'«¦ ¦¦jmm -.mi I J. ' w J- ¦ffj>%»*t ¦orJJ^iafesKiiiiiMiiaBi^g:: 1^ .IUl.. i j! iJ^-V^' iii^ii^ifeSiss^s;:' ,&;j .¦ 2 FEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. and I would, if I dared, cut, tear down, obliterate, the line of electric telegraph which winds up the sides of the cliffs. Thank Heaven, all the fine houses are empty, all the fine-plumaged birds have long since gone back to the gay city, where Offenbach, whose shut-up chateau I passed to-day, has just produced " Les Bergers "—a work, I sup pose, with as much of nature in it as Tasso's finical " Aminta " or Virgil's political-pastoral Eclogues. Offen bach, — when I have the Ocean ! From the beginning of May to the beginning of September, i^tretat is — Paris at the sea-side. The beach is crowded with bathers in their gay dresses; the cliffs are embroidered with pantaloons, crinolines, and umbrellas ; there are concerts, and balls, and picnics, and boating excursions; you can buy odiously-well-done photographs of the pretty places; there are books and journals toi be seen, and lodgings to be paid for at enormous rates. But the season is over, and !l^tretat is again the dear little fishing-village it ought to remain. There is no fashionable bathing, no com pany, you can't buy a photograph, and you must live like a fisher, since fishers axe your only companions; So far as I know, no one in the village can speak English, and few decent Ptosian; but that is all the- pleasanter, after you have once conquered the peculiarities of people who pronounce couteau " ktay," chevaux " jva," and vaches " vak," and are ignorant of any such distinctions as that between! the verb savoir and the verb connaitre. I have the place to myself,, so to speak; am monarch of all I survey ; and, happy as a king, can pass a day gloriously thus: — wanderings and ponderings out-of-doors till dinner time, and a dip in a natural bath' in the hollow of the WINTERING AT A TRE TAT. 3 rocks ; a cup of black coffee, with cognac, and a game of billiards, after dinner ; and a long evening, with books or pen and paper, to wind up all. I can dress as I please, do what I please, be alone when I please. Few days pass without something human for the mind to ponder on. Even real physical inconveniences would be forgotten in so fine a spot. Stand with me in imagination on the sea-strand, at the mouth of the little valley, and look around. Behind you lies the village — the older houses of the perpetual inhabitants in the centre, close to the waters, and the fine new buildings of the Parisians on the ascents of either side. To your left, jutting far out into the sea, are L' Aiguille and the Porte d'Aval, — the former a huge needle-like- pyramid rising out of the waters, the latter a great opening, like the door of a cathedral, through which one may pass at low tide ; and behind them, in land, stretch the great white cliffs and precipices, fringed with grass and moss of exquisite hues. Passing close under those cliffs at low tide, standing upon a rocky pavement covered with many-coloured verdure, you find yourself in a vast natural cathedral, across whose blue roof ever and anon flies a black speck which you know to be a sea-gull. To the left of the village, you behold the tall chffs on whose summit, solitary and open to the winds, stands the little chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde. At the foot of the cliffs, jutting into the waters, is the Porte d'Amont, — a natural gateway similar in structure to the Porte d'Aval, Close by yonder, is the famous Trou k Romain, — of which you will hear more by and by. 4 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNIFIES. But stand aside. There is a rumour that the herrings are passing opposite Fecamp, and that long line of quaint unwieldy luggers, drawn high up on the beach in the method described by Horace, — '* Trahit siccas machina carinas," — is about to be launched. One by one, amid shoutings and gesticulations, the fishing-boats are dragged over the shingle by men and women, the latter doing far more than their fair share of the labour. One by one, they are manned, and spreading their brown sails to the fresh breeze, slip over the eastern horizon. Close against the houses, you behold the caloges — houses made of old boats Dofed with straw, and used as receptacles for saUs and ,. ordage. These primitive boat-houses — answering almost to Sallust's description of the inverted vessels used as residences by the nomads on the coast of Africa — lend the beach of ifitretat tenfold picturesqueness and romance. One of them forms a bathing-house, and a cleaner person than Diogenes might be comfortable ih some of the others. Nowadays, even in the summer months, fish are by no means plentiful at iStretat ; but now again comes a shoal, and the beach, as now, is alive with the popula tion. These fishers are fine fellows ; most above twenty- one years of age have been drawn for the marine con scription, and have served their country, and a large number have had many a dangerous cod-fishing excursion to Newfoundland. They are as polite as Parisians, with out any of that servility which distinguishes the inland population. Their fault is a love of French billiards and WINTERING AI £TRETAT. 5 dominoes, and a tendency to lounge with their hands in their pockets. Watch these groups of women descending the steep shore, and each carrying a great white bundle of clothes upon her back. They hasten down to a spot close by the brink of the low sea, and deposit the burthens. Then each takes a spade, or stick, or even her bare hands, and digs a hole about the size of a washing-basin, through which up bubbles the sweet water. They are soon on their knees, and all busy at work, soaping, wringing, and chattering busily all the while. By and by, when the sea compels thenJ to depart, they will carry their cleansed burthens up to yonder steep hOl-sides, and hang them on the furze and broom to dry. By that time they will have finished, not only the day's labour, but the day's gos siping; for the Fountain is their place of public dis cussion. Public affairs, private grievances, market news, love, marriage, death, everything, from the weather down to the last scandal, is ventilated there. Husbands who have misconducted themselves receive their due con demnation. The girl who has eaten forbidden ffuit is detected and indicated. The Englishman who has ar rived jvith bag and baggage to winter in ]fitretat, and whose shirts and collars that bright-eyed brunette is scouring into pristine whiteness, is discussed in a succession of little incidents for the edification of the assembly. Time was when the river flowed down the centre of this valley; but it has sunk never to rise again — plunging into the earth at GrainvUle I'Alonette, in the neighbour- 6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. hood of Havre, at a point still marked by a gre^t mound of earth. To what cause is to be attributed its sudden disappearance no man can tell, unless he is content to accept the tradition afloat here among the old men. The story runs, that once upon a time .there was a mill at Gjainville I'Alonette, and that the river turned the wheel. Late one night, when the rain was falling from a black heaven, .there came to the miller's door a poor gipsy woman, bearing on her back a Httle child. Wet, and cold, and hungry, she begged for bread to eat, and a bed of straw to lie on. But the miller was a hard man : — " Begone ! " he cried, driving ,the unfortunate from his door. While the mUl-wheel roared, and the swollen river rushed, the gipsy turned upon the man, and the ¦warm light, striking in her face from the door of the open dweUing, showed that death was there. " My curse upon you ! " she cried, " and the curse of my child ! Thou wilt repent this ere sunrise." So saying, she disappeared into the darkness. That night the mill-wheel stopped, and ¦the miller, looking forth, saw that the bed of the stream was dry : the river had disappeared for ever. The gipsy -was found dead, clasping a dead child to her bosom ; and the miller was a conscience-stricken and ajuined man — for' where was the strong arm to turn the mill whereby he subsisted % The eye of the All- Just had seen it aU ; and, delightfuly in accordance with the ideas of superstition, had wrought a miracle that made a whole vaMey suffer for the sins of one unmitigated rascal. If the miller had been a reflective person, there were cer tain' ideas of human justice which may have lessened the weight of his own self-reproach. WINTERING AT & TRE TA T. 7 As certainly as the river once flowed through the vil lage, there once stood a Roman colony on the site where Etretat now stands ; but it would be wearisome to cite the evidence whereby the Society of Normandy Anti quaries has established the fact beyond all contradiction. Ancient geographical charts indicate the existence of ruins at the mouth of the valley. These ruins have long since been utterly engulfed. But again and again, in the process of building and trenching, pieces of- ancient masonry and antique objects of art have been dug up from the shingle. Roman tiles, medals, bronze clocks, spoons, and other domestic utensils, have been con stantly found by the inhabitants, frequently in the pro cess of sinking wells. Nay, portions of Roman villas have been discovered, with some of the chambers nearly perfect. Traces of a Gallo-Roman cemetery, with urns containing human dust, and of a burial-place of more recent date, — that of the occupancy of the Franks, — have been found within a few years. By the time I have ceased musing on the heights above the Porte d'Aval, and am descending the precipitous path that leads down to the village, the people have done pra}dng, and are returning home to dinner. So I wend my way through the main street of the village, inland to the Petit Val, recently a dark and narrow glen, where the church stood solitary, but now dotted here and there by the chilets of summer residents. There stands the old church still, with its sombre masonry, its grim square tower, its quaint burial-place, — a strange contrast to the pretentious little masonic impertmences that are begin ning to cluster around it. Bleak and barren, covered 8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. with dark herbage, but without a tree, was the vaUey, when the village consisted only of a few fishermen's cottages, clustering close upon the strand, just above high-water mark. Years and years ago, when Papal bulls were common, and church decorations in good taste, (for Europe as yet lacked her Rabelais and her Calvins,) there dwelt in fitretat a fair lady named Olive, who, though very rich, was not above washing her own linen down yonder at the fountain, and who, while so en gaged one day, at low tide, was set upon by a band of Norman freebooters, heathens. Landing from their bark in search of plunder, and arrested by the vision of a lady so fair, the villains wanted to be rude ; but Olive fled, calling on the Virgin. " Save me in this peril, O Blessed Lady ! " she cried, " and I vow to build thee a church upon my land." Saved by a miracle, she kept her word, and erected " L'Eglise de Notre Dame," — not here, in the Petit Val, but somewhere within easier reach of the sailors and fishermen. For the story goes, that the devil, disgusted at the state of affairs, conveyed the church by night to the spot on which it now stands, thereby hoping to cheat the poor folk out of a mass or two, and get a surer chance of their souls. The grass is deep in the churchyard. The ancient burial-stones lie broken, slimy, and streaked with green moss. I cannot stir a foot without stepping on the dust of the dead. Strangely in contrast with the old tombs are the modem graves, with, their little raUed-in patches of garden-soil, their headstones adorned with wreaths and crosses of beads, little paintings on glass and papier- machd beneath, and " Priezpur son &me" written under WINTERING AT E TRE TA T. 9 the chronicle of name and age. In one thick headstone is a glass door, through which is seen a memorial in white beads, — a round wreath, a cross in the centre, and a bunch of immortelles above. A mother's hands have fondly woven that simple circlet, and her baby-boy sleeps below, padded round with the dust of one who saw the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here white and blue beads, and a little bright picture of a doll with wings, mark the resting-place of a maiden. Solemn black beads, and a black wooden crucifix, are placed yonder, above an old man. For some reason or other, the effect is not taw dry, in spite of the sombre background of the Petit Val. Frenchmen invest even death with nameless prettinesses, but they do this as no other nation of men could — sweetly, reverently, though without depth. They cover corruption with flowers and beads, and simple strewings, and write shallow little quatrains about the angels; and they do not pass out of the sunshine, but, shading their faces, look childishly at the threshold of the mystery. Finding that the service within Our Lady's Kirk is not fiilly over, I take a path up the hill-side, and wind my way meditatively until I stand on the north cliffs. Hete, on the very pinnacle of the height, exposed to all the winds, open to the view of the whole village, and possessing a long prospect inland and seaward, stands solitary the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Safety, or " Notre Dame de la Garde.'' The simple design of the building was fiimished by a clever Abbe at Yvetot; and in 1855, stones, bricks, pebbles, and clay, all things necessary for building, were carried up to the site by the sailors them selves. The Empress herself joined in the good work. 10 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. contributing an altar-piece. No pubHc service takes place here, but now and then the bell tolls, and special masses are said for the dead, for the sick, or for a friend or sweetheart at sea. The chapel is chiefly used for private prayer, and seldom a day passes without the visit of one or more pious parishioners. Just now, as I enter, a young girl kneels before a chair close to the door, burying her face in her hands, and sobbing silently. Yonder, within the rails, is the altar-piece — a company of haggard, shipwrecked sailors upon a raft, raising eyes of mute appeal to the good Virgin, who appears among the Clouds. Here, to the left of the altar, is the statue of Our Lady, crowned and gentle. Strewing the pedestal, and hanging round her feet, are the simple, childish offerings of the sailors and fishermen and their wives, with some costlier gifts of people richer in the world's goods, — wreaths of coloured beads, such as adorn the graves in the churchyard ; garlands of flowers deftly cut in white silk and satin ; little rude pictures of the Virgin ; rosaries, with crosses carved in wood, and one tiny piece of china, representing a little angel standing over a font of holy water. All these are pious gifts, bribes that the sailor at sea may reach home safely, tokens of gratitude for preservation during a long voyage, mementoes of those who sleep fathoms deep under the motion of the great waters. A white cameo, in a black ivory frame, betokens some wealthier donor. It represents a fair young girl, with a sweet, quiet face, and vision-seeing eyes. Is it a portrait ? — of the living, or of the dead ? Has some weather-beaten mariner placed here the like ness of his true love ? or does some father plead by this WINTERING A T EtRETA T. ii picture for a daughter who has been wafted to the shores untrod by mortal foot ? The little chapel is open night and day, but these gifts are sacred. The most hardened viUain fi-om the galleys would scorn to touch them. Jean Valjean would bare his head and glint up at the plaster Virgin, and hobble away hungry and atliirst. It would need another revolution to imperU the little chancel and its contents, and even in that event, the sans culotte element would be small in fitretat. As I walk homeward, the streets of the little vUlage are stUl fiill of people, shouting and singing ; but all is stiU by the time I open my garden-gate. Only one couple pass by, a man and a girl, and the man's arm is where the arm of a lover ought to be, and the Norman girl is singing to this effect :^- " Soldat ! vois-tu ces eaux deciles Suivre le pente .du coteau ? C'est I'image des jours tranquilles Qui s'dcculent dans le haraeau. Tes lauriers arros^s des larmes N'ofifrent qu'un bonheur passager ; Crois-moi, soldat, quitte tes armes^ Fais-toi .berger I "— though he who embraces her is not a soldier, but a sailor just returned from 1:he cod-fishing in Newfoundland. Christmas morning comes, dry and chilly. The streets are crowded with gay promenaders, the men in their dark-blue blouses, the women in their coloured skirts, red hoods, and high Norman caps. AU are laughing and singing. But my thoughts are otherwhere. My chubby friend, Christmas, with his hand upon his heart, ap pears before me in the shadowy proportions of a ghost. " Epicuri de gregeporcel" he exclaims, sadly. "Instead 12 ^ PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. o[ roshf nnd plum-pudding, I can only offer you 3.pot-au- feu.'' Such is the decree. For have we not already tried to roast beef on our stove, and have we not given up the attempt in despair? and have we not discovered that, even if we could procure the proper ingredients for a pudding, we could not cook it decently ? There is no help for it, and we soon resign ourselves to circumstances. Kpot-au-feu to a, man with an appetite is by no means a contemptible meal. So we leave the preparation of din ner to' our bonne, and sally forth for a promenade on the cliffs. Climbing the northern height, and passing by the chapel of Our Lady of Safety, I walk along the grassy edges of the cliffs, carefully picking my footsteps, siace a false step might be fatal, and ever and anon pausing to peer down at the shore. The brain turns dizzy at the sight. The large pebbles look like golden sand below, the large patches of sea-weed are as faint stains on the water, and the sea-gull, wheeling half-way down, is little more than a speck. Here and there on the brink of the cliff, the loose grass and earth have yielded, and rolled down ; and ever and anon I hear a low rumbling sound, made by the pieces of rocky soil as they loosen and fall. But here is La Valleuse — a precipitous flight of steps, partly buUt in on the soft soil above, and partly hewn out of the soHd rock. A-S I descend, the roaring of the sea comes upon my ear louder and louder. Now and then I come to . a point from whence I can gaze down ward — on the bright beach spotted with black sea-weed, over which the tide crawls in foamy cream. The steps are slippery with rain and mire, and the descent is slow. WINTERING A T AtRETA T. 13 At last, passing right through the solid rock at the base, down a staircase dimly lit by little loopholes that look out to sea, I emerge on the shore, and see the huge cliffs towering precipitately above me. Close to the spot on which I stand, a huge piece of earth has just fallen, and small fragments are still rattling down like haU. Close before me, to the right, towers the Needle of Belval — an enormous monolith of chalk, standing at the distance of four furlongs fi-om the cliffs, with the sea washing per petually around its base. Its form is square from head to foot ; but the sea has so eaten at the base that it seems to stand balanced on a narrow point, and the beholder expects every moment to see the huge structure crash over into the sea. The sea-gull and cormorant, secure from mortal intrusion, buUd their nests upon its summit. Regarded from the cliffs, it appears like a great ship floating shorewards, with the white foam dash ing round its keel, and the birds screaming wUdly around its saUs. But hard by, round yonder rocky promontory, is a sight stUl finer. Passing round, I find that the cliffs, on the farther side, tum inland, and before me, at a distance of a hundred yards, is a huge flat hollow in the rock. That is La Mousse, so called on account of the thick green and yellow moss which covers one side of the hollow to the height of one hundred feet. At this distance one sees nothing remarkable, but on approach ing nearer, a sight of dazzling beauty bursts upon the gaze. From the projecting rocks above, pours a thin stream of water, which, trickling downward, spreads itself over the moss and sparkles in a milHon drops of sUver light ; in one place scattering countless pearls over 14 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. a bed of loveliest deepest emerald ; in another, forming itself into a succession of little silver waterfalls ; and in a third, gleaming like molten gdld on a soft bed of yellow Hchen. It is such a picture as one could never . have conceived out of Fairyland — a downy mass of sparkling colours, played over by the cool soft spots of liquid light, and looking, with the great cliffs towering all around, and the windy sea foaming out before it, and the sea-wrack gathering darkly, as if about to destroy it near its base. Never was sweeter spot to woo in, to kiss in, and to dream in ! As I pass away, looking backward as I go, the silver drops melt away again like dew in the sun, the moss looks dry and shady on the cave, and the beauty I have witnessed seems like en chantment. — the vision of an instant. But the low, faint murmur of the water is still in my ears, faint and sweet and melancholy, and my brow is yet wet and cool with the spray the invisible spirit of the place has scattered over me ! But I must hasten. The tide is rising quickly, and if I do not round the promontory with speed, it may go ill with me. As I pass the Needle again, the waves have risen round it, and are beating against it in white foam, trying with all the might of waves to drag it into the gulf. But it stands firm, and will, in all probabUity, do so for many a year to come. As I reach the summits of the cliffs again, the sun is slanting to his rest, though it is only three o'clock. The cloudy west is stained in deep crimson light, against which the grassy hills, and fresh ploughed fields, and squares of trees, by whose foliage the farms are hidden in AT ETRETAT. Page 15. WINTERING AT £. TRE TAT. 15 summer, stand out in distinct and beautiful lines. So I hasten homeward. By the time I enter the village, the merry-making has reached fever heat, and not a few of the virtuous villagers are tipsy. There is little singing now, only loud laughing and shouting. The telegraph clerk is walking sadly to his sUent meal. During the whole week these festivities last : the sing ing and promenading, the tippling in the cafis, the romping and the flirting ; but the climax comes on New Year's Day. As I dress in the moming, a sound of Babel deafens me — singing, shouting, screaming, barking bf dogs, rattling of carts. People are pouring in from all the farms and detached houses round about. Little fathers, driving knock-kneed horses, and seated in carts with fat mothers and bawling chUdren ; buxom lasses trotting on solemn ponies ; the diligence from Fecamp tearing up the street, crowded firom top to bottom, and hung with garlands. Opposite my door the men are stopping the girls, snatching the privUege of a New Year's kiss from buxom cheeks, and some of them, more amo-; reus than powerful, getting tumbled over into the dirt by the strong hands that wUl yet wear big rings and lead sharp chUdren. Head-dresses are torn, dresses rampled, blouses rent, in the merry scuffle. Everywhere, among the bigger folk, jump little ones, sucking chocolate and ion bans. Papas and mammas, uncles and aunts, meet and chatter and kiss. The very dogs at the street comers — a numerous group — are sociable and merry -with each other, and bark cheerily, without mahce ; among them, regarded with great respect, is my white ruffian, " Bob," who doesn't understand their manners and customs, but l6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. gets on famously by bullying and swearing. Only the telegraph clerk is unmoved ; for a moment, he is seized by the weakness of humanity, and seems about to throw his arms around his next-door neighbour the tobacconist, who passes by with an enticing look ; but his mind reverts to his wrongs, he conquers the weakness, and remains firm and patient. In-doors and out-of-doors it is the same thing. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, all sorts of relations by birth or in law, are clattering in their sabots along my passage to salute the Captain and his family — to kiss each other on both cheeks, sip a, petit verre, and go off, happy, to repeat the same ceremony elsewhere. In the lobby, awaiting me, is a tiny independent-looking fellow of seven, clad in fisherman's blouse and big sabots. " I salute you, m'sieu," he says, -ndth a polite bow, " the bo7ine ann'ee!' I have never seen my -vdsitor before, but I thank him with a profound obeisance. But instead of going away, he stands in silence, gazing expectantly up at me. I ask him if he has anything more to say. He smiles com passionately at my ignorance. " It is customary," he says, "at the New Year, to give to the boys — sous; some, the poorer classes, m'sieu, content themselves with giving one or two ; but others, more liberal, give more — from five to ten sous. Give me what you please ; I shall be content." Delighted with his coolness, I re warded him to the height of his ambition. He places his hand upon his heart, bows again, and walks away ; but he is not far from the threshold when his boy's blood gets up, he gives a peep round to see if I am looking, and satisfied in that particular, bursts into a run and a shout. WINTERING AT £ TRE TA T. 1 7 I naturally expect that he will put his .comrades on the qui vive, and that I shall have more caUs of the kind. But no ! he is a boy of honour. Having succeeded with me as a private speculation, he is too high-minded to make me the public prey. ROBERT BUCHANAN. IL A SUMMER IN THE PROVINCE OF NICE. WHILE the city of Nice is one of the best-known places in Europe, ih^ province to which it gives its name, and of which it is the capital, is seldom visited, and is little known. So much is this the case, that, having been advised to spend the summer in the interior of the province, we found it impossible, even in the city of Nice itself, to obtain complete or even accurate infor mation regarding the country and the climate. It may therefore prove interesting and useful to persons situated as we were three years agd, desiring to reach a good summer residence without a long and fatiguing journey, to leam what our experiences were during an abode of three months in that part of Sardinia, as it was then, — of France, with which it has since unhappily been incorporated, and of which it now forms the south-eastern frontier. This ignorance of the Nigois themselves is explained by their singularly uninquisitive and stay-at-home char acter. The travels of even the wealthier classes among them seldom extend beyond their annual migrations A SUMMER IN NICE. 19 from their country villas — ^which they universally let to strangers in -winter — to apartments, often of a very hum ble character, in to-wn, and back again, when the retum ing sun drives the wealthier visitors to cooler regions. In the middle of June, the heat and its accompaniment, the mosquito, having now rendered not only the town but the neighbourhood of Nice intolerable, we set out on the great road to Turin, intending to halt at St Dalmas, and if we found this place unsuitable, to proceed as far as the Grande Chartreuse, or whatever other place we might hear of that appeared favourable. After travelling ten or twelve miles, we began to ascend the lower ridges of the Maritime Alps. The country becomes beautiful, and the situation of some of the towns — as for example Scarena — is so picturesque and peculiar, that to see them would richly reward a tour. The tradition is, that the towns were perched upon those almost inaccessible eleva tions as a protection against the Saracens, by whom, in the middle ages, these parts of Westem Italy were de vastated. Certainly convenience had nothing to do -with the selection of such sites, especially the grand conven ience of obtaining water, the want of which has caused some of those old to-wns to be finally deserted within very recent times. The passing of those cols, of which . there is a regular succession, formed a very difficult enterprise, but the splendour of the scenery when the summit was at last reached always proved a rich reward. The road on the side of these cols zig-zags so much, that in some cases,, as above Sospello, a distance of three miles as the crow flies, requires one to travel twelve mUes of road ; and looking from below, these roads, con- 20 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. stmcted with incredible labour, have the appearance of an enormous fortification, rising wall above wall for miles together. The road, in ascending the Col di Tenda, which is beyond St Dalmas, makes no fewer than eighty- two turns ; and it is amusing to watch the curious posi tions into which the surrounding mountains and valleys are successively thro-wn by those incessant turnings. It would be perhaps difficult to find anywhere a more splen did panorama than one beholds from the top of the col above Giandola, which is itself a singularly curious-looking and picturesque little place, unlike anything we have ever seen elsewhere. Surrounded with mountains to the south, west, and north, it stands upon the west bank of the Roya, now forming the boundary between France and Italy. This rapid river flows here under the nearly perpendicular face of a mountain, which rises to a great height on the east of the river and of the little vUlage, as if Nature had intended one little spot of earth at least to be secured from the possibility of being touched by that scourge of all livmg things, the east -wind. Giandola is remarkable as being the point where one takes leave, without regret, of the mosquitoes. We had much of their company, and suffered greatly from their attentions, the night we remained there, not to speak of other uninvited -visitors ; and we never met them again tUl, on our retum, three months after, we slept, or tried to sleep, in ,the same place. Along with the virtues which the Italians have begun to display, all travellers wUl sincerely hope they may acquire that half-virtue of cleanliness, as Aris totle calls it, without which the others don't render man's abode quite comfortable upon the earth, A SUMMER IN NICE. sr A small incident which occurred at Giandola brought to our minds a common saying everywhere, but which has no force in cold climates. We met a girl with a basket of fine figs, some of which we attempted to pur chase, when her father came up, and insisted on our taking as many as we wanted, scouting the idea of any one taldng money for Jigs. The proverb, " Not worth a fig," is evidently imported firom the south. At Giandola, which, from its low and sheltered situation, is very warm, figs are abundant and excellent. Taking leave of Giandola and the mosquitoes together, the road follows the course of the Roya through a deep and wUd ravine, which the torrent has cut for itself, and which presents striking and often very grand scenery all the way to St Dalmas. The mountains go down in most places sheer into the river, so that the road is generally cut out of the rock, which in many places overhangs it ; and here, though it looks more dangerous, it is indeed safer than where there is sufficient space for the road between the river and the mountains, for upon these parts of the road rocks and avalanches of earth and stones frequently descend, rendering it often impassable, and always dangerous. The Roya, which is very rapid, and carries do-wn a great quantity of water, is dotted aU through its course ¦with logs ofwood. These, as we afterwards learned, are on their way from the mountains around St Dalmas to Ventimiglia, where the Roya falls into the sea. The timber is cut, and roUed into the stream, and though stranded hundreds of times in its passage, finds its way at last, by the help of floods and of gangs of peasants 22 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. with long poles, to its ultimate destination. Besides the tediousness of this process, the timber is much injured by it, and, by the enomious friction during so long a time, is even greatly reduced in size. The situation of St Dalmas (properly St Dalmas di Tenda) is striking and picturesque. The gorge here expands into a valley, surrounded -with mountains, rugged and bare at their summits, cultivated wherever cultivation is possible, and in many places where, to foreign eyes, it appears impossible ; and clothed towards their base -with forests of magnificent chestnut trees, which we saw in all their glory. These grand produc tions of nature are, indeed, a feature of the landscape here, and add much, not only to its beauty, but to its agreeableness and salubrity. They formed our grand resource during the heat of summer. To them we retired as to our study, reading-room, club, drawing-room, and general refuge from the heat and glare of the sun, — to ruminate, perase the newspapers, and discuss their con tents, hold long communings, and sometimes keen de bates, and sigh for our homes, which, like other blessings, we seldom value till we feel their loss. Many of these trees still retain marks of cannon-shot lodged in their trunks during the wars of the French Revolution, when this country was invaded by the armies of the Republic, and valiantly and obstinately defended. The final suc cess of the French, as tradition says, was due to a traitor belonging to the neighbouring little town of Briga, who discovered to the invaders a pass, by which they were enabled to take the patriots in the rear. In contrast to the wild grandeur of the hills, the vaUey is covered with A SUMMER IN NICE. 23 fields of the richest pasture, as intensely green as any which Devonshire or the Emerald Isle itself can show, and incomparably more productive; for every month during the summer they carry off a crop of grass from these meadows. This is owing to the abundance of water, unsparingly and skUfuUy applied to irrigation ; so that, amid these vnid mountain passes and secluded glens, a fertUity is produced, the charm of which is heightened by contrast with the scenery around. No less than three torrents, at the bottom of as many gorges, meet in this valley, each of considerable volume, so that the sound of rushing waters is never out of your ears by night or day, making you feel that you should be cool if you are not. In fact, so large a body of water, at a low temperature, constantly rashing down from the mountains has a con siderable effect in cooling the atmosphere, as also in counteracting its extreme dryness. Nervous people, however, are apt to be afflicted with the unceasing roar of the torrents. St Dalmas reminds one of some spots in the Highlands of Scotland ; but the climate and the Hght, and the feeling •w'hich these produce, are quite a contrast, as are also the rich fertility and splendid vegetation in immediate proximity to the wild sublimity of nature. These mountain sides and valleys exhibit the bold in dustry of the Piedmontese in a very striking light. Where- ever soil exists or can be collected, stone terraces are buUt, on which grow grass, (in shaded situations,) chest nuts, olives, com, potatoes, &c. The fmit of the chestnut is ground, and the pigs, donkeys, and mules consume it for the most part. In former times, it was commonly made into bread, and eaten by the people. 24 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. This terracing of the hill-sides could only have been effected where labour was incredibly cheap. According to the opinion of a well-informed resident, the great mass of the work was done by men who did not receive for their toU more than threepence a day ; and he thought, in most cases, the work would not have been worth doing at a dearer rate. It is amazing that men should ever have attempted to cultivate places so unpromising, consisting of such narrow strips of land, and many of them so lofty and inaccessible, and even so dangerous to approach. But they and their donkeys have leamed to do marvels in the way of climbing; and hunger is a powerful stimulant to industry, daring, and ingeiiuity. From what has now been said, the reader wUl under stand the curious contrast which presents itself according as one regards the country from the heights or from the valley : in the one case, one sees nothing but gardens ; in the other, nothing but a succession of stone walls ; so that it is not easy to believe it is the same country one is looking at in the two cases. By the way, it may be not amiss to state, for the benefit of future travellers in such regions, that persons of moderate weight, and espe cially ladies, are almost always safer, in climbing those mountain roads, upon donkeys than upon their own feet, provided the donkeys be good, i.e., of sufficient age and experience, — ^for, as a general rale, the older they are, they are the stronger and the safer. A lady of our party met with a rather bad accident going down on her feet a very steep and rough part of the path, over which she and her husband imagined it impossible that her donkey could carry her safely : however, the other donkeys, with their A SUMMER IN NICE. 25 living burdens, all performed the feat with ease, while the poor unbelieving lady, though zealously assisted by her equally unbelieving husband, fell and received a painful injury. ST DALMAS AS A SUMMER RESIDENCE FOR INVALIDS. St Dalmas di Tenda was, before the French Revolu tion, a convent of the Augustinians, dependent upon a greater establishment of the same name farther north. It is beautifully situated at the mouths of two of the glens or gorges which here unite their waters, and is square in form, as the houses of that order generally are, with a quadrangle in the centre, having piazzas on three sides. It is upon the whole in good repair, and was, at the time of our -visit, clean and orderly. At the period of the French Revolution it was seized, like other ecclesiastical property, and sold. The grandfather of the present pro prietor purchased it, with some appendages, for a very small sum, and it is now used in summer as a pension and hydropathic establishment, for which purpose it is admirably adapted, on account of the abundant supply of excellent water. The church of the convent is now used as a stable and hay-loft ; the dormitories of the monks are now the sleeping chambers of the inmates of the pension or boarding-house. We enjoyed the distinction of occupying four apartments, en suite, on the south side, which are much more ornamental and comfortable than the rest, having belonged to the prior or abbot ; and the refectory still serves the same use as of old, being the salle-d-manger of the establishment, in which good viands 26 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. are washed down with excellent appetite and copious libations of cold water, the wine being generally un popular, because of its too close affinity with vinegar. Experience, however, seems to prove that, mixed -with water, it is the most .wholesome beverage to be found in these regions to the generality of people. When we were there in 1859, the Pension was kept by M. Escoffier, the well-kno-wn restaurateur from Nice, who, -with the efficient aid of his wife, managed matters very well upon the whole, and succeeded, as far perhaps as any one can, in satisfying such restless, exacting, and discontented people as the occupants of such places commonly are. Of all nations, we think the English a shade or two the worst in these respects. The walls and ceilings of this old convent are, like all houses in Italy, however humble, ornamented with frescoes tolerably executed. So com mon is the talent for this kind of work, and so cheap a luxury is it, that we were informed such ornamentation, and even better, is executed by artists who think them selves well paid with two or three shillings a day. This brought to our remembrance the remark of a very emi nent Scotch artist, with whom, some years ago, we found ourselves alone before dinner in an elegant drawing-room in Edinburgh. " We are still barbarians," he said ; " a white roof over our heads, and a splendid carpet beneath our feet ! " No doubt this is a solecism in taste which the Italians have long escaped, though their climate may have suggested one-half of the lesson ; but perhaps the thoughtful reader may think it a parable which carries a deeper meaning. The climate of St Dalmas is dry and bracing. The temperature, during the summer months, A SUMMER IN NICE. 27 is wonderfully equable. From the middle of June till the loth September, the thermometer never feU below 70° Fahr. during the day, nor ever rose above 80°, except two or three days in the end of July, when it " rose in the heat of the day to 82° or 83°. We had no record of the lowest temperature during the night, as we had no self-registering thermometer ; but our feelings assured us that the nights were always warm, — a single sheet and a light cotton counterpane being all the bed clothes that were supplied, the latter being generally dis pensed -with. We felt it pleasant to sleep with our win dows open, though the natives do not approve of this practice, and its propriety in those climates may well be questioned. At sunset, of course, everybody kept within doors ; an hour after, everybody went outside, when it was pleasant, and reckoned safe, to stroll or sit as long as any one chose. Early in the morning, the eastern hiUs afford shade for those who choose to walk, though even then it is warm; but by eight o'clock the sun is too powerful. Between ten and eleven a.m. the breeze be gins to blow up the valley from the sea, and grows stronger tUl about two p.m., when it gradually dies away. This is the history of the weather during three months, ¦without any observable variation, except on three days, which were exceptions, but which exactly resembled each other. On these, the only days, as far as memory serves, on which we saw clouds, a thick mist was discerned about eleven a.m., fiUing the narrow pass in the under part of the vaUey. This gradually traveUed up the pass, and ascended the hiUs, tUl it covered all the heights sur rounding. At the same hour, about half-past one p.m., 28 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. on each occasion, a tremendous thunder-storm occurred, accompanied -with such torrents of rain, that in a short time every place was flooded, and the Briga river, which was nearly dry before, descended with a stream probably a yard deep in front, and in an hour it ran at the speed of a mUl-race six feet deep. Before four o'clock all was over, and by five o'clock the sun was shining in all his splendour upon the glancihg mountains, the drenched earth, and the roaring floods. Except on those three occasions, the weather was uniformly bright and warm, the heavens -without a cloud, so that we soon took it as a matter of course, and nobody either spoke or appar ently thought of the weather. Thus was cut off, -by the hand of Providence, one of the staple articles of our British conversation. After July, the evening and the moming became sensibly cooler ; and in the last month of our sojoum the afternoons were delightful, and dri-ving and riding became a real luxury for those whose strength did not permit them to enjoy the greater luxury of walking. This last, however, is here a luxury, or even a possibility, only to such as have active limbs and sound wind, as there is very little level ground, and the finest views are to be reached only by paths that are both rough and steep. For persons of light weight, the donkey is equal to anything ; the mules are not more safe, and far less pleasant, indeed they are seldom found good in this locality. A new road to Briga supplies the only level drive in the neighbourhood. That up the valley by Tenda, or do-wn the gorge to Fontana, is more beautiful and picturesque. We could not obtain accurate information as to the A SUMMER IN NICE. 29 elevation of St Dalmas. Probably it is nearly two thou sand feet above the level of the Mediterranean. We shall not detain our readers -with detaihng the grounds of this conclusion, which, however, cannot be very far from the truth. Now that it is in possession of the French, the country wUl, no doubt, be soon accurately surveyed, and all such detaUs -wUl become accessible. Upon the whole, St Dalmas furnishes a desirable sum mer residence for such invalids as are wishful to remain during summer within reach of the coast, and to whom a dry, bracing, and moderately warm climate is beneficial That the country here is healthy upon the whole there cannot (we believe) be any doubt. The situation of the Pension, though pretty, is not the best that the locality affords; a noble one is only a furlong south upon a small hUl in the chestnut forest. But the great objec tion to the present situation is the nearness and roar of the stream, and the nearness of irrigated meadows. A spirited capitalist, who should erect a large house in a proper situation at St Dalmas, could hardly faU to meet -with abundant encouragement, as supplying a want which is very frequently and painfully felt. THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY. The people who inhabit this region are in many respects worthy of study. Their moral and social, no less than their physical features, are pretty distinctly marked. There can be littie doubt that they are Celts by race ; less mixed, perhaps, than anywhere else upon the Continent. . What traces of this derivation their 30 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. language may bear, we cannot say; but their features and general appearance so much resemble those of the Irish, that, meeting -with a company of them anywhere in Great Britain, in the month of July or August, one would pronounce them Irish reapers without a moment's hesitation. Some of them look the very originals from which Erskine Nicol painted his highly characteristic pictures. Nor need we wonder at this; remembering that this country was included in Cisalpine Gaul, and was even in the classical Roman age inhabited by Celts. Their patois, which sounds bold and nervous, has evi dently a great deal of Latin in it, as might be expected ; and, besides, is said to be compounded of Celtic, Greek, Spanish, and Saracenic, -with some French words. The common people do not understand Italian, and hardly a word of French ; among the upper classes both these languages, as well as the patois, are generally spoken, though, before the annexation, Italian was the fashion able language, which the patriots also affected. Of course that is changed now. The priests, who perform the Mass in Latin, everywhere, in the country, employ the patois in preaching. In some tespects, whatever their resemblance in others may be, they are a striking contrast to the Irish; they are never, even the poorest of them, seen in rags ; their garments, often patched and clouted to the last extremity, with no squeamish regard to harmony of colours, are always whole ; none" of them appear to be idle; the women in their daily journeys to and from the fields, are always found knitting stockings as they walk; and though numbers are poor, beggary may be said to be unknown. These people are A SUMMER IN NICE. 31 ' eminently industrious, indeed hard-working; and their habits being simple and their wants few, tiiey appear to be not UI off, according to their own standard. In deed, we were told tiiat there is a good deal of wealth among some of them ; they are often what the Scotch call biefi bodies. Their manner of life is very primitive. Their regular dwellings are always in small towns, the cliief of which are Tenda and Briga-, each about two miles distant from St Dalmas ; though they have lodges or sheds upon their fields among the mountains, where they occasionally remain. From their homes they go forth in tiie moming as soon as it is day — father, mother, children, mules, and donkeys, often including the cow, which supplies the family -with milk. They remain at their work all day upon these mountain farms, (for the whole country is mountainous,) li-ving upon bread, mUk, sometimes a little olive-oil, or an onion ; till the evening, when you see them retuming home again, often a dis tance of several miles, much like a gipsy-camp, the cow leading the way, the mules or donjceys foUo-wing laden with wood, hay, corn, or other produce, and the sun burned and toil-worn human beings bringing up the rear, the mother carrying her baby, strapped in a cradle, upon her head, yet knitting with indomitable industry. A mode of life so primitive and simple strikes the ima gination of a stranger. The common dress of the men on holidays consists of a black hat with broad brim and red bow, blue waist coat and knee-breeches, white stockings and shirt : a jacket is added in cold weather, but in summer it is commonly carried over the shoulder, or left at home. 32 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The women wear a brown-coloured boddice, with a blue petticoat, and a kerchief over the head. On the whole, the costume of the women is neither beautiful nor picturesque, though it is convenient ; and the large size of the feet, or at least of the shoes, both of men and women, gives them (perhaps to our sophisticated perceptions) an ungainly air. Every woman, they say in Italy, has at least three attractions — fine hair, fine eyes, and fine teeth. The last, however, disappear at an early age. The natives of this country, especially the women, are martyrs to toothache ; and it is rare to see a woman of five-and-twenty who does not want half her teeth. The priests do not use the costume of their French brethren : they wear a black surtout reaching do-wn to the knees, -with black breeches and stockings; and a very large-brimmed hat, cocked on one side, which for ugliness cannot be surpassed. It is curious that almost all the priests we have seen in this country are tall, stately men, far above the average of the peasantry. Early toil stunts the growth of the latter. The priests go continually about among their flocks, and evidently live on very inti mate terms with them. An English lady, long resident in this country, informed us that the people, those of them especially who are in more easy circumstances, have the same ambition to have one member of the family raised to the dignity of the priesthood, which the Scotch peasantry have long sho\vn "to see their baim wag his pow in a pu'pit." We were anxious to form some estimate, approaching to correctness, of the inteUectual, moral, and religious A SUMMER IN NICE, 33 condition of this primitive, and, as they proved to us, interesting people ; but the unknown tongue presented a formidable difficulty. In some respects, indeed, their character needed no words to interpret or expound it : their quiet, and orderly, and decent habits, their sobriety and honesty, spoke to the eye, and needed no explana tion or demonstration. In the pension, where was a mul titude of servants, no one locked up anything — jewels, money, all were left open ; and no one was aware that he lost anything. In the district, people did not lock their doors, and a great proportion of the houses had no locks. There are some people who occasionally take too much wine ; but drunkenness, in the sense in which we use the word, may be said to be unknown, — the climate and the nature of their potations render this almost im possible. The bulk of the adult peasantry are not edu cated — that is, they cannot write or read ; but the Sar dinian Government, under the direction of Count Cavour, was exerting itself to promote education. For this pur pose, free instmction was pro-vided for those who could not afford to pay for it, and Government inspectors traversed the country to see that the teachers did their duty. In this and many other respects the new political arrangements wiU prove a great loss to this country ; for no government so much influenced by priests as the French is, can ever heartily promote popular education. .It was interesting to observe in the churches that an elderly peasant never had a book, whereas aU the chil dren, and many of the younger men and women, had books and could read. The people are very religious : they attend mass very 34 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. regularly, and all the men confess twice a year. We went early in the morning, on the Feast of St Peter, to the littie town of Briga. It. was a high festival. We found the whole population arrayed in holiday attire, engaged in their religious ceremonies, before eight o'clock in the moming. A crowd was hearing mass in the large parish church, and in the adjoining church or chapel a numerous congregation was singing -with great zeal and earnestness, and tolerable execution, some good music of great leiigth, a capital organ, very well played, occasionally bearing a part, the solo parts being sung by peasants who stood up voluntarily in the body of the church. What appeared curious was, that no priest was present during this long performance. In the parish church of Briga are some good old paintings, not well kept, and in need of clean ing. Upon the whole, the inhabitants seemed zealous in performing the offices of their religion. From all we could leam, the Piedmontese in general are sincere, but not bigoted, Romanists. The upper classes appeared to us much less inclined to Protestantism than opposed to Catholicism : they are to a man dissatisfied with the temporal power of the Pope, with the confessional, and the numbers of the monks and clergy. All we conversed with expressed the desire that the Church of Rome might be reformed, but none of them ^thought there was any probability ofthe Italians embracing the Protestant tenets. Some of the more ardent patriots hoped that the Court of Rome might prove impracticable, and so drive the Italians into absolute rebellion against the Church ; but these aspirations seemed to be merely political. A few days after the Festa di S. Pietro, a party of us A SUMMER IN NICE. 35 went to Briga, when we were told we should see the whole population of the Mandamento, as well as of the town, assembled. It was one of tiie numerous fetes con nected with the B. V. M., (if I remember rightly.) The Sardinian Govemment had abolished the great mass of the fete-days, which proved a serious inconvenience to industrial pursuits, leaving, however, a small number as days of recreation, of which this was one. There are now four days in the year, besides Sundays, on which the newspapers are not published, — a significant indication that in Sardinia the king had supplanted the priest. We found, as we approached the town, the whole population turned out, all in their gala dresses ; and in their relaxa tion, as well as in their toil, they appeared a comfortable, happy, and well-conditioned population. The juniors were eagerly occupied in dancing, which was of the most primitive description, and kept up with incredible per severance, considering the heat; the music being as rastic as the dancing. It was the etiquette for each lad to promenade along the road with the partner he had just danced -with. This is evidently the recognised opportunity of love-making, more safe and decorous than that secret courting over night which has so long and disastrously prevaUed in some other countries. The older people looked on apparently with interest and pleasure, and one of the priests passed through the crowd of merrymakers, and seemed as pleased as they were. This appeared to us a scene of very innocent mirth, with out any mixture whatever of profaneness, indecency, or dmnkenness. The younger members of our party went afterwards with the family of an Italian count, who re- 36 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. sides in summer in Briga, to a large hall near the market place, which was the principal scene of dancing and merriment. The count's family and the people appeared to be upon the most easy terms -with each other, and nothing could exceed the good-breeding and manly re spectfulness with which the people behaved. Our party were filled with surprise and admiration, not without many reflections on the contrast which would have been exhibited at an English or a Scotch fair; swearing, in temperance, and blackguardism, all were unknown among these primitive mountaineers. It was impossible not to feel both gratified -with such a sight, and also painfully humbled. What we witnessed on this occasion, and in deed daily during our three months' sojoum at St Dalmas, prepared us for what we learned from the best authority to which we could obtain access, or is to be found. The inhabitants of this town — and the same holds, though not so generally, regarding the two others mentioned before — are a large proportion of them peasant proprie tors, who cultivate with their own labour little mountain farms, which they have inherited from their ancestors, and which, while they preserve them above want, render it impossible that they should be either idle or rich, in our sense of the word. Industry, fragality, temperance, and forethought, thus become conditions of their very existence, and at last hereditary virtues. Accordingly, as was said before, there are no rags to be seen, and no beggars, and, what is more wonderful, there are no paupers. The foUowing statements we found it hard to believe, though they were made by a gentleman resident in the country, a considerable proprietor, and, so far as A SUMMER IN NICE. 37 we could judge, a man of accuracy, who also referred us to tiie magistrate of Briga, and by him the account was Uterally confirmed : — It is this, that in this Mandamento, containing upwards of four thousand souls, there have been but three illegitimate births witiiin the last forty-one years ; and that among the peasants Ulicit intercourse may be said to be unknown ; and that there is not a woman of loose character in the whole country, nor would be suffered to live in it. Also, that in the Manda mento of St Remo, upon the coast, containing a popula tion of about fourteen thousand souls, there is no memory or record of a murder having ever been committed. This information we mentioned -with incredulity to an inteUi gent physician resident at St Remo, whom we met at St Dalmas. He said he believed the information was per fectiy correct. Should more minute investigations prove that there is some exaggeration in these accounts — and notwithstand ing our anxiety to reach the trath, we should not feel surprised to find that there is — stiU the general purity of the people's manners must be remarkable to admit of such exaggerations being current and universally credited among themselves, as they undoubtedly are. The facts also are capable of an easy explanation. Their mode of Hfe and their peculiar customs shelter them from many of the most powerful temptations to which young persons are exposed elsewhere. They are constantly employed as families, young and old together, apart from other famihes. The youth of both sexes spend their lives under the eye of their parents ; even in their sports and amuse ments the older people and the priests are present and 38 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. look on. They are very industrious ; they are sparingly fed. and almost exclusively on vegetable diet ; and they marry young. The parents also, though less leamed in politics and in religious dogmas than some other popula tions, and though for the most part they are not able to read, and are little addicted to theological disputation, yet seem both to understand and practise some religious and moral duties better than others who have enjoyed greater advantages. They seem to take greater care of their chUdren, and to exercise a far more vigUant in spection of their conduct than is common among the peasantry of other countries, who often abandon them, when they have reached the age of temptation, very much to theif own guidance, and permit, or perhaps encourage, secret meetings over night, which not only result in immor ality, but show that feehngs of delicacy, if not of virtue, in these respects, are already well-nigh dead, both among old and young, tUl at last results appear which fill us with surprise and shame. Among the simple paysans of that secluded country, we could discover no trace of that depraved moral sense which teaches parents not to blush at their daughters' shame, or to call the loss of their vir tue by the name of " a misfortune." ROBERT LEE. IIL AMONG THE ALPS.