In each case, the method adopted differs in no way in
principle from that of the systems already touched on. Central pumping
stations, furnished with boiler and steam-power, supply the requisite
energy; whilst the transmitting medium—steam, water, or air, as the
case may be—is distributed through the principal mains, which feed in
their turn the lesser arteries of the system supplying the individual
consumer.

In the case of rarefied air, though, theoretically, a pressure of
fifteen pounds per square inch could be obtained, in practice it is
found advisable to work at a pressure of about ten pounds, without
approaching nearer to an absolute vacuum. Three classes of motors
are employed to convert the vacuum in the mains into useful work;
suffice it to say, however, that whilst differing in the details
of construction, the principle involved throughout is the same, and
consists essentially of modifications of the steam-engine to the
requirements of air-pressure. Payment is made according to the power
absorbed by each consumer, an ingenious arrangement actuating as
counter, indicating how much work is actually done, irrespective of the
number of revolutions made by the motor. Even where gas is available,
the cost of engines for using it has not unfrequently militated against
its adoption by the smaller industries; hence the Parisian Company
for the distribution of power by rarefied air has elected not only
to supply power but to lease out the motors as well. Their customers
embrace such users of small power as hat-block makers, jewellers,
wood-turners, comb-cutters, stay and clothing manufacturers, dentists,
butchers, &c. The cleanliness of this system, and its excellent
ventilating capabilities, should form an argument in its favour. Not
only is all smell from combustion, as in the case of the gas-engine,
avoided, but, by drawing at every stroke a given quantity of air from
the room, the motor directly produces ventilation.

Time alone can show whether the system will prove a commercial success;
in any case, its promoters could hardly have chosen a better field for
its introduction than Paris, a city containing upwards of a million
persons engaged in the minor industries already indicated, and which
require small motive power.




A NINETEENTH-CENTURY PIRATE.


It is not likely that many of our readers will have heard of a certain
Captain Hayes, who a few years ago was one of the most notorious
desperadoes among the numerous ‘beachcombers’ and other questionable
characters who infested the South Pacific. A few instances of this
worthy’s escapades in the paths of fraud and villainy, drawn from
_Coral Lands_, by H. S. Cooper (London: R. Bentley & Son), may be of
interest, and will also show how, up to a comparatively recent period,
a determined character could pursue a career of actual crime and piracy
in the Eastern seas with impunity.

Of the antecedents of Captain (or ‘Bully,’ as he was commonly dubbed)
Hayes, little is known before 1858, when he appeared in the Hawaiian
Islands, having landed from the ship _Orestes_. After a short stay at
Honolulu, he left for San Francisco in the beginning of 1859; and a
few months afterwards reappeared in command of a brig bound for New
Caledonia. Having entered a closed port without having first passed
the custom-house, the sheriff arrested him and took possession of
the brig. Captain Hayes put all the blame on his first officer, and
was virtuously indignant with him for misinforming him as to the
necessity of first entering at the custom-house at Lahaina, at the same
time treating the sheriff with unbounded courtesy and every mark of
respect. He at once agreed to proceed to Lahaina, and seemed delighted
to find it was the sheriff’s duty to accompany him thither. When,
however, the ship was clear of the land, Hayes ‘changed his tune,’
and coolly informed the sheriff he had no intention of going near the
custom-house, and that he (the sheriff) could either remain on board
and pay for his passage to New Caledonia, or find his way back to port
the best way he could. The sheriff found himself completely outwitted,
and was perforce obliged to take to his small boat—luckily, still
alongside—and managed to reach the land with considerable difficulty,
having the melancholy satisfaction of seeing his late prisoner laughing
at him over the taffrail as he resumed his course for the Southern
Ocean. Next mail brought instructions to the United States consul at
Honolulu for Hayes’ arrest; and it then became known that when last
in the islands he had borrowed money from a confiding clergyman,
with which he had gone to San Francisco and negotiated the purchase
of the brig, fitted her out, engaged his crew and then set sail,
paying nobody. His cruise at this time, however, did not last very
long; shortly afterwards, his ship was wrecked at Wallace’s Island,
the captain and his ‘chums’ escaping in the boat to the Navigators’
Islands, leaving the rest of the crew to their fate. They ultimately,
however, succeeded in getting safe to shore by means of a raft.