— A CONVERSATION. WHEN Sarah had taken the tea-things away, and mamma was seated in the easy chair with her knitting, and the fire had been made up, and Lizzie's pillows had been arranged, and her big eyes were looking out upon the circle by the fire — a splendid peach that James had brought her lying on a plate before her — a silence fell over the whole assembly. And the wind, which was an autumn vidnd, the richest of all the winds, because there are memories in it of the odour-laden -winds of the summer nights, and anticipations of the howling blasts of winter, conscious of evil destiny — the wind, I say — the autumn wind — just rose once and shook the -windows of the room, as if it would gladly have come in to make one of our number, only it could not, doomed to the darkness without, and so died away with the moan of a hound. And then the fire flashed up, as if glorying over the wind that it was of the party; and its light .shone in the great old mirror at the back of the room, 40 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. and in mamma's spectacles, and in Lizzie's eyes, and in a great silver watch-key, an inch and a half square, which James had brought from Thun with him, with a cow and a bell on one side, and a man and a pot on the other. " Now, James, tell us all about it," said Lizzie, so cheerily that you would hardly have believed anything was the matter with her. "AU about what, Lizzie?" retumed James, with his own smile, which has more behind it than any other smile I know. " Why, about S-witzerland, of course." " Well, Lizzie, I don't pretend to know anything about S-witzerland ; but I think I have a little notion of an Alp. I used to think I knew what a mountain was ; but I didn't. And now I doubt if I can give you any idea of the creature ; for it is one thing to know or feel, and quite another to be able to make your friend know or feel as you do." " We will all try hard, James. Won't we ?" I said. " I have no distrast of my audience," he retumed ; " but my visit to Switzerland convinced me of three things — all negatives. First, of the incapacity of the me mory to retain the impressions made upon it. The won der of the sight seemed to destroy the stuff upon which it was figured, as an overheated brand might bum its own mark out. Second, — for I can give you these conclu sions as pat and as dull as a sermon, — ^my visit convinced me. of the futihtyof words to describe what I saw; and, third, of the poverty of photography in recording such visions. I did not bring a single photograph home with me. To show one to any of you would be like sending AMONG THE ALPS. 41 my mother that photograph of golden-haired Jane (I must write what he said) without one glimmer of the gold, without one flash of the smUe — all smoke and shadow — an unvarying petrifaction. I hate the phQtographs. They convey no idea but of extreme outline. The tints, and the lines, and the mass, and the shadows, and the streams, and the vapours, and the mingling, and the in finitude, and the loftiness, and the glaciers, and the slow- crawling avalanches cannot be represented. Even my mind retains only a general impression. I forgot what had delighted me yesterday." " But do tell us about the falls," said Maria. " Please don't drag me ofl the road to places I don't want to go to. That 's the way to put all our party out of temper. The falls are beautiful, in spite of Cockney innkeepers and Bengal lights ; but I am off for the Alps, and all the cataracts in the world shall not keep me. You will come with me, won't you, Lizzie ? " " Yes, that I will, James," said the sweet pale-face. We all begged to be aUowed to go too, and promised not to interrapt him again, even to pluck an Alpine rose. " Come up this steep path then, between a fence and a -vineyard. You hear behind you the roar of the falling Rhine; but let it roar. We climb, and come into a thicket of small firs, and through that to an open heathy spot, -with a plain stretching far away just in front of us. The day is tolerably clear, but it is a chance if we can see the Alps. Sit do-wn on the dry grass. It is dry enough even for Lizzie. A little this way, and you will clear that group of trees. Now think of what you love best, for perhaps you are going to see mountains. Look away 42 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. to the farthest-opened horizon, through many, gradations of faint shado-wy blue. Yes, there are hiUs, yea, moun tains enough — swells, and heaps, and humps, and mounds, and cupolas, all in gray and blue ; you can count I don't know how many distances — ^five perhaps, one rising o-ver the other, scattering forward out of the infinite like the ranks of an ill-disciplined army of giants. But you see no cones or peaks, and no white-cro-wned elect, and you are disappointed. The fact is, you do not see The Alps at all. You see but some of the steps of the vast stair leading up to their solitary thrones, where they sit judging the tribes of men that go creeping about below them after the eating, and the drinking, and the clothing, and never lift up their heads into the solitary air to be alone with Him with whom solitude and union are one. — I forgot myself," said James, after a pause. " I beg your pardon." " Oh ! do talk like that, James," said Lizzie. " I can't say I quite understand you, but I feel that I shall under stand you when I have had a little time." " Thank you, Lizzie," said James. " Well, I will let it come when it does come, though I don't want to talk in that excited way even about the Alps. It is just like the sixpenny books of the words at the Popular Concerts at St James's HaU. Well, you don't see the father and mother Alps ; you only see the little ones about their feet ; and we must set off at once for Berne — ^by the rail way. . . . Suddenly the hiUs upon the horizon parted as we swept along, and past the gap in the distance slowly sailed, like a spectral fleet of ghastly worlds, the hoary backs and heads of the Alpine orearchs. Then in glided the nearer hills, and hid them from my eyes — which AMONG THE ALPS. 43 Straightway scarce believed for very gladness. The mo ment they vanished, it seemed as if some a-wful reason concealed them ; as if they sat pondering terrible mys teries in their secret place. Again a revealing gap in the nearer mountains, and again the sUent terrors flitted slowly by. They were so white, Lizzie ! so dreadful ! yet so beautiful ! Again and again they appeared and •vanished, for we seemed to be mnning alongside of them at a vast distance away. And when the range of heights which concealed them from us drew nearer, and opened at no great distance from our course, then they would rush across the breach in wUd haste and white dead-like beauty — great heaps -with one or two peaked tops ; though mighty -with years and gro-wth, yet spectral and savage. They seized upon me utterly. Though not quite like what I had expected, they were much beyond it. Their vastness, more than their hoped-for height, took posses sion of me. I wonder if mountains strike other people as they do me. I generaUy see them like strange animals lying down— almost always couching — ^with more or less vague remindings of creatures of the known world. Ben Nevis, for instance, seen from the south, always looks to me Hke a winged elephant ; and one of the hUls of Mor ven, away in the west, like a gray-fleeced ram -with curled homs, marching eternally forward into space. And now, looking towards the Alps, I saw them like a flock of a-wful white sheep, lying there under the guardianship of some mighty Titan shepherd — sheep and yet not sheep ; war like and sombrely fierce creatures — ^perhaps the dogs of the great angels that guard the coasts of our world from the inroads of the fiends. If one of those creatures were 44 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. but to rise and shake itself ! Ah ! the stillness of power that lay about their rooted persistency, as they faced the gulf of nothingness, looking abroad, and daring the blank space with existence 1 For it seems to me, almost always, that the backs of the beasts are towards me, and that their terribly quiet faces are looking out into the unknown. Do you know, Lizzie, I think I understand what gave rise to the grand old fable of the giants ? The Greeks saw human shapes everywhere, as all farue poets do. And it is not always the form of an animal that I see shadowed in a mountain, but sometimes the form of a buried m.an, straggling and straining to rise from beneath the super incumbent mass, which has fallen into some shadowy, almost obliterated, correspondence to the huge form which it covers. In one mountain especially, in the west of Scotland, I see the shoulders of a giant hea-ving away from his neck and do-wn-bent head the weary weight of centuries. I could almost fancy I saw the outline of the knotted muscles approaching the surface in the agonising effort to rise. But, as I said, I felt, when I saw the Alps, that I had never seen a mountain before, had never known, in fact, what a mountain was. And all the shapes of men and creatures vanished when I came near, and there was nothing there but their own selves, like nothing but what they are — the children of the great earth, thrast forth from her molten heart of fire into the everlasting cold." Now James's talk was more like talk than this ; but this is as near as I can give it. And it seems to me worth giving, although another may think differently. Here, however, he stopped again, and looked vexed AMONG THE ALPS. 45 ¦with himself that he had been preaching instead of nar rating. But presently he recovered his self-possession, and went on. " It had always been one of the longings of my heart," he said, " to be in the midst of the mountains, shut in ¦with protection, and beholding, far above my head, the lonely, sky-invading peaks. Now here I was at last, going up a valley towards the heart of the Bernese giants. It was a narrow valley, whose steep sides were crowded with those up-reaching, slender, graceful pines, the one striking its roots at the level of its neighbour's topmost boughs, to a height casting discredit on the testimony of the poor sense. The valley wound about, like the stream in its bottom ; and at one of the turns, it was closed in (to the eye, I mean) by a huge shoulder of rock. And what is that shining thing which lies spread out on the rock, just like the skin of au animal stretched out to dry, gray and green and white ? There are the four legs and the tail, a grisly sight, notwithstanding the homely sug gestion of the drawing-room rag of people with friends in tiger-breeding India.. That is a glacier, no doubt. And a cold breath sweeping do-wn the valley, as if from across its expanse of distance-shranken mUes, confirms my suspicion of the region ' where aU life dies and death lives.' " Soon I was housed in one of those centres of the ' fortuitous concourse ' of human atoms called a hotel ; which I hate, I think, nearly as much as any poetic exqui site in existence. But had I not sufficient compensation when, going down from my bedroom, whose window afforded little view, I peeped from one of those in the 46 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. public room, and, out in the dimly moonlit night, saw a faintly-shimmering ghostly peak far up in the air at dis tance undefined, haunting the valley, haunting the house, haunting my heart, never henceforth to let it go free from its lovely terrible presence ? I had been looking at that same mountain an hour or two before, when the mists on the sides of the valley shone lurid in the sunset. No red touched its cold peaks : it looked on, hard and unrespon sive ; dead with whiteness, and hard -with black rocks. But in the moonUght it glimmered out gentle as the ghost of a maiden. " It was, however, when I climbed the opposing hill, on the back of an animal caUed a horse, but made very like a giraffe, that I felt the first fuU impression of what a mountain is. For across the valley rose a vast upheaved desert, a wUdemess of mountain heaps, ranges, slopes, and peaks, of which the nearest outwork, forming the side of the valley up whose corresponding side I was ascending, was a precipice that filled me with horror. This horror was •not fear exactly, for I could not fall down that precipice, whatevet other I might fail to escape. But its stony wall, starting from such a height, and sinking plump-down out of sight in the narrow valley, the bottom of which I could not see, fronted me Hke the stare of a nameless dismay. I strove against it, and not without success, although the overpowering wonder of that which rose above this waU was not strengthening to the nerves or soothing to th? imagination. .1 knew, even whUe I gazed upon it, that I should not remember what I saw or "felt, or be able to describe it. It was such a chaotic loiveliness and awfut ness intermingled in savage harmony ! — a changeful vision THE GLACIERS. Page 47. AMONG THE ALPS. 47 of glaciers, of shifting clouds, of rocks, of faUing streams, of snow, of waste wild peaks, of stretdies of all kinds of mass, and shape, and surface, mingling in all degrees of height and shadow. And this they said was the foot of the Jungfrau ! Down below, in the valley we had left, lay fields of bright green, looking as smooth as a shaven lawn, dotted all over with little brown, wooden, toylike houses, the shelter of the goats in winter, to whicii were visible no paths to destroy the perfect green smoothness. These fields (or indeed lawns would be the nearer word) sloped up, with more or less inclination, to the foot of precipices of rock, on the top of which came other green lawns, dotted in like manner with little wooden houses of a rich broTivn, and sloping also to other precipices rising above them in tum. But the fields grew more ragged and bare upon the ascending terrraces, and great lumps of stone came sticking through them, until at last rose the naked mountain, ' horrid all vsdth ' rock, over which wan dered the feeble clouds. And down into the midst of the rocks came the tongues, and jags, and roots of the snow and ice, which higher and higher drew closer and closer together, tUl the peaks were one smooth, sunshiny white ness, except where precipices, on which no snow could lie, rose black in the midst, seeming to retire, like dark hoUows, fi-om the self-assertion of the infinite glitter, whUe the projecting rocks looked like holes in the snow. And here and there, over the mountain, lay the glaciers, looking lovelUy uneven; fretted, purfled, and wrinkled, like a wrought architectural surface; mostly white, but mottled with touches of colour, which seemed to me mostly green, though at times I could not say that it was 48 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. not blue ; in either case a colour most delicate and de lectable to behold. " I wandered about here for a day or two, haunting the borders of the terrible gulf in whose unseen depth lay the pleasant fields of the lower valley, do^wn into which, at night, I had met the deer-like goats trooping with their multitudinous patter of feet, branching of homs, and ringing of bells. But out of this lovely depth below would suddenly sweep up a mass of vapour, as if all be neath had been a caldron set upon an awful fire, and not the green pleasant places of the earth. It would drift about in the valley as in a trough, and then all at once steaming up, swathe and obliterate, in a few moments, the whole universe of heights and hollows, snows and precipices — everything but a yard or two of the earth around me. I would know that all that land of enchant ment and fear lay there, but could see nothing, although through the mist might come the prolonged roll .of the avalanche falling, far off, down the slopes and steeps of the Jungfrau. This might happen twenty times in a day. Then the mist would suddenly part a little, high towards the heavens perhaps, and you would see a solitary glitter, whiter than the mist: — the peak ot a dweller in the sky. And the mist would range and change, and darken and clear, a perfect embodiment of lovely lawlessness, re vealing such dazzling wastes of whiteness, here more dazzling, and there melting into the cloud, so that you could not part cloud and snow. In another place, where the snow had fallen along the ribs of a precipice in fur rows converging from the top, you would seem to look upon the fierce explosion of a snow-mine, radiating from AMONG THE ALPS. 49 a centre of blinding whiteness. And there again would come a sweep of deadly glacier, spotted -with green light through the upright scales of its splintered waves — a frozen storm — mimicking the Alpine ranges, jagged into many peaks like them ; but all showing from where you stand only as mottiings and unevenness. And all this would be varied to absolute infinitude of bright and dark, of seen and unseen, by the shifting clouds. Standing ¦watching the heavenly show, and rejoicing in the loftiness of some emergent peak, I would say to myself, ' There, that is high ! But I ¦wish I could see one up there — as high as that ! Then I should be satisfied.' And out would come another peak away up there ; and yet I would not be satisfied. And a higher still would gleam out, like a cloud-grown solid, from the liquidly-shifting mass, and strange hints would appear of a yet further and higher amid those blankets of the dark beyond. And yet I cannot say that I have seen a mountain top high enough to satisfy the longing of my eyes ; for I fear they cannot, as the wise man says, be filled with seeing. " I wandered along the green fields one moming, oppo site the waste mountain, and soon came to a shallow green deU, in the bottom of which ran a brawling littie stream. It was like many a deU I had seen in Scotland, with a thicket of smaU, slender; girl-like trees, where the path crossed it : it was like finding a bit of home in the midst of abroad ; like wandering in a strange house, in a dream, you know, Lizzie, and all at once coming upon your own room nestling in the middle of it. And I felt a fancfful pity for the littie stream which -was hurrying away over its stones so fast, nearer and nearer to some so PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. terrible slope and headlong fall into the valley below, ere it reached which it might be •' pouldered all as thin as flour,' in its downward, stayless rash against the steep opposing air." Here followed another pause, and James sat staring into the fire, which had reached the peaceful condition of middle age — all in a glow ¦without flame. Again the wind made a rash at the window and died away. I re member it so well, becaiise I saw James start and listen, as if it reminded him of some sound he had heard in the wild Alps. It roused- him from his reverie, and set him talking again. Tuming to Lizzie, he said : — " I wish I could make you see one of those wildly grand visions. But I cannot, and it troubles me that I cannot. I wish I were rich, Lizzie, to take you all there. If I were, you should be carried in a chair, as many ladies are. It would be jolly ! " "Yes, that it would, thank you, James," answered Lizzie, with a smile that left her lip quivering. " But when I die, I shall, if God wiU let me, take Switzerland on my way ; and I dare say I shaU see it all the better so." None of us answered this. And, after a moment's sad pause, James went on. " I started on a fine August moming, and zigzagged for hours up the hill opposite that I had ascended before ; at first in short — Vandykes, mightn't I say, Jane ? — then in longer stretches and gentler slopes of ascent ; and then back to the Vandykes again ; now through pine-woods, now along the edge of deep descents, and now along the green slopes of hill-sides. Climbing at last a green shoulder, AMONG THE ALPS. 51 much torn with rain-torrents, I suddenly found myself face to face with die mass of tiie Jungfrau from the vaUey to the Silverhom. I could have fallen on my knees before it. That moment I cannot describe. Great clouds crept like pigmy imitations across the front of tiie mighty real, which towered one rock firom its base of precipices up to its crown of snows. And as the rock towered, so its streams fell — in snow from its snow cro-wn, in water from the caverns of its outspread glaciers ; as if the great bald head sought such hair as it could find to cover its naked ness. And ever and anon you might hear the fall of one of its snow-streams thundering from some jagged solitude, which in the space before you might look but a rent in the mountain, or scar upon its rough face. For the avalanches are just streams of snow, now slipping down an inclined plane, presenting firom a distance the strange contrast of a slow-creeping river mantled with the foam of a furious haste — sometimes falling sheer over a precipice, a cataract of snow, not, like a river, to gather its force and flow on, but to rest hurtless and silent as death at its foot. One which had been pointed out to me from the other side of the vaUey, a thin thread dropping far away in the mystery of mountain-tortuosity, we found lying a triangu lar mass of whiteness, a huge heap at the foot of the Jung frau. " I stood and watched the torrents that rashed cease less from the cold mouths of the recumbent glaciers. I saw them dUate and contract by the measure of three as they feU ; as ff some mighty, not yet dead heart within drove, in pulsing beats, the arterial blood of the moun tain from a wide wound in its ragged side. 52 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. " Now the clouds would gather and half wrap the great thing in their folds, as for an appointed time the weak and evanescent can always obscure the strong and the lasting ; and over their swathing bands would appear the giant head of the all-careless mountain. Now they swallowed her up, and she retired equally careless into the awful unseen. I turned my back upon her and descended towards the valley. " A steep green slope, which we first scrambled up and then rode along ; the first of a shower ; big cattle, each with its big bell on a broad belt round its neck, glooming through the rain ; faster and faster descent of rain-drops ; the water ranning into my boots ; steeper and steeper descents ; fog, through which nothing but the nearest objects can be seen ; a more level spot of grass, with rocks sticking through it in every direction, and haggard old fir-trees standing half dead about a stream ranning over the rockiest of channels and down the steepest of descents not to be a succession of waterfalls, banked everywhere by this green grass — the whole making up one of the two places I saw where I would build a house ; — singing women ; a glass of brandy at a roadside inn ; the Eiger hanging over us through the fog, fearfully high and fearfully overhanging, like nothing I can think of but Mount Sinai in the Pilgrim's Progress; a scramb ling down rocky stairs ; and then, through the mist, that for which I have brought you all this way in the pouring rain — the . sharp-edged, all but perpendicular outline of the Wetterhom, close in front of our faces — nothing but a faint mass and a clear edge-^-the most frightful appear ance bv far we have yet seen. I would not for a month's AMONG THE ALPS. 53 sunshine have lost that sight. If I couid draw at all, nothing would be easier than to let you see it, as it mshed from the earth through the mist into the sky. A single line, varying in direction, yet in the effect nearly perpendicular, seen through a gray mist — that is all. And aU I can say is, It was terrible; and there is little good in saying an3^ing, except your saying is your friend's seeing." " I see it," each of us cried. " Well," returned James, " it was just a thing you might dream. No detaU — only an effect. But, alas ! next day, when we were all dry, air, and mountain, and I, it was so different. The Wetterhorn — and it just strikes me that it must have been named on such another aftemoon as tiiat on which I saw it first — the next day, I say. The Horn of the Tempest had retired into the hollow of the air ; showed not its profile only, but its whole countenance, and yet stood back, and looked nothing remarkable — far lower, exceedingly less impos ing. Without being an illustration, it yet reminded me of those fine lines of Shelley — you must not forgive the Cockneyism in the third line, although I don't believe he meant to* leave it so ; and you may see the line ought to end with a rhyme to storm : — *' ' The Apennine in tlie light of day Is a mighty mountainj dim and gray, ¦Which between the earth and sky doth lay ; But when night comes, a chaos dread On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.* '* . James here making a pause — " Read us a little more out of that pocket-book, won't you, James % " said Maria. 54 PEEPS 'A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. " I think I have given you everything worth giving you about the mountains," he answered ; " and I won't talk about anything else to-night. Well " — tuming over the leaves of his book — " here is another passage which I don't mind reading, if you don't mind listening to it. After mentioning the tiger-skin glacier, as I called it, my note goes on thus : ' Soon we saw another greater glacier. These were the garments of the Jungfrau, and the lady looks very fierce and lovely ; and the vnnd over her clothes smells of no sweet spices, but of cold, beautiful death. This glacier- was precipitous, and seemed to come pouring over the sharp edge next the sky, as like white water, with dim glints of green in it such as cata racts often have, as anything motionless — motionless as the face of a dead man — could look. All its forms are of waves and wildly-driven waters ; yet there it rests. It thinks, it dreams of what a rash it would make do-wn that mountain-side, if only the frost would let it go. " ' And now I have seen the maiden in her night-attire, walking in her sleep. You would not know her from an intensely white cloud — cold white — up there in the sky, over the edge of the near, lofty ridge. " ' How shall I convey an idea of the prettiness of the valley below ? It is like plapng at the country — like the kingdom of the dolls. It reminds me much of the im pression produced by Sir Philip Sidney's descriptions of nature in the Arcadia. From the stream which rans along the bottom of the valley rise, with much, though varying steepness, and -with all sorts and sizes of gently- rounded irregularity, the greenest expanses of grass that AMONG THE ALPS. 55 heart can desire, up to the foot of an absolute waU of rock, over which in parts look the snow-peaks from afar ; and yet they are so near that they are as part of the furniture of your house. If you saw the grass in a picture, you would object to it as badly painted, because too velvety, too soft, too delicately green. It seems as well-kept and mown as a lawn, and all studded over with neat Httle bro-wn houses, some for men and women and children, some for cows and calves, some for goats and kids, aU built in much the same fashion, all pretty wooden boxes with overhanging eaves. The bro^wn earth shows nowhere. AU is grass la-wn. Indeed, these lower valleys produced upon me the impression of too much neatness, of obtrasive tidiness — as if the S-wiss people were the little children whose fathers and mothers, giants up amongst the rocks, had sent them do-wn to play here, out of the dangers of the mighty games going on up there in the cloudy regions. The whole was so pretty as to produce a sense of pettiness. " ' As I stood this evening and gazed at the glaciers, I thought I saw, through the snow clouds over them, streaks that were not of cloud. And straightway out dawned the mountain. Higher and higher parts appeared, and higher and further off stiU. Such a minghng of cloud and mountain ! " If I could only see that height cleared ! " And it was cleared ; and therewith the hint of a further dwarfed it. And nothing of aU this show was quite after my anticipation of mountains and their peaks, but grander; less showy, and more imaginative. How it all changed and changed ! And the highest points never appeared 56 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. at aU. And then when the blue heaven came, it dwarfed them aU.'" Here James closed his note-book. "Weren't you very sorry to leave the mountains, James ?" " Not in the least. They are not for every-day wear. I think almost I was relieved when I got upon a good space of level land again. I am not sure that they weren't too much for me, always so high, and so ragged, and so lonely. It certainly was a pleasure to see the horizon far off again. They didn't leave me room enough, perhaps. But I cannot quite telL And, besides, I have not left them. I have them in me." "That is how you have brought them home to us, James," said Lizzie, in a tone which he thought sounded weary; though, if it was, it must have been fi-om too much pleastire. " Well, you had better dream about them now, Lizzie,'' he said, " for it is time I left you in peace." And he rose to say good-night. " But do just teU me one thing : Did you go on a glacier at all?" said Maria. " Only in the most humble fashion — just trod on the tail of one creature that comes down into the bottom of the valley like a dragon of the cold, daring the summer and the torture of the soft -wind. It was strange to walk over the rough snow on its surface, or rather graveUy ice, for it was just Hke rough salt for fish-curing, and feel the warm wind blowing in your face, as, looking up the steep-sloping ravine, you gazed at the splintered pinnacles AMONG THE ALPS. 57 of tiie ice, with the light shining green through them. On the tail you could walk, but along the rugged back up there, there was no passing. It looked just like a multitude of alabaster slabs set up on end." "Was the colour of the ice really green or blue?" I asked. " I -will tell you where there was no doubt of the blue,'' he answered. " They have cut out, for the sake of poor things Hke me, a small winding cave into this glacier, entering on the level of the ground. Maria would shriek with delight at the blue of that ice-cave. What matter that human hands made the cave ? No human hands could make, no human fancy invent that blue. The very air that filled the hole was blue. And it grew bluer and darker blue as you went in — such a transparent, liquid, lovely blue ! bluer than any sky twice condensed, and yet as clear. It was a delight for an angel, that blue ! And there was water ranning through the roof and along the floor ; and the walls were so clean, and smooth, and cold, and wet ! How delicious that cold after my hot walk ! And when I turned to come out, there stood my companion -with the face of ' one that hath been seven days drowned' — the raddy cheek and Hps purple, and the white very ghastly. So likewise I looked to him, he said, for the blue changed our cheer. And the sunlight was again welcome as I walked back, sucking a lump of the glacier ice." "You have not said one word about either of the young men that went -with you, James, tUl this minute." " No. I have expressly avoided it, because, if I had begun, I should have gone on bringing them in ; and I S8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. didn't want to say a word about anything else till I had got the mountains off my mind. Right good fellows they were, and are, and we got on capitally. But I 've told you enough for once, and have tired out poor Lizzie. Good-night." george mac donald. rv. A FEW DAYS IN SPAIN. THERE are several ways of getting to Spain. If you go by sea, there are good steamers frora South ampton to Gibraltar ; but then you strike the hot country first. The route by Marseilles and Valencia is the quickest, but it is the dearest, and there is a risk in that case of missing Burgos, just the sort of place to be dropped out of the fag-end of a tour. So we determined to go by Paris, (which every one in his secret heart is glad to find an excuse for going to, if only for a day,) and then on through western France by queenly Angoill^me enthroned among her -vineyards, and the quays of stately Bordeaux, and across the Landes — not -without their moumful beauty, being a kind of Scotch steppe waving like the sea -with heather and firs — to Bayonne, which is as much Spain in France, as St Sebastian is France in Spain. The drive across the spurs of the Pyrenees is often pretty, but never subHme. Its chief interest is, that on aU sides are the footprints of our great Wellington. At 6o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Iran, the first Spanish town, we showed our passports, which were never asked for again till we were leaving Malaga ; and when we stopped at St Sebastian we had our first glimpse of Spanish manners. The conductor of the diligence told us we were to take supper, and th6n vanished. There was no person from the inn to show us in the dark where the inn was, or to give us reason to suppose that our going there was of the slightest con sequence to any one. We saw an open door and a flight of stairs, and then a room, with a table and plates on it, and being hungry and adventurous, we went in and waited for what was to come next. A handsome Spanish girl attended on us with a kind of dainty stateliness, tak ing round dish after dish, -without volunteering a remark, and not condescending to show that she could speak French till we asked what we had to pay. The French conductor, too, furnished us with another glimpse of Spanish character ; for coming up in a kind of roUicking simphcity to the top of the table, he was quietly told by the Spaniards present to go down to the bottom, which he did instantly with a good-humoured grimace, and soon showed tiiat his rebuff had not taken away his appetite. Our ten mules pulled us on merrily till we joined the railway at Olazogoitia somewhere about 3 a.m., (the joumey from Bayonne to Madrid is now performed in less than thirty hours ;) and then, by Vittoria, which we reached at sunrise, and where we shivered for cold, we went on through a barren and dreary land till the spires of a lofty cathedral, rising above a mass of dull yeUow houses and under the crest of a fortified hill, told us that we were at Burgos. At our inn there (Fonda del Norte) A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 61 we found iron beds, prettily papered rooms, a fair cuisine, and reasonable charges. The cathedral, of course, we visited witiiout delay. At the west end are two crocketed and not very lofty spires. Behind these rises up an octagonal tower, built by the son of the Duke of Alva, and behind this again a lower tower, in itself a good-sized church. The interior is somewhat spoilt by bronze gates a good deal out of order, which " imprison the choir," and give the churcli the look of being in handcuffs ; but its airiness, loftiness, and lightness are quite wonderful, and the elaborate stone carvings, both in the octagonal tower and the mighty pillars which support it, make it a gem of Gothic art. The convent of Miraflores, about a mile out ofthe town, possesses perhaps the very noblest monument in Spain, erected by Isabella of Castile to her parents ; and though the French cruelly mutilated it, and a wretched painted railing makes it impossible to get near enough to examine it quite minutely, it well deserves a visit. The tomb is of the very finest alabaster, about tliree and a half feet high. On the top are the recumbent effigies of the king and queen : he in his armour, she in her robes, omamented with lace most marveUously chiseUed; while aU round the monument are carved figures of martyrs and apostles, each a gem of art. There are seven monks here, all on the sUent system, and I did not know how sufficiently to pity them, or to execrate the craelty tiiat condemned them to their silence. We came across one of them, an accompHshed man, who spoke fluently several European languages. He looked lost and unhappy ; and a sickly smUe Ut up his face as he showed us a stick he had been 62 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. chiselling, and observed, (for they may speak to strangers,) touching his forehead, "This would faU me if I might not thus employ myself." It seemed perfectly natural that when we parted from him, he did not cast back one glance at us, but became instantly absorbed again in his tools and bits' of wood. They were his best friends, while we were nothing to him, and to converse -with us was but to remind him of his living grave. Burgos is a dull, decayed place, and we were glad to get into the correo, or mail-coach, for Madrid; though, after a joumey of twenty-four hours, during which we could buy nothing to eat or drink on the road, we were still more glad to get out of it. The drive is not quite without interest ; occasionally we came on bits of wooded country;' and, as the sun went down, the distant hills with their lights and shadows reminded us of the West moreland fells. Whenever we changed horses, the cur^, and the gossips, and the children came to have a peep at us, and so we got a peep at them ; -and, pro-vided you have no dust, and can have the coup'e to yourself, a diligence journey now and then is a pleasant way pf travelling, permitting meditation and talk more easily than a railway, and much better opportunities for seeing the country. Madrid, which disappointed us when we entered it, grew on us afterwards; and though it cannot be com pared with Paris, Naples, or Berlin, may fairly be ranked with Bordeaux or Milan. The Puerta del Sol (where was our exceUent hotel, Fonda de los Principes) has recently been ornamented with a very effective fountain, and at night, when lighted and crowded with people, A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 63 would be striking even in Paris. The Prado is said to be a brilHant scene on a summer's evening. The palace is quite the grandest I know ; but I have never been to St Petersburg. The shops are third-rate, and enormously dear. Cabs are good and cheap. House-rent is becom ing exorbitant. The best hotels are expensive, (ours was sixteen fi-ancs a day;) but provisions are dear, and the cuisine is equal to Meurice's. In summer the heat is frightful, and in -winter the cold blasts from the Guadar rama mountains cut -with the sharpness ofa razor; but in spring and autumn the climate is perfect, and while we never once felt it hotter than chilly Englishmen wish to feel it, we also felt that we had not come in vain in search of the sun. The glory of Madrid is its Picture Gallery. Exter nally the building is not remarkable, but the long gallery as you enter is very imposing, and in this respect superior to the Lou-vre, that there is neither gUding nor ornament to distract you from what you have come to see. The pictures, moreover, are weU lighted ; there is abundance of civil attendants, and you generally have the place to yourself. The main fault of the gallery is that there is no real attempt to classify the pictures in their several schools. The merit of it is the astonishing coUection of really excellent pictures of aU countries, as well as in the numbers of chefs d'oeuvre of the greatest masters. Here, moreover, you come across painters not much known in England, such as Velasquez, the most natural and vigorous of portrait painters, and the somewhat sombre, but most meritorious productions 64 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. of Jos^ Ribera. I would only add that, after a some what careful study of Raphael and Murillo in this gallery, I felt most thankful for the natural way in which they have painted the human life of Christ. In a cabinet picture by Raphael the infant Jesus is putting his arms round the Baptist's neck, and kissing him. In another, the Holy Child is riding on a lamb, Joseph holding him. But the most domestic picture is perhaps one by Murillo, in which the boy Jesus, standing at Joseph's knee, holds in his hand a white bird towards which a dog is preparing to spring, while the Virgin at her spinning-wheel looks on. To be made to feel that the joys and sensations of childhood have been shared by One who, when He be came man, took to Himseff a humanity complete in all its sympathies and emotions; and that our blessed Sa-viour was once a childlike child as well as a true man, is surely a help and light of no common value. From pictures to bull-fights is a rapid transition, but the Bull-ring is near the Museo, which possibly accounts for the connexion in my own mind. We did not see a bull-fight, for the only one that took place while we were there was on a Sunday, and under any circumstances it is hardly the place for a humane Christian man. From all I heard of it, the spectacle must be sickening and dis gusting. The men no doubt are brave enough, and the buUs fierce enough, and the excitement must be appalling; but the horses, instead of being what they used to be, and in Spanish America are still, noble blood animals, capable of leaping over the bull, if he comes too near them, are worn-out jades, fit only for the knacker, and have to be goaded to their death. It often happens that. A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN, 65 after the buU has gored them, they run round the ring trampHng on tiieir own entrails ; and sometimes a boy will ran up, stuff the wound with straw, and so they do for the next day. The most hopeful feature about the thing is, that the Queen in Madrid hardly ever goes to them; that the press is steadily -writing them down ; and that society very much takes its tone firom France and England. It is possible, therefore, that in a few years' time this bar barous remnant of the old gladiatorial games may pass away. Of course we went to the Escurial. Standing on a platform of granite at the foot of the' Guadarrama range, it seems part of the mountain, which overshadows -with out dwarfing it : and, partly monastery, partly palace, in more senses than one it is the Versailles of Spain. Built on the plan of a gridiron, it is in shape a rectangular paraUelogram, at each end flanked -with towers surmounted by a gray spire, and with four tiers of windows. In the centre is the dome of the church, a grand and simple building that reminded me of St Peter's. The material is granite, so firesh that it looks as if. it was finished yes terday, and the severe simplicity of the whole building is its chief merit. Under the dome is the burial-place of the sovereigns of Spain, firom Charles V. to Ferdinand VIL, each in his o-wn sarcophagus of marble. The Ubrary, -with the edges of the books tumed out wards, is chiefly interesting for a portrait of PhiUp II. in his old age, who glares at you out of the canvas -with a duU, crael stare. The royal apartments are small and tawdry ; but any one who has read Motley's history, 66 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. would take an intense interest in visiting the suite of rooms where PhiUp II. spent his life in the deliberate infliction of pain. There is the rough chamber where it was his whim to receive ambassadors ; the tiny cabinet, with no window in it, where he sat at his desk hour after hour (for he was a glutton of work) reading despatches, and scrawling upon them ; there is the chair on which he sat, the table where he -wrote, the stool on which he rested his gouty leg ; and just beyond, inside the church, and in view of the altar, is the spot where, in frightful agonies of body and mind, he breathed his last, gazing at the crucifix that could not save him, and listening to the priests who could not. give him peace. Toledo is one of the most interesting cities in Spain, ¦and you can go and retum to Madrid in the same day. It is perched on a kind of eagle's nest above the Tagus, which rushes beneath it through solid walls of granite, on its three hundred miles' journey to the Atlantic. The streets are very narrow, narrower than at Vienna. The inhabitants, who speak the purest Castilian, do not live in flats, as in Madrid, but each in his own house, with its pateo or inner court, musical with a fountain always playing, sweet and green with flowers, and cool with its thick awning to keep off the sun. Constantly our guide stopped us to point out some arabesque carving, or some ancient door studded with nails of a wonderful shape and thickness, (the Moors were great in nails,) or a deep weU with its old iron lid. There are two beautiful synagogues here — which, since the Jews were expelled from Spain, have been turned to all kinds of uses — omamented with Moorish tracery in brilliant colour ; and there is also a A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 67 noble fragment of a church buUt by Ferdinand and Isabella, hung outside with iron fetters taken off the Christian captives at the surrender of Granada. The cloisters here, wofuUy defaced by the French, seem to have been more beautiful than the Campo Santo at Pisa. But the crown of Toledo is her cathedral, worthy in deed of the seat of the Primate of all Spain, (who ranks next to the Pope,) and which impressed us almost more than SeviUe. Here, as elsewhere, the exterior is not remarkable, (our EngUsh cathedrals far surpass in this respect those of Spain,) but the interior is sublime to the last degree. Four tiers of enormous columns, themselves decorated with smaUer columns, divide the nave. The choir, as is the case in all Spanish cathe drals, is quite in. the way, and spoUs the effect of the rest of the building ; but the walnut stalls are very beau tiful, and it contains a gorgeous chapel to the memory of Spain's greatest prelate. Cardinal Mendoza, the friend, and almost the equal, of the Catholic kings. The nume rous chapels are richly decorated. The sacristy is full of jeweUed dresses, and gold and silver plate of a fabu lous value. The reliquary is as well stored as that of St Anthony at Padua, and as the afternoon sun streamed in through the windows of richly-painted glass, the church was filled -with glory. From Madrid to Granada is a journey of about twenty-nine hours^, of which the first eight are now by railway. It is the great distances in Spain, and the expensiveness of good places in the diligence, that make travelling costly. TiU you come to Santa Cruz (with the exception of an oasis of verdure at Araniuez) you 68 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. might imagine yourself in the desert ; and this arises not only from the fact that in autumn much of the country is in stubble, but also that a good deal is not in cultiva tion ; for as there is no means of transport, there is no use in growing corn which is not needed for home con sumption. The soil and climate of Spain produce the finest wheat in the world. In some places the bread is so white and rich, that it looks like cake, and does not need butter. When the railway system at present in progress is completed to Barcelona in the north-east, to Santander in the north-west, and to Seville in the south west, Spain will become the granary of Western Europe, and an impetus will be given to the trade of the Penin sula, the results of which it is impossible to foretell. Santa Cruz; is in the district of La Mancha, Don Quixote's home, and a very desolate land. Three hours from here, the road begins to climb the Sierra Morena, (the backbone of this part of Spain,) and by a really Alpine gorge, and past mountains, not indeed so bril-; liantly coloured as those of Wady SheUal, but stUl quite metallic with red and sulphur, leads down into Anda lusia. On all sides, till the eye rests on a mighty back ground of mountains forty mUes off, there stretch vast plantations of olives, carefully planted in rank and file : and here, for the first time, we come on the cactus, the wild aloe, and the pomegranate. At Bailen — the scene of a battie in 1808, where the Spaniards defeated the French, and were so frightened at what they had done, that they made no use of it — the roads to Cordova and Granada diverge. Jaen was the next town we came to, a city set on a hill, and surrounded by frait gardens of A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 69 a delicious greenness. Then on we drove through a valley of Italian richness, where the fig and the vine, the peach and the nectarine, the melon and the pomegranate, the maize and the olive, told us of a land of milk and honey : as tiie sun fell, the moon rose, and through gorge after gorge, glittering in the silver air, we drew nearer to the majestic shadows of the Sierra Nevada, till we were roused out of a snatch of uneasy sleep, to find our journey over. Granada is the Salzburg of Spain. Built at the ex treme end of a most fertile valley, and embracing with both its arms the noble hiU on which the Alhambra is built, it has a climate deliciously tempered by mountain breezes, and was the brightest jewel that Islam lost, and that Christendom won. I am not sure that the view from the bell tower of the Alhambra does not quite equal the famous -view of Damascus : and when the Nevada is glittering -with snow, and the plain fresh with its spring greenness, Hke Jerusalem of old, it is beautiful for situation, and the joy of the whole earth. The cathedral is a bad St Paul's, but its great feature of interest is the royal chapel of Ferdinand and Isabella. There are two of the most exquisite marble tombs that ever the hand of man chiselled, and underneath, in the vault, their remains repose. They show you Ferdinand's own sword, and a splendid vestment worked by Isabella for Cardinal Mendoza : and then you go down into the narrow chamber, where a taU man could hardly stand upright; and before -you are two plain lead coffins, one marked F., the other I., that contain all that is left of those strong and royal hearts. TO PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The Carthusian convent outside the town commands a fine view of the plain, and of the Duke of Wellington's estate, the value of which is absurdly exaggerated by the Spaniards. In the sacristy, you get a notion of the mineral wealth of Spain, in some superb marbles, and the doors of the chapel are exquisitely inlaid in ebony and tortoiseshell. But the Alhambra is the pride of Granada and the boast of Spain. A noble avenue of English elms leads up to it out of the town, and English tourists cannot be too strongly recommended to take up their quarters at a pretty Httle inn, called the Siete Suelos, which is right under the palace walls, and in every respect all that can be wished. The first thing to do is, if possible about sunset, to climb the Torre de la Vela, where the Chris tian flag was first hoisted by Cardinal Mendoza, and where there is as glorious a panorama of mountain and plain as can be seen in Europe. We spent two evening hours there on our first visit, for the Alham bra, like Venice, is best seen in twilight : and we looked down on the city, and the dim outline of the distant mountains, and the grand sweep of plain at our feet, till the moon rose over the shoulder of the Nevada, and with its silver splendour put out the lights beneath. It is very difficult to describe the Alhambra, but the ornamentation of one room is very much like that of another ; and the kind of thing is familiar to any one who has visited the Crystal Palace. Like all Oriental edifices, its beauty is within, and from without it is remarkable only for the thickness of its masonry, the A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 7 1 imposing appearance of its towers, and the commanding elevation on which it is built. Even the interior at first disappoints some persons, for all colour is gone, except where you come across the admirable restorations now going forward, and there meet you everywhere marks of the tooth of decay. Never was I myself so much impressed with its size, as with the admirableness of proportion, and the exquisiteness of taste ; and the feeling is rather one of delight at the refined handiwork of an inventive genius, than awe in the presence of commanding power. The Hall of Ambassadors is perhaps the most imposing part of it ; while the Court of Lions, with its 128 pillars of white marble, so slender and delicate, that you wonder how the roof is supported by them, gives the best impression of the capabilities of Moorish architecture. But the place wUl grow on you, as you visit it again and again, by yourself, and at all hours, especially in the moonlight : and when you suc ceed in forgetting the dilapidation and ruin that surrounds you : when you try to imagine that whitewashed plaster radiant in gold and colours : when you people those sUent halls with the beauty, and the prowess, and the wisdom, and the nobiUty of those stately Moors : when you trace through the length and breadth of the land, how all that was honest, and trae, and good in them, still blesses Spain, — you will see that if at last the Fleming conquered the Moor, in some things stiU the Moor is master of the Fleming : and while you are thankful for the conquest of Granada, whUe in our age we have better things than Moorish palaces, and through God's goodness could tell those Moors, what their Koran 72 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. could never teU them ; we may still feel that God's Providence had a purpose in suffering them to be all those centuries in Southern Europe. We can all leam from each other, and we can all give to each other ; let us be as great in our time, with our advantages, as they were then with theirs. While at Granada, I twice visited Matamoros in prison — a most trae and noble sufferer for conscience' sake, and not yet spoiled by sympathy. From Granada to Malaga we went on horseback across the mountains, and a fagging ride of two long days we . found it. The dip down from the Alhambra into the plain is as fine as anything in Italy ; and Alhama, which we reached in the afternoon, a thoroughly Moorish town, and built on the edge of some enormous fissures in the hills, is most singular to look at, but woe to the flesh and blood of any Englishman that sleeps there. Soon after this we got more into the heart of the mountains, and passed through some glens that reminded me of the road from Dhahariyah to Hebron. Here however the rain came down smartly, and, as it was dusk, we took refuge in a viUage posada, where everything was in common, and the muleteers came in to dry themselves by the fire, and then passed the night on the floor. One bed was made for us up-stairs, on the outside of which we tried to snatch an hour's sleep, but the voracity of the insects soon disturbed us ; and as no amount of capital punishment produced any effect on the survivors, we got up, and read till the moonlight and the approach of dawn made it prudent for us to proceed. For six hours we were scrambling about from one precipice to A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 73 another in our descent towards the sea, which we saw at a great distance beneath us, and for the first two hours it was very cold ; but when we got, into the sun- Hght it was hot enough, and we found ourselves in a vaUey tropical both in its climate and vegetation, with the orange and the lemon, the sugar-cane and the palm. From Velez Malaga, where we breakfasted, it is a six hours' ride farther to Malaga, by the side of the sea ; and as we entered the town at sunset, in a flood of golden mist, it seemed impossible ever to think Turner extra vagant again. From Malaga, where we stayed only one night, we went on to Gibraltar by steamer ; an affair of eight hours. There too we remained just long enough to visit the lines, to find that none of our friends were in the place, to read tiie papers, and to be very anxious to get away. The Spanish press is now agitating for the restoration of Gibraltar ; but two questions have first to be settled : Does Spain deserve it ? and could she keep it 1 It must always be remembered that England holds the Rock, not merely in the pride of conquest, but in the interests of the rest of Europe, Austria, Turkey, Italy, and even Spain herself. It is certain that if England at this moment were to give up Gibraltar, every Spaniard in the country would instantly say, that we had given it up in fear of them ; and instead of respecting us for our justice, they would despise us for our weakness. But the point is, how long would she keep it out of the hands of France 1 And then, surely, it is a fair question, Does she deserve 74 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. it? When Spain joins with the rest of the civilised world in honestly putting down the slave trade ; when she permits foreigners to worship God according to their own conscience, and to have the rites of Christian burial if they die on her soil; when she grants to her own children full liberty of faith; when she pays her just debts, and becomes once more a solvent nation ; when she has an independent diplomacy ; when she has an army that can do something more than slaughter Moors ; and when she has a navy to protect Gibraltar, if she gets it, — then it may be time for England to begin to listen to proposals, which now even to think of would be high treason. From Gibraltar to Cadiz is a voyage of eight hours, and in the finest weather trying to weak stomachs, -when the boat gets fairly into the roU of the Atlantic. Of all the beautiful cities I ever saw, Cadiz is the most beauti ful, rising like a lustrous pearl out of a sea of sapphire. The houses are clean and elegant, and with flat roofs. The streets are full of good shops, and crowded with people. The harbour is busy -with shipping, for Cadiz is the great port for exporting the Xeres wines, and for communication with the American colonies. In pursuance of our settled plan always to avoid the Queen on her state progress, we left Cadiz before she reached it, and passing SeviUe, where a grand display of fireworks was going on, made for Cordova. This is an old Moorish city, once almost the greatest in Spain, and now in its decay numbering 50,000 souls ; but the streets are vastly dull, the shops poor, the heat clammy and sickening, the mosquitoes audacious, and our inn (the A FEW DAYS IN SPAIN. 75 Fonda Suisse) the only one in Spain where we were overcharged. StiU it is quite worth coming to for the cathedral, or Mesguita, as it is stiU called, — that is, the ancient mosque tumed into a church. I do beheve there is nothing Hke it in the world. You approach it through an open court filled with orange-trees, and with one noble palm laden -with frait Outside it is long, low, and heavy. When you enter, you almost imagine your self in a forest ; for no less than 850 marble pillars, all different in shape, colour, and carving, support the roof, and di-vide the cathedral ; and as they are somewhat smaU, and by no means lofty, you seem all the closer to them. The effect perhaps is curious, rather than impos ing ; in fact, at first you hardly know what to make of it ; but when you imagine yourself in a mosque, all seems natural, and the air of the place is much more Mohamme dan than Christian. There is one exquisite fragment, a sacred recess, where in old days the Koran was kept, and in which the arabesque carving and columns are in excel lent preservation. The building is spoilt by a modem gUded choir stuck in the very centre, and even Charles v., who tried to do worse at the Alhambra, found griev ous fault ¦with this. SevUle, which is about four hours from Cordova by railway, is the capital of Andalusia, and in some respects the second city in Spain. The birthplace and the resi dence of MuriUo, it contains some of his finest pictures, and those open to the pubhc are chiefly to be found in the chapel of the Caridad, the picture gallery, and the cathedral. The two most important of those at the Caridad represent Moses striking the rock, and Christ, 76 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. in a sitting posture, blessing the loaves before they were distributed to the multitude. The colouring and the drawing are, of course, irreproachable, but I confess they were just a proof to me that no artist, great as he may be, can excel in everything, and that historical painting, which requires great dramatic power and con ception, was not MuriUo's gfft. In the picture gallery, all his pictures, by a most fatal mistake, are coUected into a single room. Certainly, you have not the feeling of sickening disgust that comes over you in the gallery at Munich, in the room devoted to Rubens, but painters want a foil more than any people, and you have here too much at once of the same thing. Among many gems, the picture that strack us both most is one of St Francis and Christ. The Saviour on His cross, ¦with one arm free, is bending down to embrace the saint, to whom He seems to say, " Art thou equal for this cross ? and am I sufficient to help thee to bear it?" while St Francis, (the world under his feet,) to whom two infant angels, evidently not understanding what they do, hold out a scroll, with the words, " Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple," clasps his Di-vine Master -with a look that seems to say, " A hundred crosses with Thee." The picture in the cathedral which Borrow admires most — that of the Guardian Angel — was completely covered up by velvet drapery, placed there in honour of the Queen : but really, one fine thing is enough at a time, and the cathedral is enough to admire by itself. Its finest extemal feature is the Moorish tower, caUed the " Giralda," which you ascend by a raised pathway. A FEW DA YS IN SPA.TN. 77 as in the Campanile at St Mark's, and from the summit of which is a noble view of the country and town. It is unnecessary to say that the buUding is unfinished, and certainly it must not be mentioned the same day with the Duomo of MUan ; but it is the purest and the largest specimen of Gothic architecture in the world, and I should be sorry for the man who could enter it for the first time -without a real awe. Its vastness, its loftiness, and, to use a very hackneyed expression, its dim reli gious Hght unpress themselves on you instantly. All the windows are in painted glass, and the organs are almost more magnificent than usual in Spanish cathedrals, which is saying a great deal. The church music we thought beneath criticism, but there is no singing abroad that I have ever heard like our cathedral music at home. The son of Columbus is buried here ; his father sleeps across the sea. I wonder what Dean Close would say if he were to go over the tobacco manufactory here, -which employs about 500 men and 5000 women daily in the manufacture of snuff, cigarettes, and cigars. The very sight of 5000 gowns and petticoats hung up against the wall, and the sound of 5000 female voices, not always ofthe gentlest, and all, of course, speaking at the same time, are astonishing enough by themselves. I greatly fear that a very cursory glance at Spain would con-vince him that tobacco is a national institution, and that smoking is the intemperance of the Spaniards. It wiU, however, I am sure, please him to know that the buUding is entirely closed on Sunday. The Alcazar, or Moorish Palace, could not be seen, as it was being used by the Court; and for the same 78 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. reason, the palace of St Telmo, the residence of the Duke of Montpensier, flanking the Guadalquivir, and surrounded by gardens, planted with very choice shrabs from all parts of the world, was not visible. But Seville itself is full of interest. There is much that is old, still mingled with the new. Orange and lemon-trees spring up everywhere — oranges are now the chief trade of the place — and the ladies of Se-viUe are the most beautiful and fascinating in Spain. Let me venture to whisper it, there are two things, two things only, in which they surpass Englishwomen. They walk better. A Spanish lady glides, rather than walks, with a grace and dignity you see nowhere else. And then, as they never wear bonnets, but simply a black lace veil thrown over their heads, (a most becoming head-dress,) and invariably choose the quietest colours, (when they go to church, they always wear black,) they are preserved from that incredible rashness in mixing colours, which, with many of our own countrywomen, rob face and complexion and figure of more than half their due. The great drawback to SevUle is the plague of mos quitoes ; and the inns are far from being equal to those of Madrid. Our way home we had intended to be by Lisbon, but circumstances made it expedient for us to return by fhe quickest route ; and so we strack across the country for Valencia, a joumey of forty-four hours; going by diligence to Santa Cruz, and then taking the railway to Alcazar, which there diverged in a branch line to the Mediterranean. We were not prepared for the astonishing fertility we found in the district of Valencia, and which is mainly A FEW DA YS IN SPAIN. 79 owing to the system of irrigation handed do-wn from the Moors. The view from the cathedral tower is a very panorama of richness, and the city itself is a thriving and bujtling place. Evidently there is great heat, for the very streets are awned over from the sun. In the markets, we saw frogs and snaUs for sale as articles of food ; and economical persons can buy as small an article as a chicken's leg. Tiles are manufactured here in great abundance, and also black silk. Here we finished Spain, ending well ; and in a tartana, a kind of covered cart without springs, which has been compared to a gondola on wheels, we jolted do-wn to the harbour, where we took the French steamer for Marseilles. And now for a few closing sentences on Spain and Spaniards. In soU, in climate, in mineral wealth, in natural resources of all kinds, Spain is unrivalled ; and it only needs a wise development of her commercial sys tem to restore her to the level that she has so long lost. It is a great misfortune to her that the Tagus flows into the sea at Lisbon ; and it was Philip II.'s fatal mistake in making Madrid the capital, that alienated Portugal. The settlement of the dynasty and the liberal constitution have done much to consolidate the institu tions of the country ; and the introduction of foreigners into Spain, as well as the taking of Spaniards out of it by increased faculties oftravelHng, must tend to introduce new ideas and principles into the country, and may pave the way for religious liberty. Borrow and Ford speak so severely of Spaniards, that I hesitate to give impressions which must be superficial, and are likely to be erroneous. But from what I heard from EngHshmen resident in 8o PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Spain, and from what I saw with my own eyes — which I did my best to keep open — I quite came to the conclu sion that, with all their faults, they are a great people, and are certainly a nation of gentlemen. They seemed social and light-hearted, with neither the hea^viness of the Germans, nor the le-vity of the French, nor the somewhat sad gra-vity of the EngHsh. There is a great deal of real dignity in them. You can see this in the way they dress, for they are certainly the best-dressed peeple you wiU find anywhere ; and masters treat their servants with a consideration that would surprise us here. As an instance of this, one person told me that a maid-servant had refused to come to him unless she was called Senora. They have great veneration for their parents, for whom they mourn two years, and during that time never enter a theatre, nor listen to music. Their faults remind one of a large family of brothers and sisters living together in a remote place, and who, compelled by circumstances to be independent of others, come to think there is nobody like themselves. Pride and poverty make theminhos- pitable. Their self-love creeps out sometimes very amusingly, and an English acquaintance told us, that during the royal festivities at SeviUe, when a few regi ments were being reviewed, he overheard the people saying to each otiier, " AVhat a wonderful people we are ! Who is like the Spaniards ? No wonder we conquered the Moors." They dislike foreigners, though they are very civil to them. One Spaniard, who had lived as a political refugee in England, remarked to a gentleman, who repeated it to me, that he should like to banish all foreigners and foreign productions out of Spain altogether. A FEW DAYS IN SPAIN. 81 and leave Spain to herself. But of aU foreigners, they dislike us most, and for four reasons. We are heretics ; we have laid them under great pohtical obligations, which tiiey to a man ignore ; we have lent them money which they do not mean to repay ; and we hold Gibral tar. And yet one Spaniard, who began his sentence by the flattering observation, " I hate England," finished it by adding, " yet I never come into contact with an Englishman without liking him." The serious faults of the Spaniards are pride, idleness, and corruption of morals. They have no domestic life : their faith is alloyed and encrasted with superstition : the shadow of the Inquisition still haunts ' them. Even nov.' no man dares speak out his mind where the Church has dogmatised ; and their Bible is sealed. So, as we cross the Channel, and climb the old white cliffs, and rash up through the Weald of Kent, and enter once more the crash and roar of London, our one deep feeling is thankfulness that we are Englishmen. A. W. THOROLD. V. A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITALY. WE would never urge any man or woman to cross the Channel, until they were tolerably well ac quainted with the chief things worth seeing on this side of it. We are old-fashioned enough to beUeve that this " nice little, tight littie island " contains within its rocky shores as wondrous a combination, and as great a variety of scenery as can be found in any one portion of the Con tinent of Europe twice its extent in surface. We back Great Britain and Ireland — not omitting even " the adja cent islands of the Great and Little Cumbraes " — against the world, for possessing the richest treasures of all that is beautiful, grand, and lovable in Nature. We may be pitied as ignorant provincials for such beliefs; but we are as nearly as possible in sober eamest when we declare them to be ours, after comparing both sides of the Channel many a time and oft during these last thirty years ; and so with our whole hearts we sing with Cole ridge — A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITALY, 83 O dear Britain ! O my mother isle t Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy," &c. You know the rest, good reader : if not, please read for yourseff " Fears in SoUtude," for there are many things in the poena worth marking and digesting at the present time. There is one good at least which is gained by going abroad that cannot so well be obtained at home; — ^we are thereby helped to the possession of the rare enjoy ment ot being able more easily to forget ourselves, by getting quit of a hundred things which at home constantly remind us of our existence, — State politics and Church politics, all the vexatious and troublesome questions which one is compelled to think about and talk about are left behind, and we go forth unkSiowing and unknown, desiring only to keep alive the consciousness that we are men and Christians. With Clough we exclaim — " It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of all one's friends and relations. All the assujettissefiient of having been what one has been, What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one." We enjoyed a short tour in Italy during May and June of this year. Leaving Paris we crossed Mont Cenis, and proceeded by railway to Genoa, where we made our first halt for a few days. From thence we proceeded, by vetturino, along the Riviera shore, to Pisa and Florence, crossed the Apennines to Bologna, and reached Venice vi& Ferrara and Padua. From Venice we proceeded to Lakes Como, Lugano, and Maggiore, thence to MUan, and finally to Courmayeur and Mont Blanc, recrossing the Alps by the "Pass of the Great St Bernard, and retuming to Paris by Martigny, Neuchdtel, and Basle. S4 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. Considering all that was to be seen, we could afford but " a peep " at the chief attractions of the route. Travellers who have abundance of time and money at their disposal — " old stagers," as they are called — who every year loiter for months on the Continent, until their faces are as familiar to hotel-keepers as those of " com- missionnaires," are no doubt disposed to look ¦with feel ings like contempt upon those less favoured brethren of the pilgrim-staff whose time and money necessarily limit their joumey, or condense it into a mere "peep." I admit that in the old days of travel, before raUways gridironed the earth, there was a sense of distance, a sense of being really abroad, which it is hardly possible to realise now, when a few days or hours suddenly con vey us from the busy streets of London to the solitudes of the Alps, or the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. In the days when we were young — " ah ! woeful, when !" — the distant points of chief interest in Europe were reached slowly, and by such sacrifices of time and com fort as enhanced the value of the long-^wished-for result. The stage-coach journey first from Scotland, for example, to London; the lumbering diligence, rattling for days and nights along the strait lines of paved roads, when towns, which are now passed with the speed of ¦wind, were necessary resting-places for dusty and deliquescent passengers; in all this there was a respectful, solemn approach made to Vienna, Rome, or even S-witzerland, Vvhich one felt to be more becoming their dignity than to rash impetuously into their presence in a cloud of steam. We naturally valued more the object attained by such labour, and did liot, therefore, hastily part from A RAMBLE IN NOR TH ITAL Y. 85 it. Letters took weeks to reach the poste restante. We began to feel soft-hearted, on our first journey, as we thought of our absent friends ; and it is possible even that we sung " Home, sweet home," with tears. We thus seemed to be gradually educated to set the Continent with the eyes of continentals ; becoming acclimatised, so as to grow out of its soU, and expand in its atmos phere. But now it is difficult to get quit of the presence of Edinburgh, Dublin, or London. We fall asleep in these home cities, and doze on until our passports are demanded, or our luggage is examined in some foreign country, about which long books of travels were written " when -we were young." The novelty, the wonder, the freshness have vanished with " Bradshaw.'' Yet, after all, these days of prosaic railways and of rapid travelling have their advantages, especiaUy for the classes — in rail way nomenclature, 2d and 3d — to which so many of us belong, who have little time and money, but who never theless wish to get even a peep at some of the glories of nature and art beyond the Channel. Most places of interest on the Continent can now be reached in a space of time much shorter than those who never leave home, and have not been educated to study vulgar "Bradshaw," the more learned and aristocratic "Murray," or the sensible " ShiUing Guide," have any idea of. Last month, for example, we reached Genoa very early one Saturday, having left Paris on Thursday night. A friend who was obliged by business to part from us at Venice on Monday morning, reached Edinburgh on Thursday moming. Then, again, as to expense, it is the old story of one pound per day, on an ayeragS; te ^juver the 86 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. expenses of the most rapid travelling compatible with comfort and seeing anything in peace, while for half that sum days may be spent at the best hotels, en pension, or as boarders. The great benefit of railways is that they enable the traveller to hurry over distances which have no special interest, and to spend the more time in those which have. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that comparatively little time for what is called " sight-seeing " (that intolerable bore !) is incompatible -with seeing sights which, once seen, can never be forgotten, but must remain as photographs upon the mind for ever, to be reproduced at wUl in after years, when sickness or old age may confine the traveller to a journey from his bed to his chair, and when thpse old visions -will "flash upon that inward eye," accompanied by many of the delightful feelings and associations with which they were at first beheld. Let any man, for instance, who wishes to receive an undying impression of Alpine grandeur, spend but a day on the Gomer Grat, above Zermatt, ahd gaze upon the glacier world around Monte Rosa and the gigantic Matterhom ; or let him with reverence look up to the august " monarch of mountains " firom the AUee Blanche at Courmayeur ; or if he would fill his soul vnth a sense of the beautiful, let him at Genoa "the superb " ascend the old Kghtliouse, and look froni its summit at the city, its surrounding hUls, and along the winding shore ; or for one evening sit in sUence on a balcony at Belaggio, hanging over the waters of Lake Como; or stand on the heights of Fiesole as the sunset is steeping Florence and its plain in its golden glory; or if he wishes to see what no other THE MATTERHORN. Page £6. A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL K 87 spot on earth can disclose anything like, let him row down the Grand Canal from the Rialto to St Mark's, and watch a sunset on the Alps from the Giudecca ; or, if he desires to obtain a glimmer of art-glory which will surpass all he has ever conceived of, let him stand in silence before tiie masterpieces of painting and sculpture, in one spot in one gallery, such as in the tribune in the Pitti Palace ; or, if he would receive some impression of the majesty, power, and beauty of architecture, he may do so ¦within those wondrous spots in Pisa and Florence, which are each occupied by their respective campanile, cathedral, and baptistry; or let him pass as in some enchanting dream around the Place of St Mark's in Venice, or ascend the spire of Milan, and while able to see afar off Monte Rosa " glowing in roseate hues at even,'' and beneath him the great sea of the Lombard plain, he will find himself — " Amid that aerial host Of figures human and divine. White as the snows of Apennine Indurated by frost," that must fill him ¦with a sense of the beautiful as well as the grarid, which even the more majestic Cologne does not impart. Let him do even this much, and aU this he can do in a few weeks ; and though he may almost weep because he has only days instead of months to take in the grandeur from nature and from art, and firom many memories, yet he must feel that he has become possessed of treasures whose value no time nor money can express. The peep may be short, but it is like a peep into paradise ! The practical conclusion from aU this is, that it is better to have seen in haste, than m^i"-^ *;- '-— ^ -:- it all. 88 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. But we must break up this tour a little more into some of its most interesting portions. The scenery best worth seeing, as we have already hinted, is unquestionably the Italian lakes ; the Riviera, stretching between Genoa and Massa ; and the Mont Blanc, from Courmayeur. I do not mean to affirm that the other portions of the route were stupid ; for, except where one crosses the dead flat plain of Lombardy — which has its own peculiar interest — every mUe almost was worth seeing. The line of railway from Chambery, until it ends at Mont Cenis, is highly picturesque ; so is the Mont Cenis pass itself, and the Suza Valley, which leads to Turin ; so is the Une from Venice to MUan, which skirts the Alps ; and the road from Ivrea to Cour mayeur is one of the most interesting I ever journeyed. Of most of those beautiful scenes, I need not say anything, nor of the Italian lakes, as every person who has visited the north of Italy is acquainted with them. But one word or two about others, which are not so frequently visited. The road from Nice to Genoa (the Corniche, as it is called) is of the same character with its continuation along the Riviera from Genoa to Pisa, or at least to beyond Spezzia, as far perhaps as Massa. We traveUed the latter portion only by vetturino — that is, with a hired carriage driven with two horses, for about £2 per day. The joumey occupied two and a half days, sleeping the first night at Sestri, and the second at Spezzia. It would be difficult to exaggerate the beauty of this excursion, which can hardly be matched perhaps in the world, except on the Neapolitan or SicUian coast. The Apennines here run, a few miles A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL Y. 89 off, parallel to the Mediterranean, to which they connect themselves by long spurs or ridges, which rise up into conical hills, wind round deep valleys, range themselves into high mountain passes, with rock and precipice, open out at the sea into wide bays with beaches of pure sand, or end in bold headlands, like Porto Fino, which abruptly plunge themselves into deep water. But who can describe the endless beauties of this scene, when every tum of the road reveals some new grouping of marvellous beauty ! To the right, is the glorious ocean. Is it green as emerald, blue as lapis-lazuli ? — or do not the colours of the topaz and amethyst mingle with these ? It is dotted with pure white sails, like sea-birds on its bosom, and loses itself in the horizon on the way to Egypt and Palestine. The road sometimes passed so near its margin, that one gazed down into the crystal depths, and heard the laughter of the waves on the shore. The air was loaded with the perfume of orange- trees, and the most subtle and deUcate odours. Every where, as far as the eye could see inland, were festooned vineyards, groves of olives, with figs, chestnuts, dark cypresses — every shade of green lighted up by flowers of every hue. Everywhere, from sea to mountain, white cottages like specks of light relieving the foliage ; vil lages perched on the sides, and on the tops of the hills, nestling deep down or far up in the vaUeys, and each with its attendant church spire, all fiUing the air at evening with the echoing chimes of bells; and then overhead the dome of the blue sky that no art ever can picture, and all day enjoying an atmosphere which glorified every object with its luminous sDlendour ! Ding, go PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. ding, ding, rang the beUs of our Uttle horses, as we wheeled through this scene hour after hour, until, from expressing our wonder as every moment some new view burst upon us, we became weary of speech, and gazed in silent and absorbed admiration, until some object for a moment concealed the ¦view, and then we drew our breath and gave vent to our common sense of the surpassing beauty around us. If the reader ever visits Genoa and cannot take this joumey, let him even go four miles out to Quarto, where Garibaldi's villa is, and let him stand on the point on which is reared the small obelisk below his home, which marks the little bay from whence he and his brave band sailed on that memorable expedition to free Sicily — and if he goes no farther,, I promise him that he will " rest and be thankful." But should he go the whole way, he wiU never forget the pictures presented by Chiavari, Sestri, or Spezzia. The detour by Carrara to Massa, though a very rough drive, is, I have been told, well worth another day's labour to those who have strength and time to undertake it. I have seen nothing like the scenery of these southern lakes and coasts anywhere in the North. The lakes of KiUarney are beautiful and lonely. Many of the lakes of Scotland have rare beauty, as Loch Awe, Loch Lomond, through the Trosachs, &c., and most of our " lochs '" are characterised by wUd and dreary grandeur. The lakes of Sweden are desolate and tame. The lakes of North America — I mean Lake George and Lake Champlain, for the great lakes are but inland oceans — are beautiful also, with an undefined Indian wUderness- grandeur about them; but no lakes, except those of A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL Y. 91 Westmoreland, comprise beauty, cultivation, and in- habitiveness, with mountain wildness, as do those of Italy. The richness of the shores, with the magnificence of the Alpine background, form a combination which nowhere else can be found, unless on the lakes of Switzerland, such as those of Lucerne and Zurich. Then again, as to the coast scenery of the North, it must in every case (except perhaps on the Devon coast) yield to the South in rich and varied beauty. The coast of Finland is interesting with its endless archipelago of wooded islands, and on shore its many small lakes, wild forests, and fantastic boulders ; but it has no variety and less beauty. The Irish coast is wildly picturesque and full of interest, as, for example, at the KiUeries and Antrim. The Scottish coast in many respects stands alone with its grand ocean-line, its islands, headlands, precipices, bays, distant mountain ranges, and vast stretch of view. There is hardly in the world a grander scene (when the day is favourable) than mid-channel between Oban and Mull, or when voyaging between the point of Ardnamurchan and Skye. But the coasts of Italy, taking into account at once the sea, sky, atmosphere, vegeta tion, and cultivation, stand alone for perfect beauty. But as I am writing of the beauty of the South, I must here notice a scene, which verily comes under that designation, although in the midst of a crowded city. There are in Venice a band of singers, numbering about twenty, who, for about two shillings a head, will give a concert upon the water. A few of us united to hire them. We met in our gondolas about nine at night, beneath the bridge of the Rialto. The first choras is 92 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. always sung here on such occasions, probably to gain effect, from the reverberations of the arch over-head. The gondola with the singers then slowly floats down the Grand Canal, followed by the other gondolas with the listeners, song after song being sung until midnight. The night we tried this experiment, last June, was per fect. A full moon shone from a cloudless sky, ** And look'd round her with delight, the heavens all bare." The water glanced in golden waves. Palaces and churches were steeped in the calm brilliancy of the southem night. There was a silence such as could not reign in any other city on earth. A whisper — one's very breathing might be heard. Every palace was visible as in daylight, and, except for the forms of dark gondolas which glided past, or a few lights that, like fire-flies, darted amidst the darkness of the mysterious water-streets which opened into the Grand Canal, the city seemed' as if dead. The beauty of the scene, combined with memories of the past, and all that Venice was and is, lay upon the heart, suggesting thoughts and feelings dim, impalpable, oppressive, yet most exciting to the imagina tion, and which were relieved though not changed by the next choral burst of some old Venetian boat-song, which rose from the shadowy gondola that was leading us onwards. Venice is Venice stUl 1 Even the Austrians cannot destroy its attractions. Let us turn to a very different scene — Mont Blanc. The Italian side of Mont Blanc can be reached firom various points. In two days or more, for example, from Chamouni, by the Col de Bon Homme ; or walking A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL Y. 93 sixteen hours by the difficult pass from the Mer de Glace over the Col du Geant ; or from Martigny by the Col de Ferret in eleven hours' riding ; or by the Great St Bemard in twelve, which latter route joins at Aosta, the one we necessarily took, ascending from Italy. The easiest approach from the north side of the Alps, for one who is not a pedestrian, therefore, is by the St Bemard, as the whole road can be driven, except two hours on mules, ascending from St Pierre, and two hours descending to St Remy, along a perfectly safe and easy path. The hotels at Courmayeur are good. We were the first visitants this season, and had all to ourselves. As we approached the hotel, it seemed to be vwapped up in the frost of winter. The air was bitterly cold, although we had left scorching heat in the valley. As we drove into the large court of the hotel late in the aftemoon, all was silent. The " Casino " — which by an immense advertisement on a board, hung up ¦with vulgar impu dence opposite Mont Blanc and its glaciers, promised us all sorts of English periodical literature, from the Times to the Ladie^ Magazine — ^was not yet opened except to spiders. Not a dog was heard, nor a landlord's voice, as up to the door we hurried. But soon an astonished waiter, who seemed to have been hybemating since the previous season, appeared adjusting a white neckcloth, and then an amazed landlord rashed out of hiding, and all seemed to ask, "'What has sent you here in the depth of winter ? It is only the month of June ! " No bedroom was ready, and we were ushered for a time into a salle i manger with closed ¦window-shutters, which> when opened, disclosed a long room with a horse-shoe 94 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. table, capable of dining about one hundred and fifty people, with chairs and sofas piled up on it, as if they had fled from some avalanche, the whole room being a dim prophecy of expected summer and expected guests. A wood fire gave some life to it and us. I have never seen any mountain view, or rather the view of any mountain, to be for a moment compared to the view of Mont Blanc from the ItaUan side. The approach to it from Aosta is in every respect worthy of the great monarch into whose presence it leads. Every mile increases in beauty, while some portions of the road have gorges as deep and wild almost as the Via Mala, with most picturesque villages, noble mediseval castles, and ever and anon never-to-be-forgotten glimpses of Mont Blanc, with everywhere snowy peaks marking the summits of the high Alps. As to the immediate view of the great mountain itself, I cannot imagine any thing on earth more overpoweringly magnificent. The Chamouni side we had formerly seen in most favourable weather ; but whUe it has its own peculiar glory, which must ever make it one of the most interesting centres of attraction in Switzerland, yet from the Allde Blanche alone, near Courmayeur, can be viewed the whole glory of the Monarch, from his footstool on the green earth up to his crown of pure snow in the azure sky. The great advantage of this view is, that without any diffi culty, and in an easy ride or walk of two hours, one can get to the very base of the mountain, and then look up from, as from above the Glacier de la Brenva, for ex ample, up to its Ndvd, and up, up, through ice-faUs, alabaster snow, black jutting rocks and gigantic pred- A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL Y. 95 pices ; up, up, until almost in the zenith overhead, the eye rests on that pure white dome, reposing on the pure blue sky ; up, where no mountain-top was ever seen by you before ; up, where you have been accustomed to gaze only on fleecy clouds or silent stars ; up, for miles untrodden by foot of man, though perhaps by passing angel in his flight, for weU might he fold his , wings on some message of love and grace and rest upon those pure heights, as on a throne in the third heavens. As one looks in silence upon this marvellous panorama from the aiguilles, which rise like a wall from amidst the flowers of the AU^e Blanche, along the mighty mass of precipice and glacier, until the view is bounded by the tremendous buttress of the Grande Jorasse, the lips fail to express in words the emotions of the heart ; but tears will come uncalled to the eye, from a sense of joy and blessedness in being able to see and possess such an inheritance as this on earth. We had a well-known guide with us, Chabot, com monly called Turin. I know not how it is, but famous Swiss guides, — such men as Balmat, for instance, — who have, like high priests, entered reverently into these holy places in the high Alps, fill me with great respect. There is a quiet dignity about them, that shrewd, thoughtful, undemonstrative look, such as one sees in old pilots or old brave soldiers, and that belongs to men only who have been in the habit of meeting and encountering great perils. They possess a solemn earnestness, yet cheerfiil hopefulness, with a humiUty and modesty which are singularly attractive. Turin professed the greatest admiration fbr the English "Lords." "Bah!" he said, 96 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. "these ItaUan gentiemen go from caf^ to caf€, from theatre to theatre ; but young Englishmen walk from glacier to glacier, and from one mountain peak to another." We returned, as I have already said, by the St Bernard, reaching the Hospice with great ease in twelve hours, from Courmayeur. After enduring for a few hours ex cessive heat in the valley we again entered upon bitter cold at St Bemard. The mist hung like a damp sheet over the small lake on the summit, and partially re vealed the high white walls of the Hospice, like a ghost rising from the grave. We found the monks and dogs in good health, and passed through the usual routine so familiar to travellers, who know the comfort afforded by this convenient ecclesiastical hotel. We received the courteous attention of one of the brethren; enjoyed music in the evening from perfor mances on a pianoforte presented by many noble ladies in England, and a fine harmonium gracefully sent by the Prince of Wales to cheer the ¦wintry solitude. In the morning at six we were roused by the organ of the chapel booming through the corridor, then after taking a peep into the morgue, that temple of death in all its vlleness, and depositing our money in the poor's-box, and paying the waiter, we departed, and soon weie among the green pastures, alive with the herds of cattle belong ing to the Hospice. It is impossible, when passing along this route, to for get the famous march of Napoleon, when, for twenty days, he poured his legions over these snows, and along those mountain rocks, to the plains of Italy. The A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITAL Y, 97 grave of Dessaix, kiUed at Marengo, and his monument in the lonely chapel of St Bernard, vividly recall that me morable period. But not more so than does the fortress of Bard, which so nearly checkmated the First Consul. A more formidable opponent than it presents, in the gorge of the valley between Ivrea and Chatillon, can hardly be imagined. It rises, a sharjp conical rock, like a small and impregnable Gibraltar, covered -with bat teries, tier above tier, like a six-decker. Abrapt preci pices rise on each of its flanks ; the separating space on the one side being filled up by the raging glacier-torrent of the Doire, (for the road now cut out of the rock is recent,) and on the other, by a small village which nestles between the fortified rock and the mountain wall, as if in the ditch of the citadel. Through this -village the old road along the valley passes. And it is only when one sees the -wild and steep ravine, two miles or so from the fortress, up which Napoleon led all his army, by a pass which descends beyond it on the south side and wholly concealed the enemy, that ene fully reaUses the daring and elan of that army and its general. The carriage of his artillery under the very guns of the fort, along the streets of the village, laid with straw to conceal the noise, strikes one in looking at the scene as being hardly pos sible, without either detection or destruction. But I must conclude my rambling remarks upon this short tour. Methinks I hear those who have been good- natured enough to begin this chapter, inquire with some Ul-nature, as it is about to end, " Can you really give us nothing new or worth knowing from Italy?" About what inquiring reader ? I patientiy wait for your ques- 98 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. tions, and wiU reply to the best of my abiUty. But they and the answers must be brief. " What sort of man is Victor Emanuel ? " I have seen his likeness only ; he seems very ugly, and is, I hear, a remarkably healthy, active, powerful animal, but yet is honest as a king. " What of art in Italy ? " Much more beautiful, I assure you, and better worth seeing than Victor Emanuel. But on this subject I must refer you to Ruskin, Kiigler, and Murray. I am bound, however, to confess that I am a confirmed pre-Raphaelite, and would return, if to see nothing more than the frescoes of Giotto. " What of men and manners, then ?" I know nothing of either, except what I gathered from meeting waiters and vet- turinos. " What know you of the Piedmontese or the Neapolitans ? " Little of the one and nothing of the other. The former look like men, and I believe are almost equal to ourselves in sense and courage ; but I have been credibly informed that the great mass of the Neapolitans are the veriest cowards and rascals on earth. " Do you know the present phases of Italian politics ? " Only from the English papers, and also from having sat in the Parliament House of Turin, — when no person happened to be in it but myself I proposed that Ratazzi should be dismissed, as too much of the mere lawyer, and Ricasoli recalled as the right man ; but there being no one to second my motion, it was negatived without a divisioji. The people also seem fond of news papers, and eagerly devour them. " Can you tell us anything of the priests?" Nothing except what every person has known during many centuries, — that they are very numerous, some being good, many of them bad in A RAMBLE IN NORTH ITALY. 99 every sense, and all aliens from the commonwealth, and that, except English perverts, no man of any education has faith in them "And, finally," — I am glad it has come to this — " what of Protestantism and its prospects ? " The hardest question of all ! How shall I answer it seriously? I may do so safely by saying that I really know little about it beyond what one reads in religious papers, and hears from one-sided sources. To know a country and its people, one must live in it for many years, and mingle inteUigently -with all classes of society and with all parties. As to the prospects of trae religion in Italy, I beUeve that though as yet there have been but few and very doubtful conversions from Romanism, hopeful signs are not wanting of coming good. There are honest and able men in Italy who preach the gospel, and others who (like the Free Church missionaries) -wisely aid the native churches. Many thousand Bibles are everywhere sold. But, above all, sufficient poUtical and religious liberty exists to enable sensible and good men to make kno-wn to others what they believe to be the trath. In this respect the revolution in Italy is immense. An age seeras to have passed since the old regirae existed, which -wicked men, and some political dotards on both sides of the Channel, would dare to bring back. Let us have patience. It may be that as none of the slavish and ignorant generation which left Egypt could form the germ of a new nation, but were left to die out in the wUdemess, so perhaps must this generation in Italy pass away, save here and there a Caleb or a Joshua, ere a united, and educated, and free nation is established. I oo PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES Forty years is surely not too long a period to wait for - such a boon ! Then as to the Church of the future in Italy, one may question whether as yet there exists its faintest shadow. In the meantime, it would be well if the several small Christian societies who meet to gether for worship would each attend to their own work, -without meddling with their neighbours ; that " Ply- mouthists," who are as likely to become the Church of the future as v^ild-flowers are to become oaks, would let the Vaudois and other bodies alone ; that the Vaudois would retum the compliment, and not be disappointed if Italy refuses to be moulded by these northern moun taineers; that all would concentrate themselves .upon one work, preaching eternal truth by word and life to the human heart and human, conscience, leaving the results to God, who may rear up a Church which will gather into its bosom old and new elements of life from the Catholic clergy and laity, — a Church which, rooting itself in the historical past of Italy, may, in its development, follow more the t3rpe of the English than that of any other Reformation. Anyhow, let us labour, pray, and hope. The darkest hour may be nearest dawn, in spite of Pope or Kaiser. He who has ceased to be afraid of the devil gaining possession of the world, need not fear his earthly agents ; and he who believes that Jesus, the world's Maker and Possessor, " must reign" until all the enemies of righteousness are put under His feet, mdy be at peace regarding the future even in Italy or Rome; • NORMAN MACLEOD. VI. A RIDE ROUND SICILY. THERE is no country within the same distance of home which affords such a refreshing change from everything English as Sicily. It is a multum inpa?~vo. Its substratum is, of course, Italian, but its Grecian remains rival any to be found in Greece itself, and, as is well known, Greek colonists, with their Greek costumes, inhabit the " Piano dei Greci" to the present day. The Spanish element is also strongly represented both in the style of its houses and in many characteristics of its people. I would recommend any one who may have six weeks of spring at his disposal to take a through ticket to Paler mo : and, when they have ridden the' three weeks' joumey from that city by Segesti, Girgenti, and S3Tracuse, to Messina, — or for a week longer, so as to retum by the northern coast to Palermo, — they will have enjoyed some pieces of unrivalled coast scenery : have in a measure -visited Italy, Greece, and Spain ; seen many of the finest specimens of ancient art ; imbibed an endless I02 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. amount of sunshine and sunbrown ; endured just as much discomfort and filth as is salutary for their moral and physical discipline ; and not improbably have had "a new sensation" in the shape of meeting real ban ditti, in being carried off to the mountains, or at once robbed in the most approved highway fashion. We trast, however, that few wUl take our advice. There are too many tourists — or, as a certain Highland game keeper, a friend of ours, calls them, "touracks" — in Sicily even now for the permanent security of her peculiar privileges. We tremble lest those great districts, with no road but the bridle-path winding through bean fields and by groves of Cactus, should be opened up by dusty turn pikes. Diu absit Macadam ! We are horrified at the idea of the little " Locanda " with its grimy labyrinths, unglazed windows and armies of fleas, not to speak of other and diverse species of irritants, giving way to a great staring hotel. By and by there will not be a spot within any reasonable distance from home, where we may, conscientiously and for necessary reasons, enjoy the " great unwashed great unbrashed " principle, which, when so enjoyed, is the most health-giving of all restora tives. Who would exchange the long day on the great mule, with his ponderous ears flapping clouds of flies, or lifting his loud clarion of joy, when in the balmy twilight he reaches the little village and scents the " Stallo" afar off, for the easiest of four-wheelers or most luxurious of railways ? In many notable respects, civilization and corafort are a mistake — for a week or two. The time when, with the companion of many another such expedition, I rode round Sicily, was before the days A RIDE ROUND SICILY. 