Hayes was next heard of at Batavia in command of a barque; how
obtained is not known. He succeeded in getting a cargo of coffee for
Europe—which it would never have seen—when the Dutch East India Company
got some information as to his antecedents, and were only too glad
to get repossession of their coffee, losing the charter-money, which
Hayes insisted on being paid before he allowed the cargo to be taken
on shore again. Finding he had not much chance of doing any good—or
evil, rather—at Batavia, Hayes resolved to depart in search of a fresh
field for the exercise of his talents. Proceeding to Hong-kong, he
succeeded in filling his vessel with Chinese coolies, and sailed for
Melbourne. After a fair voyage, he was nearing the Australian coast,
when he spoke a ship, and was informed that a tax had been imposed on
all Chinese immigrants, and that he would have to pay fifty dollars
per head on his passengers before he would be permitted to land them.
This was rather a serious outlook for the captain, but, as usual, his
inventive brain was equal to the occasion. He sailed calmly on, and
soon arrived off his port of destination. Then he set to work to carry
out the plan he had conceived. He coolly filled his ship half-full of
water, hoisted signals of distress, and lay to, waiting the development
of his ruse. He had not long to wait; his signals for assistance were
perceived, and two tug steamers were soon alongside, proffering their
services for the purpose of towing him into port. Hayes declared his
ship would sink before she could be got into dock, as his pumps were
choked and the water rising at a great rate. He implored them to take
off his passengers, leaving his crew and himself to escape by means
of their boats, should the barque not float till they returned. This
the tug-owners agreed to do. The Chinamen were trans-shipped, and the
steamers bore off, promising to return as speedily as possible to his
assistance. They got their load of Chinamen safely landed, the owners
paying the head-tax, and steamed back to bring in the ship; but she was
nowhere to be seen, having, as they supposed, gone down with all hands.
No such fate, however, had befallen the gallant captain. No sooner were
the tugs out of sight, than he pumped his ship free of water, and lost
no time in putting a good few miles between him and Melbourne, inwardly
chuckling, no doubt, at the clever way he had duped the antipodeans and
got his Chinamen landed at others’ expense. Some time after this, Hayes
speculated in another cargo of Chinamen; but this time he landed them
without trouble and without paying anything, having gone through the
formality of getting them all made British subjects before he sailed!

For a few years after this, Captain Hayes was little heard of, except
at some of the South Pacific islands, where he occasionally turned
up, ostensibly pursuing the avocation of an honest trader. By-and-by,
however, he resumed his old habits, and for a couple of years or so
he made raids on several of the island groups, robbing and destroying
the stations of the traders and native villages. Eventually, he was
arrested by the British consul at Upolu. As luck would have it, at this
same time a certain friend of Hayes, Captain Pease or Peace, arrived
at Upolu in his brig the _Leonora_. On some pretence or other, Hayes
obtained leave to go on board; and when next morning dawned, the brig
was invisible, having sailed during the night with him on board as
a passenger. In due time, the _Leonora_ arrived at Shanghai, and by
some dodge or other, Hayes managed to get Captain Pease put in prison,
passing himself off to the authorities as the owner of the brig. He
next got on board the supplies he was in need of, and set sail, as
usual paying for little or nothing. Hayes once more was in command of
a good ship, with a crew who asked no questions, and in a position
to resume his fraudulent career. His first port of call was Saigon,
where he was chartered to take a load of rice to Hong-kong and other
intermediate ports. At the first port of call, the owner of the rice
went on shore to try and effect a sale. Hayes took this opportunity of
leaving the owner behind, and set off for Bankok, where he disposed of
his cargo at a good price, and departed once more for his favourite
hunting-ground—the South Pacific.

Hayes some time after this was again without a ship, having imprudently
intrusted his vessel to the care of his first officer, who treated
the ‘Bully’ to a dose of his own game, and went off with her, leaving
him in a quandary on one of the South Pacific islets. Hayes was now
forced to change his play, and accordingly came out in a new character.
Pretending to be converted from his evil ways, he completely got the
better of the American missionaries, and obtained command of a small
schooner belonging to the Mission. At the first favourable opportunity,
as may be supposed, he disappeared with the schooner, and arrived
at Manila. Here, however, his fame had preceded him, and on being
recognised, he was promptly arrested, and put in prison. The captain’s
game seemed now about up; but his good luck had not yet deserted him.
Once more adopting the religious dodge, he turned a devout Catholic,
and so talked over the priests, that, although there was evidence
enough to hang him and a dozen others besides, he got off, and was next
heard of at the scene of his first escapade, San Francisco, where he
stole a smart schooner called the _Lotus_, and once more was off for
the Sunny South.