103 of Garibaldi, and when the notion of " Italia una " was but an idea, fermenting in the brains of Ci^vour and a few brother patriots. Bomba Rex, Pater Patriae, then held an undisputed sway. He was master of the war- steamers we used to see heaving along the brilliant coast, and his hand moved the arms of those signal posts, which passed his commands from headland to headland, and station to station. Things may be changed now by the opening up of new roads, but tra veUing in Sicily was then rather a formidable matter, as almost everything had to be carried, from bed and table Hnen down to pots and pans. Capital feUows are, how ever, always to be had in Palerrao, who are quite up to all that is required, being possessed of excellent canteen- chests, and who are themselves good cooks as well as guides. We had a famous old man with us, a certain Giovanni Dimaria, who, if all he told us was true, had led as romantic a life as any contained in the wildest fiction. According to his own account, he had exer cised in his time the various functions of cabin-boy, jockey at Newmarket, man-of-war's man, opera singer and cook ; and, as a little episode, had once fallen in love and eloped with a young lady of Naples, whora he discovered to be a step-sister of his own within an hour or two ofthe celebration of the marriage at Portici ! Of these many accomplishments I can only vouch for his cooking and singing. Before the dawn of a glorious April morning, this same Giovanni, leading four large mules hung with trappings and bells, came jingling into the quiet court yard of the slumbering Trinacria. There were also I04 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Vincenzo our muleteer, in his white Sicilian cap of " KUmarnock " fashion, and Garofalo the boy, servus servorum, besides sundry waiters with pale unwashed faces, and Ragusa, the best of hosts, with his stentorian voice, superintending the preparations. After the usual hubbub of packing, adjusting of saddles, balancing and lashing on of canteen-chests, breaking numberless straps, buckles, and old cords, and with much loss of temper and of breath among all the parties concerned, we got away from the hotel about six, leaving its inmates to enjoy whatever share of rest might still remain to them. We passed up the sombre street, still in deep shadow, with its great houses of Spanish fashion, and heavy eaves and balconies, and out by the Moorish-looking city gate, to the dusty road leading up in long ascent to the hills. The little fragments of suburbs were bright with morn ing sunshine, that lit up the rough fresco daubs on their walls into colour; women stood in the sunshine, spinning from the distaff; mothers tossed their half-dressed babies in the sunshine ; the very donkeys, waiting to have their panniers laden, brayed and made their tails quiver for joy of that warm brilliant glory flooding hill and sea. The first leaves of spring were just beginning to tremble on the vines and fig-trees, the fields were freshly green with the young crops of corn and rows of shumack, here and there were orange groves with the golden clusters still hanging on the branches, while the gray olive mingled its sober colouring amid the brighter foliage. Long gossamers, beaded with glittering dew- drops, waved from the sharp spikes of the aloe or prickly pear, and spring flowers, blue, and yeUow, and A RIDE ROUND SICILY, 105 scarlet, were strewn like stars among the natural grasses. An hour or two brought us to Monreale, with its grand old church, half Byzantine, half Moorish, standing boldly out on the hill-side overhanging the valley. Ex cept St Mark's in Venice, there are few finer specimens of that particular style of art than Monreale. Its mosaic roof-pictures more than rival St Mark's, and however rude and conventional the stiff hard drawing may be, nevertheless there is something most impressive in those gigantic countenances. Enter at the westem door, for instance," and walk up the dim-lit nave, towards that apse, whose whole space is filled with a half-length colossal figure of our Lord, all set in blue and gold, with the long hair divided meekly on either side the brows, the hands raised in act to bless, and the large almond eyes, whose sad loving gaze follows you wherever you go ; while all around this central figure and idea of them all, are rows of saints and angels and cherubims — " Thrones, Dominions, Princedoms, Powers,'' filling the spaces on roof and walls, and every sense of rudeness in the art becomes lost in the pervading feeling of rever ence which is inspired. A short way past Monreale we took our last glimpse at Palermo. In the distance was the deep bay, shaped like a horse-shoe, held in on one side by the bare craggy height of Monte Pellegrino, at whose base were the har bour and the clustered roofs of the city ; and ridged in on the other by the long stretching hills of Bagaria, while between the crescent disk of blue sea swelled up into the bosom of the plain — " La Concha d'oro." — which, itself a sea of green, lay embayed between the ro6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, waves and the purple mountains, " La corona di Mon- tagne," as the spot is proudly called by the Sicilians. When we had crossed the " Col," our path lay among rolling upland hills, to Alcamo, famous as Garibaldi's resting-place — as it was ours, after our first and long day's ride. And now a word or two as to our mode of travelling. First came Giovanni, his diminutive jockey-figure perched Hke a crow on the top of certain large bags and sacks slung from his mule. In heat or cold, there Giovanni sat, wrapped in a little brown great-coat, telling us stories of his former life, or of the different traveUers he had accompanied, and breaking out sometimes into snatches from the old operas. His favourite song was a high-pitched tenor air from the Pirata, " Nel furor delle tempeste,'' when, as he approached a particular bravura flourish, the little man alraost rose from the large bags, in the vain attempt to accomplish what, as inevitably, ended in a collapse and a groan over his lost powers. " Ah, gentlemen, if you had only heard how I could once do it !" After Giovanni came " I Signori viaggia- tori," sometimes followed arid sometimes preceded by Vincenzo {Sidlice Vincenz'), balanced on the top of the canteen-chests, which, again, were balanced on the top of a gigantic mule. By his side trotted the boy Garo falo, between whom and Vincenz' there waged a chronic warfare, ever carried on with many gestures, and in the roughest SicUian. And then there were the mules, — curious, ungainly, pains-taking animals, with many pecu liar propensities. They are of course lazy, but for this the Sicilians have devised a simple remedy in the shape A RIDE ROUND SICILY, 107 of an instrament caUed a puntarebbe. The puntarebbe is a neatly fashioned conical piece of wood about two inches long, attached from the larger end, by a light chain and ring, to the finger, and having at the smaller extremity a modestly protrading point, like the end of a thick blunt pin. It is extraordinary the effect this primi tive contrivance has even on the laziest of mules. To be sure crael fellows, like our Vincenzo, do sometimes actually knock it into the animal. Especially when we had a deepish river to ford, and the " Ceccho " showed any inclination to lie down in some tempting pool, then -with an Ee-ee-ee ! of desperation, and tremendous swing of the arm, you saw Vincenzo digging into the beast's quarters, so that the agonized brute absolutely sprang up the opposite bank at a trot, to the great danger of the rider's seat, not to speak of the burden of crockery. But with persons possessed of common humanity, the puntarebbe could be made as efficacious, without the infliction of any pain. Is your mule lazy ? then all you ' require to do is to insert the point of the puntarebbe among tiie hairs of its mane, and let it gently rest on his skin. Instantly the charm works, the animal wakes up from any reverie however engrossing, and shuffles merrily away. From the time we left Alcamo, untU, nearly a fortnight afterwards, we reached the neighbourhood of Lentini and Syracuse, we scarcely saw a road, and consequently no wheeled conveyance. We passed towns of as many as 18,000 inhabitants, without any road more than a mere bridle-path, and yet the island had for thirty years been heavily taxed for "road-money." This want im- lo8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. plies, however, no loss of enjoyment to the traveUer, as nothing could be more deUcious than following those tracks, sometimes wandering through fields of wheat or pale-green flax, or cotton, or of beans in full blossom ; — or sometimes among olive copse-woods and by great hedges of the prickly pear ; — and sometiraes for days along the coast, — winding round wide bays, with the long roU of the waves thundering on the yellow sands, and the blue sea, dotted with white saUs, stretching to the far horizon. We usually began the' day at sunrise and ended at sunset, stopping for two hours at midday under some broad-leaved Carub or fig-tree for lunch and siesta. Our resting-places at night were not however quite so agreeable. Let me describe one — Sciacca — as a speci men of many others. In the evening we enter a squalid half-town half-village, filled with tall peasantry lounging about in brown, ragged capotes — untidy, unwashed woraen, and hordes of sad-looking children. Palaces of noble architecture, but crambling in decay, their un- painted shutters hanging from broken hinges, and weeds growing from the crevices, rise from the midst of the poorer tenements. We stop at that house in the street where swings a board, bearing the now faded, but once richly emblazoned sign- of the " Albergo dell' AguUa d'ore." A dingy-looking peasant at the door, without a coat, is recognised by Giovanni as " mine host " under the magnificent half-Spanish, half-Sicilian title of Don Puddo^ (Pietro). Mr Peter, who in the sister isle would, unmistakably, be simple " Pat,'" helps us to ungirth our mules, which iraraediately roll and luxuriate in the warm dust, kicking up their heels, and squeezing myriads of flies A RIDE ROUND SICIL Y. 109 to death. As the ground floor of " The Golden Eagle" forms the stable of the estabhshment, we must ascend to our apartments on the " Piano Nobile," where the Don shows us into two little rooms like prison ceUs, with an iron bed in each, a couple of rickety chairs, a table, and on it a basin about the size of a breakfast-cup. The odour, half garlic, half staleness, of the Hotel is not agreeable, and the unwashed filth of the rooms is inde scribable. On the walls, little stars of blood, here and there, revealing where certain insects had met a violent death, make us tremble lest the surviving relatives should take their vengeance out of us. There is no glass in the windows, so that if we wish to keep out the rain or wind, we raust close the shutters and sit in darkness. Until our own linen is put on, we do not in the meantime think it ^necessary to exaraine the beds very minutely. By and by Giovanni comes in with dinner, his face flushed, and followed by the lank, meek, bandit-looking countenance of Don Puddo. " Per Bacco ! Signer, if you only saw where I cooked this dinner," is his intro duction, intended doubtless to enhance his own powers, but which would have proved discouraging to any, save those- who were as hungry and in as jovial health as we. After dinner we stroll about, or watch the noisy popular tion from our balcony, until night comes, when, with a creeping shudder, we commit ourselves to our fate — " Ah night, thou wert not made for slumber :" for every now and then come sounds of warfare from the mules, kicking and squealing ajaong themselves in the stable immediately below, followed by very audible cur- 1 10 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. tain lectures from the muleteer, as well as the thunders of well-deserved chastisement. No sleeping powers could resist the noise of these riots, and no sooner, were you thereby roused, than there came a dawning con sciousness of other conflicts with which you yourself had a more personal interest, suggesting the possibiUty of the tragedy of Bishop Hatto, demolished by mice, being re peated in your case, by smaUer but no less greedy ani mals. Fatigue and custom, however, work marvels, and •at early sunrise, a refreshing " header " in the clear blue sea, drowned all evil memories. The chief points of interest in Sicily are the remains of Greek art. Mount Etna, and the wondrously grand coast scenery from Taormina to Messina. Of all the Greek temples, that of Segesti is the most lovely, crowning a lonely eminence with its f£|jr cluster of Doric columns ; and picturesquely embosomed among desolate gorges and mountain tracts. When standing in its stately portico, your eye looks across a deep valley, to the rains of the old city, whose theatre and houses strew the opposite hill-side. Far beyond are the moun tains of Trapani, and the blue bay of Castellamare, while to the right, a wild glen leads down to the rugged " Acropolis " of Calatafemi, since then famous as the battle-field of Garibaldi. Like those of Paestum, the three temples of Salinuntum, on the other hand, rise by the dreary shoreland flats, but are shaken down into majestic heaps of utler ruin. The great temple of the Sun, has but one column standing, around which the giant fragments of capitals and entablatures have been poured down in fantastic piles. Enormous blocks of A RIDE ROUND SICILY, in masonry, such as are to be found only in Egypt and the East, lie the one tossed on the other. The temple has never been finished, having been destroyed by earthquake many years before the Christian era, and a touching monument of that event still reraains, in a solitary block lying in the field, about a hundred yards off, which had thus been stopped when being transported to the build ing, and has so remained for more than 2000 years. But the most remarkable of all these old places is Girgenti, whose five temples, one rising above the other, crest the graceful line of a long sloping ridge. I first saw thera in the splendour of a golden sunset, their broken columns rising against the sky over a foreground of green almond trees and dark cypresses, while rolling pasture lands below swept down to the shining levels of the Mediter ranean. And it is only as thus seen that one can duly appreciate the surprising beauty of Greek architecture, which appears as nothing when choked into the crowded streets of a large city. But when lifted up into the wide air, with bits of blue sky gleaming through the lace-work of the columned porticoes, and the fair outline of the entablatures relieved against the suo-wy bosom of a float ing cloud, you see the very embodiment of summer love liness, and feel how verily this was the becoraing teraple- forra for sunny Greece, -with her clear skies and seas, and craggy heights. After sorae pleasant days spent in wandering araong the antiquities of Syracuse and Catania, we prepared for our long-desired expedition to the summit of Etna. Never can I forget the first view I had of that mountain, when, the evening we arrived at Terra Nuova, we saw 1 12 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, cleaving the northern sky, a white pinnacle, a cone of gleaming snow, and learned that, though more than sixty miles from us, this was Etna. Almost every day since it had formed the leading object in our landscape, and it was with no small expectations we leffCatania to make the ascent. Etna is like no other mountain in Europe. All our other high mountains are in a measure lost among their surrounding rivals, and much of their real height is diminished by the high elevation of the spots from which they are viewed. The valley of Charaounix is itself many hundred feet above the sea. But Etna, all alone, sweeps up in one proud line from the blue sea and almost tropical warmth of the bay of Catania, to where her cold white snows are lost in the blue sky. At her feet are the vine, and fig, and aloe, but her brows are bound with a coronet of ice. As we were very early in the season, and as at that time falls of snow and thick mists often render the ascent im practicable, we went the first day to Nicolosi, a little vUlage about half-way up, in order to take the first favourable opportunity for departure which raight pre sent itself That night, and all the next day, " a bad wind " blew, and we had to content ourselves resting at 'the Little Locanda, and in strolUng among the extinct craters, of which there are upwards of seventy, rising on the sides of the larger mountain like so many enormous ant-hiUs. On the evening of the second day the long-looked-for Tramontdna blew, and after calling on Signer Gemellaro, the scientific observer, or, as he is called, Custode, of the Volcano, who gave us his im primatur, we determined to leave at midnight. A RIDE ROUND SICILY. 113 In order to start fresh, we "turned in" for some rest at eight, and had no sooner faUen into a balmy slumber, than we were disturbed by the sounds of music. To our astonishment our bedroom door was thrown open, and in marched the village band, consisting of a few string and wind instruments, and marshalled by Vin cenzo, the muleteer, who, in return for a great mess of macaroni we had given him that day, thought we might possibly feel rewarded by seeing himself and one or two large young mountaineers dance a Tarantella. As per formed by our obliging but not very graceful friends, the dance resembled partly a Highland reel, partly a polka, varied by a series of pas seuls, in which there was much wriggling, and jumping, and shuffling of the feet. After expressing our profound admiration and gratitude, we persuaded Vincenzo to withdraw his musicians and himself, and had soon the satisfaction of hearing the grunts of the trombone becoming fainter and fainter in the distance. It took us some time to sleep after this episode ; but, no sooner had sweet un consciousness once more stolen over us, than a shake from Giovanni, accompanied by the intimation, " The mountain is ready, gentlemen," fairly dispelled our dreams. I confess at that moment I wished the moun tain had been asleep too ; but there was no help for it, so tumbling up, and swallowing some hot tea and abominable butter toast, which afterwards wreaked vengeance on me, we pulled on tremendous gambali, or woollen leggings, rolled ourselves in our capotes and plaids, and mounted the mules. There was a clear, starry sky, a moon half-full, Etna rose chilly white 114 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. in front, and a keen biting wind blew in our faces. We rode up through the silent street of the sleeping village and emerged on an old lava bed, w'hich on every side presented a scene of utter desolation and eerie solitude. The masses of blackened stone and scorise were tossed and tumbled in every possible shape and position, looking weird and spectral in the moon light. Beyond were the mounds of old craters, some rising to 400 and 500 feet, but appearing only as so many pimples on the rugged face of the old mountain. Mount Etna is divided into three parts — Piedmontana, Eegio del Bosco, and Discoperta. We now entered the second of these — or the Forest — where the broken, rocky ground is thinly covered with old trees, more than half-stripped of their branches, and between whose peeled and gnarled v.trunks glimmered the clear stars. The view backwards was remarkable. Far below stretched the moonlit sea, and the whole coast was -visible, stretch ing to Syracuse, raore than fifty miles off. At the ex treme edge of the Regio del Bosco stands the Casa del Bosco — a little hut, in the neutral ground between vege tation and primeval desolation — between the blackened rocks and the white snow. As we approached the Casa del Bosco, about three in the morning, dawn began to appear on the banks of cloud which rimraed the sea-line. At first a pale light dimmed the moon, and then a belt of faint orange gleamed on the surface of the clouds, gradually deepening to scarlet. We had intended to leave our mules at the Casa del Bosco, and were aston ished on Hearing it to hear the bark of a dog, followed A RIDE ROUND SICILY. 115 by the figure of a gaunt old man, who, as we rode up, presented himself at the door, from which issued also forth a blinding cloud of smoke. It seemed that he and a band of boys were engaged in collecting snow for the Caffi^s at Catania, and had come here to spend the night. No artist ever painted a wilder interior. Closely packed round a half-slumbering green-wood fire in the centre of the floor, were at least two dozen full-grown lads, half- wrapped in ragged capotes, their thin faces begrimed with smoke and filth, and their feet turned towards the hot embers. Some were crouching, and resting their heads on their knees ; others were at full stretch ; some sleeping, some peering with wistful eyes at the well-fed strangers, who were making way for themselves into their circle. The old man heaped on more wood, till a red blaze lit up the dark rafters, and cast a livid colouring on the strange group around us. The wind moaned drearily outside, and we half-regretted the necessity of leaving the warm fire, where we had been gradually thaw ing, to resume our ascent once more. When we again carae out, the whole horizon, where it met the eastern sea far below us, was barred vrith burning clouds ; but as we rode on, a thin vapour, blown down from the mountain, swept itself between us and the sun. Never have I seen anything so strangely beauti ful as the effect of the strong red light filling that thin vapour -with gloiy, as blown about and interwoven with itself, it flew rapidly past us like so many aerial webs of gauze glowing with colour. When we reached the snow we had to bid farewell to the mules, and take to our feet A pure white slope, not very steep, but long, stretched 1 16 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. before us up to the Cima. I never realised what cold was till that morning. Although -wrapped like Esqui maux, and toiling up an ascent through d^ep soft snow which had lately fallen, yet the -wind, which cut along the hill-side, seemed to pierce through us and freeze the very blood. Gradually, as we ascended, and tbe mist cleared up, the view became superb. The southern and eastern portions of Sicily lay like a relieved map below us. We could see away to the right, the broad plain dotted with villages stretching as far as Terra Nuova, while almost below us were the Straits of Messina and Calabria, with Rheggio over hanging the sea. After about a couple of hours' steady walking I began to feel very unaccountable sensations. Without any symptom of fatigue, my " wind " seemed about to fail me entirely, and a giddiness and sickness, like that at sea, came over me. The thin air was proving too much for me. I struggled on for more than an hour, throwing myself every now and then on the snow, and kept up by the cheery Coraggio of the guide, until reaching the Casa Inglese at the foot of the cone, and about 10,000 feet above the sea, I had fairly to give in. I regretted this the less as a mist seemed to be gathering, and our chances of any view small. So, as the Casa Inglese was literally buried in snow, I contented myself with wandering over to the summit of the precipice over hanging the Valle del Bove, whUe my companion went on to the surarait. On relating my mishaps afterwards to Signer GemeUaro, he quite accounted for all my sen sations. The Valle del Bove was the scene of the fear- A RIDE ROUND SICILY. 117 ful eruption in 1852, which laid waste one of the fairest regions in Sicily. As seen frora where I stood, the side of the mountain seemed to have been tom open, and yawned into a dark ragged ravine. What it must have been during the eruption, let Signor Gemellaro tell. The eruption began on the 12th of August, and on the 2d ot September, when it was in full force, he determined to make an attempt to witness the terrible scene frora as near a point of view as possible. Accompanied by a friend, with a guide and muleteer, he set out from the village of Zaffarana, and passed the night in the open air, amid fearful thunder and lightning and drenching rain, not far from Monte Finocchio, the point to which they were going. I translate from the published extracts of his joumal, his description of the scene which pre sented itself to his eyes, when next morning they reached the top of Monte Finocchio, a spot alraost in the midst of " the eraption :" — " A sea of fire was the first spectacle which met our eyes, filling that great valley of four miles vride and five long, and presenting an irregular surface of valleys and hUls, all of fire, reflecting themselves with a red glow on every visible point around. Great fissures, from which flowed the tide of liquid lava, showed their burning depths, and from these every now and then rose livid flames for ten or fifteen minutes, while masses of scori- form rocks, forced out by the current, were shot down or split into blazing fragments. From one crater, whose mouth was about 100 feet in circuraference, miUions on millions of scoriae were -launched to an immense height, in such uninterrapted succession that it was almost im- 1 1 8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. possible to keep the eye fixed on them, so blinding was their light, seeming to form but one gigantic column of living flame. The air, too, was laden with sand, which afterwards was found to have covered in its fall all the eastern slopes of Etna." He states another curious fact : " During the four hours we were on Monte Finocchio, our minds were so intently occupied in contemptating the grand scene before us, that we paid no attention to the continuous movement of the whole mass of the mountain itself on which we were standing, while, in fact, the mo tion was such that our guide and muleteer were affected as if in a vessel at sea, so as to suffer from giddiness and faintness, which was succeeded by vomiting." Before we descended from the high elevation at which we stood, a level bank of dappled cloud floated itself along, below, and between us and " the under world." We found ourselves, in short, above the clouds, with a clear sunny sky overhead, and this far stretching sheet of snow-white down, entirely shutting out from us the visible world below, except where we gazed through holes on a little patch of blue sea, with perhaps the white sail of a ship crossing it, or on an island fragment of the populous plain. We felt as if we could almost leap through these hatchways, so near did they appear, while the places beneath seemed again to be stUl farther re moved and diminished, as when one looks through the larger end of a telescope. Another fortnight on the mules brought us round the rest of the coast by Messina and the northern shore, to Palermo. It is after leaving Etna that the wonderful coast scenery of Sicily begins, some portions of which A RIDE ROUND SICILY. 119 surpass anything in Italy. Take, for instance, the view from the old Roman theatre of Taormina, nestled high up on a cliff above the sea, where through a framework formed by the crumbling walls, you see the long yellow coast and soft full sea-line sweeping from beneath you in a wide curve up to Catania and round to distant Syra cuse ; while in another line, as soft and full, Etna swells up, white as a cloud, into the blue sky ; and beside you are richly wooded crags and hills, crowned with viUages. The road, too, for days, wound by a coast like that of Amalfi, where deep mountain gorges, held in by cliffs falling in sheer precipices into the sea, formed little bays of golden sand, with fishing vUlages fiUing the mouth of the ravines, and fishing boats lazily heaving on the sparkling waves. We did not repent making the whole circuit back to Palermo. Although few traveUers go farther than Messina, yet we found the northern coast, as a whole, more picturesque than the southem, and with many strange old Norman to-wns. From what we saw of the people, we thought them, like their island, capable of great things, but so utterly ill-governed as to have become in a measure demoralised. Education was at the lowest ebb. Even such men as our guides on Etna could not read ; and I remember the expression with which one of them turned and left me' when I was telling him of the electric telegraph — as if he had said, " There is a branch of Her Majesty's service you may have heard of called the Marines, but you know" Their religion, too, had raany peculiar features. " La Santissima Vergine " seemed to have a greater share of worship than even in the other parts of Italy. .120 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. When the peasantry are in the fields, they begin work generally with a sort of hurra, " Viva Maria Vergine ! " And I remember listening to a sermon delivered by a Capucino from a movable pulpit, to the people gathered at a fair in the market-place of Lenteni — where, in like manner, as a climax to all his most telling passages, he shouted out " Vive la Santissima Vergine I " to which came the loud response from the crowd, " Viva ! Viva ! " When he had got them to the necessary pitch of en thusiasm, a hat was sent round. As in the rest of Italy, one of the great curses of the country is the lottery and the base gambUng spirit, the mother of idleness and greed, which it fosters. The late Government of Naples used this engine of rapine to the utmost. Wherever any public works were going on, a " Lotto Reale '' was at once established, and by this raost ingenious contrivance the larger proportion of the people's wages was drained back again to Naples. As an instance of this, at a sraall poverty-stricken village called Gioiosa — in the neighbour hood of which a new road was being m.ade — our inn keeper, who was agent for the lotteiy, told me he sent to Naples about ;^io weekly. Let us trust that things may be improved now ! We were sorry when the day arrived which ended our ride round Sicily, in spite of all its discomforts — and felt sad, as if parting with old friends, when we bid good-bye to little Giovanni and his canteen-chests, and saw Vincenzo leading off our honest mules, and heard their bells tinkling in the distance as they trotted away to their native village, far up among the hills. DONALD MACLEOD. VIL A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. THEY are a noble-looking people the Italians. The fire darting from their black eyes, combined with the dark-brownish shades of their complexion, imparts to them a graceful mixture of juvenile liveliness and manly dignity. There is something knightly, nay princely, in their bearing, expressive of a deep feeling of liberty, which seeras to proclaim, " We are a free people ; we may have been an oppressed people, but we never were slaves, aud never shaU be.'' Such were the thoughts that crossed my mind as I stood one afternoon at the comer of the Via Carlo Alberto and the Corso del Re at Turin. I was looking at the stream of people who were promenading under the magnificent avenue of chestnut trees, enjoying the cool shade and the fresh air, and obtaining glimpses of the splendid cafds, which, lining the road on both sides, teemed with crowds of visitors, who took their sorbet in-doors and out, and moved to and fro as bees move in and out of their hives. 1 22 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES " A noble set of people," I thought ; " worthy to rank among the foremost of the free nations." My meditation was interrupted by a monotonous noise that seeraed to come in the direction of the Via Carlo Alberto. It sounded like the humrning of an immense swarm of bees. I turned round : it was a procession. Under a canopy supported by four men clad in white linen, a priest was carrying the monstrans or some other idol. A boy, dressed as a chorister, walked in front, ringing a shrill-toned bell. Its piercing notes were ac companied by the continuous buzz of the Paternosters and Ave Marias which the priests and a few poor people in their rear kept mumbling as they passed. Every one, rich as well as poor, noble as well as vulgar, took off his hat and bowed reverentially : but before it had occurred to me to do so, the procession had passed, and all went on as before. "And yet a poor enslaved people !" I sighed. " No knowledge of trae liberty can dwell in their souls so long as a piece ofwood or stone can comraand their obeisance." A hand was gently pressed on my shoulder, and a well-kno-wn voice whispered in French, " I congratulate you on the happy escape of your hat, Mr ." I turned round. " WiUiam ! is it you ?" Of course we cordially shook hands. It was my Waldensian friend, WiUiam , whom I had become acquainted with two years ago at Berlin, where he was tutor in a family wilh which I was staying. " And where are you going?" he asked. " To MUan, and then back to Switzerland, round by the Simplon." A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. 123 " Of course," he said, with a a slight shade of bitter ness in his smUe. " That 's like all you tourists. When far away you speak, of us, you pray for us, you collect money for us ; but when in our immediate neighbour hood you seem to forget all about us, and not one in a thousand of you thinks of looking in upon us in the valleys. The Cathedral of Milan is honoured with the visits of more Protestants in one year, than our valleys — which are the head-quarters of ItaUan Protestantism — are in ten." I must confess that I was not prepared for such an onslaught. But I felt that his remark was but too true, and I was ashamed of myself and all my Protestant fellow-travellers, who, in the prospect of seeing a temple made by man, and teeming with idols, allow ourselves to forget the magnificent temple which the hand of God has reared in the midst of the Piedmontese Alps, and where thousands worship Him in spirit and trath. " Could you not go with me," my friend said, " and stay at least one day with us ? It is only a short jour ney from here to Pomaret. We shall arrive there before it is dark, if we take the three o'clock train." How little man is master of his own plans! That moming I awoke with the purpose of spending my after noon on the top of the Superga, and lo ! before the clock strack three, I found myself at the station taking a ticket for Pignerol. " And do you really mean to say that my hat was in danger?" I said to WiUiam, when we were comfortably seated in our railway carriage and moving on at the rate of twenty miles an hour. 124 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. " You happened to be standing pretty far back, and so escaped unnoticed ; but if you had been in a conspicuous place, I am afraid some one would have smashed it over your eyes. I daresay you have heard of the story of General Beckwith and his hat ?" " I have not." " Some thirty years since, when at La Tour, his hat was roughly knocked off on the occasion of a procession passing by. Not content with this insult, the priests also charged him before the authorities -with having treated the religion of the country with disrespect. The judge asked hira if he did not know that he must take oft his hat to the religious processions ? The general stood before the judge with his head uncovered, but no sooner was this question put to him than he immediately put on his hat again, and pressing it tightly on his head, said, ' Never, Monsieur le Pr^fet — never shall I take off my hat to a procession 1 No, never !' The judge thereupon applied all the rigour of the law to this bold champion of liberty, and had the English ambassador at Turin not interfered, the general would have got into endless vexa tions, and hardly have escaped imprisonment. I must add, however, that things have greatly changed since then. The Constitution of 1848 has canceUed those tyrannical laws, and secured equal rights to aU religious denominations. According to the law of the country, you are not at all bound to take off your hat to a pro cession. You could even give the person into custody who knocked it off, and the judge would be obliged to give a verdict in your favour. But what laws are power ful enough to control the spirit of Popish fanaticism ? A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. 125 Even if capital punishment were the penalty, plenty of hands would strike at your hat for the honour of mar tyrdom." " He was a great man. General Beckwith," I said, " and a true Christian, willing to leave everything, if re quired to follow Christ. I am sorry I know but little of his history, but this much I know, that, under God, you Waldensian people owe to him nearly the whole of your social development and religious life." " Very true ; but for his noble assistance and support, our children would be without schools, our parishes without churches, and our ministers without education. During the twenty-five years which that good man passed among us, our valleys were refreshed as a dry parched land by a summer shower. England has given us many good gifts from the days of Cromwell down to the pre sent time, but the greatest of thera was undoubtedly that gallant officer, who, after having fought the common enemy of Europe at Waterloo, came down to our valleys to help us to fight the common foe of God and man. Nor should I forget to mention another Englishman, who, next to General Beckwith, was the greatest bene factor of our valleys in the present age. I mean the late Dr Gilly, Prebendary of Durham. Without his assist ance and influence the General could not have extended his beneficial and generous operations over such a large surface. If we were at La Tour I could show you our excellent coUege which these two men founded on the bank of the river Pelice. It has just now from eighty to ninety young men in training. Our ministers and teachers now speak Itahan as fluently as French, which, as you 126 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. know, is our native tongue. Nay, even the chUdren at the schools leam ItaUan, and before many years pass this language will be the common tongue of the Wal- denses, and thus reunite us to the Italians, by whom we have of late been looked upon as foreigners. Yes, we are indebted to Beckwith for this boon. It was he who enabled the first Waldensian minister to spend a year at Florence for the purpose of leaming'the ItaHan language, and when his experiment tumed out favourably, he as sisted four professors of the college to do the same. Thus he again introduced among us our original lan guage, which two centuries ago we exchanged for the French. Then look at our popular schools. They number eighty, and most of them were founded by the General, or, at least, he caused them to be founded, and paid a considerable part of their expense. At La Tour, which is the capital of our valleys, you will find an excellent school for young ladies, especially for the daughters of Waldensian ministers. This also is a founda tion of the General's, who was of opinion that no nation could be educated unless the females -were educated in the first place." While my friend was thus giving me information about the present state of his countrymen, and about that estimable man whose name lives in the heart of every true Waldensian Protestant, we arrived, after an hour's ride, at Pignerol, a thriving to-wn of about 16,000 inhab itants, and situated at the entrance of the Waldensian valleys. As we had an hour's time before the coach for Pomaret started, we took a walk about the town. We passed a row of large buildings which evidently were A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. 127 destined for government use, although they seemed to be unemployed for the present. " These are the famous barracks," my friend said, " which Louis XIV. of France constructed for lodging the soldiers whom he employed in hunting down our forefathers. You must know that during the times of the persecution, Pignerol was the head-quarters of the armed force which the enemy collected for our destruc tion. Of all those who ever hated us, the monks and priests of Pignerol were the most furious and implacable. Nor is their spirit much improved even now, though, thank God, their power is gone. This much, at least, is certain, that the bishop of this place is our greatest adversary, and that he is sorely disturbed that such a con siderable portion of his diocese as our valleys should have the boldness to approach the Saviour without his interces" sion. Still he cannot help witnessing to the trath, that kings and princes, popes and bishops, cannot tum the counsel of God, nor resist the power of His Spirit. Rome had sworn that a Protestant should never be permitted to possess one inch of ground at Pignerol. And now, do you notice that recently-built chapel over there ? It is our Waldensian temple, founded, as it were, in the shade of those sarae barracks which were to make its founda tion impossible." We walked up the slope of a hill, and seated ourselves on what my friend called " a velvet grass-carpet." It was a most charming afternoon. Nature seemed to be adorned like a bride. The sun, which had already con siderably advanced on its declining course, touched the scenery round about with all the riches of light and 123 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. shadow. W'hile the valleys below were ¦wrapped in the dark uncertain shades which the mountains cast upon them, the hill-tops were bathed in an ocean of gold and purple. And in the midst of this enchanting play of colour, the colossal pyramid of the Monte Viso lifted its snowy crown up to the clouds, leaving all the surround ing peaks and crests far below, and inspiring awe and reverence from the majesty of its gigantic form. It is a few feet lower than Mont Blanc, but it gives you the im pression of being by far the highest of the Alps. It owes this to its sharp pyramidal shape and solitary position. Muston, the Waldensian historian, rightly caUs it the Virgin Alp, since no human foot has ever trod its ever lasting snows. "It is,'' he says, " the Jungfrau oi the south, the powerful genius which watches over our valleys ; for under the shadow of its granite-^wings the torch of the Gospel has often sheltered its inspiring light." We drove on a good carriage-road along the left bank of the river Chiesone, as far as Perouse or Perosa, a pretty town, which is the capital of the valley of that name. It is a Roraan Catholic place, and so are all the towns on the left bank of the river ; but no sooner have you crossed the bridge at Perouse, than you find yourself on Protestant territory. Pomaret, which is situated at a mile's distance only from the bridge, is the chief place of the Protestant parish, and, after La Tour, possesses the most important institutions of the Protestant Waldensian church. Its temple, though not so magnificent as that at La Tour, is better adapted for Protestant worship than any other of the Waldensian A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. 129 churches. Its gymnasium, or Latin school, is an auxi liary college to that of La Tour, and enables the inhab itants of this quarter of the vaUeys to get their sons prepared for the university. Its hospital, which contains twelve beds, receives on an average 150 patients during a year. Its popular schools, one for boys and one for girls, are considered the second best in the valleys. It was dusk as we walked across the bridge of Perouse. My friend was taking me to a cousin of his, with whom we were to pass the night. We walked up a country road which led into the mountains. Soon we stopped at the door, of a farmhouse. It opened into a square farmyard, two sides of which were lined by the two wings of the house, which met each other in a right angle. Half-way between the floor and the roof, and on a level with the floor of the first story, a spacious balcony ran across the front of the house all along its breadth. This balcony was sheltered from the rain by the roof of the house, which protmded, in the Swiss style, a considerable length beyond the wall. A wooden stair case, which was built in the vertex of the angle, where the two ¦wings of the house met, led up to the balcony. This was the main entrance to the house. It was evi dent that the ground-floor was not inhabited, since an open door under the balcony allowed us a peep into a stable ; while through another opening, the not very harmonious sound of pigs and chickens found its way to our ears. But on the first story, there were a sitting- room, and a kitchen, and three or four bedrooms, the entrances to which all opened on the balcony. My friend's cousin, the farmer, was standing at the 130 • PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. top of the stair-case before the door of the sitting-room, as we walked up the farmyard. There was just enough of daylight to enable us to observe the outlines of his form against the whitewashed waU. " Is it you, WiUie ?" he said in a kind voice. " Yes it is, and a friend from England, whom I have taken the liberty of inviting, kno-wing that all that comes firom England is welcome to you.'' " Oh dear, yes I oh dear, yes I Come up. Messieurs ! Anna I light the candle soon ! Welcome, mes amis ! Ah, that 's right, that you have brought this friend with you, if our simple house and potage will only do for him." Under cover of these words, which fell rapidly from our good host's lips, we were led into his sitting-room. Anna, the servant, soon enabled us to see each other's faces. My friend's cousin — I forget his name, I believe it was Vauthier, or Gauthier — appeared to be a man in the prime of life, not very tall nor very stout either, but strongly built, broad-shouldered, low-browed, sinewy and muscular. The furniture in the room was simple and tidy, but nothing particular. "And where is ma bonne cousine, your wife?" asked WiUiam. " I hope she is at home ?" " Oh, to be sure I She will be in in a moment. She is just gone to VillesSche to visit a few sick people." "Is she StiU continuing that work?" William said. " That 's right. I know she likes it. " My cousin's wife," WiUiam continued, turning to me, " has applied herself to the excellent task of visiting the poor and the sick of this parish. Nor is she the A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY. 131 only person who performs that good work. There are many who, especially during the winter months, spend a portion of the day in reading a chapter of the Bible, and praying with the invalids who live at remote places in the mountains. They thus assist the ministers in their pastoral work. Owing to the inequalities and numerous windings of the roads round projecting rocks and intervening ravines, the distances are so great in this district, that many of the aged and sick persons would be destitute of any spiritual intercourse, if the young and the strong did not climb up to them." Our good hostess made her appearance soon. She was a tall, healthy-looking woman, with cheeks as bloom ing as a belle-fleur apple, and ¦with dark, beautifully- curved brows, as tf a painter had penciUed them over her glittering eyes. Her hair, of which I could not discover one particle, was all tied up in a white muslin cap, which was fastened under her chin with a red ribbon. A blue woollen jacket, open in front and laced cross- ways, and a skirt of the same stuff and colour, formed her simple dress. On seeing William she joyfully ran up to him, and gave him a hearty kiss on the forehead. Then dropping a curtsey to me, she took a chair, and putting a pocket-bible which she was holding in her hand on the table, she bade us cordially welcome, and expressed her hope that we should stay "very very long" and help her to get through her strawberries and cherries. " And how did you leave old Jeannette ?" asked her husband. " Poor thing ! she is very weak. I am afraid she 132 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. wiU not live another week. Her leg is getting on nicely, but she must have sustained some intemal injury, which gives her much pain and takes away her strength." " Has she met with an accident?" asked WiUiam. "She has, poor creature ! She lives up the hUl a good bit, and the way to her cottage is rather steep. One day in February, when carrying up a bundle of fagots and provisions,- she missed the footpath, owing to the snow, and fell down into the ravine. Fortunately she was stopped by a cluster of trees, else she wciuld have been dashed to pieces. She must have lain there for a, good while ; and had her groanings not been heard by a man passing by, she must have been frozen to death." " Is she aware of the danger she is in ?" her husband asked. " She is ; and I am sorry to say I found her not pre pared to die. On the one hand, she hopes her good works, as she calls them, will go a great length towards •her salvation ; but, on the other, she is afraid some of her sins will not be pardoned. I pointed her to the only good works, that is Christ's, and prayed her to rely upon His cross alone. But she continued to fear that she was not good enough to be admitted to heaven." " Alas ! I do not wonder," quoth our host. ' " She is a native qf Macel, where, in her youth, there was a minister who held very loose opinions about the divinity and the atonement of Christ. That unhappy man never taught his people that they were lost sinners, who could be saved by grace only." " Those must have been sad days for our valleys," WiUiam said. ' - A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY, 133 " I wonder," I said, " that the descendants of those noble martyrs, your forefathers, could evtr fall so low." " Ah Monsieur / " our host observed, " bad ministers, bad churches. Our people are very ignorant and un learned. They know how to cultivate a piece of land, to prane a tree, to make their wine, and to manage their _ silk-worms. That is all. For reading or studying they have neither time nor inclination : they leave that to their ministers." " But we raay thank God," our hostess said, " that we live in better days now ; don't we, dear ? " " Oh, certainly !" our host replied. " But it -wiU take some time yet before all the people will learn the truth. There are still many old crooked trees which won't allow themselves to be bent right ; and there is, I am sorry to say, a sad spirit of indifference and lukewarmness stUl prevaUing among our Protestant population. Our min isters wiU have to work hard, and pray hard, to be able to expel the lethargy which poisoned our good Waldenses some fifty years since." WhUe saying these words, the good farmer appeared affected -with the thought of the sad change that had taken place among a people which once ranked fore most among the champions and martyrs of the Chris tian Church. " Ah, but my dear sir," WUliam explained, "we have a fair prospect before us now. Look at the schools with which all our communes are now provided. Among the books which are read there, the Bible occupies the first place.. Our rising generation grows up in the light of the Gospel. The whole of Italy is thrown open 134 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. for- our evangelists and missionaries. We have churches at Pignerol, at Turin, at MUan, at Genoa, at Legliom, at Florence, at Naples, and at several other places all through the peninsula. Ten years ago, nothing of the kind was to be seen. And what a surprising sight does our mission-field present to the eyes of all who pray for the spread of the Gospel among our priest-ridden country men ! For we are Italians, are not we ? And the salt of Italy, too ? Yes, God wUl most assuredly establish our valleys as a Zion from which the light will go forth that shall dispel the mists of Popery and superstition." My friend's eyes beamed, and we could not help feel ing his enthusiasm reflected in ours. We continued talk ing on, and if we did agree that there was much good to be done still, we also agreed that there was much good achieved to rest our hopes upon. Candle in hand, the flame of which he protected with his palm, our host guided me across the balcony to my bedroom. Its glass door was at the same time its front window. Another window was in the opposite wall. It was an oblong square apartment. Its walls were white washed, the wooden floor was without a carpet, and the wooden ceiling without plaster. But all was perfectly clean. A bedstead of chestnut-wood, nicely polished, soon received me as an addition to its feather- stuffed contents. I slept like a chUd's top, and when early in the moming I awoke, I found, much to my satis faction, that the sun, which peeped merrily through the back window, promised a beautiful summer day. I stepped out of my room on the balcony. What a sight ! The farmhouse was built upon the summit of a A PEEP INTO A WALDENSIAN VALLEY, 135 projecting portion of the hiU, and commanded the whole picturesque valley below. The wide landscape seemed to be a psalm in colours and figures, praising the won derful Creator who makes the hiUs to leap before His face and the valleys to exult with pleasure. The morn ing dew rising up before the rays of the sun seemed to be incense of gratitude and adoration ascending from the altar of creation. All the treasures that can beautify a panorama were strewed beneath me with a lavish hand, — green pastures teeming with flowers, little groves of chestnut-trees, rows of apple-trees (which have given its name to Pomaret), smiling hills, the slopes of which were dotted with cottages and farmhouses, foot paths here and there winding up the elevations, browsing cattle, purling streams tracing figures of silver across the emerald velvet of the meadows. How could I but be absorbed in wonder and adoration, offering up a hymn in the unutterable music of heart-born ejaculations. I was interrupted in my meditations by the voice of William, who stepped out of the sitting-room. The family was assembled for moming worship. Our host conducted it with trae patriarchal solemnity. What to my ears was lacking in dignity in the sounds of the French language, was made up by the grave tone in which the holy page was read. William closed with prayer. His last words were, " Set up, Lord, a flag of salvation on the top of our mountains, to which the whole of Italy wiU tum." Our breakfast, which consisted of cafe au hit, bread, butter, and fraits, was weU calculated to prepare us for a walk to the Balsille, which we had in prospect. I could 136 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. write a book were I to give a full account of that trip, and of all WUliam and his cousin told me whUe we were passing through the picturesque district, so rich in re collections of the great deeds of the Waldensian martyr- heroes. When that evening I found myself back at my hotel at Pignerol, I only regretted that I could not expand the twenty-four hours I had spent among those excellent people into as many days ; and I solemnly promised myself that my next summer ramble should be among the Waldensian valleys. JOHN DE LIEFDE. VIIL A PEEP AT THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. ON the evening of a lovely day in May, not a hundred years ago, three friends started from London vict Harwich for Antwerp, to take a peep at the Netherlands and Holland. About a hundred years ago, two persons, better known in the world of to-day, traveUed by the same route ; one being on his way to Utrecht, the other keeping him company as far as Harwich. The intend ing traveller was James Boswell ; the friend who accom panied him to bid him farewell, was Samuel Johnson : the former, a far less man than he ever suspected himself of being ; and the latter, a far greater man than his bio grapher, who enables others so well to understand him, could possibly comprehend. It was lucky for the small planet frora Auchinleck that, in the mysterious move ments of the heavens, he happened to rise above the horizon in company with that "great roUing sun," in whose reflected Hght he shone, until he began to think himself a luminary. What an amusing account Boswell 1 38 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, gives of their trip to Harwich in the stage-coach, with the young Dutchman and gentlewoman 1 He tells us how Johnson read Pomponius Mela, and rebuked him for giving a shUling instead of sixpence to the guard ; and how he shocked the passengers by defending the Inquisition against the violent attacks of the lady upon that famous Church institute ; and how he defended torture in criminal cases in Holland, to the horror of the Dutchman ; and then how, after supper, he descanted- upon the glories of eating, laying do-wn the maxim, " that he who does not mind his stomach, will hardly mind anything else," which leads " Bozzy '' t6 give a long dis sertation upon the gastronomy of the great moralist. But what was more trae and real to his convictions than all those opinions defended for the sake of argument, and much more worthy of the man than his eating pro pensities, was the fact that when in the church at Har wich, he sent Boswell to his knees, saying, " Now that you are going to leave your native country, recommend yourself to the protection of your Creator and Redeemer.'' "As the vessel put to sea," adds his biographer, " I kept my eyes fixed upon him for a considerable time, while he remained roUing his majestic frame in his usual manner ; and at last I perceived him walk back to the town, and he disappeared ! " These illustrious travellers occupied two days in jour neying from London to Harwich. How long Boswell lay in the packet, pitching and tossing in the North Sea, before he reached Helvoetsluys, he does not inform us. Our joumey and voyage from I.,ondon to Antwerp vi& Harwich, did not occupy more than sixteen hours ; and THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND, 139 I fancy we agreed fully as well as the moralist and his friend would have done. We embarked at night, and when we came on deck at early mom, it was clear, but rather cold. The steamer was running along the Belgian coast, some miles off, It was refreshing to leave the hot cabin, full of indescrib able smells, contributed by new paint, preparations for breakfast, and innumerable ingredients, found nowhere else save in a steamer's cabin. Besides, the society was not interesting ; most of the passengers were stretched in sUence upon a double tier of couches, popularly termed berths, and by some benevolent persons, " beds^' but presenting a miserable display of confused blankets covering sufferers, who were most of them wondering what infatuation tempted thera to leave home for such plea sure, and others were making earnest inquiries of the steward when they might reach the Scheldt, and get into smooth water, for " the sea is stirring in its bed," as it always does in the Channel. But if one could at all enjoy the sea, there was something most exhilarating in it on such a morning. The vessel was under full steam, with foresail and jib set. The waves were not fierce, but came toppling along in a gladsome mood, not im pelled by any strong -wind, but as if by their own free accord. Seaward, a few sails were visible. Landward, a long low line of sandhills stretched north and south, broken here and there by a steeple or windmill. No change took place in the view untU Flushing was reached, at the entrance of the Scheldt. Flushing in its days of smuggUng celebrity, fumished beautiful lugger prizes for the revenue cruisers on the west and north of Scotland, 140 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. and an inexhaustible supply of gin and contraband for the inhabitants of the same district, from the laird to the cottar, including every grade and every profession. Now, it is known to our countrymen chiefly as fumishing respectable pilots. The saU up the Scheldt was one along a broad, quiet, insipid river, with low, quiet, insipid banks ; yet it afforded singular pleasure to the passengers, who came creeping up from the cabin, no longer horrified at the mention of breakfast. The high steeple of Antwerp soon attracts attention, and every turn brings it nearer. Then coraes the pier, along which the vessel, with steam roaring from her funnel-head, slowly advances. Then follow the Dou^ aniers, with wide blue trousers, small caps, and large scoops, the exaraination of luggage, the recommendation of sundry hotels on landing, by crowds of polite infor mants, the struggles to keep hold of your bag, until at last you are safely landed in the " Hotel St Antoine " or " Park," -with the prospect of an excellent table-d^hSte in half-an-hour. The said table-d'hbte is surrounded by countrymen and countrywomen. Here is a respectable pair, with two daughters and a son, who have just landed, and begun a tour never to be forgotten in their sweet home in Yorkshire. They are modest and retiring, " tasting of Flora and the country green.'' There are two impudent, forward, London bagmen, who insist upon being famiUar with every one : avoid them as you would fever. Removed by a few yards are two aristocratic young men who never speak, but stare with dead, lack lustre eyes on all around them : take no notice of them, for they wish you to do so. On the opposite side are THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 141 frank, unsophisticated people, who seem to like every one, and fancy every one likes them, as they deserve to be. They are ready to tell you all their plans and family history, and insist on speaking bad French, learned from a book of conversation conned every five minutes. The father twits Susan for not being more fluent after all he has spent on her education, though she was taught to read only, not to speak French. The waiter speaks English, and smiles when the old gentleman replies in French. Add to these, Germans, with long hair, large heads, and spectacles; Belg'ans, round and soft-faced; Frenchmen, with sharp, dark features, moustache and peaked beard ; and a couple or two on their marriage tour, who see none else in the room but theraselves, and you have a fair idea of the group that meets your eye around the table-d'hbte. Let us take a tum into the to-wn, and go right down past the tobacconist's at the comer, across the square, through that narrow street, and now you are before the Cathedral of Antwerp. I make no atterapt to describe the cathedral as seen from without ; but yet the inside of this venerable pile (as well as that of the other churches in Antwerp), presents many sights which give one as vivid an impression of the genius of Popery as can be received from anything seen in Spain or Italy. The fact is, that Belgium, which lies within a ten hours' sail from England, is as far removed from her Protestantism as if worlds lay between. It was not so always. Protestantism was strong and flourishing in her once rich and prosperous cities ; and in no part of the world were there tmer martyrs to the truth, or more bloody persecutions perpe- 142 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. trated to extinguish it. And Rome did so extinguish the trath, that one might now be months in Brages or Ghent before he heard of a Protestant. We are not aware of the existence of a public place of Protestant worship in either, nor of one in Antwerp even, except the English chapel. So much for persecution ! What nonsense to talk of the blood of the martyrs being always the seed of the Church ! Trae, persecution will not extinguish the Church in the world, or hinder the dawn of the brighter day in the end ; but in the meantime it may extinguish the gospel for ages in particular countries, as it has certainly done in Spain, Italy, Belgium, and France, and would have done in Britain but for the courage of our people. But let us enter this old-fashioned-looking gate at Ghent. We are in the midst almost of a small viUage, separated frora the city by a high wall and circling canal. Here is a large irregular square, with houses ranged along its sides; irregular streets crossing it; a large church in an open space in the centre of it, and an hospital close by. And such silence I Listen 1 A gentle ripple from the wave of the populace catside is alone heard echoing through those mysterious little streets. The inhabitants, if there are any here, seem dead. No ; there goes one, two, a third, creeping like shadows to or from the hospital — all dressed alike with black gowns and white caps. . Nuns, every one of them I We are in the famous old convent of the Bdguines, which has existed here, just as you see it, for centuries ; and we can hardly fancy a' better institution for respect able old ladies, who have no definite calling in the big THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 143 and busy world, " barring " of course, its credenda, and looking only at its agenda. Look at that nun, for in- ^ stance ; she is neither young nor beautiful. Such nuns, by the way, we never discovered in any nunnery ever visited by us, and we have entered many ; and our belief is that they only exist in novel nunneries. That old Bdguine coming towards us is a fair specimen of her class ; round, dumpy, comfortable, half-nurse, half-house keeper, with a large knowledge of cookery. Depend upon it, she is very happy and very useful. When her parents died long ago, she was probably left with a nephew to keep his house. The nephew and she did not get on well. She was " too particular " for young Hopeful, too strict a churchwoman for his fancy. Her fast days and poor dinners came intolerably often for his carnal appetite. But no one could match her with graels and possets in times of sickness ; and no one could deny that a kinder old soul never existed than Aunt Rachel. Now, when the nephew married, what better could Aunt Rachel do than go to the convent close by ? Of course, we would insist upon it, that she should be aUowed to leave when she pleased ; and this liberty is granted to the B^guines. But there is much to induce her to remain. She has got a very neat, comfortable dwelling in the row. Before it is a small plot of ffower- garden. A high wall separates house and garden from those of all her neighbours, and frora the convent square. But opposite each house there is a door in this wall, and on the door is inscribed, not Aunt Rachel's name — fbr that has been left in the parish register, and in the memory only of the world — but. the name of a patron saint, it may 144 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. be St Agnes or St Bridget, and by the name of some such worthy only is Aunt Rachel known. And there she lives alone ; the chapel close by for daily worship — the old bald-headed priest ever accessible for a quiet chat and confession — her neighbour saints always near for mutual edification, sympathy, and, no doubt, a little oc casional confidential conventual gossip at tea-time, or after vespers ; and, better than all, the hospital of suf ferers, where the good old woraan, with a band of sisters like-bodied and like-minded, is found, cooking, reading, crossing, ministering, and waddling about day and night. I can name several of my lady acquaintances who would make inimitable- nuns, and be very happy and very- useful, who are now wasting their time in boarding- houses, or making calls to the disturbance of the studious. There, for instance, are But, on second thoughts, I think it safer to withhold names. At the. sarae time I cannot but express my sober conviction that the period has long ago arrived when the question regarding Deaconesses, or the organisation of Christian women for the work of ministering to the poor, the sick, and the ignorant, especially in our large towns, must be more patiently and earnestly considered by all our churches, especially by Presbyterian churches, than it has been When this is done, we may have much to learn frora the Be'guines. Would we could linger in the Netherlands among those old streets and houses of Bruges and Ghent ! Why, that old gateway, which once led to the palace of the Count of Flanders, is itself worth coming to see. Within the once proud waUs to which it led, Charles V. THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 145 was bom. In the church hard by can yet be seen the basin' in which he was baptized. Here, too, was born John of Gaunt (of Gand, or Ghent), who is now chiefly remembered in history as an acquaintance of Falstaff's more than of Justice Shallow's. Then there are old houses, made memorable by the Van Arteveldes of his tory and of poetry; and besides all those living persons of the past, there are delightful pictures, that seem, in their permanence, no longer indeed shadows, but substances — such as the well-known pictures of Van Eyck in Ghent ; and those, to me still higher in art and thought, of the Hemmlings in the old hospital of St John, in Bruges, with that mighty one of the Descent from the Cross in Antwerp. But why attempt to describe pic tures ? as well almost describe a scent or a sound. Perception is, in either case, by such means impossible. I have a better hope from the panorama of a great land scape. Let us try. We are standing on the top of the great square tower of the High Kirk of Rotterdam. The day'is bright and breezy. We have ascended the endless screw-stair and wooden ladders, and passed far above the solitary home of the town clock, where day and night it swings its huge pendulum, and, with many a whirr and click, solemnly and conscientiously divides time, which is dividing all things, and which also, during the last fifteen minutes, has almost divided our o-wn breath from the body, in this ambitious striving to overlook the world. But, now that we are up, the -view is worth all the trouble. So every one at least protests. 145 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Below is the city of Rotterdam. Like aU continental cities, it burns wood only,, and is therefore free from smoke. You can count every red tile in the house-tops far down, or the stones in the streets lower stiU, -with the innumerable ants, or black dots like raen and women, who are crossing to and fro accompanied by their shadows. There is nothing in the town itself very attractive to the eye, — a mass of brick and tUe houses, with green trees, and a few steeples here and there to break the sea of red. But there are some other features of the view eminently characteristic. See those canals ! — everywhere taking the place of the streets in other cities, the streets here being on each side of the canals. Notice that sweeping river to the south, losing itseff far off in the plain. It is not what it once was, and feels the contrast so acutely, that, as if ashamed of itself, it has changed its name. Here it is called the Maas. For who would believe that a thing, now so flat and stalcj so humble and quiet, as it glides in its old age to " the unfathomable gulf where all is still," should be that im perial river — ^'or even an elder branch of — the once lordly Rhine, which in its youth thundered from the Alps, roaring in foam and rainbow . mist over Schaffhausen, and in its strength and glory gathered to its. lofty sides the pomp and chivalry, the poetry and song, the learning and Hterature of Deutschland ; and — if teetotaUers wUl permit the additional reminiscence of its history — -wreathed its brows with the noble vines of the princely Johannisberg ? Alas ! no one knows what they may come to even in this world. But if this allusion to alcoholic wines gives pain to THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 147 any worthy hater of such dangerous fermentations, let him just tum his face from the Rhine and its vinous associations, and look to the north, and there he will see a country which might form the very paradise of water- drinkers, if they were disposed to overlook the quality of the liquid in the largesse of its quantity. Take a sweep of the horizon along half a circle from west to east — all is as flat as the ocean. A green plain, with nothing what ever to relieve it except lines of white that indicate the ditches which divide the fields, and the windmUls which drain them ; with here and there a group of trees round a -village, and the church spire that rises above it. Such is the scenery of Holland. The Atlantic, if dead calm and covered with grass, would be equally picturesque. The smallness of Holland is realised from the top of this tower. To the south is seen a patch of red with steeples, which notes the venerable old town of Dort, and which, com'ng from Antwerp, is passed in sailing to Rotterdam from Mcrdyk on the Maas. Its synod and articles are weU known to all students of divinity ; and the discussion carried on there in the seventeenth cen tury, between Arminians and Cal-vinists, is continued still, and promises, in some form or other, to divide men's opinions till synods and articles are no more. That town is not far firom the southern border of the kingdom. Look now along the line of railway which shoots to the nerth-west straight as an arrow. That steeple a few miles off marks Delft, once the world's capital of crockery. A. few miles farther on in the same direction are the steeples of the Hague. Let the eye follow the horizon until it describes a semicircle sweep- 148 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. ing inwards to the right hand, ending due east of Delft, and the steeples of Leyden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht can be seen in succession, and these are the chief cities of this pumped yet watery land. That village on the river to the west, and close to us, is Schiedam, frora whence, for generations, gin flowed, and smugglers sailed, to tipsify and cheat our ancestors. And now, bidding farewell to the upper regions of the atmosphere, and the windy pinnacles of St La-wrence, we may descend — no easy matter — to the earth. Let us look into the church in passing, for it is like eveiy other in Holland. It is very large, and without any ornaments whatever. The pulpit is attached to one of the pUlars, and the congregation are all boxed in within the nave, leaving the aisles free, and a large portion of each end of the fabric. With the exception of the organ, all is as simple and unadorned as the most rigid Presbyterian could desire ; for the Dutch, like almost all the Churches of the Reformation, are Presbyterian in their forms of worship and church ' discipline. All the seats are fur nished -with Bibles of a uniform size — but such a size ! They are the only things in Holland which fully carae up to my preconceived ideas of Dutch size and capacity. Pocket Bibles in public seem unknown. Those we saw everywhere in the pews seemed to have reposed there since the days of Hugo Grotius. To carry them, sacks, instead of pockets, would be necessary. Now that we are again in the town, we may take a short stroll before the railway starts for the Hague. As we do so, we cannot fail being struck by sorae features common to all Dutch cities. One, of course. THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 149 is the cleanliness and order everywhere visible. The streets, with their small red brick pavement, are scrubbed Hke an in-door floor, and the fronts of the houses are all subjected to a constant watering from syringe pumps, like those used by our gardeners. The vessels in the canals are equally clean. They are ranged, as if by a theodolite, in straight lines ; and what is wanting in elegance or variety of form, — for they are all the sarae in rotundity of build, looking so like drawing-lessons, — is made up in perfect cleanliness. Every bit of brass is beautifully scoured and polished. The sailors are con stantly washing the oars, or scrabbing the decks. At the stem may be seen small windows, two feet square or so, with tiieir white curtains tied up -with ribbon, and probably a few small pots of flowers, and there live the whole family of the worthy master of the i^row Catherina, Most people are annoyed by the cleanliness of the Dutch. Scotchmen are always so. They never, at least, praise it, but either express a mere sense of wonder at such a fuss being made about it, deplore the precious time wasted in securing it, or detract from the supposed virtue, giving " no thanks,!' because of the abundance of water close at hand; I heard a Scotchman say, when treading carefully over a scrubbed street, " Did any one ever see the like of this ? I do believe that the heaviest punishment which you could inflict upon these towns would be to shake off the dust from your shoes and leave it with them ! " This was pure envy. We must admit that Scotland and Ireland contain the filthiest villages in the world. " But that is the cliraate." No ; look at HoUand. Pray, my dear countryman, do not I so PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. excuse such habits ; but whenever you can, lecture your village neighbours on the blessings of water and the beauty of soap, and tell them about the cleanly Dutch. Now we must take a peep into the land of the Dutch, or the Ditch, for either term is appropriate. The Spur- weg, or railroad, wheels you in a single day from Rot terdam, through Delft, Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, to Amsterdara. The grand characteristic of all these towns is " sUence which may be heard." No doubt there are exceptions to this rule. In the most silent town the sound of human footsteps occasionally breaks upon the ear, and the whisper of human voices disturbs the air; while in some parts of the Hague, and in most parts of Amsterdam, there are decided noises and evident bustle, such as one hears and sees in a quiet London street on Sunday morning : but, generally speaking, the repose is profound. A carriage startles you. When the tread of a horse is heard, every head is turned to see what it imports. The question is constantly forced upon the mind. What can all th^ people be about ? How do they live ? Where are the manufactories, the mines, the anything to produce food and clothing ? But the echo answers, " Where 1 " The windmlUs wheel in the sUent air as if their wings were oUed. The barges glide along the calm and sunny canals, and the people appear to be well fed and clothed. The whole nation looks, in fact, like an old respectable sea-captain, who had made his money years ago by trading far away, and who now sat upon his chest of dollars, smoking his pipe and gazing with a stolid face of quiet satisfaction upon THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 151 all the world, as if saying, " My money is made, and my day is over ; I am contented ; and please don't trouble me with anything new. It 's all right ! " Methinks I hear some well-informed accurate statist correcting me with a frown, and sapng, " What ! do you not know that the Dutch are the most industrious people in the world ? Common sense, as well as more accurate information, might have told you that no nation could exist in such repose as you picture. Have you never seen their immense dykes, their drained lakes, their warehouses filled with the products of their flourishing colonies ? Have you never heard of Java, Surinam, or or Guiana ? Have you never read that most charming book. Motley's ' History of the Dutch Republic ? ' " There is no necessity, astute friend, for any such cate chism. My one reply is this, that I do not pretend to teU anything about the country except what meets the eye of a railway traveUer. The paradise of a Dutchman is Broek. This is a vUlage of about 700 inhabitants, an hour's journey or so north of Amsterdam. Cross the ferry in a small steamer, proceed for half-an-hour along the great Helder canal in a Trekschuit, — a mode of conveyance, by the way, de- UghtfuUy national in its order and peace, — then hire a carriage, for which you must pay what is asked or want it, and proceed leisurely along the banks of the canal for three or four miles, until you reach Broek. The peep one gets from the road across the country gives a perfect idea of HoUand, which looks like the flat bottom of a boundless sea, drained or draining off; the cattle in the fields, the scattered viUages with their steeples, and tall 152 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. trees here and there, with storks studying in earnest meditation on the margin of long ditches, all assure you that, in the meantime, the land has got the best of it. Yet it is impossible not to have damp, uneasy feelings, lest by some unnoticed power of evil, — an unstopped leakage, dry rot in a sluice-gate, or some mistake or other to which all things mundane are subject, — a dyke should burst, and the whole Zuyder Zee pour itself like a deluge over the country, leaving you and your carriage out of sight of land. Broek is weU worth a peep. The only thing^, I had ever heard about it in history was the high state of its cleanliness, which had gone so far that the tails of the cows were suspended by cords lest they should be soiled by contact with the ground, and afterwards be used to switch the pure and dappled sides of their possessors at any moment when the said possessors were suddenly thrown off their guard by the bite of some unmannerly insect. I can certify to the truth of this caudal arrangement. It seemed, however, to be more cleanly than comfort able. The most ordinary sympathy with suffering caused an irritation in one's skin, as he saw the tail suddenly checked by the string, just when about to descend upon and s-weep away a huge fly busy breakfasting about the back-bone or shoulder-blade. A model village preserved in a glass case could not be more free from dust, life, or human interest than this Broek. A small lake and innumerable small canals so interlace the cottages and streets, that it looks as if built upon a series of islands connected by bridges. The THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 153 Streets are all paved to the water's edge with small bricks. Each tree is bricked round to the trunk. Bricks keep down earth, grass, and damp, and are so thoroughly scoured and spotless that it is impossible to walk without an uneasy feeling of leaving a stain frora sorae adhering dust of mother earth. The inhabitants (if there are any) seem to have resigned the town to sight-seekers. I am quite serious when I assure the reader, that three travel lers, at eleven o'clock in a fine summer forenoon, watched from a spot near the centre of the village, and did not for at least ten minutes see a living thing except a cat stealing slowly towards a bird, which seemed to share the general repose. You ask, very naturally. What were the inhabitants about ? I put the same question at the tirae in a half-whisper, but there was no one to answer. AU experienced, I think, a sort of superstitious awe from the unbroken quiet, so that 'the striking of the clock made us start. We visited the churchyard (natur ally), and found everything arranged with the same re gard to order. There are no graves ; but rows of small black wooden pegs driven into the ground, rising six inches above the grass, -with a nuraber on each, a little larger than those used for marking flowers, indicate the place where the late burghers of this Sleepy Hollow finally repose. I have never seen so prosaic and statis tical a graveyard. Contrast with this the unfenced spot in a Highland glen, its green grass mingling with the bracken and heather, and its well-marked mound, be side which the sheep arid her larab recline, except when roused by the weeping mourner ! To live in Broek, and be knovm after death only as a number in its church- 154 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. yard, would seem to be the perfection of order and the genius of contentment. To be mentioned by widow and children like an old account, a small sum, an- item less from the total of the whole — as " our poor 46," or " our dear departed 154!" — what an "in memoriam !" Tbe intensity of the prose becomes pleasing to the fancy. I am not sure how far it would be inadvisable to send a colony of Irish peasantry and pigs to improve Broek I On our way back to Amsterdam we made a detour of some miles to visit Peter the Great's house at Saardam. The veritable wooden cottage is still there, being cased now in a large building to preserve it from further decay. It consists of two small rooms, a but-and-a-ben, as they say in Scotland, all of wood. Here Peter the Great had for some time lived in order to leam shipbuilding at the docks, not only by seeing how the work was done, but chiefly by doing the work himself. There are several tablets hung on the waUs of this humble shed, telling of visits paid by crowned heads, such as one by the Emperor Alexander of Russia — " Alexander I. Benedictus Imper- ator hunc lapidem ipse posuit, 1822." Another by the present Emperor of Russia, " Petro Magno — Alexander, 1839." It is not much more than a century and a half since this wooden hut was occupied by the Czar Peter. And how strange to connect the state of Russia about that period ¦with what it is now ; how like, yet how unlike ! Then Peter was creating a navy ; — how formidable has it since become ! Peter was then at war with Turkey, had taken Azof, and was planning how he should build ships to command the Black Sea, and seeking through THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 155 the clergy to raise money for the purpose. That system of aggression upon Turkey and the East, begun so long ago, has only lately reached its climax, and received its first check in the taking of Sebastopol, and the destrac- tion of the powerful Russian fleet beneath the waves of the Black Sea. Then Peter had founded St Petersburg in an unknown and barren swamp ; now it is the im pregnable capital of a great empire. Then Russia was successfully invaded to within a hundred leagues of Moscow by the Napoleon of his day, Charles of Sweden, who afterwards, with the aid of Turkey, nearly destroyed Peter ; now Sweden has been driven from her old pos sessions by Russia, and fears almost to breathe in her august presence. Russia was then emerging like a wild barbarian from her unkno-wn forests and unravelled icy plains, and was hardly recognised among the European powers ; now she is taking such a part in the affeirs of the world as will mould the features of our future history. As the wooden hut of Saardam is to the present ira perial palace in St Petersburg, so is the Russia of Peter to the Russia of Alexander. But while Russia has been advancing wonderfuUy since those days, Amsterdam and the Dutch have, strange to say, remained, Uke Peter's wooden palace, very much the same. The Dutch merchants at that time lived in such comfort and splendour, that the Czar Peter got a model house made that cost him about ;^i5oo of our money, and is now in the museum at the Hague, to serve as a pattern to his nobles for their domestic archi tecture. It is a very beautiful model indeed, and, ex hibits the interior in all its details, down to the most 156 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. trifling ornaments — the pattern of the rugs on the floors, of the curtains on the beds, and the paper on the walls, with every tiny bit of china ornament in the sitting-room, cooking- pan in the kitchen, or plaything in the nursery. And well might the Czar en^vy the home of the rich Hollander. No one can visit one of the old aristocratic merchant families in Arasterdam ¦without perceiving the iramense advance made by the Dutch two centuries ago beyond any other mercantile community in the world, except the Italians. Take as a specimen the mansion of the V L s, in the Heeren Geracht. Notice the large marble flags that pave its handsome lobbies and line their walls — the stately rooms — the large mirrors— r the soft thick carpets — the tasteful grouping of old hand some furniture, and beautiful side-tables with rare and costly china, and exquisite filagree work in silver from Japan ; and the perfume of choice flowers which makes every apartment odorous. But, above all, gaze upon those pictures that cover the walls of the drawing-room and library. How fresh ! They seera as if they had just corae from the hands of the painter. Exquisite flowers, with pearly drops of water, by Van Huysura; Roman scenes by Ulft ; landscapes by Both and Ruis- dael ; sea-pieces by Backhuysen ; old women by Gerard Dow ; village scenes and huge noses by Ostade ; with other masterpieces by Van de Velde, Weenix, Berghem, and especially a magnificent Wouverraans, and Metzu. These have not been picked up suddenly at sorae sale, nor are they of doubtful authorship ; but the best of them, upwards of twenty, were painted for the family, and have never been out of the house since framed in those THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 157 plain black frames, and hung up on their walls by the hands of the famous artists themselves ! Here, too, are two grand full-length portraits of their ancestors. Burgo master S and his wife, painted by Rembrandt. Some of the streets of Amsterdam, or rather the ranges of houses which border the grand canals, are very handsome ; others, like the Jonkerstraat, are narrow and crowded. The Jews' quarter, like every other Jews' quarter, from Tiberias to Tobolsk, is filthy, and redolent of old clothes and roguery. The Stadhuis is fine. I was much pleased with the stucco ornaments over the door of the Hall of Bankraptcy, which represents rats duck ing into empty purses, and rioting in empty boxes. A printed notice intended for the porter who shows the building, is very characteristic of Dutch formality : — " Le concierge est chargd de I'empecher avec politesse, mais sSrieusement." I was not fortunate enough to hear the organ in Haarlem, the only thing in the town much worth a visit. The cathedral was devoid of special interest, save what was afforded rae by an old dusty, cobwebbed raodel, hung up in an archway, of one of those grand, pictur esque old Dutch ships, with iramense lanterns and high poops, that somehow always suggest to me pleasant dreams of the Spanish main, the buccaneers, and rich prizes. The beadle also pointed out two marks in the wall, which, from the solemn air he assuraed in bidding us notice them, I at once guessed to be records of some martyrdom. But the upper mark, eight feet from the floor, recorded the height of a giant called Kejanas, and the lower, three feet high, that of a dwarf who bore the 158 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. name of Simon Paap ! These seem to have exhausted the ecclesiastical curiosities of Haarlem. Unfortunately we missed, by a few days, the bloom of flowers and " Dutch roots " famous in the neighbourhood. From what we saw, that sea of colour must be very beautiful when shining in its full tide of glory. Every one knows that the Haarlem Sea has been at last drained. A noble work I I forget how many thou sand acres have been pumped dry, or how many millions of tons of water have been weekly pouring out of this enormous tub for years. But the waters have finally left the earth, and the whole land is di-vided into polders, and becoming a green plain — ^pasturing cattle, amusing storks, supporting villages, and receiving the admiration of the industrious natives, who work and smoke their pipes in peace and safety on their fields, fifteen feet below high- water mark. The Hague, or Gravenhaven, is unquestionably the most pleasing town in HoUand. The park, ¦with its massy noble trees, gives it a picturesqueness and beauty not found elsewhere. These trees are the mountain ranges of Holland. Except a few steeples, there is nothing higher. There was the annual kermiss, or great fair, the week I was there. It would be unprofitable to my readers to describe at length those Dutch satumalia. With few ex ceptions, they were like every other exhibition of the same class : innumerable booths, many of them got up with wonderful taste and beauty, merchandise of all sorts, theatres, shows, horsemanship, giants and dwarfs, gam bling, drinking, tons of toys, tubs of pickles,, crowds of THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND, 159 men, women, and cliildren, dissipation of aU sorts night and day. The Dutch are proverbiaUy douce, sober, and forraal ; they have few amusements or excitements on week-days : their Sabbaths are, outwardly, almost as well kept as in Scotland. But. when such a holiday as a ker miss comes round, it seems to be understood araong the working classes, and even doraestic servants, that a general indulgence is proclaimed for every vice. This is just what one would expect. It is so with many in Scot land on our New-Year's days, and at some of our fairs. Men will have amusement and excitement, as certain as the ocean will have its springtides, and the world its summer flowers and summer songs. How shall this inborn appetite be fed ? ShaU it be treated as a crime, and handed over to Satan ? or shall it be made to minister to man's happiness according to God's wiU ? Shall it be pent up until it gathers strength to burst all the barriers of law and decency, and rush in annual floods of wild and unbridled passion ? or shall society recognise its necessity, perceive how full of goodness and benevolence it is, and adopt such wise plans as will run it off in gentle riUs, week by week, or even day by day, to freshen and irrigate the earth, and make our fields more green and beautiful ? Those who can adjust the demand for excitement to the other and higher demands for man's, nature and life, wUl confer an inestimable boon on society. All classes require their amusements to be reformed, not reduced ; spread over, not concentrated ; directed, not annihilated ; and taken out of the kingdom of Satan and brought into the well-ordered and beauti fully-balanced kingdom of Christ on earth. A danger i6o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. frora all extremes is to be found in their opposites. When the swing is highest on one side, look out for broken heads and falls on the other. One cause of the tendency .to pervert the Sabbath from a holy day to a holiday, is the incessant toil, barren of hours of rest, and of all amusement and gentle excitement, during the week. The bouts of hard drinking indicate many previous days of parched thirst. Let us leave the crowd of the fair and go to Scheve ling, on the sea-coast, about half-an-hour's drive from the Hague, and the only bathing quarters of the capital. We drove along a road straight as an arrow, with trees on each side, and at the end of it was a village intensely red, nestled beneath a ridge of sandhiUs, which sheltered it frora the ocean. We ascended these dunes, and reached a caf^ on the sea-side, which sprung out of the sand like an Egyptian torab, and almost as empty of living inhabitants. The day was cold, and the whole prospect intensely dreary and comfortless ; — fine sand drifting like snow before the cutting sea-blast, — the sea brown, gurly, and sulky-looking, — rows of Dutch fishing- boats arranged along the beach, their rotund sterns turned towards Great Britain, — the cafd containing only piles of chairs and benches, which prophesied of crowds yet to come, — we saw but one waiter, and nothing more cheering than Schiedam. Such was Scheveling. There is much in the Hague to interest one. There are many pleasing and undefined memories from the past, of " our ambassador at the Hague ; " " letters frora the Hague ; " " ministers who took refuge at the Hague ; " and though it was difficult, perhaps, to recall TIIE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. i6i much about any one ambassador, letter, or minister, in particular, yet you felt pleased in knowing that if the Hague could speak, and those old houses tell their story, it would be worth listening to. It had the interest of an old man who had seen strange things in his day, but was not communicative. Then there was for the present a royal family that I knew nothing about; and Paul Potter's Bull, with other pictures which the whole world know something about, and which were all worthy of those great artists, who had indeed eyes to see, hearts to feel, and hands to execute ; and there were many other things which were, associated with historical names and events that can never die, such as the house, the prison, and place of murder of the great De Witt ; the house and place of execution of the greater Bameveldt. Alas ! may we not pause and mark how often in the Hstory of this fallen race of ours these two things go together — great men and murdered men ! Truly hath Coleridge said, — It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that -which he merits. Or any merit that which he obtains." It must be so until the kingdom comes I The elay world is not capable of understanding genius, unless it makes itself " useful," by working in clay to supply the world with bowls and basons ; the selfish world cannot believe in the unselfishness of the truly great ; the proud yet little world cannot brook superiority; the hating world cannot admire love ; and so in all ages hath it been. The world " loves its own," and hates those who are not of it. It is so with the clerical world and the lay world ; 1 62 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. with the world, whether seen in Presbyteries or ParUa- ments, in Synagogues or Senates. The huge shams and humbugs hate the honest men and true ; and there are none so fierce and unscrapulous as those who think that they are doing God a service whUe serving their own passions. I liked right well to see in the Museum of the Hague the arms, clothes, &c., of such men as De Ruyter and Van Tromp — the Lord St Vincents and " mighty Nelsons " of Holland. The nation, like the family, is God's blessed and wise ordinance, and its independence should be defended with its last drop of blood ! And therefore one of the greatest gifts God gives a nation is that of great heroes, men who will " hazard their lives unto death " for their country, who wUl " wax valiant in fight," and "put to flight the armies of the aliens." Noble fellows were De Ruyter and Van Tromp ! Even England was afraid of them. I should like to end my " peep" in the old hall of the University of Leyden — to close my eyes gazing on the portraits on its walls — fall asleep, and awake any where except in a late debate of the General Assembly of the good Church of Scotland. The portraits are of the great professors who, as members chiefly (I believe) of the theological faculty, have made Leyden illustrious since it becarae a univer sity. Of course I requested ray guide to withdraw, that, all alone, I might get a whiff from the past amidst the deep repose of that ghost-like old hall. There were profound scholars there, like Scaliger ; men of science, like Boerhaave ; and divines, like Arminius ; and also, THE NETHERLANDS AND HOLLAND. 163 no doubt, the usual percentage of those whose names have gone araissing, except to antiquaries, among the dust of books and churchyards. Some easy men were there, with double chins and single wit, who transmitted faithfuUy to the next generation what they got from the past, all -wrapped up in a white napkin never opened by themselves, and who were awfully solemn in their re bukes of any student who profanely suggested an exami nation of the contents, lest they should have becorae mouldy by time and damp; and logical-looking men were there, with knit brows and sharp noses, who had the faculty of proving to a demonstration points which no one either believed or could contradict ; and weak though proud-looking men were there, who made sono rousness pass for sense, orthodoxy for religion, and "dig nified silence " the defence of their ignorance, and the graceful escape from their perplexities. There seemed to be God-loving men also among them, with giant brows and childlike eyes. Arminius was there — how good and mild he looked ! — with some of his followers, and Calvinists side by side. How these sects fought while on earth ! and most zealously in that land of ditches, sluggish canals, wheeling windmills, and dead flats. Great often was their mutual hate, too, in arguing about the love of God to some or to all. There were martyrs in Holland to the five points, and the Synod of Dort was well-nigh as dogmatic and exclusive as the Council of Trent. These good men are now in heaven. Looking at their portraits I was inclined to ask : " I wonden fathers and brethren, if you even now understand the mysteries about which you divided families and churches? i64 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES Are the decrees or foreknowledge yet comprehended by you in relation to man's responsibUity and free wUl?" Corae, let us breathe the air ! The figures begin to move on the walls, and we may have the dispute re newed, each ready to begin where he left off, finding that no one since their day has thrown any additional light upon it. What a charming thing it is to voyage by a trekschuit along the canals I What perfect repose ; what placid en joyment ; what rest in motion ; what an epitome of Holland ; and what a contrast to England or America ! The sunny canal, the quietly trotting horse, the regular and orderly succession of Dutch gardens, Dutch villas, and Dutch comfort, the sense of having nothing whatever to do, or railroads could not be so despised, — a glory from the past, when men were not rushing like mad bulls over the earth, as Carlyle would say, " from the inane to the inane again," but could quietly browse and chew their cud, — all this made the sail to Delft singularly pleasing. Delft itself has now no manufacture of " Delftware," as far as I know; but crockery is not, at best, interesting to me. Then came Rotterdam at night, the steamer in the moming, , the ocean at mid-day and next night ; Lon don again, with Blaekwall and the weary custom-house ; then farewells to ray travelling companions, the best ever man had ; then home. NORMAN MACLEOD. IX. FROM NORWAY. DO you wish your lungs to expand, your eyes to dUate, your muscles to spring, and your spirits to leap ? — then come to Norway ! I repeat it — be you man or woman, grave or gay; if you ever indulge in lofty aspirations, in bold contemplations, in desperate imaginings — corae to Norway, and you will receive much satisfaction, I assure you. Are you a raan ? You will find subject and occasion for your manhood. Are you a woman ? You will find yourself at the fountain-head of the sublime and beauti ful ! Are you scientific ? The rocks are bold and bare — the flora rich and varied. Birds and beasts of many kinds there are ; glaciers, too, miles and miles of thera, filling up the valleys, and covering the mountain tops- awaiting the inspection of your critical eye. Are you a painter ? There is araple field for the wildest pencil and the boldest brush. Are you a fisher ? Here is your terrestrial paradise. 1 66 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. But you must be a fisher of the rough school, — not " a foUower of the gentle art." Can you wade all' day in snow-water? Can you swim down a roaring rapid — perchance shoot over a cataract, and count it but a trifle — with a twenty-foot rod in your hands, and a thirty- pound salmon at the end of your line, making for the sea at the rate of twenty miles an hour ? Then, by all means, come to Norway. But you must be possessed of a singularly patient and self-denying character. Mark that well. I have heard of two gentlemen who came to Norway for six weeks expressly to catch salraon. They carae, they fished, they went back — one having caught two fish, the other none. The trip cost them ^^150. They came in the wrong season, that was all. It is not easy to ascertain the right season, for the time that is suitable for one river is not suitable for another. What a false impression of fishing in Norway raust have been given by those luckless gentlemen to their friends ! I could give a very different account of it, but fishing is not my theme at present. Are you a daring mountaineer? The mountains of Gamle Norge (Old Norway), though not so high as those of the Himalaya range, are high enough for most tnen. The eagle wUl guide you to heights — if you can follow him — on which human foot has never rested. Do you love the sunshine ? Think of the great luminary that rules the day, rolling through the bright blue sky all the twenty-four hours round. There is no night here in summer, but a long, bright, beautiful day, as if Nature were rejoicing in the banishment of night from earth for ever. FROM NORWA Y. 167 But, above all, do you love simplicity, urbanity, un sophisticated kindness in man ? Are you a student of huraan nature, and fond of dwelling on its brighter aspects ? Then once more I say, come to Norway, for you will find her sons and daughters overflowing with the railk of human kindness. I was fortunate enough to come to Norvvay in a friend's yacht, and voyaged along tiie west coast from south to north. This trip is one of the most agreeable that can be made. Steamers ply regularly during the summer months. For inforraation of all kinds in minute detail, I refer the reader to Murray's excellent " Hand-Book to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden." There is an advantage in voyaging along the west coast, which those who abhor the sea would do well to consider. The islands are so numerous that the swell of the ocean is corapletely broken, consequently there is no unpleasant motion — no sea-sickness ! Ponder that well, and do not shudder prematurely at the bare mention of yachts and steamers. It is impossible to give any one an adequate idea of what is meant by sailing among the islands off the coast of Norvvay, or of the delights attendant on such navigation. If you would understand this thoroughly, you must experience it for yourself Here is a brief summary of pleasures. Yachting without sea-sickness. Scenery ever changing, always beautiful and wild beyond description. Landing possible, desirable, frequent. Ex pectation ever on tiptoe. Hope constant. Agreeable surprises perpetual. Treraendous astonishments nu merous, and variety without end. Could any one desire i68 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. more ? The islands extend along the whole coast in myriads. I presume that their actual nuraber never has been, and never can be, ascertained. Some are so huge that you mistake them for the mainland. Others are so small that you might take thera for castles floating on the sea. And on many of them — most of them, perhaps — you find small houses — quaint, gable-ended, wooden, and red- tile-roofed — in the midst of small patches of ver dure, or, not unfrequently, perched upon the naked rock. In some cases a small cottage may be seen unrelieved by any blade of green, sticking in a crevice of the rock like sorae miniature Noah's Ark, that had taken the ground there and been forgotten when the flood went do'wn. There is not within the bounds of the known world a more splendid cruising ground than this great archipelago, which may, I think, be appropriately terraed the island- world of Norway. Most travellers are inclined to class it with the wonders of the world; and he who does not, when passing through its wondrous intricacies, find him self transported into a new world of thought and feeling, must himself be deemed a world's wonder. Of course a good deal depends on the weather being propitious. Let this remark be particularly noted, for of all subjects of discussion, there is not one more fertUe of difference of opinion and flat contradiction on the part of travellers than that of scenery; and, having pondered this subject, I have come to the conclusion that, apart from variety of taste, which induces one to admire extravagantly what another views with comparative indifference, or with ab solute disHke — this difference of opinion is altogether due to weather. FROM NOR WAY. 169 You come on deck in the morning ; the sun is blazing in the bright blue sky ; the water is flat as a mill-pond — clear as a sheet of crystal. Sky-piercing mountains surround you, islands are scattered everywhere, but no mainland is visible, yet rauch of what you see appears to be mainland, for the mountains are islands and the islands are mountains. Indeed it is alraost irapossible to tell where the mainland begins, and where the island-world ends. The white mists of early morning are rolling over the deep — shrouding, partially concealing, partly dis closing, mingling with and ramifying everything, water and sky inclusive. On one side an island-mountain, higher and grander than Ben Nevis, rears itself up so precipitously and looks down on the sea so frowningly, that it appears as if about to topple over on your head. On the other side a group of low skerries, bald and gray, just peep out above the level of the water, bespattered with and overshadowed by myriads of clamorous sea gulls. You gaze out ahead, you glance over the stern, and behold sirailar objects and scenes endlessly repeated and diversified. The ascending sun scatters the mists, glitters on the sea, and converts the island-world into gold. You almost shout ¦with delight. You seize your sketch-book (if a painter), your note-book (if an author), and, with brash or pencU, note down your fervid impressions in glowing colours or in words that burn. Ten to one, however, you omit to note that a large proportion of the beauty in the midst of which you are revelling is transient, and owes its existence very much to the weather. Another traveller passes through the same scenes 1 70 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. under less favourable circurastances. The sky is gray, the mountains are gray, the water is gray or black, and a stiff breeze, which tips the wavelets with snow-white crests, causes him to feel disagreeably cold. The gulls are silent and melancholy ; the sun is nowhere ; perhaps a drizzle of rain makes the deck sloppy. The great island mountains are there, no doubt, but they are dis mally, gloomily grand. The rocky islets are there too ; but they look uncomfortable, and seem as if they would fain hide their heads in the troubled sea, in order to escape the gloom of the upper world. The traveller groans and brushes away the rain.