On another occasion, Hayes was captured by the U.S. steamer
_Narraganset_, which had been commissioned to look out for him. He was
not many days on board the war-ship, when, by his affable manners and
gentlemanly behaviour, he so won over the sympathies of the American
officers, that they became convinced he was a most worthy individual,
and set him free, actually supplying him with a new set of sails and
other articles he was in need of!

On another occasion, Hayes called at Levuka, the capital of Fiji, to
obtain supplies for a lengthened cruise. The goods were sent on board,
and the bill rendered, payment being expected next morning before
he sailed; but when the day dawned, the captain, as usual, was off.
Unfortunately for him, however, in this instance the wind failed him,
and the merchant was able to overtake the ship in a rowboat.

The captain was not at all put about when the merchant came on board;
said ‘he presumed he would have letters for him to post, and would be
delighted to be of use.’ The merchant was rather taken aback at such
coolness in an absconding debtor, and mildly hinted at payment of his
account.

‘Why,’ exclaimed Hayes, ‘you were paid yesterday!’

The merchant assured him that he was mistaken.

Hayes expressed astonishment, and ordered up one of his officers.
‘Didn’t I give you the cash to settle this gentleman’s bill?’ he
asked indignantly; and then the ‘Bully’ opened the vials of his wrath
upon the innocent seaman, who was cunning enough to see the captain’s
object, and held his tongue. Seeing, however, that there was no sign of
a breeze springing up, he was forced to pay for his supplies, no doubt
very much chagrined at having to be honest for once in his lifetime.

After a long career of robbery and bloodshed—for he gets the name of
having perpetrated several murders—Hayes at last met his deserts at
the hands of one of his officers, whom he had defrauded and ill-used
in a most disgraceful manner. No doubt, the secret of his eluding the
hands of justice for so long a time was his particularly pleasing
manners and appearance. He was by no means a common ruffian, but the
reverse, having a handsome face and figure, and bestowing a deal of
care and attention on his personal appearance. His urbanity of manner
and conversational powers were of the most fascinating description,
and he could entertain a friend or knock him on the head in an
equally charming style. When he first appeared in the Pacific, he was
accompanied by ‘Mrs Hayes,’ and was seldom without a female companion,
several of whom are said to have been among his victims. He was
possessed of great natural abilities. If he had only turned his talents
into a proper channel, he might have made a good position for himself
in the world.




THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.


Mr C. Tankerville-Chamberlain, late acting consul at Panama, gives a
hopeful account of the progress of M. de Lesseps’ giant undertaking,
the construction of the Canal across the Isthmus, which is very
different from the description of the state of things lately published
in the American newspapers. He believes that the great work will be
actually completed in about three years’ time. The line of the Canal,
forty-six miles in length, has been divided into five sections, which
have been handed over to five responsible and solvent contractors,
who are bound under heavy penalties to complete their work by the end
of 1888. The holders of railway stock and many others in America are
interested in believing, and trying to make others believe, that the
Canal is a failure and cannot succeed. That it will be a financial
success, must remain an open question, for the expense already
incurred, added to that which is to come, constitutes a larger sum than
has ever yet been sunk in a single engineering undertaking.

A proposal is now on foot to connect by means of a submarine tunnel the
defences of Portsmouth with the forts on the Solent and with the Isle
of Wight, and it is probable that preliminary borings will be made to
ascertain the practicability of the scheme. It has been before proposed
that a fort should be built half-way between Stokes Bay and Ryde, on
a bank which rises to within eight feet of high-water mark; but the
scheme was abandoned because of the difficulty of finding fresh water
for the garrison. The tying together of this proposed fort and the
other defences would at once obviate this difficulty, and would at the
same time relieve our expensive ironclads from the duty of protecting a
spot which has always been looked upon as of great importance.