-drops that hang from the point of his lugubrious nose. If, in the eccentricity of despair, he should ' retire to the cabin, draw forth his note-book and apply his stiffened fingers and chilled ¦ intellect to the task of composition, what does he write? " Detestable weather. Beauty of scenery absurdly over rated. Savage enough it is, truly ; would that I were not in a like condition !" Thus difference of opinion arises, and thus the non-travelling public is puzzled in its mind by the conflicting statements of men of unimpeachable veracity. Through this island-world we saUed until the great mountain ranges of the interior became clearly visible, and as we gazed into the deep fjords we felt that that boldness and raggedness so eminently characteristic of the old Norse vikings must have been fostered, if not created, by the scenery of their fatherland. As we gazed and pondered, a huge old-fashioned ship came out suddenly from behind an island, as if to increase the archaic character of the scenery. There it was un- FROM NOR WAY. 171 doubtedly (and there it may be seen every day), with the same high stempost as the galleys of old, only wanting a curve at the top and a dragon's head to make it com plete, — and the same huge single mast with its one unwieldy square sail. Presently a! boat shot alongside and a sedate seaman stepped on board — a blue-eyed, fair-haired, sallow man, with knee-breeches and long stockings, rough jacket, no vest, a red night-cap, and a glazed hat on the top of it. This was the pilot. He was a big, placid-looking man of about forty, with a slouching gait and a pair of immensely broad shoulders. We found that he had been away north for several weeks, piloting a vessel of some sort beyond the Arctic circle. He was now close to his home, but our signal had diverted him from his domestic leanings, and, like a thorough sea-monster, he prepared, at a moment's notice, for another voyage. The ob^vious advantage that a yachter has over the voyager by steamboat is, that he can cast anchor when and where he pleases, and diverge from his course at will. Thus he discovers unsuspected points of interest, and visits numberless spots of exquisite beauty, which, I verUy believe, lie thickly hidden among these isles, as corapletely unkno^wn to man (with the exception of a few obscure native fishermen in the neighbourhood) as are the vast solitudes of Central Africa. The yachter may sail for days, ay, for weeks, among these western islands, imbued with the romantic feelings of a Mungo Park, a Livingstone, or a Robinson Crusoe ! This is by no means a wild statement. When we consider the immense extent of the Norwegian coast, the innumerable 172 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. friths of all sizes by which it is cut up, and the absolute irapossibUity of being certain as to whether the inlets vs'hich you pass in hundreds are fjords ranning into the main or mere channels between groups of islands, coupled with the fact that there is comparatively little traffic in the minor fjords except such as is carried on by native boats and barges, we can easily conceive that there are many dark friths along that coast which are as little known to travellers now, as they were in the days when Rolf Ganger issued from them with his vikings to conquer Normandy, and originate those faraUies from which have sprang the present aristocracy of England. We ascended a fjord of this kind which we knew had not up to that tirae been visited, because there was a glacier at the head, which is mentioned by Professor Forbes as being known only through native report — no traveUer having seen it. This was the Skars fjord m lat. 67° N. The mere fact of this glacier being unknown, except by report, induced us to turn into the fjord with all the zest of explorers. A ran of twelve miles brought us within sight of the object of our search, the first glance at which filled us with awe and admiration.. But the longer we stayed and explored this magnificent "ice- river," the more were we amazed to find how inadequate were our first conceptions of its immense size. Appearances here are to our eyes very deceptive; owing, doubtless, to our being unaccustomed to scenery of such grandeur and magnitude. This glacier of the Skars fjord appeared to be only a quarter ofa mile wide. On measuring the valley, which it entirely fiUed up, we found it to be nearly two miles in breadth. Its lower FROM NORWAY. 173 edge appeared to be a few feet thick, and about twenty yards or so from the sea, the shore of whicii was strewn with what appeared to be large stones. On landing, we found that the space between the ice and the sea was upwards of half a mile in extent ; the large stones turned out to be boulders, varying in size from that of a small boat to a large cottage ; while the lower edge of the glacier itself was an irregular wall of ice about fifteen or twenty feet in height. Standing at its base we looked up the valley over the fissured surface of the ice to that point where the white snow of its upper edge cut clear and sharp against the blue sky, and, after much consultation, we came to the conclusion that it might be three or four miles from top to bottom. But, after wandering the whole day up the vaUey by the margin of the ice and carefully exploring it, we were forced to believe that it must be at least eight or ten miles in extent, and un doubtedly it was many hundreds of feet thick. When we reflect that this immense body of ice is only one of the many tongues which, descending the numerous valleys, carry off the overflow of the great mer de glace on the hill-tops of the interior, we can form sorae con ception of the vast tract of Norwegian land that lies buried summer and winter under the ice. There was a littie blue spot in the glacier at a short distance from its lower edge which attracted our atten tion. On reaching it we found that it was a hole in the roof of the sub-glacial river. The ice had recently faUen in, and I never beheld such intensely soft and beautiful blue colour as was displayed in the caverns thus exposed to view, varying from the faintest cerulean tinge to the 174 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. deepest indigo. Immense masses of rock which had fallen from the cliffs lay scattered along the surface of the ice near the edge, and were being slowly transported towards the sea — so slowly that probably months would pass before the smallest symptom of a change in position could be observed. There were very few natives in this wild spot — so few that their presence did not in any appreciable degree affect the solitude and desolation of the scene. They expressed much surprise at seeing us, and said that travellers like ourselves had never been there before. Indeed, I have no doubt whatever that in many out-of- the-way places we were absolutely the first individuals of a class somewhat different from themselves that these poor Norse fishermen and small farmers of the coast had ever set eyes upon. Their looks of surprise in some cases, and of curiosity in all, showed this plainly enough. In one chaotic glen or gorge where we landed we distributed a few presents among the people— such as knives, scissors, and thimbles — with which they were immensely delighted. Three of our party were ladies ; and the curiosity exhibited by the Norse women in regard to our fair companion's was very amusing. By the way, one of the said "fair" companions was a brunette, and her long jet black ringlets appeared to afford matter for unceasing wonder and admiration to the flaxen-haired maidens of Norway. Of course I speak of the untravelled districts. In the regular highways of the country, travel lers of every class and nation are common enough now. But Norway, in the interior as well as on the coast, has this advantage over other lands, that there are regions. FROM NORWAY. 175 plenty of them, where travellers have never been, and to reach which is a matter of so great difficulty that it is probable few will ever attempt to go. This fact is a matter of rejoicing in these days of railroads and steam boats ! On another occasion, while we were sailing up the Sogney fjord, which rans between stupendous mountains about a hundred miles into the interior of the country, we carae to a gap in the raountains into which ran a branch of the fjord. The spirit of discovery was strong upon my friend, the o-wner of the yacht, so he ordered our skipper to tum into it. We were soon ranning into as wild and gloomy a region as can well be conceived, with the raountains rising, apparently, straight up from the sea into the clouds, and tongues of the great Justedal glacier peeping over their sumraits. We turned into a large bay and cast anchor under the shadow of a hill more than 5000 feet high. Here we found the natives kind and hospitable ; but, indeed, this is the unvarying experience of travellers in Norway. They were not, in this fjord, like the poverty- stricken fishermen of the outer islands. They were a civilised, comfortable looking, apparently well off, and altogether jo-vial race of people, some of whom took a deep interest in us, and overwhelmed us with kind attentions. Their houses, which were built of wood, did not present much appearance of luxury, but there was no lack of all the solid comforts of life. No carpets covered the floors, and no paintings, except a few badly- coloured prints, graced the walls. But there were huge, quaint-looking stoves in every room, suggestive of a 176 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. genial temperature ; and there were scattered about numbers of immense meerschaum pipes and tobacco pouches, suggestive of fireside gossip — perchance legends and tales of the old sea kings — in the long dark nights of winter. I was strengthened, here, in my belief in the indis soluble connexion between fat and good-humour; for all the people of this fjord seemed to me to be both good-humoured and fat. It was here, too, that I was for the first time strongly impressed with my own lamentable ignorance of the Norse language. Never theless, the old proverb — " Where there's a wiU there's a way" — held good, for the way in which I managed to hold converse with the natives of that region was as tounding even to myself! One bluff, hearty feUow of about fifty, with fair hair, a round, oily countenance, and bright blue eyes, took me off to see his wife and family. Up to this time our party had always kept together, and, being a lazy student, I had been wont to maintain a modest silence whUe some of my companions, raore versed in the language, did all the talking. But now I found myself, for the first time, alone with a Norwegian 1 — fairly left to my o-wn resources. Well, I began by stringing together all the Norse I knew (it was not much), and endeavouring to look as if I knew a great deal more. But I soon found that Murray's list of sentences did not avail me in a lengthened and de sultory conversation. My speech quickly degenerated into sounds that were quite unintelligible to either my new friend or myself, and I terminated at last in a mixture of bad Norse and broad Scotch ! FROM NORWAY. 177 I may remark, in passing, that there is a strong family likeness between Norse and broad Scotch. For instance, they call a cow a ko or coo. Gaae til land, is, go to land, go ashore. Tage place, is, take place, or sit down. Vil de tak ain dram ? scarcely requires translation — and the usual reply to that question is equally clear and emphatic — Ya, /eg (pronounced Yie) vil tak ain dram ! If you ¦ talk of bathing, they will advise you to dook oonder; and should a mother present her baby to you, she will call it her smook bi'irn (pronounced bam) — her pretty chUd, or bairn, smook being the Norse word for pretty. And it is a curious fact, worthy of particular note, that all the mothers in Norway think their bairns smook, very smook, and they never hesitate to tell you so. Why, I cannot imagine, unless it be that if you were -not told you would not be Ukely to find it out for yourself ! My fat friend and I soon becarae very amicable and communicative on this system. He told me innumerable stories, of which I did not comprehend a sentence ; but, nevertheless, I looked as if I did, smiled, nodded my head, and said "Ya, ya," to which he always replied, " Ya, ya," waving his arms and slapping his chest, and rolling his eyes, as he bustled along towards his dweUing. The cottage was a curious little thing — a sort of huge toy, perched on a rock close to the water's edge. If it had slipped off that rock — a catastrophe which had at least the appearance of being possible — it would have plunged into forty or fifty fathoms water, so steep were the hUls and so deep the sea at that place. Here my friend found another subject to expatiate upon and dance round, in the shape of his own baby — a soft, smooth M 1 78 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. counterpart of himself — which lay sleeping like Cupid in its crib. The man was evidently extremely fond of this infant, not to say proud of it. He went quite into ecstasies about it ; now gazing at it with looks of pensive admiration ; anon starting and looking at me, as if to say, " Did you ever in all your life behold such a beautiful cherub ? " The man's enthusiasm was really catching — I began to feel quite a paternal interest in the cherub myself " Oh i " he cried, in rapture, " det er smook biirn." "Ya, ya,'' said I, "megit smook'' (very pretty), although I must confess that smoked baim would have been equally appropriate, for it was as brown as a red- herring. I spent an agreeable, though mentally confused, aftemoon with this hospitable man and his two sisters, who were placid, fat, amiable, and fair. They gave me the impression of having never been in a condition ot haste or perturbation frora their birthdays up to that tirae. We sat in a sort of small garden, round a green painted table, drinking excellent coffee, of which beverage the Norwegians seem to be very fond. The costume of these good people was of an uncom monly sombre hue ; indeed, this is the case throughout Norway generally. But when a Norse girl marries, she comes out for once in briUiant plumage. She decks herself out in the gaudiest of habUiments, with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments. The most conspicuous part of her costume is a crown of pure silver, gUt, and a scarlet-cloth breast-piece, which is thickly studded with silver-gilt brooches and beads of various hues, besides little round mirrors ! This breast- FROM NOR WA Y. 1 79 piece and the crown usually belong, not to the bride, but to the district ! They are a species of public property hired out by each bride on her wedding-day for the sum of about five shiUings. This costume is gorgeous, and reraarkably becoming, especially when worn by a fair-haired, blue-eyed, and pretty Norse girl. Some time after the little touch of doraestic life above narrated, we had a speciraen of the manner in which the peasants of these remote glens indulge in a little public recreation. We chanced to be up at the head of the Nord fjord on the eve of St John's day, — not the day of the EvangeUst, but of the Baptist. This is a great day in Norway ; and poor indeed must be the hamlet where, on the eve of that day, there is not an attempt raade to kindle a mighty blaze and make merry. On St John's Eve, bonfires leap and roar over the length and breadth of the land. The manner in which the people rejoiced upon this occasion was curious and amusing. But here I must turn aside for one moment to guard myself from mis- constraction. It needs little reasoning to prove that where the mountains rise something like walls into the clouds, and are covered with everlasting ice, the inhabitants of the valleys may have exceedingly little intercourse with each other. Hence, what may be true of one vale may not be true of another. In these rough descriptions I would not have it understood that I atterapt to give the characteristic features of the Norwegian people. The doings on this occasion may or may not have been peculiar, in some points, to this particular valley at the head of the Nord fjord. I i8o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. simply describe what I saw. With an apology for this defensive digression, I proceed. It was midnight when we went to a field at the base of a mountain to witness the rejoicings of the people. But the midnight hour wore not the sombre aspect of night in our more southerly climes. The sun had indeed set, but the blaze of his refulgent beams stUl shot up into the zenith, and sent a flood of light over the whole sky. In fact, it was almost broad daylight, and the only -change that took place that night was the gradual increasing of the light as the sun rose again, at a preposterously early hour, to recommence his long-continued journey through the summer sky. Assembled on the greensward of the field, and sur rounded by mountains whose summits were snow-capped and whose precipitous sides were seamed with hundreds of cataracts that gushed from frozen caves, were upwards of a thousand men and women. There seemed to me to be comparatively few children. To give a pretty fair notion of the aspect of this concourse it is necessary to give an account of only two individual units thereof. One man wore a dark brown pair of coarse homespun trousers, a jacket and vest of the same material, and a bright scarlet cap, such as fishermen are wont to wear. One woman wore a dark coarse go-wn and a pure white kerchief on her head tied under her chin. There were some slight modifications, no doubt, but the multiplication of those two by a thousand gives very nearly the desired result. The raen reserabled a crop of enormous poppies, and the women a crop of equally gigantic lilies. Yet, although the brilliancy of the red and white was intense, FROM NORWAY, iSr the deep sombreness of the undergrowth was overpower ing. There was a dark rifle-corps-like effect about them at a distance, which — albeit suggestive of pleasing military memories in these volunteering days — was in itself emphatically dismal. Having come there to enjoy themselves, these good people set about the manufacture of enjoyment witb that grave, quiet, yet eminently cheerful demeanour, which is a characteristic feature of most of the country people of Norway whom I have seen. They had delayed com mencing operations until our arrival. Several of the older men came forward and shook hands with us very heartUy, after whicii they placed three old boats together and covered them outside and in with tar, so. that when the torch was applied there was such a sudden blaze of light as dimmed the lustre of the midnight sun himself for a time. Strange to say, no enthusiasm, seemed to kindle in the breasts of the peasants. A careless observer would have deemed them apathetic, but this would have been a mistaken opinion. They evidently looked on the mighty blaze with cahn felicity. Their enjoyment was clearly a matter of fact : it may have been deep ; it certainly was not turbulent. Soon we heard a sound resembUng the yells of a pig. This was a violin. It was accompanied by a noise resembling the beating of a flour-mill, which, we found, proceeded from the heel of the musician, who had placed a wooden board under his left foot for the purpose of beating time with effect. He thus, as it were, played the fiddle and beat the drum at the same time. Round this musician the young men and maidens formed a ring and 1 82 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. began to dance. There was little talking, and that little was in an undertone. They went to work with the utmost gravity and decorum. Scarcely a laugh was heard — nothing approaching to a shout during the whole night — nevertheless, they enjoyed themselves thoroughly : I have no doubt whatever of that. The nature of their dances was somewhat incompre hensible. It seemed as if the chief object of the young men was to exhibit their agility by every species of im promptu bound and fling of which the human frame is capable, including the rather desperate feat of dashing . themselves flat upon the ground. The principal care of the girls seemed to be to keep out of the way of the men and avoid being killed by a frantic kick or felled by a random blow. But the desperate features in each dance did not appear at first. Every man began by seizing his partner's hand, and dragging her round the circle, ever and anon twirling her round violently with one arra, and catch ing her round the waist with the other, in order — as it appeared to me — to save her from an untimely end. To this treatment the fair damsels submitted with pleased though bashful looks. But soon the men flung them off, and went at it entirely on their own account ; yet they kept up a sort of revolv ing course round their partners, like satellites encircling their separate suns. Presently the satellites assumed some of the characteristics of the comet. They rushed about the circle in wild erratic courses ; they leaped into the air, and, whUe in that position, slapped the soles of their feet with both hands. Should any one deem this an easy feat, let him try it. ' FROM NORWAY. 183 Then they became a little more sane, and a waltz or something like it was got up. It was really pretty, and some of the movements were graceful ; but the wild spirit of the glens re-entered the men rather suddenly. The females were expelled from the ring altogether, and the youths braced themselves for a little really heavy work ; they flung and hurled themselves about like maniacs, stood on their heads and walked on their hands — . in short, became a corapany of acrobats, yet always kept up a sympathetic feeling for time with the music. But not a man, woman, or chUd there gave vent to his or her feelings in laughter ! They smiled ; they comraented in a soft tone ; they looked happy — nay, I ara convinced they were happy — but they did not laugh. Once only did they give vent to noisy mirth, and that was when an aspiring youth (after having made the nearest possible approach to suicide) walked round the circle on his hands and shook his feet in the air. We left them, after a tirae, in the full swing of a prosperous manufacture of enjoyment, and walked home, about two o'clock in the morning, by brilliant daylight. But if the yachter enjoys many advantages in voyaging on the coast of Norway, he who travels by stearaer has the comfort of rapid transit from place to place, and enjoys many opportunities of studying the character and habits of the people. I chanced, once, to be the only Briton on board the steamer that plied between the Nord fjord and Bergen, and I was particularly struck, on that occasion, with the silence that seemed to be cultivated by the people, as if it were a virtue. I do not mean to say that the passengers 1 84 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES, and crew were taciturn — far fromi it ¦ they bustled about actively, and were quite sociable and talkative ; but all their talk was in an undertone — no voice was, ever raised to a loud pitch. Even the captain, when he gave orders, did so in a quiet voice, usually walking up to the men, and telling them gently to do so and so. 'When I called to mind the bellowing of our own nautical men, this seemed to me a remarkably modest way of getting on, and ¦very different from what one might have expected from the descendants of the rough vikings of old. The prevaUing quiescence, however, reached its culminating point at the dinner table, for there the silence was total, although a good deal of gesticulative ceremony and vigorous muscular action prevailed. When we had all assembled in the cabin at the whispered request of the steward, and had stood for a few minutes looking benign and expectant, but not talking, the captain entered, bowed to the company, was bowed to by the company, motioned us to our seats, whispered " vir so goot." and sat down. This phrase ver so goot (I spell it as pronounced) merits explanation in passing. It is an expression that seems' to me capable of extension and distension, and is frequently on the Up' of a Norwegian. It is a con venient, flexible, jovial expression, which is easily said, easily remembered, and means much. I cannot think of a better way of conveying an idea of its signification than by saying that it is a compound of the phrases, " he so. good"- — "by your leave" — "if you please" — "go it, my hearties" — and "that's your sort." The first of thesCj be sa good, is the Uteral translation, the remainder FROM NOR WA Y. \ 85 are the superinduced sentiments resulting frora the tone and manner in whieh the words are uttered. You may rely upon it that when a Norwegian offers you anything and says " ver so goot" ne means you well, and hopes you will make yourself comfortable. But, to return to our dinner party. There was no carving at this meal — a circumstance worthy of con sideration and imitation. The dishes were handed round by waiters. First of all we had sweet rice soup. with wine and raisins in it, the eating of which seemed to me like the spoiling of one's dinner with a bad pudding. This finished, the plates were removed. The silence had by this time begun to. impress me. " Now,'' thought I, " surely sorae one will converse with his neighbour during this interval.'' No ; not a lip moved! I glanced at my right and left hand men. I thought fpr a moment of venturing out upon the unknown deep of a foreign tongue, and cleared my throat ; but every eye was on me in an instant, and the sound of my awn voice, even in that familiar process,, was so appaUing that I subsided. I looked at the pr-etty girl opposite me, I felt certain that the young fellow next her was on the point of addressing her, but I was mistaken. Either he had forgotten what he meant to say or his thoughts were too big for utterance. I am still under the impression that this youth would have broken the ice had not the next course come on and claimed his undivided attention. The second course began with a dish like bread pudding, minus currants and raisins — suggestin.g the idea that tiiese ameliorative elements had been put into 1 86 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. the soup by mistake. It looked as if it were a sweet dish, but it turned out to be salt; and pure melted butter, without any admixture of flour and water, was handed round as sauce. After this came veal and beef cutlets, which we ate mixed with cranberry jam, pickles and potatoes. Then came the concluding course — cold sponge cake, with almonds and raisins scattered over it. By this arrangement we were enabled, after eating the cake as pudding, to slide naturaUy and pleasantly into dessert without a change of plates. There was a general tendency in the company to bend their heads over, and rather close to, their plates while eating, as if for the purpose of communing privately with the viands, and a particular tendency on the part of the man next me to spread his arms and thrust one of his elbows into my side, in regard to , which I exercised rauch forbearance. The only beverages used, besides cold water, were table beer and St Julien, the latter a thin acid wine much used in Norway ; but there was no drinking after dinner. It seemed to be the etiquette to rise from table simultaneously. We did so on this occasion, and then a general process of bowing ensued. In regard to this latter proceeding, I have never been able to arrive at a clear understanding as to what was actuaUy done or intended to be done, but my impression is, that each bowed to the other, and all bowed to the captain ; then the captain bowed to each individually, and to all collectively ; after which a comprehensive bow was made by everybody to all the rest all round, and then we went on deck. In fact, it seemed as if the effect of dinner had been to fill each man with such over- FROM NORWAY. 187 flowing benignity and goodwiU that he would have smUed and bowed to a bedpost had it come in his way, and I am certain that the obliging waiters came in for a large share of these civUities, and repaid the company in kind. As each guest passed out, he or she said to the cap tain, " tak for mad." This is a " manner and custom " throughout all Norway, and means thanks for meat. The expression is usually accompanied with a shake of the host's hand, but that part of the ceremony was not per formed upon this occasion, probably because the captain was not a bond fide host, seeing that we had paid for our dinner. With the exception of these three words at the end, and " ver so goot " at the beginning, not a single syllable was uttered by any one during the whole course of that meal. When the deck was gained the gentlemen immediately took to sraoking. As a matter of course, Norwegians smoke, and they entertain enlarged ideas on that subject, if one may judge from the immense size of their meer schaums, and the large fat tobacco-pouch that is worn by every man, strapped across his shoulders. There was a youth in this steamer — a beardless youth — whose first thought in the morning, and whose last gUmmer of an idea at night, was his pipe, the bowl of which was as large as his own fist. I remember watch ing him with deep interest. He was long, cadaverous, and lanky — in these respects, unlike his countrymen. He slept on the sofa just opposite the spot whereon I lay, so that, unless I turned my face to the side of the vessel or shut my eyes, he was an unavoidable subject of contem- i88 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. plation. On awaking, he stretched himself, which act had an alarming appearance in one so long by nature, and so attenuated. Then he fiUed his pipe with an air of deep abstraction and profound melancholy — the re sult, I suppose, of his being unrefreshed by his recent slumbers. Qf course na one of sense would think of attributing this to excessive smoking ! The pipe fiUed, he arose ; on rising, he lit it ; while dressing, he smoked- it; and till breakfast it burned fiercely like a blast furnace. During the morning meal it went out, but before the big bowl had tune to cool it was rekindled. He smoked till dinnex-time ; dined, and smoked tUl tea- time; tea'd, and smoked tUl bed-time. Then he lay down for'the night, and still continued to smoke until I or he, I forget which, fell asleep. He awoke before I did next morning, so that when I opened my eyes the first object they rested on -was the bowl of that youth's meerschaum enveloped in clouds, of smoke 1 I am tempted to moralise, but I refrain. Mankind) is smitten with the disease, and I am- afraid that it is incurable. Of cojiurse, the further nortii you go in voyaging along the coast, during the ro.onths of June and July, tbe brighter and longer becomes the daylight, until at Mst you arrive at the regions of perpetual day. The exqui site charm of this novel state of things is utterly beyond the comprehension of those who have not experienced it. Apart altogether from the gladdening influence of sunshine, there is something delightfully reckless in the feeling that there is no necessity whatever for taking note of the flight of time — no fear lest we should, whUe wan dering together, or perchance alone, among the moun- FROM NOR WAY. 1 89 tains, be overtaken by night. During several weeks we lived in the blaze of a long nightless day. White we were in this bright region most of us laid aside our watches as useless, leaving it, if I remember rightly, to the skipper of our yacht to tell us when Sunday came round, for we always, when practicable, spent that day at anchor, and had service on board. I do not use hyperbolical language when speaking of this perpetual dayUght. During several weeks, after we had crossed the arctic circle, the sun descended little more than its own diameter below the horizon each night, so that it had scarcely set when it rose again, and the diminution of the light was quite insignificant ; it did not approach in the slightest degree to twUight. If I had been suddenly awakened during any of the twent}'-four hours, in the cabin of the yacht, or in any place from which it was impossible to observe the position of the sun, I could not have told whether it was night or day ! Having said that, it is almost superfluous to add that we could, even in the cabin, read the smallest print at mid night as easily as at noon-day. Moreover, a clear mid night was absolutely brighter than a cloudy forenoon. Nevertheless, there was a distinct difference between night and day— a difference with which Ught had nothing to do. I am inclined to think that the incalculable m)Tiads of minute and invisible creatures with which God has filled the soUtudes of this world, even more largely than its inhabited parts, exercise a much more powerful influence on our senses than we suppose. During the day-time these teeming miUions, bustling about in the activities of their tiny spheres, create an actual, though 1 90 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. unrecognisable noise. I do not refer to gnats and flies so much as to those atomic insects whose little persons are never seen, and whose individual voices are never heard, but whose collective hum is a fact that is best ¦ proved by the silence that foUows its cessation. In. the evening these all retire to rest, and night is marked by a deep impressive stillness, which we are apt erroneously to suppose is altogether the result of that noisy giant man having betaken himself to his lair. Yet this difference between night and day was only noticeable when we were alone, or very quiet ; the preponderating noises resulting from conversation or walking were more than sufficient to dispel the sweet influence. We were often very far -wrong in our ideas of time. Once or twice, on landing and going into a hamlet on the coast, we have been much surprised to find the deepest silence reigning everywhere, and, on peeping in at a window, to observe that the inhabitants were all abed, while the sun was blazing high in the heavens. Sorae times, too, on returning frora a shooting or fishing expedi tion, I have seen a bush or a tree full of small birds, each standing on one leg, with its head thrust under its wing and its round little body puffed up to nearly twice its usual size, and have thus been reminded that the hours for rest had returned. Of course, a little observation and reflection would at any tirae have cleared up our rainds as to whether day or night was on the wing — nevertheless, I state the simple trath when I say that we were often much perplexed, and sometimes ludicrously deceived, by the conversion of night into day. On one occasion we lay becalmed in a fjord some- FROM NORWAY. 191 where beyond the arctic circle. It was fine weather, but the sky was not so bright as usual, being obscured by clouds. A fisherman's boat happening to pass, we re solved to take advantage of it and escape the monotony of a calm by having a row up the fjord. The fisherman said there was a good salmon river and plenty of ptar migan at a place little more than a Norse mUe off — equal to about seven English miles — so we took rods and guns with us. It was evening when we set forth, but I did not know the exact hour. The scenery was lovely — there, good reader, don't ex claim " Pshaw ! of course ; I know all that ! " — I merely refer to that hackneyed subject in this place in order to reraark that the scenery through which we passed, at this particular place, was on a smaller scale than is usual in Norway, and that we enjoyed our row more than usual in consequence ; and to deduce from these two facts the great general principle that scenery on a small scale is inore enjoyable than scenery on a large scale. More over, I would add that the reason of this seems to be that, when in the midst of scenery on a sraall scale, the traveller is constantly and rapidly presented with new views, as well as with beautiful and varied combinations of the same views, while in that on a large scale the eye becomes indifferent to the almost changeless grandeur of prospects which are so vast that they are necessarily pre sented to the view for hours at a time. On our way we met with a Finn. He stood on a rock, gazing at us with much interest. I know not in what circle of. Finnish society this individual moved, but his class and tribe had certainly no reason to be proud of 192 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. his personal appearance. He was diminutive, dis- heveUed and dirty. His dress was a leathern tunic, belted round the waist ; his leggings were of the same material. But the most conspicuous portion of his cos tume was a tall, conical worsted night-cap', which we neatly, but accidentally, knocked off his head with a piece of tobacco. He looked -angry at first, but on be coming aware of the nature and quality of our raissile, his weather-beaten visage beamed with forgiving smiles. Next, we came upon an eagle, which alighted on a ¦tree and allowed us to come within long range-^at least our sanguine temperaments induced us to hope that it was long range — before taking flight. Of course it took no notice whatever of the three shots that were fired at it. Soon after that we reached the mouth of the river. Here we found a small hamlet of exceedingly poor people, who received us hospitably, but with such evident astonishment, that we concluded they had never seen civUised visitors before. Their fjord was off the track of steamers, and far distant from any town. They thera selves were little, if at all, better than North American Indians. They gathered round us with open eyes and mouths, and the women handled our clothes with evident wonder. We presented them with several pairs of scis- . sors, whereupon they shook hands with us all round and said " tak "¦ — thanks — very heartily. In this custom of shaking hands when a gift is presented, I usually found that the receiver shook hands not only with the donor, but, in the exuberance of his gratitude, with the whole party. The looks of the people betokened either that scissors FROM NORWAY. 193 were entirely new implements to them, or that those we presented were of unusually good quality. They went about snipping everything in the most reckless manner. One woman caught hold of the ends of her daughter's neckerchief and snipped them both off; whereupon her husband plucked them out of her hand, and snipped off the ends of his beard. Here the huts being dirty, we pic-nicked on the green sward. AVe had brought tea and biscuit with us, and the natives supplied us with some thick sour milk with half an inch of sour cream on it — a dish which is common all over Norway, and is rauch relished by the people as well as by many of their visitors. This disposed off, we set out — sorae to fish, and others to shoot. I went off alone with my gun. Ptarmigan, in suramer pluraage, which is brown with pure white feathers intermixed, were numerous, but wild. They were just tame enough to lead rae on in an excited and hopeful state of mind for several hours, regardless of the flight of time. At last I became tired, and having bagged four or five birds, I returned to the boat, where I found my comrades. One of them chanced to have a -watch, and froin him I learned that it was just two o'clock in the moming ! so that I had actually been shooting all night by daylight ; and the sun had set and risen again without my being aware of the fact. We did not get back to the yacht till eight o'clock a.m., when we found the crew just sitting down to a breakfast of oatmeal por ridge. Some of us having refreshed ourselves with a dip in the sea, took a plate of this. Then we went to bed, and rose again at six o'clock that evening to breakfast. 194 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. During one of my solitary rambles with the gun, I had the good fortune to shoot a magnificent eagle. I say good fortune advisedly, because the eagle is so wary that few sportsmen succeed in kiUing one, and those who do 'have raore cause fo be thankful for their luck than proud of their prowess. It happened thus : About two o'clock one beautiful morning in July I lay wide awake in my berth, looking up through the sky-light at the bright blue heavens ; the yacht being becalmed sornewhere between latitudes 64 and 65, and the sun having commenced to ascend the vault from which it had disappeared for only half an hour. On that night — if I may be permitted the inap propriate expression — I could not sleep. I counted the hours as they passed slowly by ; practised without success the various little devices that are erroneously supposed to bring slumber to the sleepless ; grew desperate, and finally jumped up at four a.m., resolving to row myself to the nearest island and shoot. There were usually eider ducks in the little creeks, and ptarmigan among the scrub. Should these fail rae, I could vent my spleen on the gulls. Arming rhyself with a double-barrel, I quaffed a tumbler of water and sallied forth, ignorant of the fact that it contained a large dose of morphia, which had been prescribed for an ailing but refractory meraber of our party the previous evening. No one was stirring. It was a dead calm. Landing on a lovely island, of perhaps five or six mUes in extent, which rose in the form of a rugged mountain to a height of about four thousand feet, I rambled for some time among low bushes and wild FROM NOR WA Y. 1 95 flowers, but found no game. The gulls, as if aware of my intentions, had forsaken the low rocks, and were flying high up among the precipices and serried ridges and peaks of the mountain. Resolved not to be dis comfited, I began to ascend, and as I mounted upward, the splendour of the island scenery became more apparent. The virtuous feelings consequent upon early rising induced a happy frame of mind, which was in creased by the exhUarating influence of the mountain air. It was a wUd lonesome place, full of deep dark gorges and rugged steeps, to clamber up which, if not a work of danger, was at least one of difficulty. While I stood on a rocky ledge, gazing upwards at the sinuosities of the ravine above me, I observed a strange apparition near the edge of a rock about forty yards off. It was a face, a red, hairy, triangular visage, with a pair of piercing black eyes, that gazed down upon me in unmitigated amazement. The gun flew to my shoulder ; I looked steadily for a moment ; the e3'es winked ; bang ! went the gun, and when the smoke cleared away the eyes and head were gone. Clambering hastily up the cliff, I found a red fox lying dead behind a rock. Bagging Reynard, I ascended the giddy heights where the gulls were circling. Here the clouds enshrouded me occasionally as they sailed past, making the gulls loom gigantic. Suddenly an enorraous bird swooped past me, looking so large in the white mist that I felt assured it must be an eagle. I squatted behind a rock at once, and as the mists cleared away a few minutes later I saw him clearly enough sailing high up in the sky. I glanced down at the yacht that lay Hke a speck on the 196 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. water far below, and up at the noble bird that went soaring higher and higher every moment, and I felt a species of awe creep over me when I thought of the tremendous gulf of space that lay between that eagle and the world below. He was evidently bent on making closer acquaintance ¦ with some of the gulls, so I sat down behind a rock to watch ihira. But knowing the shyness and the sharp- sightedness of the bird I soon gave up all hope of getting a shot. Presently he made a rapid circling ffight down wards, and, after hovering a few minutes, alighted on a cliff several hundred yards distant from my place of concealment Hope at once revived ; I rose, and began, with the utmost caution, to creep towards hira. The rugged nature of the ground favoured my approach, else I should never have succeeded in evading the glance of his bold and watchful eye. When I had approached to within about eighty or ninety yards, I carae to an open space, across which it was impossible to pass without being seen. This was beyond conception vexing. To lose him when almost within ray grasp was too bad ! I thought of trying a long shot, but feeling certain that it would be useless, I prepared, as a last resource, to make a sudden rush towards him and get as near as possible before he should rise. The plan was successful. Cocking both barrels I darted out of my place of concealment with the wild haste of a maniac, and, before the astonished eagle could launch himself off the cliff, I had lessened the distance between us by at least thirty yards. Then I took rapid aim, and fired both barrels almost simultaneously. I FROM NOR WA Y. 197 might as well, apparently, have discharged a pop-gun at him. Not a quiver of wing or tail took place. He did not even accelerate his majestic flight, as the shots rever berated from cliff to cliff, and I watched him sail slowly round a crag and disappear. Re-loading I sauntered in moody desperation in the direction of his flight, and soon gained the point round -ft'hich he had vanished, when, behold ! he lay on the ground with his broad wings expanded to their full extent and his head erect. I ran towards hira, but he did not move, and I soon saw that he was mortally wounded. On coming close up, I was corapelled to halt and gaze at him in admiration. He raised his head, and looked at me with a glance of lofty disdain which I shall never forget The conformation of the eagle's eye is such that its habitual expression, as every one knows, resembles that of deep indignation. This bird had that look in perfec tion. His hooked beak was above four inches long, and it strack me that if he were disposed to make a last gallant straggle for Iffe when I grasped him, such a beak, ¦with its corresponding talons, would give me some ugly wounds before I could master hira. I therefore laid my gun gently across his back and held him down therewith while I caught him by the neck. But his fighting days were over. His head drooped forward, and his bold eye closed in death a few seconds later. Afterwards I found that the whole charge of bothbarrels had lodged in his body and thighs, yet, on receiving this, he did not wince a hair's-breadth, or in any other way indicate that he had been touched. He measured exactly six feet six inches across the expanded wings. 19,8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Alas ! his stuffed skin, which I have preserved as a •Norwegian trophy, gives but a feeble idea of what the bird was when, in all the fire of strength, courage, and freedom, he soared above the mountain-peaks of Norway. R. M. ballantyne. X. COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. JULY 6. — We are now really settled in the country. We are at Arsta, the old family property of the Bremers, purchased when the father,. of Fredrika left Finland, at the time she was four years old. We left Stockholm yesterday, by the stearaer, and had a beautiful sail through a part of the Skargard, which is very extensive, the mainland being edged by a wide- stretching archipelago of rocky islets, on which grow fir and birch trees, very much in the character of the Malar. It seeras, indeed, almost impossible to reach the open sea. The sea is not visible from the house at Arsta, although it is near. It is a large mansion, not built of wood but stone, painted white. In the front is an extensive court, on each side of which is a long, one-storied, red house, the one occupied by the people employed on the estate, the other by the family of Baron R., who has taken it for the summer. Dalaro is a little bathing-place 200 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. situated on a rocky hillside, facing one of the lake-like basins of the sea, with rocky islets and tongues of land before it, on one of the former of which stands an old fort, with its parasol-like top. We were three hours on the water between Stockholra and Dalaro, where Herr Saxenberg, the present possessor of Arsta, came in his comfortable, old-fashioned, close carriage to meet us. The coachman who drove the handsome pair of black horses was old Carl Adalfsson, who belonged to the estate in Miss Bremer's time, and was then employed in cutting wood and drawing water. One day when she was living there, seeing him at the well, she asked him if he did not find his life monotonous. " Monotonous ! no, indeed. There 's plenty of variety in it," he said. " Sometimes it 's wood, and sometimes it's water." There are two brick houses in Dalaro, but all the rest are wood ; snug little cabins, where people make them selves happy during the summer. There is quite a rage now to build little Swiss cottages on fertile nooks in the Skargard and by the Malar. This, it is said, is owing to the little steamboats, of comparatively modern introduc tion, which ply about these waters, and thus make their shores accessible. Leaving Dalaro, we drove through scenery which is characteristic of this part of Sweden : poor land, woods, and beautiful basins of water and wooded islands, and here and there a little wooden cottage. Before we left the high road to enter upon the Arsta estate, we passed within sight of a large, yellow, wooden country mansion, with a fine avenue, which, in Miss Bremer's time, was COUNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 201 occupied by two old brothers, who had a great abhor rence of women. They always took their dinner stand ing, having in their youth been made to do so by their parents. As soon as dinner was ended, one brother, by way of retuming thanks, said, " As it was in the begin ning," the other, "as it now is," and the old servant con cluded, " and ever shall be. Amen.'' Having entered the Arsta demesne, the carriage was brashed by the young birch-trees which formed thickets on either side of the way, for the fir-wood having been burned, and the land thus cleared, birches always spring up of themselves ; then through a pine wood, and over a large meadow, and the white house, with its tall roof and square tower, was before us. Fm Saxenberg and her daughters, Sofi, Theresa, and Selma, were on the steps to meet us, in their simple Swedish attire ; the mother with the cotton pocket-handkerchief pinned over her head, and all in print dresses, although they must be really wealthy people. Saturday afternoon. — About twelve I went out with Tant* Bremer, down the long avenue, principally of ash, into the so-called park, — really a kind of wood, — which borders the Arsta, and where it is always warm and shel tered. We passed the fisherman's cottage, and walking along the wooded path, with alders growing to the water's edge, came to the little bath-house, standing at the point where the creek expands into a sort of lake, edged with islands, beautifuUy fertile and wooded. On the farther, northern side, stiU forming a part of the Arsta estate, little boats bring people to chapel, and in * In English, aunt. 202 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the gay prosperous days of Arsta, brought also many a wedding party, the ceremony taking place in the house — the great staircase being decorated with flowers for the occasion. I wish a wedding would take place somewhere whilst we are in the neighbourhood. I should like to see the large gilt crown of the bride and the jewels which she wears in her hair, for if the family have not jewels of their own they are hired from Stockholm. On our way back we gathered magnificent wild straw berries, listened to the larks that filled the air with their singing, and examined an old gray stone with Runic characters dimly discemible upon it, which had been placed upon the lawn since Miss Bremer's time. Ancient stones of this kind are not uncommon in Sweden, and people are now beginning to set great value upon them. This is literaUy a land of milk and honey, the latter represented by butter, delicious home-baked bread of various kinds, delicious wild strawberries, and such spinach ! As fbr the milk, the glass which was brought me between breakfast and dinner, and which, having had an excellent breakfast, I left till dinner, was by that time almost an entire glass of cream. The water too is so deliciously fresh that one does not know which to choose. Those larks are stUl singing like mad ! The wUd thyme is out, and there are many familiar flowers besides : meadow-sweet and dog-daisies and little bright pink wild pinks. Monday. — We made a little excursion on Saturday evening wilh Her Grace R., not the Baroness, as I imagined, but Hennes Nod. as Tant Saxenberg said, for COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. 203 SO, according to the kind usage of Sweden, she wishes me to call her. She lives in one of the red houses, and is an elegant, tall, and young-looking woman, more like the sister than the mother of a Froken, or noble young lady, of eighteen or nineteen, and three youths, the eldest of whom wears the white cap of a student, and a younger daughter. Both she and her daughter wore simple print dresses, as does everybody here, let them be as rich and great as they may. Our way was through a birch and fir wilderness, to the house of old Settergren, a kind-looking aged man, the sexton, though he lives a long way from the church, at least according to English notions. He took us over his neat little potato plot and meadow, into a rocky wood, and up a steep crag, whence we had a splendid view of glittering creeks, islands, and woods. Here araongst the glossy lingon leaves we found the beautiful wax-like and crearay pyrola growing to a large size, which we gathered ; and also later on in our walk, white orchises, for Miss Bremer, who was not with us, but is very fond of these flowers, for their delicate evening perfume. As we mounted the rock a large brown snake laid its head on Fm Saxenberg's foot, to her great horror. There seem to be many snakes in these woods, a few of which are dangerous. Again at Settergren's house : he showed me his an tiquities, amongst which was a little old stone head of a hammer, a sort of axe-head of stone, multitudes of which are preserved in the Museura at Stockholra, and on which he sets great store. His littie plot of peas and broad beans does him great credit. I have not yet seen new 204 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. potatoes, nor are his peas ready, and the gooseberries are quite green. We, too, had stewed green gooseberries yesterday for dinner, so that you can see how far the season here is behind that of England. Guelder-roses are now out, and as we strolled home the boys were very useful with their botanical knowledge, so that I learned from them the Swedish names of the mountain cistus and other flowers. The grass is not yet cut, and it is flushed with the red flowers of the sorrel, just as in England, and studded with dog-daisies, whUst the road-sides are edged with roses now in full flower, blue-bells, ladies' bed-straw, and everywhere the white caraway ; many of the fields also are only too golden with the wild mustard. The gray rocks are now briUiant with golden stone-crop and little wUd pansies, three- coloured violets as they are called. The little Linnea is also out in damp shady places. It is not very comraon, and great therefore was Tant Bremer's delight when she discovered it first, a few days ago, in a fir-wood at Haga. Nor when I am speaking of the wild produce must I omit the wUd strawberries, which are wonderfully fine and abundant Milkwort and the different speedweUs grow here, and, to my joy, actual EngUsh daisies in the grass near the house. In the gardens there are now colum. bines, lupines, and peonies ; the sweet-wiUiams are not yet out Returning from our littie ramble, we met the two black carriage-horses, Albertine and Mariana, going to be bathed, and at Fra Saxenberg's wish, who considers it an amusing sight, we aU went to look on. WhUst the horses, each in tum, were swam, much to their apparent COUNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 205 contentment, round the jetty by the bath-house, a long, 'low, cart-like, raral vehicle, with two seats back to back like an Irish car, came rumbling up, dravra by a pair^^of brown horses, and driven by a countryman. The carriage contained an elderly, somewhat spare gentleman, in black ; a stout, motherly-looking woman, in a green stuff-gown, a cotton-handkerchief over her shoulders, and a large brown straw hat over her white muslin cap ; together with two young girls in dresses which had seen a good deal of wear and sunshine. " The Lagervalls, from the parsonage, come to bathe !" was the joyful exclamation ; and then, after bows, and curtseys, and introductions, and greetings, the Httle bathing-party dived down the wood, there to enjoy the water in rural simplicity, which they preferred to the use of the bath-house. And scarcely had they disappeared before the Arsta boat came floating down the creek, rowed by two young men, Lagervalls likewise, who were bound on a simUar expedition. Arrived at Arsta, sentinels were posted on the road to waylay and stop the parsonage vehicle on its homeward journey, capture it, and bring thera all there to tea. They came, — the most friendly, social, good-hearted people ! — and there was quite a great gathering to drink tea out of large cups, or delicious frait essence, to eat skbrper and little twists and gingerbread, laid out in long omamental rows on a large tray in the spacious dining- room. There was Tant Bremer, and the great Saxenberg troop, ¦with the young married daughter and her Httle two- years-old Ellen, who have been here ever since Whitsun tide j aU Mr R.'s and their cousins, the lad Sadermark 206 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. and his little sister from Upsala, who are staying with them, all the clean, fresh-looking parsonage bathers, and " your affectionate M. A. H. ' Yesterday Albertine and Mariana took Tant Bremer and me to church. What a nuraber of salutations she had to acknowledge to the different country-people trooping to the church of the wide parish of . Arsta Hannige, and how often her faithful leathern bag had to be opened for ores and gingerbread, for the children at the innumerable gates through which we had to pass ! Arrived at the church, we took our seats in the frOnt pew with its handsome carved door belonging to Arsta, with the rows of women behind, whilst on the other side sate all the men of the parish, with a similar grand pew at the top for Arsta gentlemen ; the 'next pew behind on either hand belonging to the parsonage. Before us, facing the comraunion-table, were the boys and girls who were being prepared for confirmation; the eldest Mamsell Lagervall likewise taking her place there, and these were prayed for especially during the service. We had not, I am thankful to say, so long a sermon as is customary at Stockholm, but when it -was ended, a little discourse on a man who was just dead in the parish surprised me, for his name, birth, former residence, relations' names, the complaint which had carried him off, all of which in a country place raust have been known o every one, were related. I wondered only that his virtues or vices did not follow. And when the service was over, as usual a long proclamation was read, whicii had to do with trees, wood, bark, and so on. But as this seemed to be important only to the people, the CO UNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 207 others left the church. Tant Bremer went into the churchyard to visit tiie graves of her parents, and that of her beloved sister Agatha, which is a long flower-bed planted with roses. Several brothers and another sister also lie there ; and adjoining is a fellow-plot belonging to the former parsonage-family, the Bergfolks. July 15. — Yesterday when my letter was ready for the post, I went out with Safi to find the man who was going to town with mUk that day, that he might take it with him. It was Jone Eriksson, and we accordingly set off to his dwelling. Here and there, on the estate, round the house is perched a red wooden building in which the work-people dwell. There are about thirty employed on the farra. Eriksson lived on a second floor ; he was a good-looking young fellow, and was eat ing his supper in a neat room, whilst his mother was frying fish for hira at the square brick fireplace. When we had given hira the letter, we went into the room below, where a wan, miserably emaciated man lay dying of some terrible internal malady, with his three little chUdren playing in the roora. It was Anderson who had been prayed for in the church on Sunday. " Wliat, is it you, Mamsell Sofi % " he said piteously ; and added to me, '' Ah, I shall never be well again ! never be any better ! I have been UI a year now ! " Poor man ! I shall never forget his heart-rending voice and his emaciated countenance. To-day Tant Bremer is going to see him ; she wUl read to him, and cheer him, as she does every one. About six o'clock this evening, not seeing any one stirring, I walked in one of the long hazel-covered aUeys, 2d8 peeps a T foreign COUNTRIES. two of which run paraUel the whole length of the iramense kitchen garden, and saw the men who had come out from supper weeding, and presently came upon Fru Saxenberg, who was watching Olsen, the head -gardener, (the garden-master, to translate literally,) and who is also a glazier on occasion, planting _ young lettuces ; then we left him, she saying. Now we will have a nice chat. I am Margreth and she is Tant, and we say du to each other, as if we had been good friends all our lives ; indeed, with these kind, simple-hearted people it is easy to be on the most intimate terms. We have therefore dropped all stupid formalities, which is a great comfort. So Tant Saxenberg and I gathered columbines, roses, and Turk's cap lilies. Emperor's crowns, as they are called here, to take in as a nosegay for Miss Bremer ; and she showed me the- apple-tree where I might find the key of the gate which led into a pleasant wooded paddock. She told me that she had always lived in great houses like Arsta, built of stone and three stories high ; how Abraham was sixteen when she was eight ; how he used to come with her two brothers to a large house, on the estate of wjiich her father was the steward, and swing her, and be very kind to her. Then a number of years went on, they thinking nothing of each other, nor ever meeting until he happened to come to an estate which her father was then managing, and there he became her " old man," (they call husbands and wives "old man" and "old woman," let them be as young as they may.) So here Abraham " became her old man, and it was all over with her. And she had him as happy as could be ever CO UNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 209 This morning she has been with Tant Bremer and rae to the well. This is a spring of mineral water, which has had no consideration till the present time, when Miss Bremer's predilection for it is known. Now, therefore, they have made a little runnel for the water, and a little boarded step down to the well, so that I can easily go down and fill a glass of this ice-cold water. Fru Saxen berg, who has been at a hydropathic establishment near Stockholra, who has faith in water, and whUst there drank her nine glasses a day, this morning therefore carae with us, and took of it likewise. But with us it has becorae a regular institution, and on our way thither we have raet each morning a little, stout, brown-faced ¦peasant lad, in a brown suit, a leathern bag slung over his shoulder, and his hair bleached almost white with the sun. He is twelve or thurteen, and, talking to hira, we learned that he was the youngest of the Borens, a family which had given the Arsta people a great deal of trouble from their idle, slovenly ways. When the mother had five or six sons, she went to Miss Bremer, and asked her to obtain for her firom the king a premium for having brought up so many. But as she was a careless, idle woman, it seemed almost a thing to be regretted that such had been the case. This little fellow, however, seemed by his appearance to redeem the family char acter. I am greatly interested in the little details of peasant life which, as for instance this morning, I gathered up in our walk to the well. The old labourers in the good Bremer-days, when they were past hard work themselves, had cottages e;iven to them where they might live in 0 210 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. peace and quiet. But when the property passed into other hands, the want of some intelligent, good famUy to act as a guiding influence on their dependents, was very apparent, and the people sank into a low moral ¦ condition. Nine years ago, when Herr, or Patron Saxen berg, as he is called, purchased the estate, the family removed here. They found themselves in the midst of a boorish people, with such thievish tendencies that Fru Saxenberg was quite in despair. But good example, kindness, and a wise guidance has produced a wonderful change, and the people are again become civUised and ¦ trustworthy. This younger scion, therefore, of the Borens is growing up, it is hoped, to be better than his parents. The wages ofthe women-servants are about three pounds a year, and these are considered good ; formerly servant- girls in the country had about five-and-twenty shillings and a pair of boots. Nor are wages much higher in Stockholm. Cooking, however, is not here a servant's accomplishment. All the excellent and well -cooked dishes which are brought to our table are the work of Theresa and Selina, who take turns in housekeeping and cooking week by week. Yet these young ladies are ac complished ; they are very musical, play, sing, read, and walk when not busy about the house, the duties of which are done so cleverly and so expeditiously that they are never untidy and never in a hurry. But I am forgetting our walk from the well. We hear every morning the church-bell of Arsta Hannige ringing at six, which, according to old custom, is done at that hour both morning and evening. We talk with every body we meet, and in this way hear many curious things : CO UNTR Y LIFE IN S WED EN. 2 1 1 amongst the rest, that the Swedish crows are both cruel and cunning. I was told, on the best authority, that a few crows wUl beset a number of hens, and frighten thera out of their wits, some standing before them, and others placing themselves behind, like a set of bullies; that they kill the hens, and then tear them open to eat the yet unlaid eggs. A fisherman said that finding his lines on one occasion all in confusion, he watched and saw the crows come and pull up the hooks with their claws from under the water, and eat off the baits. AU this was confirmed, as unquestionable, by Miss Bremer. July 16. — This morning was gloriously fine. As we were starting for the weU, we saw Herr Saxenberg ' collecting a quantity of elra seed, of which there is an amazing quantity this year. He was intending to scatter them about on various parts of the estate, in the hope that they would grow, and in time stUl further improve the property. Thick dew lay on the grass, white mist floated between the fir-woods and round the red wooden cottages, and spider-webs stretched thera selves between the taU blades of grass. With all this there was a mellow, dreamy sunshine, which seemed to embathe the little flock of doves which was tripping away through those long meadows of tall grass to their red dove-cots. Yes, let us hope that they were human doves, those maidens, who were hastening away to their breakfasts, and meeting, not in a field of rye, as the nursery song says, but in the luxuriant ^rass meadow, and whose pretty, triangular, pale-coloured handkerchiefs were just seen above the tall, uncut grass; foUo-wing them was a long row of mowers in their snow-white shirt- 2 1 2 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. sleeves, with their scythes on their shoulders, Hkewise marching off to their breakfast, after their first early on slaught on the luxuriant crop. The women here all wear handkerchiefs pinned corner- wise over -their heads, pink and white check being the most approved; and all are as clean and fresh as if just put on new. The men look very much like English shoemakers, in the long leathern aprons which they generally wear. At five o'clock the Arsta bell rings for work, being answered, about five minutes later, by the musical bell at Stymninge. The former is rung again at half-past six and at seven, at twelve and at one, and at half-past five and six in the evening, for meal-times, when you may see different groups of labouring humanity moving off to their various little dwellings; for these work-people all eat at home. July i8. — In the afternoon of Saturday we all went into the large meadow which lies sheltered between the woods that face the creek — the park, as it is called — and where old Arsta stood ; and, by the by, I must mention that according to tradition, the great Gustavus Adolphus passed a night here, in that very red house which forms what is called one of the wings, and where the Baroness R. is now located. This old buUding, though now forra ing a portion of the new house, is believed to have been an outlying dwelling belonging to the old raansion, which stood at some distance ; and here it is that this champion of Protestantism is said to 'have lodged the night before he sailed for Germany, and also that he mustered his troops on the plain at Arsta. Miss Bremer believes this tradition, and told me that her father, when taking down CO UNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 2 1 3 one of the brick partition-walls in the lower story of the house, found a very handsorae gun immured as for con cealment. Of this there was no tradition, but it was supposed to belong to those times. This gun is said to be yet in one of the garrets. But to return to the park. Here we came to see the men mowing, and, between whUes, to gather wild strawberries on the rocky wooded mounds which rise like islands out of the tall, waving sea of grass. How vigorously the long row of eighteen tall, athletic mowers — a long line, each a step in advance of the other — swept away and laid the rich crop prostrate before them ! Spite of a cloudy morning, after a wet evening, Tant B. and I went this moming as usual to the well, and met little Borens, with his bleached hair, going to his breakfast Towards noon I again saw him sitting on the grass by the long ash avenue with another little lad, eating his dinner of knackebrod, of which there were equal strata of bread and butter, for the peasantry in Sweden may be said to bread their butter, instead of buttering their bread. On our way home, in coming through a copse, we raet with beautiful ripe bilberries. Dame Nature, if she keeps her northern children fasting a long tirae, is deterrained that they shall have plenty when once they begin, and pours out from her cornu copia wild strawberries and bilberries, followed by Un- gon and other fruits, and hay and com harvests in such rapid succession, that there is hardly breathing time. At dinner we had amongst other things, sour milk, which is a regular sumraer dish, called "fil bunke." With regard to the Swedes' great love of this dish, a 214 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Story was told which is worth repeating. A poor Swedish journeyman, finding his way to Rome, fell sick, and was taken into a monastery, and kindly attended by the brethren. But he could not eat any of the viands which were prepared for him, and kept incessantly mur muring, " Fil bunke ! Fil bunke ! " The good monks, dib'tressed at their inability to ease his sufferings, lis tened to this cry, and light seemed to break in upon them. This was his patron saint, and at once they began to sing " Sancta Fil Bunke, era pro nobis ! " July 19. — Yesterday afternoon a pleasant interruption occurred in the arrival of two young men, Herr Uppmark and his friend, students of Upsala, to decipher and make a tracing of the Runic stone of which I have spoken. The whole household was gathered round to hear them read the old inscription which had remained for so many ages a dead letter. When they had traced it out upon large sheets of paper by means of red chalk, in the manner in which the old brasses are copied, they ex plained to their audience that some " Svaen " had raised this stone to the memory of his good or god-father, but which did not seem clear. If it belonged to the heathen period it raust be the first, if to the dawn of Christianity it might be the latter, just as the cross which formed the centre might either be the symbol of the 'Christian faith or the aUegorical hammer of Thor. It was also pointed out to us that the serpent twisting round this cross or hammer, with Runic characters inscribed on its body, held a hawk, or sorae other bird in its mouth ; here again was a rude representation of the serpent and the dove. Unfortunately the stone has been broken ; three por- CO UNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 2 1 5 tions are here complete, but a fourth is wanting, though the inscription can happily be made out as it is. Herr Saxenberg has made endless unsuccessful searches after the missing portion, which may probably now form part of a cottage wall or the hearth-stone of its fireplace. As a slight rain fell whilst the inscription was being traced, a number of the Arsta lads held up a large piece of Hght blue drugget as a canopy over the heads of the operators and their work. The three portions of the stone lie apart at this time, and the inscription consequently had to be taken from each separately on separate large pieces of paper, prepared for the purpose. But when this was clone a desire came into Herr Saxenberg's mind to have the three pieces laid accurately together so as to forra, as far as possible, a complete whole ; therefore the large assembly of young men and boys, by means of levers and rollers, endeavoured to wheel one gigantic stone to its place by the large central piece. But the mass was far too ponderous, and could not have been moved, had not five yoke of oxen, returning with as many of their loosely-built waggons, been taken out and put to this new work, which was thus happily accoraplished ; so that now the chief part of the inscription lies together, and if the one missing part can only be recovered, the whole wUl be secured by iron cramps and placed in a wall. Great attention is now being paid to these old frag ments of antiquity in Sweden. A Professor Dyberk, a very weU known and learned man, devotes himself to the discovery and preservation of these Runic stones ; also of the folk melodies, and all other remains of old Norse nationality. 2 1 6 - PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. July 20. — This morning I had a pleasant surprise. When I was dressed and came down, ready as usual to go to the well, I saw in the great dining-room, before the folding entrance-doors, a square moderate-sized table very beautifully adorned with flowers. It is the custom to have a small table-cloth placed in the centre over the other cloth in a lozenge form, crimped and folded in various artistic plaits. One of these, of fine, snow-white damask, was laid on the table, looped up with bouquets of white pinks, roses and nemophile, quite a new plant here, and in the centre a splendid bouquet of the sarae flowers, with the addition of the syringa, here caUed the jasrain. There was also a large M formed in flowers upon the table. And what was it but a mark of regard, which these kind loving hearts were showing to me? For remembering that it was St Margaret's, or my name- day, which I had forgotten, they had, spite of yesterday's rain, gathered the flowers, and thus early prepared the beautiful offering. And meeting Herr Saxenberg, the first thing he did was to congratulate me, and Sven and Knut, and every one have wished me many happy returns of the day, so that I have come in quite unex pectedly for a little festival, and I feel very' like a person who has been astonished by a fortune. "Margreth should have a little country-table," said good Fru Saxenberg. " It is not much, but it is a country custom, and what the peasants always do for each other. If it had not rained yesterday she should have had more flowers." Now are not these most genial and affectionate people ? COUNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 217 July 29. — Miss Bremer brought Magester Eneroth back with her from church to the great family dinner, which on that day took place at two o'clock. At such a house as Arsta, where there is so much work on the land going forward, where agricultural and horticultural experiments are always being made, a raan like Mr Magester, whose profession this is, and who stands so high in his profession, independently of all other reasons, is sure to be a welcome guest. After dinner we all set off to the Parsonage, Fru Saxenberg, Tant Bremer, and Mr Magester in the carriage ; Sofi, Selina, and myself, who went earlier, on foot, and we were soon overtaken by Herr Saxenberg, Sven and Knut, and their friends, Zanoni and Sondstrom, all on their way to drUl, they being volunteers, and the exercise of the corps taking place that afternoon. As we proceeded through the woods and over the pleasant fields, I found that Zanoni, who by the by is of Italian descent, knew a little English, being in the sea service, and five years before having been three months in the English ports, and one month in London. He has been in America too, and altogether has seen a good deal ofthe world. Arrived at the church, our ways separated ; they went on to their military ground, and we passing the square wooden two-storied house of Hesslingby, which formerly belonged to the Arsta property, but now to a young heiress, not yet of age, in Stockholm, we entered a wide fertile valley bordered with the everlasting fir-woods. On the southemside of this valley, looking towards the church, and at the distance of nearly a mUe, stands the long, one-storied parsonage, which I am told is the counterpart 2 1 8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. of all Swedish parsonages, with its court and round grass-plat in the centre, now adorned with its one large hay-cock, the summer crop. On- each side the house stand two detached bright-red, wooden wings, the one out-buildings, the other the residence of the farm- manager, and behind are stables and the farm-yard, and then rocks and fir-trees. Behind the house itself is a large, well-filled kitchen-garden shaded by taU apple and pear trees ; in the front stretches the wide valley, on a sort of centre-slope of which stands the parsonage. Fru Lagervall was seated in the porch reading The Watchman, a much-esteemed religious paper, when we came up, and most kind and motherly was the reception she gave us, only regretting that her young people were from home. They were gone to the Kora-minister's, who was assisting Pastor Lagervall to celebrate Margaret's Day, in honour of his daughter, he not being able to celebrate it during the week on account of some Stock holm guests who were to be present ; and a very signal celebration it was to be. Magester Eneroth received a very warra welcome, for they knew all that he had done and was doing for the improvement ofthe country. But he and his companions in the carriage were long in arriving, and then it appeared that they had stopped on the way at the school to take into consideration how a garden could be laid out there. It is one of Magester E.'s favourite schemes that all schools should be furnished with gardens, and he has written a littie work on the subject, with plans. And a very good and wise project it seems to me, for nothing could be better for these poor people than for them to COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. 219 have their nice little kitchen gardens, with plenty of cuUnary vegetables and fruit-trees, As it is, if they can only get potatoes, they care for nothing else. The Lagervalls, however, doubt whether the scheme is practicable. Farm labourers, it appears, are here a nomadic population, who stay a year or two at one place, then move off somewhere else. They do not remain long enough at a cottage to take any interest in sowing and planting. And, besides, even if they did, they have no time for their own work. Father and mother are emplo)'ed ; so are their children as soon as they are old enough ; and the working hours are from five in the morning until eight at night, with only two hours' interval for their three meals, and when the raen retum home at night, having walked perhaps some miles to and from work, they are too weary to do much gardening. Nevertheless, if they themselves were in earnest about it, they would no doubt do it To begin with the children ; for instance, if they had each their little plot at the school, and were taught and accustoraed to gardening, it would becorae necessary to thera as they grew up, and they would make tirae for the small amount of labour which it would require. Think of the flower-shows of the poor ragged children in London, who, under all the difficulties of bad air, sraoke, and confined space, are able to produce plants and flowers ; of the allotment gardens too, which answer so admirably. I therefore did my best in advocating the commence ment of such an attempt in Sweden. There was an interesting article on the subject of workmen's cottages and gardens, written by Magester 220 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. E., in the Swedish Workman last winter, sho-wing. that in one manufacturing town of France, houses, by smaU instalments of payment, become the property of the workmen, and in another the introduction of cottage gardens had become a perraanent blessing. One old man, it was said, though offered a pension to retire from the factory, would not do so, because he would then lose his garden. In Sweden, too, a Mr Swartz has set a first- rate example, by giving his people separate plots of ground, and thus has awakened in thera a love for gardening ahd for vegetables; the vrindows of their dwellings are now quite little greenhouses, gay with flowers, whUst the inner casements, used in winter to keep out the cold, are in suramer employed to cover cucumber frames. Miss Bremer warmly advocating there being a garden at the school-house, and Mr Magester quickly seeing how it could be managed, both talked so earnestly with the pastor on the subject, that I trust he and his wife will becorae, if they are not now, converts to the plan. Whilst this was being discussed in one room, the good housewives Lagervall and Saxenberg were discussing in another the best methods of preserving vegetables for winter use. The younger lady thought it hardly worth the trouble to pick off each single spinach leaf, and each single pea, dip them into boUing water, spread them out to dry, and so keep them for winter use ; therefore she was contented with potatoes and haricot beans, though in her father's house they always had winter stores of dried vegetables. WhUst this talk was going on, a COUNTR Y LIFE IN SWEDEN. 221 messenger was sent to tell the pastor's wife that a poor man in the neighbouring cabin had just been bitten in the foot by a snake, and to ask what must now be done for a remedy, upon which sweet-oil was sent back for the wound to be rubbed with. About half-past nine the party in the carriage drove back, and we, who certainly had the best of it, walked again through the woods and over the meadows that deliciously calm summer evening, with the bronze-red moon rising solemnly over the fir-woods as we neared Arsta, July 31. — I went last Wednesday with Tant Bremer to a peasants' ball, and very arausing it was. But in the first place, I raust tell you that a portion of this large estate, called Galon, has been purchased by an excellent institution, which I will presently explain, caUed Prince-Carl Institution. Nothing can be more charming than this little dem'esne of Galon, surrounded as it is by beautiful creeks of the Baltic. Frora Arsta, by land, it is six or seven miles, but by water it can be reached in half an hour. And now for the noble purpose to which this property is devoted. Bishop Wallin, a most excellent man and a poet, anxious to decrease, if possible, the number of juvenile criminals, by nipping the early tendency to crime in the bud, and assisted by the head of the police at that time, also a very philanthropic man, determined to es tablish an asylum for low-born, destitute children, where they should be educated and provided for, instead of being exposed to theft as a means of livelihood. The idea was approved of, and an institution established 222 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. under the name of the Prince-Carl Institution, in honour of the young Prince, now King of Sweden. This establishment was divided into two classes : those who had actually committed small offences and were, therefore, criminals ; and those who were merely desti tute, but who might become such if they were not removed from the temptation. It was not necessary that they should be orphans, it was simply necessary that they should belong to the destitute class. Sorae five or six years ago, the latter were removed from Stockholm, and boarded out amongst the cottagers on Galon, which was then purchased for the use of the institution. A superintendent was appointed, with a residence on the estate, and a schoolhouse buiU, with accommodation for a schoolmaster and mistress. Miss Bremer, who takes great interest in this move ment, determined to visit Galon whilst we remained here; and as last Tuesday was a great day at the institution, it was expected that she would be there. The directors would come over from Stockholm, and the examination of the children would take place preparatory to the month's hoUday, vvhich began the following day. On this following day, however, the chUdren were to have a great treat, and Tant Bremer very sensibly, as I thought, pre ferred going to the treat instead of the examination, which would be infinitely pleasanter, at all events to the children, if not more edifying. It was just then the commencement of a monstrous wash at Arsta, and three of the female servants fell ill, so that the lady 6f the house could not leave home, and only one of her three daughters could be spared to go COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. 223 with us ; besides which, it was the middle of the hay- harvest, and everybody was busy ; nevertheless the Patron Saxenberg rowed over in a boat in fhe course of the afternoon, and old Carl Adolfsson was spared to drive Miss Bremer, Sofi, and me in the close carriage. The two lads, Sven and Knut, would have liked to have been at the fun above all things, but they were out at work, and did not hear of it tUl too late. " It is very hard," said Knut to me one day, " that neither Sven nor I are told of anything till the last minute. It is always the way, else we might have had a dance on Wednesday ! " I do not think the country folk of Sweden would care for a treat of any kind if a dance were not connected with it, and this Wednesday afternoon it was nothing but dancing. It is a great pity our poor English people do not know any of the simple, harmless dances, which the peasantry here so much enjoy, and which give them so much pleasure and such healthy exercise. The children, eighty-one in number, were not the only guests. Their adopted parents — their uncles and aunis as the chUdren call them — were there also, as well as some of the cottagers' own children ; so that the number of youngsters was somewhat above a hundred. We who had come in the carriage arrived between two and three, and drove up to the house of the manager, Herr Lund- back. He is a tall, handsome man, with a good and thoughtful countenance, and his -mie a pleasant, motherly woman, with eyes full ofa tender and affectionate expres sion ; the very persons, both of them, to be at the head of such an estabhshment 224 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Opposite to their long wooden, one-storied house, was another very similar, the large wooden, yellow-painted school-house. We had hardly arrived before lads in brown suits with narrow red facings, caps and jackets alike, and little girls with coloured handkerchiefs pinned over their heads, came streaming up in little groups through the flowery meadows, frora their happy homes amongst the birch- woods, under the gray rocks, or by the blue coves and creeks. Then carae the " uncles " and " aunts,'' simple- hearted-looking and sunburnt couples, who as soon as they were congregated partook of coffee under the oak trees. The Swedish peasant would as soon think of going without his drop of coffee, his " tear of coffee," as he calls it, as an English washerwoman without her tea. There was one clumsy-featured, bronze-faced man, of about five-and-thirty, with earrings, with whora I had a good deal of conversation, and wonderfully intelligent he was. He seeraed to know all about England, and told his " old woman" how quickly one could get there, and I had to hear a long story about a friend of theirs who wished to emigrate to America by going to Liverpool. As soon as the worthy couples had all drank their coffee, shaken hands with Fru Lundback, and thanked her, the children came, and then the ball commenced in the great schoolroom, beginning between three and four o'clock, having for orchestra two fiddlers, one an elderly man, the other a young man, who both reminded me of wooden effigies, only that the music worked through them down to their very toes, so that they were all alive, them and their brown fiddles, fiddle-strings and bows. But in COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. 225 trath all the men and women had features which might have been cut in wood, and when at the beginning an old man — though by the by he was not old, only they call each other " old man " and " old woraan " — began solemnly whirling round with his partner, gradually followed by another and another couple, all looked as mournful and danced as soberly as if at a funeral. Life, however, came into them when the little lads and lasses and every one began to dance. As for the noble young lady, the Froken, who is the schoolmistress, and the young schoolmaster, they danced away the whole after noon, as if they were some wonderful pieces of mechanism, and were the very soul of the entertainment The favourite dance is the t^wist polka. A large circle of dancers dances round the room to the music, couples also swinging round in the middle. Whenever you Hke to leave the circle and choose a partner you may do so, and go swinging round hand in hand, sometimes four together, with hands crossed. As for Froken Erhenstein and the schoolmaster they were dancing round with partners, little boys, young lads, young girls, men and women, nearly the whole time. It is so easy that it requires no learning ; I danced four, Sofi, Manager Lundback and Pastor Lagervall, and then again and again with the country people. And I can assure you that being spun round by the men -was like being driven by a windmUl. Then there is a single polka, or polska more properly, which is danced to a particular step, though the polka step will do very well for it After I had danced it with a woman and was gone back to my place, she beckoned me to her in a very 226 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. mysterious manner. This was to beg of me to go and ask her " old man " to dance. "The men were too shy to ask us, so we had quietly to take hold of them and lead them out Then they danced gladly enough, though always with a solemn, yet well-satisfied air. There was the curtseying polka, too, a sort of long string and foUow-my-leader dance. We danced it out of the baU-room by one door into the sandy court, dancing ail the while, and in at the other door, then coiled up into a ball, so that we were just like packed herrings, and then untwisted again, which was a great relief There was another, a very amusing dance, called " Weaving Walmar," the homespun cloth which the men wear. The schoolmaster and the Froken with their partners were the shuttles which kept flying backwards and forwards, their hands clasped above the circle of stooping attendant dancers, who clapped their hands all the time. The dancing went on incessantly till about a quarter past nine, when the children filed off for their supper, under the oak trees. The supper consisted of tremendous slices of various kinds of bread and butter, with -slices of cheese and different kinds of meat. There had been an interval before, during which people were refreshed with various beverages, and afterwards the children played at a game ; but all the time the two fiddles of Peter and Soderstrom had been going and the men and the womeni indefatigably dancing in the schoolroom. At weddings the peasants dance several nights run ning, and last winter the daughters at the parsonage frequently danced from six o'clock in the evening till four in the morning, going to bed and sleeping tiU the COUNTRY LIFE IN SWEDEN. 227 two o'clock dinner, after which they would again dress and drive off to another dance. On the evening of the Galon festivity they did not reach home before half-past twelve, there being some singing and a little religious service, also a distribution of gingerbread to each child, and then a drive of an hour-and-a-half after we had left. They were eight in number in that cart-like carriage o.f theirs, drawn by two little brown horses, so that they did not travel rapidly. We reached home about half-past ten. XL A PEEP AT RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. FOR several reasons, most of them connected with — to me — grave and important business, of which I shall not here speak, I visited Russia in the autumn of last year. Sailing direct from Hull to St Petersburgh I spent a fortnight in that city and in Moscow, returning vid the coast of Finland, as far north as Abo, thence to ' Stockholm, and by the lakes to Gottenburgh and Copen hagen. The whole tour occupied less than two raonths. Some things which I saw and heard interested me, and an account of thera may, perhaps, be interesting to those who have the misfortune to know as little of those parts as I did before I chanced to visit them. THE VOYAGE OUT. I have little to say about it. The fact is that almost all voyages out of sight of land are much the same. In every ship there is the same sort of steward and pas- RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 229 sengers ; the same bustle for berths at starting ; the same ranning about through the cabin and on deck, with hat- boxes, carpet-bags, and new portmanteaus, getting settied down. The same smells too ! — blame rae not for dwell ing on them- — most notable facts are they, inasmuch as the nose conveys to the soul fully as much inforraation regarding the external world as any other of the senses. Hence there is a sea-shore smell; a highland moor smell; a coach smell; a first, second, and third class smeU ; a church smell ; " a subtle smell which spring unbinds," as Wordsworth well knew, having had the ad vantage of a large poetic nose to perceive it No man feels himself abroad until he has inhaled the smell of the " salle i manger " or the " Speise Saal." And thus no man realises that he is at sea until he has felt the smell of the cabin, and of those subraarine ceUs called state rooms, — an aroma which stands alone, a product of sea and land, yet nothing else on sea or land having a scent like it ! Then there are much about the same kind of waves on every sea, that is to say on ordinary occasions; for when put to it by a gale of wind, I would back the Atlantic, anyrvhere between Cape Race and Cape Clear, against all the treasures of the great deep, for breaking, topping, sweeping, roaring blue seas. The North Sea is not, indeed, to be despised, especially when it fights with the winds, as Duncan did with the Dutch over the Dog ger-Bank ; but the Baltic, though ambitious, and often seriously angry, has all the testiness of a fresh-water lake, but wants the grand majesty, the mountain-s-wing of the real old Ocean. It is fierce and furious, not awful and overwhelming like the Atiantic. Our passengers were. 230 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. of course, divided between the whole and the sick, with various species under this last genus, from those possess ing a solemn gravity and pensive meditativeness, down to a solitary inert mass of helpless agony, unconscious apparently of every existence except that of the steward — whose narae was feebly uttered, by day and night, in spasmodic intervals. I have ever had the good fortune to be among the whole and hearty. Our good ship, I may add, was the Admiral, sailing from Hull ; and our good captain, than whom a worthier man or more ¦ experienced sailor saUs not the sea, was Brown. We took seven days to St Petersburgh. Remember that fact ere ye thoughtlessly venture to peep into Russia. The most interesting spectacle on the North Sea was the fishing-smacks. We passed several out of sight of land. They trawl over those endless banks for months, consign ing their cargoes from time to time to vessels which con vey them to British or continental markets, but the same crew always remaining in the sraack. There they lie, pitching and tossing, reefing and tacking, hauUng and trawling, lying to and bearing away, night and day, through mist, and spit, and salt sea-foam, with wet nets, wet fish, wet saUs, -vyet ropes, wet clothes, wet skies! How cosy and comfortable is any returned convict or inhabitant of one of our well-regulated prisons, corapared with these poor fellows ! We would recommend " Four months' fishing on the North Sea," as a sentence to be passed upon all those genteel criminals who would miss the theatre and comfortable tavern. It would cool their passions, improve their health, cultivate their good habits, or kill them. RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 231 After three days, we saw in the distant horizon a few specks, and were told that they represented Jutland. Then by and by came the Olman light ; then some ten hours after, the Skagen lighthouse, marking a low line of sands, on which we counted five old wrecks ; — then twelve hours farther, with occasional peeps of misty streaks which were called dry land, the hitherto almost unseen shores began to come nearer. In a few hours we could see corn-fields, and trees, and then houses, both on the Swedish and Danish coast, but no scenery worth remarking until at last, right ahead, at some distance, we saw a large square building, which we were told was the Castle of Kronberg, by Elsineur. We anchored for an hour at Elsineur to take in a pilot ; and landed in" honour of Hamlet. I saw nothing very noticeable about this classic spot, except excellent cherries, and some good cherry cordial ; also, twp tugboats, representing the genius and the influence of Shakspere in this harbour of prose — the one being called Haralet and the other Ophelia ! We were surprised at finding Elsineur neither " wild,'' " stormy," nor " steep," but a quiet little wooden town, full of fish and saUors ; with its old castle, half a mUe off, rising from the very margin ofthe sea, and wear ing the look more of a decayed palace than of a warlike fortress. One would think from its appearance, that it is fit for little more than firing royal salutes. A few hours after passing Elsineur, the sea widens out again until Copenhagen is reached, of which more anon, sweep ing round the margin ofan ample bay. The day we first saw it was lovely, the sea a dead calm, and the waters alive with vessels. Various buildings were pointed out 232 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. as we leisurely surveyed the city whUe landing our pilot; but I saw only the two batteries before which the British fleet poured their broadsides, sixty years ago, for three hours, during the hottest fight ever witnessed by Nelson ; and I also saw more clearly than these, the Httle man himself, putting the telescope to his blind eye, and tum ing it through the smoke towards Parker and his No. 39 signal, ordering the hero to withdraw his ships from the terrific combat I need only say, that every man of us got up his " Nelson and the North," to the best of his ability, and with becoming patriotism. Away we went out of the Cattegat and up the Baltic, passing the long island of Gothland, flat and shaped like a tombstone seen sideways ; — on, across the Gulf of Bothnia, with sunsets of surpassing glory, and skies red and fiery frora the west up to the zenith, and down to the eastern horizon, which glowed as if with sunrise ; — on we went, rolling and pitching away with a quarter wind, and all sail set, the right paddle now buried in the sea, and apparently dying of suffocation, the steara giving a wheezing groan as if in sympathy, then, after a roll to port, lightly capping the top of the foaming billows, while the opposite paddle was struggling for existence ; the persevering and strong engine all the whUe doing its duty with an air of dignified respectabUity, but greatly want ing in zeal ; on, passing the time with the usual routine of meals and conversation, enlivened by the screams of two pigs who paraded the main-deck, and received daily a powerful scrubbing frora the saUors, whUe a sheep, tawny with coal dust, contemplated the scene in peace, — on we went, with a fresh breeze and broken sea, pass- RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 233 ing several cold and dreary lighthouses and lightships, until, one morning, we were told that a few scratches on the horizon were Cronstadt. Then came Sir Charles Napier's farthest point of observation, Tamboukin light house, untU, finaUy, we bravely advanced towards the dreaded forts, which did not presume to stop our pro gress until we blew off our steam, and anchored close to the pier in the busy harbour. So ended our voyage. THE FIRST DAY IN RUSSIA. There is nothing very imposing about Cronstadt, I mean in the sense in which Gibraltar, or Quebec, or any such mountain fortresses are imppsing. But to a skilled eye the soldier lying on the ground behind a bush, with an Enfield rifle, is much more awing than a huge Goliath with his spear, boastfully challenging the armies of Israel ; and so these forts, built on low islands, or rising out of the water like three-storied cotton-factories, have a firra, dogged, business look about them. They are evidently built for guns, and for nothing else, to knock down everything, and to defy anything to return the compli ment And so with great respect we first passed Fort Alexander, rising out of the sea on our left, and Peter Vahki on an island to the right (a narrow channel inter vening,) ¦with the Risbank between it and the opposite shore ; and then with a respect increasing ¦with the forts and their number of guns, we sailed past Fort Constan tine backing Alexander, and Fort Menschikoff in the rear of aU. It is quite evident that no fleet, unless cased in iron, could run the gauntlet, first between Alexander and Peter Vahki, and then past Constantine and Men- 234 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. schikoff, with hundreds of guns on the sl\ore supporting them. But no one doubts the certainty of their destruc tion during the war, had Sir Charles Napier attacked the island of Cronstadt from the rear. But the water was too shallow for anything but gun and mortar boats, and of course there were none provided, untU the Czar had time to make any attempt in the rear impracticable. It is not difficult to understand the relative position of Cronstadt and St Petersburgh. The Neva empties its waters into a shallow firth about twenty mUes long and, as far as I remember, two or three miles broad. The en trance of the firth is guarded by the island and docks of Cronstadt, which is connected with the opposite shore to our right in going to the capital by two small fortified islands. The water is too shallow to admit of any vessels but those of a light draught reaching the an chorage at Cronstadt (except by one passage close to the forts,) or of going beyond that point to St Petersburgh, which is twenty raUes up the firth. The port of Cron stadt is therefore a busy place, with all sorts and sizes of shipping in its docks, and a goodly array of ships of war lying side by side, with their rigging down, in the navy dock, and looking by no raeans iraposing. The confusion for more than an hour at Cronstadt after we were moored near the wharf, and before we got ourselves and our baggage transferred to the small steamer which conveyed us to St Petersburgh, cannot be described. The gray-coated and large-booted men who came on board from the custom-house, seemed portraits from the Illustrated News of the Crimean Russian soldiers come alive. Once they were on board. RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 235 there arose such a medley of sounds from the roar of steam; the Babel of Russian; the rushing to and fro with papers ; the meeting of friends ; the searching for luggage ; the affectionate kisses between Russian men and old friends araong our passengers ; the roaring out questions and answers by everybody, and everybody apparently frantic with haste, or some mysterious burthen, that it was an immense relief when the steam of our small vessel was choked in the boiler, and with rapid paddle we skimmed through the shipping, and between long poles which marked the passage, and were off for the capital. We saw little or nothing of the low and distant shores of the firth. To the right, along the wooded bank, we could discern white houses thickly scattered, and we heard that this was the fashionable summer retreat of the citizens who could afford a country-cottage, but not a garae at rouge-et-noir at Baden-Baden. The Eraperor also has one of his favourite residences on the same side, at Peterhoff. The left-hand shore is low, wooded, and without the slightest interest As we rapidly approached St Petersburgh, one of the most magnificent rainbows I ever beheld spanned the sky before us from horizon to horizon. Behind us was another resplendent sunset, with the mighty orb like a globe of molten gold, slowly descending amidst gorgeous colours of amethyst, emerald, and gold, until a single star of light rested for a moment, like a glittering diamond on a cushion of gleaming raby, and then disappeared, while we held our breath with wonder, and a hundred suns then danced before our eyes. Already were the gilt domes of St Isaac's Church and of the Admiralty 236 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. reflecting the last rays of evening above a low fringe of forest In about two hours after leaving Cronstadt, on our taking a sudden tum to the left, we entered the Neva. The first sight which arrested my attention was the huge form of the newly-launched line-of-battle ship, the Nicolai, with her as huge " camel," or " cradle,'' to float her to the deep sea, in attendance. "\¥hen made fast to the landing-wharf on the shores of the Neva, before the custom-house, the first thing unquestionably which strikes one as new and quite Russian, that is to say, like what we have heard of Russia from our picture-books, are the droskies — they are thoroughly national, and long may they continue so ! The drosky is a low four-wheel, with two seats supported by old-fashioned, hanging leather springs that make large semicircles behind. The one seat behind is for the driven, a small one above his knees before for the driver. Two persons of small bulk can cram them selves into the seat, but if one of the occupants happens to be a " portly raan i' faith," he or his neighbour must suffer grievously. Every driver or Vosnik is dressed in exactly the same national costume — the large blue dressing-gown, or kaftan, reaching to the boots, and tied round the waist with a sash, while a low-crowned black felt hat and turned-up brim covers a head, the back of which has thick reddish-bro^wn hair, arrested by the scissors as it touches the coat, while the front is adomed by a face with cocked nose, large mouth, and a general dusty, turnipy, and, on the whole, stoUdly kind expres sion. There is a myth about sheperds being able to distinguish one sheep from another by the expression of RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 237 their countenances. We don't believe James Hogg himself, after marking the idiosyncrasies of all the black or white faces on Ettrick, would ever be able to discover the difference between one Vostick (Isvostchik) and another. When the traveller, for the first time, hazards ' his person in one of those small droskies, and his driver, securing a rein in each hand, sets off with rapid speed along the quays and streets of St Petersburgh, he has entered on a new experience in locomotion, unless he has had some personal knowledge, as I have had, of the corduroy roads of America. .Those streets, • those meraorable streets, surely leave impressions never to be obliterated. They are all paved with sraall stones, and seldom level, but descending in the centre, along which is an open watercourse. But the holes in that pave ment ! the roughness of those stones ! the rattle, plunges, knocks endured ! while following a s^wift-trotting horse and remorseless Vostick in a drosky, forms an element of sight-seeing in hot weather, which every traveUer should carefully consider before he leaves home. Every bone, thew, muscle, and sinew of his frame must be in perfect order to undergo this ordeal. Rascally-looking Cossack police, on their small horses and -with their long spears, galloped past; Greek priests, with their black robes and broad-brimmed hats, and hair do-wn their back, moved along ; and various other types of humanity never seen before. But the eye feebly took in the panorama of a new country. The whole soul was concentrated on the bones of the body, and all the natural emotions of gratitude for our safe arrival, and wonder at finding one's self in Russia, began to dawn 238 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. only when the drosky was left with a bound of delighted deliverance, as it stopped at Dom Felinson's Anglitzke Nabroshne, (so the words sounded to me,) which meant, as I afterwards learned. Miss Benson's English Quay, being the comfortable pension to which we were recommended, and into which we gladly entered. SIGHT-SEEING. Sight-seeing in a new country is a necessity, a doom : the city must be "done." Yet I maintain that it is a serious bore to do it in hot weather, and such weather we experienced in Russia — when the air was at what seemed the boiling-point, with the pavement like a fur nace, not a cloud in the sky, and the sun fierce and in tolerable. Where is the man who, in such circumstances, has not felt a nervous shiver, in spite of all his curiosity, as he stood at the hotel door, " Murray" in hand, about to pace it till dinner-time through palaces, museums, churches, streets, and sc[uares? After all is finished with a late dinner, the irresistible doom still reraains to spend the evening at Tivoli, the " gardens," or some of those places attached to every continental city, with crowds of people, coloured lamps, bands of music, chairs in the open air, waiters rushing to and fro with white aprons, and serving coffee, ices, or anything to refresh the languid nerves, or cool the parched throat ; — ^but all this naust be " done," there is no help for it. " Why did you come abroad, unless to see all that was to be seen?" asks ene new traveller, up to anything. It is possible, however, slightly to mitigate this heavy, imperious duty. Beware, first of all, of an enthusiastic, able-bodied. RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 239 patient, determined sight-seer, who desires to obtain accurate information about everything; who is always discovering national peculiarities — " things one never sees at home" — who takes notes, asks innumerable questions, replies to which no meraory can retain were it desirable to do so, and who insists on seeing every thing in the museum, do^wn to the last emperor's stock ing, or in the palaces, down to the emperor's kitchen. Neither body nor spirit of ordinary mould can stand this amount of excessive culture. Then again, if pos sible, never take a guide. Yet how seldom is it possible to get quit of that attached incubus with shabby-genteel surtout, gloves, and polished old hat ! Who on going abroad ever thinks of the trials that await him with commissionnaires, or valets de place 1 Can any man recall the architectural glories of the faraous old continental tciwns, without the presence of a commissionnaire raingling itself in memory with the beautiful, like a patch on a royal robe ? After con siderable experience, we advise the soUtary stroll through the town ; the discovery of sights for one's self; the enjoyment of freedora ; the delight of calm, undisturbed observation ; the power to gaze into shop windows, with out being waited for, or of sitting alone in a cathedral, vrithout an arm and finger of a guide corapeUing your eyes to follow their directions. Only be assured that everywhere human beings may. be found who will tell you all you wish to know, in every place where you wish to wander, and where you seek to feel rather than to know. The language — alas! that in Russia , is a fearful demand. French and German go far, but when Russ 240 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. is required, you must get Mr Schaff to accompany you. But let this be the last resource of desperation. For tunately for us, we had a perfect guide in one of our traveUing companions who knew Russia and the Rus sians. Now, I will not trouble my readers by dragging them after me through all the sights of St Petersburgh and Moscow; this would be almost as bad as driving through their streets in a drosky. Let me just first give an abridged catalogue of the chief things which I saw, and then I shall try and convey to them the general im pression which they made upon me. SIGHTS. In St Petersburgh I visited the principal churches, especially St Isaac's, great in granite, magnificent ih malachite, and hoary in nothing save superstition; with the Kazan church draped with innumerable banners taken in war — never did an English flag form a part in any such collections ! — with keys of many fortresses, and the baton of Davoust, dropped in his cold race from Moscow to Paris. I saw in these churches the most august services of the Greek communion, getting my pocket picked at the most solemn of them. I paced through the Winter Palace, from room to roora, from bedroom to bedroom, saw all the glories of lapis- lazuli and crown jewels ; I revelled among the very beautiful and choice pictures of the Herraitage, one fine building at least ; the citadel, with its mint, was not neglected ; and I stood among the tombs of the Roman offs, beside the sleeping bodies of Peter the Great, — great in stature, in resolution, in genius, in whim, in war, .