Among all the wonderful things which were exhibited in the late
Colonial and Indian Exhibition, there was nothing more remarkable than
the vast variety of different woods—strange to European eyes—which were
shown in some of the Courts. These woods seemed to exhibit every shade
of colour and every variety of grain. In one Court in particular could
this be well remarked, for the different samples of wood were cut into
the shape of books and highly polished, each pseudo volume bearing its
own name. Messrs A. Ransome & Co. lately invited a number of colonial
visitors—engineers, builders, and others—to their large works at
Chelsea, in order that they might demonstrate the applicability of some
of these woods to various purposes. About forty different varieties
were subjected to the operations of tree-felling, cross-cutting,
sawing, planing, moulding, mortising, tenoning, and boring; while
various articles, from casks to doors, were actually made and
completed before the visitors’ eyes. The exhibition not only formed an
illustration of the suitability of many colonial woods for employment
in this country, but it also showed to what a marvellous pitch of
perfection wood-working machinery has been brought by Messrs Ransome.
The demonstration is likely to lead to a great shipment of colonial
woods to this country, many of which are plentiful, and therefore cheap.

The colossal statue of Liberty, which has been presented by the French
Republic to the Republic of America, and which, with the pedestal, is
over one hundred and fifty feet in height, is, at the time we write,
nearly completed. When the statue is quite finished, it is proposed
to illuminate it at night in a very novel manner. The female figure
of Liberty holds aloft a torch, which will be furnished with eight
electric arc lamps, each of six thousand candle-power, the rays from
which will be thrown upwards towards the clouds. At the same time,
several other lamps of similar power will shine on the statue itself,
causing it to stand out in strong relief from its dark surroundings.

A correspondent of the _Times_, quoting a letter recently received
from Sydney, New South Wales, gives an account of the extraordinary
instinct shown by ants and other insects which live in and on the
ground. Some months ago, the natives of a certain district predicted
the approach of floods, and left their low-lying camping-grounds for
the higher country. The floods came as predicted, several weeks later;
and the natives said that their sole information regarding them was
gathered from the insects, which had built their nests, &c. in the
trees, instead of, as usual, in the ground. The correspondent asks
whether this forecasting providence of the ant is recorded by any of
our travellers, and whether any explanation of the fact can be given.

Here are two more natural-history notes recorded by correspondents. It
is pointed out by one that, owing to our backward spring this year,
the swallows on their arrival were kept so short of food that quite
two-thirds of their number died of famine; hence the unusual plague of
flies that we have experienced during the summer. He pleads that the
little mud nests which are seen clinging under the eaves of so many
houses in country and suburbs should be protected from injury, for if
it were not for the swallows, flies would constitute a veritable pest.

In answer to this, another writer points out that sparrows will
sometimes prevent the swallows building, and will often drive the
rightful owners from their nests. This fact he has ascertained by
direct observation. He also remarks that the swarms of flies this year
may be due in great measure to the scarcity of wasps, which destroy an
immense number. The scarcity of wasps in his particular neighbourhood
is fully accounted for, one of his friends having destroyed no fewer
than sixty-seven of their nests. His plan of procedure is, as far as
we know, as novel as it is simple and effective. Tow soaked in spirits
of turpentine is thrust into the wasp’s nest at night, and the hole is
afterwards filled up—presumably with earth.

We are so accustomed to wonderful news from the land of Niagara, that
we are not much surprised to learn that the largest photographic
negative ever produced has been taken by an American worker. The glass
plate upon which the colossal picture was taken measured sixty by
thirty-six inches, and weighed more than eighty pounds. The coating
with sensitive material of such a plate was in itself a very difficult
undertaking, while for its development after exposure in the camera,
over three pailfuls of fluid had to be cast over its surface while it
was lying in a specially constructed tray. The photographer succeeded
in obtaining a good picture, as well as a silver medal to reward him
for his enterprise.

A French journal says that flowers may be preserved with all their
natural brilliancy and freshness by dipping them into a mixture
made as follows: In a well-corked bottle, dissolve six drachms of
coarsely powdered clear gum-copal; add the same quantity of broken
glass, and fifteen and a half ounces (by weight) of pure rectified
sulphuric ether. The flowers should be dipped into this varnish-like
fluid four or five times, allowing them to remain in a current of air
for ten minutes between each immersion. This plan, if it does not
interfere with the delicate texture of the petals, should be of use to
flower-painters, who often have to hurry their work unduly because of
the perishable nature of their models.

Mr Graber has lately made some curious observations upon the effect
of light upon eyeless animals, a Report of which appears in the
Proceedings of the Vienna Academy. He put a number of earthworms into
a box, which was provided with an aperture at one side, through which
light was allowed ingress. The result of many experiments showed that
the worms sought the darkest part of their temporary prison, and that
at least two-fifths of their number shunned the light. Experimenting
with rays of different colours by means of stained glass, he found that
the worms exhibited a marked preference for red light.

According to the _American Druggist_, an alloy which will solder
glass, porcelain, and metals, or one to the other, can be made in
the following manner: Copper dust, made by precipitating the metal
from a solution of bluestone by means of zinc, is put into a mortar
and treated with strong sulphuric acid. To this mass, formed by the
copper and acid, is added a little more than twice as much mercury, the
addition being made with constant stirring. The amalgam thus formed is
washed with warm water to remove the acid, and is afterwards cooled.
When required for use, it is heated, and worked in a mortar until it
becomes as soft as wax, and in this state it will cling tenaciously
to any surface to which it may be applied. It is applicable more
especially to those substances which will not bear a high temperature.

A year ago, Mr J. W. Swan of Newcastle described before the North
of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers an electric
safety-lamp which he had invented for the use of miners. This
lamp, although efficient, had no means of detecting the presence of
firedamp. In an improved lamp which the same inventor has produced,
this deficiency is supplied, for a firedamp indicator forms part of
the lamp. This indicator is based upon one invented some time ago, and
consists of a coil of platinum wire which can be switched on to the
current which supplies the lamp and brought to a red-heat. If firedamp
be present, the wire becomes far hotter, and therefore brighter than it
will in pure air; and in one form of lamp a similar coil, shut up in a
glass tube containing air, is provided, for the sake of comparison. In
another form of indicator the hot wire is made to explode the charge of
firedamp submitted to it, of course in a closed chamber, thus forming
a partial vacuum, which acts upon a column of liquid in an attached
gauge tube. By this means the exact percentage of fiery gas present can
be accurately noted. It may be hoped that these improved appliances
may come into common use; but of course electrical fittings are
somewhat expensive, and this is the initial difficulty in introducing
improvements which would lead to much saving of life.

In these enlightened times, when books without number are published to
instruct even the youngest scholars about the nature of common things,
it seems almost impossible to realise the ignorance which existed and
the nonsense which was written even as lately as the last century
concerning matters of the most elementary kind. So-called facts in
natural history of the most ludicrous kind were handed down from writer
to writer and accepted as the exact truth by all readers. Here is a
specimen of chemical knowledge which dates from the year 1747, and
is due to the pen of one George Adams. He naively remarks that ‘some
people have imagined that the sharpness of vinegar is occasioned by the
eels striking their pointed tails against the tongue and palate; but it
is very certain that the sourest vinegar has none of those eels, and
that its pungency is entirely owing to the pointed figure of its salts,
which float therein.’ There is probably some confusion here between
the sourness of vinegar and the acidity of sour paste, which latter is
accompanied, as even young microscopists know well, by the development
of innumerable so-called eels.

At a recent meeting of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, Dr
Alfred Hill, the President, delivered an opening address, which dealt
with the important subjects of the disposal of house-refuse and the
best method of treating sewage. The employment of destructive furnaces
for getting rid of dry house-refuse was strongly recommended. The
efficient disposal of sewage is of course a far more difficult problem
to solve, and one which has now for a number of years troubled the
minds of many. Dr Hill is in favour of the sewage-farm principle, which
has been so successfully tried at Birmingham. He showed that the system
had not proved a nuisance to adjoining residents nor yet injurious to
health. It was also a profitable system, for in the city referred to,
twenty thousand pounds had been realised during the past year by the
sale of stock and produce from the sewage-farm. He believed that if
a similar system were adopted for the metropolitan area, the sewage
which is now allowed to poison the Thames might realise in meat, milk,
and vegetables two hundred thousand pounds.

Mr Thomson Hankey has lately pointed out a new use for sugar, which,
however, is not new, but it is so little known that he has done good
service in calling attention to it. In the preparation of mortar and
cement, the addition of a certain quantity of unrefined sugar will
give the mixture extraordinary hardness and tenacity. In India, sugar
has been used for this purpose from time immemorial, and walls built
with mortar of this description will defy all ordinary methods of
destruction. Plaster of Paris will also set much harder if about ten
per cent. of sugar be added to the water with which it is mixed. With
plaster of Paris, it might be mentioned, the addition of alum has much
the same effect.

At one of the recent meetings of the Iron and Steel Institute, M.
Gautier of Paris read an interesting paper on ‘The Casting of Chains
in Solid Steel.’ In the course of this paper, he pointed out that in
order to compete successfully with wrought-iron in chain-making, the
steel employed must be quite solid and absolutely free from blowholes,
and it is most necessary to adopt a quick method of moulding the
chains. In the process which has been adopted by Messrs Joubert and
Leger of Lyons, these difficulties have been successfully overcome. The
process combines chilled casting with instantaneous removal from the
moulds, after which the chain is finished and annealed in oil. By this
method he claims that better chains can be manufactured than those of
wrought-iron, with the advantage of greatly diminished weight.

The deposition of dust and smoke by the passage of electricity has
been more than once adverted to in these pages, more especially in
connection with the collection of lead-fume. Messrs King, Mendham,
& Co. of Bristol have recently constructed a convenient piece of
apparatus for illustrating this phenomenon. It consists of a jar capped
at the top with a cover, through which protrudes a rod furnished with
a ball. This rod terminates inside the jar in a point; and a similar
pointed wire, which finds a termination outside the lower part of the
jar, is opposite to it. Below, there is a small combustion box, in
which a smouldering piece of brown paper will soon fill the jar with
smoke. Thus filled, the jar is connected by its brass terminals to a
Wimshurst Electrical Machine. When the handle of the machine is turned,
an electrical discharge takes place between the two pointed wires; and
the smoke, after being violently agitated, disappears, leaving the air
in the jar perfectly clear.

The Simplex Ironing Machine, which is invented by Mr S. Bash, and which
has been examined and approved by the leading tailoring establishments
in London and Paris, is designed to relieve workers from the heavy
manual labour attending the use of pressing-irons. The simplex iron is
suspended from a movable arm by a universal joint, and can be moved in
any direction over the work and with any desired degree of pressure.
This pressure is brought about by the aid of a pedal attachment. There
is also provision made for pressing long seams, a movable table being
made to travel to and fro beneath the gas-heated iron. The inventor
claims for his method a saving in fuel and more rapid and efficient
work.

A new explosive has been invented by a Russian engineer, M. Rucktchell,
about which some very curious particulars have been published, while
the nature of the compound remains the secret of its discoverer. The
explosive gives a penetrative power to projectiles ten times greater
than gunpowder. It emits neither smoke nor heat, and its discharge is
unaccompanied by any report. If this be true, can the compound—whatever
it be—be called an explosive? But this wonderful product is to be
utilised in the arts of peace as well as those of war, for it forms
the motive-power for an engine constructed by the inventor, an engine
for which he claims superiority over steam and gas engines. It will be
remembered that an engine of much the same character was invented a few
years ago in America. Its motive-power was a secret from everybody. The
necessary and inevitable Company was formed to buy up the inventor’s
rights, and then—nothing more was heard of it.

Mr W. F. Dennis has been exhibiting at Millwall, London, a continuous
wire-netting machine, which is a great improvement on former
contrivances of this kind. The machine works from bobbins of wire
only, not from bobbins and spools, as in the older machines, and these
bobbins contain a sufficient length of wire to keep the machine at work
for a whole day. In a day of ten hours, a single machine will produce
three hundred and fifty yards of wire-netting twenty-three inches in
width. The machine in question occupies a space of eleven by eight
feet, by six feet in height. Nor is it confined to the production of
netting from soft metal, for hard bright steel and iron wire can be
used, producing a most rigid product. The consumption in Europe of
wire-netting is estimated at forty million yards per annum, and the
possibility of producing it of a rigid character, hitherto thought to
be impossible, is sure to increase its fields of usefulness.




OCCASIONAL NOTES.


WOODITE.

Woodite, a newly invented preparation of caoutchouc—so called from
the name of its inventor—is attracting considerable attention at the
present time. In woodite are united the useful elastic properties of
india-rubber together with the advantages of immunity from injury by
fire or salt water. The specific gravity of woodite is only one-tenth
that of iron or steel; whilst the cost of the new material, as compared
with these metals, is estimated to be as three to seven, or rather less
than one half. Such facts fully explain the importance attached to the
proposition now being made to utilise woodite as a protection—either
internal or external, as regards the vessel’s skin—to men-of-war and
torpedo boats. Experiments recently made to ascertain the behaviour of
woodite under fire were as satisfactory as conclusive, and established
the interesting fact, that the caoutchouc closed up again so thoroughly
and instantaneously, after the passage of the shot, that no leakage
resulted, though the vessel was pierced below waterline.

The value of a material possessed of such qualities for naval purposes
cannot be overestimated; whilst in a variety of other ways, woodite
appears likely to play a not unimportant part in the near future. In
the construction of lifeboats, a material so buoyant and indestructible
cannot fail to be of service; whilst for lining quay walls, harbour
entrances, piers, landing-stages, and the numberless cases where it
is desirable to moderate the force of impact, woodite should be found
of the greatest value. In the case of a collision at sea, a vessel
fortified internally or externally with woodite would be more likely to
remain afloat, than, _cæteris paribus_, one not similarly protected.

In an age when every effort is made to secure the requisite buoyancy
in our huge floating citadels, heavily laden with ponderous armour and
gigantic ordnance, a material combining buoyancy in so high a degree,
with its other advantages, cannot but be destined, in the opinion of
competent judges, to play a brilliant part; whilst its future in the
more peaceful arts cannot fail to be equally commensurate with its
merits.


TRAVELLING ARRANGEMENTS ON THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY.

A passenger by the Canadian Pacific Railway gives an interesting sketch
of the travelling arrangements on this latest trans-continental line.
We learn that the locomotives have a haul of about one hundred and
twenty to one hundred and thirty miles in each division of the line,
when they are changed, and fresh ones put on. The continent is crossed
from Montreal to Vancouver, in British Columbia, in five days and
fourteen hours; and this will soon be reduced to one hundred and twenty
hours. Good time is kept. The first east-bound trans-continental train
that was met in transit, passed Sudbury, going eastward, at 4.17 P.M.,
after being about five days on the journey. Before its arrival, there
was some curiosity to learn whether it was in time, and bets were made
on the time it would arrive. This train, after travelling a distance of
two thousand five hundred miles, arrived only fifteen seconds behind
time. The railway route from Montreal to Vancouver covers two thousand
nine hundred and nine miles; and the through sleeping-coaches attached
to the train run the entire distance without change, which is a great
comfort to the traveller. Every week-day, a train starts from each
end of the line, leaving the eastern terminus at Montreal at eight
o’clock in the evening, and the western terminus at one o’clock in
the afternoon. On Sundays, the trains do not start; thus making six
trains each way every week. The west-bound train is called the Pacific
Express; and the east-bound train the Atlantic Express.

The Pacific Express, in which this correspondent travelled, was made
up of five coaches. At the head was the luggage, mail, and express
coach, which carried the baggage. The next is the colonists’ coach, a
third-class carriage with seats arranged so that they can be turned
into a double tier of berths on each side for sleeping accommodation.
The train carries passengers at three rates. The ordinary American
first-class passenger coach follows the colonists’ coach, which
usually takes local travellers along the line. Following this is
the dining-coach, which usually accompanies the train only from
seven o’clock in the morning till nine o’clock at night. Following
the dining-car is the through sleeping-coach, which is constructed
with six sections on each side. In the aggregate, twenty-six persons
can be given sleeping accommodation in this car; while at one
end, toilet-rooms and a bathroom are provided. At the rear of the
sleeping-coach is a large open apartment with a good outlook, which can
be used as a smoking-room, and where passengers may have a view of the
line passed over.


OVERHEAD TELEGRAPH WIRES.

This arrangement of wires has always been considered as a disfiguring
and dangerous eyesore, and at last our quick-sighted cousins ‘across
the water’ have determined that the nuisance shall be forthwith abated.
In New York, Washington, St Louis, Chicago, and other great cities
of the United States, legislative decrees have been issued for the
compulsory abolition of all overhead wires, which will in future be
conducted underground in tunnels beneath the pavement, and by this
means a great improvement will be effected in the matter of street
architecture, and some dangers to passengers will be removed. Many
instances have been known in America where, from violent storms of wind
or snow, the telegraph posts have been blown down, occasioning injury
and even death to passengers. All this will be avoided by the new
arrangement.


ANGRY BEES.

As a supplementary note to the article on ‘Bees and Honey’ which
appeared in No. 135 of the _Journal_, a correspondent sends us the
following:

    ‘A painful instance of the terrible consequences of provoking bees
    is connected with one of the loveliest sights in India, the famous
    Marble Rocks of Jubbulpore. These rocks form a gorge through which
    the great river Nerbudda flows, and the marble formation extends
    for about a mile. The dazzling walls which shut in the river are
    studded with pendent bees’ nests, and for any one proceeding in
    a boat down the narrow channel to disturb the bees is a fatal
    proceeding. If any warning were required, it is given by a tomb
    which stands on the outskirts of the village just above the gorge,
    to the memory of one who was stung to death in this beautiful spot.
    Actuated by a foolish impulse, he fired his rifle at one of the
    nests, whereupon the bees came down on him in such numbers that
    he attempted to save himself by jumping overboard. The relentless
    insects, however, still pursued him, with fatal results. I quote
    the story from memory, but believe it is to be found in detail in
    Forsyth’s charming work, _The Highlands of Central India_.

    ‘A friend once told me that as he was driving near a village some
    miles from Jubbulpore, he and his servant and horse were attacked
    by bees without any real provocation. The enemy crowded round in
    such numbers that the situation became serious. After receiving
    several stings, and finding the horse, too, becoming restive, my
    friend resolved to save his own life and that of his servant,
    both of which were really in jeopardy, at the risk of a little
    discomfort to other people. Accordingly, he whipped up his horse
    and made for the village, a cloud of bees keeping up with the
    trap without the least effort. When the village was reached, the
    bees, as my friend anticipated, found so many other objects of
    interest, that they distributed their attentions with less marked
    partiality than hitherto. In other words, the cloud left the trap
    and scattered among the villagers, who were, however, so numerous,
    that two or three stings apiece probably represented the total
    damage. The expedient was not, perhaps, a charitable one, but, in
    the circumstances, was, I venture to think, justifiable.’

       *       *       *       *       *

_The PUBLISHERS have pleasure in intimating that next year will appear
in this JOURNAL an Original Novel, entitled_

                             RICHARD CABLE,

_by the distinguished Author of the well-known works of fiction,
‘Mehalah,’ ‘John Herring,’ ‘Court Royal,’ &c._

       *       *       *       *       *




A BRIGHT DAY IN NOVEMBER.


    A Summer hush is on the golden woods;
    The path lies deep in leaves—the air is balm;
    No sound disturbs these silent solitudes,
    Save some faint bird-notes, which, amid the calm,
    Seem like the sad, sweet song of one who grieves
    Over a happy past—yet with a strain
    Of Hope, which sees amid these yellow leaves,
    Bare boughs all clothed with Spring’s young buds again.

    Even thus, most gracious Lord, in Sorrow’s hour,
    When Life seems saddest, and our hopes decay,
    Thou sendest comfort—as, in wood or bower,
    Some humble flower remains to speak of May;
    Some gleam of joy lights up the wintry scene;
    Some tender grace returns to bless and cheer;
    And though our trees no more are clothed in green,
    Bright days may light the closing of our year.
            J. H.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Conductor of CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL begs to direct the attention of
CONTRIBUTORS to the following notice:

  _1st._ All communications should be addressed to the ‘Editor, 339
    High Street, Edinburgh.’

  _2d._ For its return in case of ineligibility, postage-stamps should
    accompany every manuscript.

  _3d._ To secure their safe return if ineligible, ALL MANUSCRIPTS,
    whether accompanied by a letter of advice or otherwise, _should
    have the writer’s Name and Address written upon them_ IN FULL.

  _4th._ Offerings of Verse should invariably be accompanied by a
    stamped and directed envelope.

_If the above rules are complied with, the Editor will do his best to
insure the safe return of ineligible papers._

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.
Page 764: Naraganset to Narraganset.]



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75818 ***