- ir \ i^W-:.^i ^-^-^' ST. Isaac's cathedral. Page 240, RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 241 in ship-building, in city-buUding, and wood-turning ; the tombs also of Paul, the royal madman who was murdered ; of Catherine, great in genius, and in crime; of Alexander, the hero of the great war, overcome by the talk of Napo leon on the Niemen raft, and paying him back at the old Kremlin ; and last of all, the tomb of Nicholas, the grand despot, who died of his wounds in the Crimea. Ah ! it was sad, as I entered the church, to see the widow of Nicholas coming out of it, old, tottering, and agonised by cancer, taking her last look at the place where her once mighty " Czar of all the Russias" lay cold and senseless as a stone. She has since joined him there. Oh, sickness, pain, and death ! what republican levellers are these, and how they unite us raore than armies or fleets can do, by the bonds of sympathy and pitying love! I need not say that I wandered through the busy streets, paused before the Admiralty, admiring the noble Alexander Column, and the long vista of the Nevski Prospect, and stood beside the Statue of Peter the Great, whose chief interest to me was the memory of its picture at the corner of an old school atlas ; and that I drove (that drive cannot be forgot!) to the monastery of St Alexander Nevski, and also through the wUd Islands, — the finest park I have ever seen near a great city, — re joicing in the woods and in the flashing strearas of the noble Nevas that sweep through the Delta. We visited all or several of the Islands, Kammenoi, Yelaginskoi, Yelagin, Krestorski, Vassali Ostroff, Petrosky, Aptekar- skoi, &c., pausing, as the wont is in the evening, to see the glorious sunset from the nearest point to the Baltic; Q 242 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. and I wandered through the best sight of all, to study Russia and mankind, the Bazaars, the Gostinnoi Dvor, the Appraxin Riiiok, and Tshukin Dvor, those worlds of everything bought or sold in Russia by tens of thousands of dealers. I paced down the Nevski Prospect more than once. I visited the museum, and actually saw, not only the skeleton, but the skin and hair of a brute, known to all school-boys as the Siberian mammoth, which trod the earth, ate, slept, grew old and stupid, and finally died, before Adam was born ! Is the reader wearied of this catalogue ? Yet I ara not half done. I also went twenty miles in one direction to see the Royal Palace of Tzarskoi Selo, built by Peter the Great with its amber room, its museum- full of every species of arras frora every nation that ever fought, where the Duke of Wellington's sword and Kosciusko's sleep together as harmless as two primroses. In the grounds is the summer-house, where that old randy, Catherine, used to entertain company round a table so constructed that every plate descended by machinery to the kitchen, was fiUed and returned, without the necessity of any servant entering the room, which was a great advantage to the morals of the servants. Finally, for this sight-seeing puts one out of breath, I visited another palace on the left shore of the firth going to Cronstadt, caUed Peterhoff, built by the half-mad Czar Peter, in which is still shown, his bed, the dirty flannel night-cap lying on his pillow ; and yet another palace in the same place, where the royal family reside in summer, which has grounds with no end oi s'^lendid Jeis-d' eau, bands of music, Circassian guards, and fine soldiers. This was a small portion of RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 243 St Petersburgh sight-seeing without a word of Alexan- drotski and old General Wilson ; and besides these all Moscow is before us yet, and Moscow has its Kremlin, worth all St Petersburgh put together. All this must keep dry for my next paper. THE BALCONY AT MISS BENSON'S. But before we part for the present, please, reader, to take, in fancy, a chair with rae on the balcony, which is entered from the dining-room, on the second story of Miss Benson's exceUent boarding-house. The guests who are seated beside me and in the room are all English, with the exception of one, who shall be men tioned. Almost all of them are commercial men. Two or three of them with unrevealed names are probably not so. They maintain the usual silence and reserve of Englishmen on their travels ; they talk among them selves, and gaze around them -with eyes educated to express a vacant stare. Yet these are very likely fine fellows, if you only knew them. They have travelled before now, have just come from a fishing tour in Norway, have " done " Sweden, Finland, and intend to visit the great fair of Novgorod. They study to ap pear unconscious of the presence of any other human being in the room, and it is to be presumed that " you must love them, ere you know that they are worthy of your love." Pray don't trouble them, and they won't trouble you. Yet, ten to one the ice will be broken between you, if you are not intrusive, and you wUl find that Jones and Robinson are right good fellows. Sitting in the corner of the balcony, slowly whiffing his cigar. 244 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. is a British naval officer who has been for many months in St Petersburgh. He was one of the commissioners for arranging the boundary between Turkey and Persia. He, too, is silent and reserved, though an Irishman ; but only draw him out, and you will soon discover what a mine of inexhaustible information there is in him, and what sly, pawky humour. What part of the earth does he not know? He will tell you the soundings of every mile in the Gulf of Mexico ; and there is hardly a spot frora Labrador to New Zealand, which does not suggest a story. For years he has wandered with the Arabs of the Desert, frora Bagdad to the rains of Babylon. The Sheiks Hassim and Selim, and every vagabond who wanders over Mesopotamia, are his familiars. No one, except perhaps " Hakim Ross," the faraous Scotch doctor of Bagdad, knew them better. A most agreeable companion is the captain. But gliding in on noiseless tread is an old Russian man of science. He dines daUy at this table. 'Wliy, no one knows, for the English alone frequent it. " The Professor " is upwards of seventy, but is still hale and active. What has he not seen ? Whom does he not know? What scientific meeting of savans was ever held in Europe without " our distin guished friend from St Petersburgh " being among them? What invention of any great importance was ever patented, that the inventor did not find a card and letter of introduction presented by " Professor " from St Petersburgh? Is the Great Eastern com menced, finished, launched ? The Professor is there at each of these moments of her existence. Is the Trans- Atlantic telegraph laid ? He is the first at RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 245 Valentia, and the last to leave it " Please transmit the names of the Royal Family of Russia," he whispers to the clerks. He is sure to receive one of the first messages transmitted, and shows it to the Emperor. Oh, how simple he is — a child — mere scientific curiosity; but is he not wide awake ! He knows far more of persons and things in every part of Great Britain, than any inhabitant of the nation does. Yet ask that man one question about Russia — try, if you can, and screw one ounce of information out of hira ; — interrogate him about serfage, the political liberty, or any other question ; — oh, what ignorance seizes him ! How defective his memory becomes ! He does not know ; he does not remember. He regrets to be unable to inform you. He has indeed no information on such points ! Most araiable, accomplished, and learned yet ignorant pro fessor ! I mention him merely as a type of a large class of Russians. Their rale is "get" (never "give") all thou canst " High Heaven rejects the lore, Of nicely calculated less or more." No wonder such persons should be considered "spies." If we conclude that they are not, no thanks to them for so favourable a judgment. But look abroad ! Below is the street, with a drosky-stand, bounded fifty feet across by the granite quay, and beyond, the Neva flowing past, broad, deep, and swift There are no vessels so high up, except a steamer or two on the opposite wharf. " What a stupid, dull place," exclaims the naval officer ; " how I hate it ! " " And I." " Ditto, ditto," exclaimed others. " Please give me a light for my cigar," asks a commercial 246 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. man of his neighbour, " I am dying of ennui." "What a glorious evening! What a sunset! Only look !" cries an enthusiastic new comer. It is indeed a glorious evening, Just watch across the Neva the remains of the sunset over Vassali Ostroff! What a marveUous combination of colour in the sky ! How deeply calm and lovely are the heavens, from the horizon to the zenith ; what exquisite colouring of blues, purples, reds, yellows, greens, and tints of yellow green, with broad streaks of light, wide-spread oceans, golden islands; amethyst promontories, unfathomable abysses of glory — all are there, and they will remain there till early dawn, at two o'clock, in unchanged, undecaying beauty, while we bid them good-night, and go to sleep ! I hope my readers are not in this position long ago. If they are, it is time to be quiet, and not disturb theur repose. ST PETERSBURGH. Knowing the admiration which most traveUers have expressed for St Petersburgh, I am almost afraid to ac knowledge my great disappointment with it It by no means came up to what I expected from the description I had read, or the " Ulustrations " I had seen of it. The finest view, I think, is from the centre of the Admiralty, in that grand open space where 100,000 men may be manoeuvred. In front is the Nevskoi Prospect, one of the widest streets in Europe, and stretching in a straight line for three miles. To the left is the noble Alexander Column, flanked on one side by the Winter and Hermit- RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 247 age Palaces, and on the other by the handsome quadrant of public offices, opening by a large arch into streets be yond, having on its summit a car of victory. The extreme right of the view, and of the place, is bounded by the buildings of the Holy Synods, and the farthest angle filled up by St Isaac's Cathedral. The open space on the opposite side to St Isaac's, and next the Neva, is raarked by the statue of the Czar Peter ; while beyond the broad, noble river itself, appear the long buUdings 011 the quays of the Islands. There is, no doubt a vastness in the scale of this Place d'Armes, which, is imposing. There are, moreover, details in this great whole which stand minute examination. St Isaac's Church — -which by the way cost about, as some say, _;^i 6,000,000 ! — is a stately and solid building without, but too bizarre within, and too overloaded with gildings, and too flash with colour, to produce the solemn effects of York or West minster as fi place of worship. It is, however, admirably adapted for those spectacles in which the Greek Church delights. The Hermitage Palace, with its noble stair case and raagnificent collection of paintings, is worthy in every respect of a great capital ; nor is there any monolith in Europe to be compared with the Alexander Column, the shaft alone being eighty feet of unbroken polished granite. But in spite of all this, and rauch more which might be said in favour of other views, and of particular objects, the general iinpression which the whole made on me irresistibly was that of a rapidly-got- up city, with a singularly waste and unfinished look about it, barbaric vastness and oriental display, -without real, endurable, unmistakable grandeur. The platform 248 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. or base-line from which the buUdings spring, is ugly, being a desert of uneven stones, full of mud or dust-holes, open water-ways, and undulations, excruciating to the miser able travellers in a drosky. This sadly mars the general aspect. The vast majority of the palaces are mere brick and stucco, with a very decayed, shabby look about them, while the immense space seems to dwarf every building into paltry dimensions, and themselves to appear empty of people, who are but dots on their acres of surface. The Nevskoi Prospect has nothing very striking in it, except its breadth and length. The shop- windows are small, owing, I presume, to the necessities of winter ; the show of goods commonplace ; the pave ment is wretched and uncomfortable, made up of round, flinty stones, or blocks of wooden pavement ; the equi pages are mean, the passengers, on the whole, poor-look ing ; whUe every street seems to end at last in wretched houses, dreary spaces, with horses, carts, and all sorts of rubbish ; and, finally, it appears to be lost in " nowhere," unless in the primeval forest or morass. The very unintelligible mystery of the Russian signs, which seem made up of all our old letters having become deranged, some turning back to- back, and others stand ing on their head, detracts from the interest by deny ing information, and is hardly made up by the panoramic views of the contents of the shop, painted for the sake of the great majority of its customers who cannot read. Who, for example, in examining the name on a statue, and seeing Cybopob inscribed upon it, would detect in these symbols the name of the old General " Suwarrow " ? Then there is the absence of all historic interest. No RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 249 doubt, to the native of Russia, many " vitches," and " ditches," and " offs," are full of patriotic remembrances. But most travellers, like myself, have never heard of these names, or the deeds which have made them illus trious, performed beyond the Caucasus. To a stranger the Czars are, in fact, the nation. One knows and hears only of them, — the great, the mad, the bad, the mur dered, from Peter down to our late enemy Nicholas, who combined not a few of these characteristics. The associations which chiefly fill the mind are connected with immense armies, distant conquests, Cossacks, the knout, serfs, political crirainals, Siberia, with a Czar over all, and a background of bribery, and of political and moral corruption, which darkens the whole Russian sky. The finest sights in St Petersburgh are the great bazaars and the islands. The former are thoroughly Russian and oriental, and there is no stroll so interesting as through those interminable narrow arcades, perfectly sheltered from the rain, and admitting as much daylight from above as is desirable, with the open warehouses, containing every article bought and sold over a counter in Russia, and swarming with the most motley assem blage of buyers and sellers to be anywhere seen. In the great city bazaars alone, (or Gostinoi Dvor,) there are two thousand shops, lining I know not how many lanes with plank-floors crossing each other at right angles. The drive through the islands was to me peculiarly interesting from its endless extent, the presence of un cultivated, untouched nature, with her Neva streams, and 250 PEEPS AT FOREIGA COUNTRIES. quiet Baltic inlets, and primeval trees, and peasant-houses, as rade as if in a distant forest ; .while everywhere are as unexpectedly met with, the country seats and beautiful cottages of wealthy citizens, and here and there cafes and theatres, and scenes of gay amusement, as false and gaudy as in the Champs-Elysees. On the whole, wild nature has the best of it But perhaps the finest feature of St Petersburgh is the noble Neva ! The hotels are filthy, the police villains, the droskies tortures, the palaces shams, the natives ugly; but the Neva seems to redeem all ! It flows on, deep, pure, rapid, proud, and majestic ; whether one gazes on its waters flowing beneath sun- set, crosses them in the Ught and painted ferry-boats, quaffs them, or bathes in them, they are in no case disappointed. But vvhy should we express any astonishment that this great capital should in any respect disappoint us ? The wonder rather is, that such a city has risen in such a country in so short a time. Old General Wilson told me that he had, when a child, been spoken to by " Cath erine the Great," whom he distinctly remembered, and she was married to Peter the Third, the grandson of Peter the First, who founded St Petersburgh. MOSCOW. I longed to see the real old capital of Russia. Yet I had no preconceived idea of it in my mind, except that of an undefined picture of a mysterious old Kre'nilin, with flames and smoke surrounding it, and Napoleon begin ning his terrible march from the unexpected heat to the ¦Iffe aSej^ ¦M03S0W 'NnwHira RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 251 unexpected cold. I was happy, therefore, to find my self in the train, which was snorting along its iron path en route to the Kremlin. I have littie to say about the journey. It occupies about eighteen hours, the distance being four hundred miles. The line is as straight as an arrow, and quite as uninteresting. It passes through a forest as prosaic as a few brooms stuck in a marsh. No tunnel darkens it ; no cutting flanks it. Not a town is seen along its course ; for though a few are stations, yet the station-house alone is visible. I would have liked to have stopped at Tver, on one of the branches of the Volga, and the starting-point of the steam navigation down that noble river. The route by the raUway to Moscow is extremely corafortable; the carriages, as everywhere else, being far superior to those in Britain, especially the second-class. The officials are most civil. The refreshment rooras are equal to any in Europe, and the tea unrrvalled. I cannot mention its name without expressing my thankful acknowledgment for this, one unmatched Russian luxury. The Russian tea, or " Tchai," is the product, I have been told, of provinces in China too far north to be able to supply the European markets through the southem ports of the Empire. It is conveyed overland to Russia, packed in skins, which are seen in the tea-shops, in parcels about a yard square. It is consequently more expensive than our tea, its price varying from 8s. to upwards of 20s. the pound. But a much smaller quantity is required to make a cup, or rather a tumbler, as it is only in such that tea is served in Russia. It is the universal and most refreshing beverage, and costs to the drinker, as far as I remember. 252 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. about 6d. a glass. In some of the " Tractirs " or res taurants of Moscow, such as the famous one near the Exchange, about forty pounds' weight of tea are con sumed daily. The food supplied at the principal railway stations had nothing which I could discover very peculiar about it except its general excellence. The Russian dishes, par excellence, must be demanded by the traveUer before they can be obtained. In the best restaurants of Moscow, where one sees two friends eating with their spoons out of one tureen, he naturally assumes that this is a national rather than an individual custom ; and when dining out, he may probably be startled by his iced soup with cold salmon in it But along the railway he is not reminded by the cooking of his distance frora France or England, except by the high charges for wine above the forraer, and by the abundance of time granted at every station for meals, as compared with the latter. Next to tea; the common drink is excellent beer, or " piva," and a sour but not unpleasant acid decoction, void of alcohol, called quass. The supplies of fruit are neither cheap nor tempting. Most of it comes from the south. The stop pages on the railway are frequent and long. But a walk and saunter refresh the system, and I saw several really nice-looking young ladies, who were in the same carriage with us, eraploy these seasons of repose to smoke their cigarettes, which they did with such grace as unfortunately to tempt both strangers and foreigners to follow their bad example. I found myself early in the forenoon in the busy par lour of Mr BiUo, well known to all travellers to Moscow RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 253 as a most civU landlord. " To the Kremlin ! " was tiie first and anxious desire of our party. So to the Kremhn we went How shall I describe it ? for it is unquestion ably one of the most reraarkable, odd, out-of-the-way, like-nothing-else spots I have ever visited, and indeed the thing to be seen in Moscow, if not in Russia. The first sign ofthe Kremlin, as we walked along the street towards it, was a high whitewashed wall, with Tartar-like embrasures, and separated from the town by an open boulevard. . Beyond this nothing was visible ; untU, on passing through a gateway, behind which was a very small chapel, which seemed from its lamps, its pictures, and crowded worshippers, to be some "holy place," we entered on what seemed a busy town. This was the " Kitai Gorod " or Chinese city. Proceeding along the narrow crowded street we debouched into a vast oblong space, half a mile or so in length, and about half this or less in breadth. This was the krasnoi ploschad, (red place.) The one side was bounded, opposite to us, and also to the right, by another high whitewashed wall, with towers, which contained the Kremlin proper ; the other side by the back ofthe low houses, of the great bazaar. The end to the left was occupied by that most fantastical and indescribable of all buUdings, that compound of twenty domes of different shapes and sizes, of stairs, and chapels, and mass of colour, blue, green, yellow, white, red, and gilt ; that Tartar-like Chinese Pagoda, ridi culous were it not so venerated and venerable — the Cathedral of St Basil or Basiliki Blagennoi. Nearly op posite this church is the sacred entrance to the KremUn, 254 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. by the Holy Gate or the " Spass vorota." Over it there hangs, under a glass, and before a lamp which bums from age to age, a picture of the Saviour. From vari ous traditions, which need not here be enumerated, every passenger, high and low, from the Emperor to the serf, must keep off his hat as he passes through this covered archway, which leads upwards, by a slight ascent of a few yards, to the acropolis and capital of Moscow. So have passed many a stately procession, many a weary pilgrim, raany a conqueror and soldier from conquests extending from Paris to Persia, and from the Volga to the Amoor.' Bareheaded, I found myself at last on the stone plateau of the old Kremlin. Anxious to get a bird's-eye view of the whole before examining any of its details, I directed ray steps at once to the highest point in the city, the summit of the high tower of " Ivan Valiki," or Long John. But I could not help pausing as I recaUed an early dream which, along with many others, was suggested by a dear old book I have long since lost sight of, called Ten Wonders of the World, a dream now reaUsed in the " Great Bell of Moscow." There it lay, the " Tzar Kolckoi," or King of Bells, a huge in verted cup, twenty-one feet high, and upwards of sixty feet in circumference, whose very metal is worth _;^35o,ooo, and with a piece out of its side which leaves a door open for easy access to the curious who wish to visit its ample interior. What a tongueless mouth ! What a dead thunderer ! But we must ascend the tower. We first pass a huge bell, which in size looks like the eldest son or wife of the dead one below, weighing about RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC 255 sixty-four tons, and requiring three men to swing its clap per; then up another storey, meeting about fifty more beUs, diminishing in size as the summit of the tower is reached — yet the least of them great When the summit is at last attained, let a cursory glance only be given at the Kremlin below, and at Moscow beyond, through the clear, transparent and briUiant atmosphere ; and then, perhaps, for the first time, one feels amply repaid for coming so far to gaze on such a peculiar and wonderful spectacle. Immediately below is the flat summit of the low hill, which is properly called the Kremlin or fortress, and which occupies about a mile square. Rising out of this flat plateau, and without apparent order, but closely grouped together, are about sixty gilded domes, marking the oldest and most revered churches in Russia — with palaces for metropolitans, bishops, and czars, old as the Tartars, and modem as Nicholas ; with treasuries, arsenals, and nunneries. And then there are the walls of all the buildings whitewashed with sno-wy whiteness, topped with coloured roofs of every hue, the vacant spots and sraall squares dividing the closely-packed buildings, occupied by thronging worshippers, soldiers, monks, nuns, and pilgrims, all clearly defined in their many shadows in the pure atmosphere, while the visible portion of the wall, which bounds the view on two sides, is so singularly pic turesque in old, curious watch-towers, mouldering turrets, all covered with coloured tiles — all making up a most remarkable picture. But when the eye passed from the more immediate objects beneath, and took in the rade panorama beyond, the spectacle was magnificent On 256 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. one side, the river Moskwa curled itself like a snake, one of its bends being immediately under the Kremlin walls. Farther away, a few miles to the right, rose a low ridge of hUls or steep wooded banks, called the Sparrow hills, whose base was washed by the river, from which the whole city first burst upon the gaze of Napoleon and his army ; and after ¦vdsiting the scene, I can hardly imagine a more imposing view of a vast city. In tuming to the other side, to gaze on the city from the summit of the towers, what can be finer ? It covers a great area for its population, (which is only about 500,000.) This is chiefiy owing to the fact of most of the houses standing apart, and having gardens attached to them. The characteristic feature unquestionably of the city is its churches. How many there are of those I know not, (it is said 600,) for I tried in vain to count them. But as each has several copper-covered, gilded, or ornamental domes, (generally five,) with high gilded crosses, and these everywhere glittering in the sun, minghng with the green of the trees, and the white of their houses, all together form a most brilHant and singular panoraraa, spread over a great area. Add to this the domes which gleam to right and left beyond the city, on the banks of the Moskwa ; of great monasteries, such as the Seminoff and Donskoi, (sacred to the Don Cossacks,) and the brUliant impression is deepened which the gazer receives from the summit of Ivan Valiki. It is a spectacle which one never tires of, and few traveUers grudge the toU of a second ascent, at least, in even the hottest weather, to have the splendid vision renewed. Before leaving this " stand-point," the RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 257 mystery of the waUs within waUs around the Kremlin is explained. These but represent the defences buUt at different times as the town extended beyond the " fort ress," which occupied the summit of the highest point, for hill it can hardly be caUed, in the original Muscovite settlement of the fourteenth century. Perhaps the reader asks, whether " the great fire " of 181 2, which roasted the French out of the capital into the frost, has not altered the features of the city ? I could see no evidences of the fire, nor were any changes in the town pointed out between what it was and is, such as enabled me in the least degree to realise its effects. The Kremlin was saved. But the line of retreat which Napoleon hiraself was obliged to follow, in order to pass with his staff from the Kremlin to the Palace of Petrov- ski, in the northern suburbs, and from whence he gazed on the tremendous conflagration, is easily traced, and from its detour, indicates a great area of fire, which barred his progress by the more direct route. Nor has it in reality been ascertained with any certainty how the fire originated. Many of the romantic stories told about it have been denied. The Emperor Alexander repeat edly declared that he had never sanctioned it ; and the then Govemor of Moscow, Rostopchin, who was thought to have first set his own palace on fire, published a pamphlet, asserting that the whole thing was accidental ! Whatever glory, therefore, has been attributed to the Russians, for this supposed grand sacrifice, has been thrast upon them by others, but rejected by them selves. But we must descend frora Long John and examine 258 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the Kremlin, its churches, nunneries, palaces, treasury. Impossible ! The mere catalogue of its curiosities would occupy pages. We would be compeUed to degenerate into the " Look now before you, and here you see," &c., of the penny showman. Yet, without doubt, a coUection of objects are here congregated, expressive ofthe history and rise of Russia. The palaces are extremely interest ing. The New Palace has the most magnificent suite of apartments I have ever seen. The St George's, Alex ander's, St Andrew's, St Catherine's, in which the knights of those several orders are invested, are finer than any in St Petersburgh, and are not surpassed by any in the world. The old Tartar palace, wilh its low-roofed small apartments, almost like closets, its narrow screw staurcase to the council-chamber; its thrones, beds, arabesque and fantastic ornaments on the walls of trees, with birds, and fraits, squirrels, mice, painted in every colour, is thoroughly Oriental and Moorish. It was from the roof of this palace that Napoleon first beheld Moscow, from within the walls ; and the view is superb. The treasury, again, is a world in itself of national curiosities. It con tains, araong other provincial wonders, the crowns of all her emperors, and those of the several countries they have conquered, including the crown and sceptre (broken too !) of Poland ; crowns dating as far back as the twelfth century, and all sparkling with clusters of jewels of im mense value and splendour. The thrones, too, are there — one of massive silver, all enriched with jewels- — on which successive Czars have sat, most of them uncom fortably, I doubt not; and huge gilded chariots, like those in old pictures of Lord Mayor's shows, with wheels RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 259 and harness suited to a menagerie, in which these bears of the north have driven. There, too, are the clothes which these same czars have worn on State occasions ; with things innumerable, including Napoleon's camp- bed, and the chair which Charles the Twelfth used at the battle of Pultowa. In passing out of this trea sury, 900 cannon taken in war are seen arranged in the Place d'Armes. The raost of them were taken from the French, in their retreat, by their victorious but barbarous pursuers. I need hardly say, that rio specimens of English cannon are there. These are guns too rare to be found in foreign arsenals. " Our national vanity is great ! " laments the foreigner. It may be so, but I trust our national gratitude is greater. Wellington never lost a gun. But I ara forgetting the Kremlin. What else have we to see there ? Why, the valet de place teUs us we " have seen nothing;" and that, too, after pacing for hours, under oppressive heat, — " up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's charaber." We have yet to see, he says, the Palace of the Patriarch, with its venerable public halls ; and House of the Holy Synod, with its ancient library; and its halls, with the two great silver kettles, and thirty silver jars, in which the holy oil, or " mir" is manufactured, having as its elixir vitcB drops of the oil frora the flask used by Mary Magdalene when she anointed Christ's feet. This is sent to every part of the erapire, to anoint infants when baptized, from the " -vitches" of the Czar down to queer-looking creatures beyond the Caspian, among the forests of Siberia, near 200 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the walls of China, br on the shores of the Arctic Ocean — and applied also to the dying, who are passing into the land where there is neither barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free. We have also to enter the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, so holy to the Russians. Just glance at that fresco of Jonah, in which there are three Jonahs, each with his name over his head ; one Jonah thrown overboard, the other disgorged, and the other received by the King of Nineveh. What a delightful and primi tive combination of ship, waves, whale, sailors, prophet or prophets, kings, and nobles, with Nineveh itself, in that space above the door ! Within are the tpmbs, side by side, like huge coffins, of the Russian monarchs down to Peter the Great. There is also the Church of the An nunciation, in which the Czars are crowned, paved with jasper, agate, and cornelian, (without beauty,) having the throne of the Czars, and reUcs without nuraber, gold and sUver counted by the pound weight, and with a picture,, l{ of the Virgin Mother, painted by St Luke, — the only real and authentic one, of course ; and with a real drop of blood, no doubt, which once belonged to John the Baptist. And after that we'shaU visit the great MiUtary School, capable of driUing within its four walls, and be neath one roof, eight thousand men ; and the Foundling Hospital, and— and — In some such strain as this, our well-informed, intelligent bore, the valet de place, addressed us on the Kremlin, when the sun was pouring down its hottest rays, and these were reflected from the stone pave ment which glowed like a furnace. I have too intense a memory of the utter hopelessness of "doing" these RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 261 wonders, and many more, satisfactorily to repeat the dose, even in infancy, to my readers. They are, I doubt not, almost as tired by this recital of the sights as I was by the reality. I resolved to take a Russian bath. "What like was it ?" Pardon me if I do not reveal the mystery, beyond stating that it was very hot, very soapy, very dear, very barbarous, and utterly indescribable ; and let me advise all who have a hot and shower bath of their own, to be thoroughly contented with the luxury, and not to en-vy the Russians, few of whom have either. An ordinary amount of common sense, apart from an ordinary amount of experience from travel in foreign countries, may suflSce to teach a man the absurdity of giving forth his opinions, with the slightest confidence in their being founded on sufficient evidence, regarding the political or social condition, from his own observation, of any country which he has visited for a few weeks only. The first day I landed in the United States, I took my seat on the top of an omnibus — by no means an aristocratic position, but a most interesting one in pass ing through the streets of a great city — when my atten tion was called to the fact of the driver seating himself on the left or " off" side of the araple " Box." With the disposition of a traveller to watch for national character istics, I was inclined to " book " this fact as peculiar to drivers in America. But I thought it best, before doing so, to inquire into the cause of this unusual phenomenon. " Pray, why doyou sit on that side ? " I inquired. "'Cause, stranger, I guess I 'm left-handed ! " I gained some ex perience by this reply, and resolved, accordingly, never 262 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. to generaUse too hastily, lest I should make mere excep tions prove the rule of manners and customs. I don't -wish to forget this principle in presuming to speak about the Russians. But just as a Parliamentary committee, which itself knows little of a subject, never theless obtains information by examining competent wit nesses, so may a traveller have opportunities abroad of examining those who ought to possess inforraation from long residence, and whose evidence he has the means of constantly sifting, and in some degree of testing, by his own limited observation. Accordingly, I naturally em braced every opportunity given me of ascertaining what those long resident in Russia knew about its people. Circumstances enabled me to come into contact with several well-informed persons, whose character for trath was above suspicion. WeU, then, let me give my readers a specimen of one conversation of several I had with such witnesses. I do not pretend to give the very words, nor the exact sequence of the remarks raade, but I am sure that my ¦compagnons de voyage, who wUl probably read what I am now writing, could confirm the strict accuracy of my report. Let me, then, record AN AFTER-DINNER TALK AT MOSCOW IN BILLO'S PENSION. The dinner is ended ; the clatter of plates and of aU the European languages has ceased ; the most of the guests have dispersed, — some have gone out on pleasure or business ; some to read the newspapers in the next room, and others to arrange about their journey to the great fair, then going on at Nijni Novgorod. But at RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 263 the end of the empty table, half a dozen Englishmen and Scotchmen have remained by special invitation, to chat with the travellers who have brought some of them letters of introduction. One man has been twenty years at the head of a prosperous work for the manufacture of machinery ; another, nine years in a similar business ; another, fifteen years a superintendent of one of the largest cotton mills ; two others, partners in an establish ment which has necessitated a large amount of travelling for sixteen years in every part of Russia ; while one or two more are acquainted with the country during a residence of several years, either in Moscow or in St Petersburgh. Such are the witnesses. Let us examine them on several points. We begin with THE POLICE. " One hears a great deal about the Russian police," was remarked, " but it is difficult to know how far the stories recorded of them in anonymous books are true, or how far they may be the mere invectives or inventions of men who suffered righteously from them." " A greater set of scoundrels don't exist ! " pronounces my cotton friend, calmly and coolly, as if speaking frora the heart. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! my boy, you are sore upon the point," said an acquaintance of his, sitting beside him. " Now, do tell our friends about what happened to yourself the other day. It is & fair .specimen of the set" suggests a third party. After some joking and coaxing, the story was told. But I wish my readers could have seen the figure of the splendid Yorkshireman who told it. He 264 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. was upwards of six feet, with a bronzed, handsome face, and light curly hair, and fists from whose grasp most men would shrink if they seized in order to shake ! I wish also, if the reader loves Yorkshire as I do, that he heard the story told in the dialect of the great county, so full of force and humour. The story ran thus : — The cotton mills had suffered, more than once, considerable losses in their cotton bales. It was difficult to detect the thief — for no doubt the bales were stolen — and difficult, when he was detected, to con-vict him. So utterly corrupt is justice, from highest to lowest ; so combined are all interested parties to act solely with reference to their own probable gain in money, that it is always a very complex problem to solve, whether more is lost or gained by ever going into court in order to recover property. The bribery is so immense, so shameful, and reduced to such a science, that the complainer is always in the dark ; for the poHce he eraploys to search, the advo cate he employs to plead, the judge who tries the case, each and all raay be bribed by higher sums on the part of the defender than on that of the complainer. There fore, in Russia alone can the rule be followed by selfish ness, of permitting him who takes your coat to take your cloak also, rather than go to law. But in this case a carrier volunteered, for a consideration, certain intelli gence regarding the missing cotton bags. It was thus discovered' that the son of one of the leading merchants in Moscow, and a member of its highest " guUd," had been in the habit of bribing the carriers of the cotton to drop a bag occasionally at a certain spot in a wood near the public road, and from which the " gentleman " picked RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 265 it up shortly afterwards. Mr S. laid his scheme of detection founded on this information. He armed himself with a loaded revolver, and hid himself in the wood, in the environs of Moscow, to watch his prey. The carrier appeared in due time, dropped and con cealed the cotton bale in the wood, passed on, and in a short time was followed by the young merchant in his drosky, accompanied by an empty cart. The bale was conveyed into the empty cart by its driver, and, along with the drosky and its driver, was proceeding on their joumey, when the Moscow gentleman found himself suddenly seized by a huge man, who sprang into his vehicle beside him, threatening to shoot hira if he offered any opposition whUe pinioning his hands. A mouse might as well have opposed a vrild cat ! Mr S. drove him to the police-office of the district. Now it so happened that the head police-officer was bribed by Mr S. " Bribed ! " I exclaimed, interrupting his story ; " how could you do that ? " A general smUe prevaUed on the countenances of the company, while Mr S. replied, "Every man must bribe in this country. It is a tax, understood and fixed. Unless merchants bribed the post-office" — "At what rate?" — "I know some houses that pay about £1 a-week ; and the mer chant who refused this would not get his letters until long after they were due. Unless we bribed the police, neither we nor they could live. For example, the poHce- officer I speak of only receives as his nominal salary say ;^ioo. But he has to keep four horses and two assist ants, each at ;^5o per annum, while his allowance for his horse goes as his bribe to his superintendent How 266 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. then is he to live, unless we pay him ? We give him about ;^2o a-year, and this is absolutely necessary to secure that his services shall not be against us." To continue the story. Mr S. appeared with his prisoner at the bureau of the police-office, and found himself iramediately charged by him with an attempt at murder, while he denied, at the same time, all knowledge of the transaction regarding the cotton, which he was ready to swear he had never seen or touched ! The tables thus seemed suddenly turned against the' Yorkshireman. But whUe he, the young gentleman, was drawing up his protest and charge, the police-officer gave a sign to Mr S. to follow him to the next roora. " Pray, Mr S., was your pistol loaded ? " " It was, and no mistake ! " " Then draw the bullet instantly, or you will find your self in a scrape." Mr S. tried to do so in vain, but the policeman effectuaUy aided him. They retumed to- the room, and the charge was presented. " I see," said the officer, " that you charge this highly-respectable foreigner with a threat to shoot you ! Pooh ! pooh ! It was all a joke!" "Joke! I wish you had only seen him! Joke ! " " But are you sure there were bullets in his pistol? Mr S., please inform me as to this fact." Mr S. instantly handed the pistol to the policeman, and asked hira to examine and decide for himself " I knew it ! The barrels are empty ! I cannot tolerate this stupid charge ; it is malicious and shameful ! Please compromise matters. I presume, Mr S., you are willing to adrait that there is no proof that this gentleman stole your cotton? And you, sir, addressing the Russian, Imust admit that there is no proof that Mr S. intended RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 267 to do anything else but to give you a fright ? " And so a compromise in these terms was agreed upon. But the policeman whispered to Mr S., "Would you like to thrash the rascal ? for, if so, I can easily give you an opportunity of doing so, eh ? " But Mr S. declined the honour. " For," said he, as he told the story, " 1 knew that the policeman was another rascal, and that, if I had accepted the privilege offered to me, he would have kept it over my head for years, and threatened me with a trial ; and every tirae I atterapted to leave the country, the trial would be re-opened anew, untU they were heavily bribed to let me off without it ! " So both parties left the office. But, as the door was closed behind them, the young Russian merchant, finding himself alone with Mr S., put his finger to his nose and said, " When you wish to catch a thief again, pray let me advise you to take a little more time ; to restrain your passion ; to be more careful of evidence, and you may probably succeed. In the meantime, I rather think T have done you ! " And with a triumphant laugh and bow, he bade Mr S. a good afternoon. This fact, which had happened a few weeks before, is a fair specimen of the stories which were told illustrative of the police, and is characteristic of the whole system of "justice" from the highest to the lowest. There is nothing, in fact, in the civilised world more infamous than the execution of the civil and criminal law in Russia. One other trifling incident I cannot help recording. " Well, S.," asked one of the company, " how do you and the Govemment Doctor get on now?" 268 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. "Better a littie," replied S. « Do you know, I have found out the reason why the fellow annoyed us so much, and made so many complaints. I knew that he was a drankard, and that he insisted on being suppHed well with liquor as his bribe. So, as I did not drink myself, I hired a man, and paid him regular wages,, to drink with the medical inspector. Was that not liberal I But the rascal got offended, and determined to revenge himself on me, because I drank with him by proxy, and did not give him my own company !" "Are you afraid," I asked another person present, " to travel on the roads at night ? " " Never, unless we meet the Cossack mounted police, who are sure to rob if they catch an unarmed traveller ! " So much for the poUce. But this led to a further con versation on THE COTTON MILLS, THE WORKING CLASSES, AND GENERAL MORALITY. There are in Russia about 140 cotton mills, containing 1,600,000 spindles. Taking all things into account the protection of the trade raises the price of the article fifty per cent above England. Smuggling, therefore, exists to a great extent. The workmen employed are serfs, who generally live in the country, but leave their villages and their wives behind them to work for a time at the factories. Their wages amount to about f[,z, los. monthly. Barracks are provided for the workmen. The work is continued by relays day and night. Out of 280 work days, about 30 are fast or feast-days, in which no work is done. The Russians have hitherto been unable to RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 269 make good factory machinery ; any who have succeeded, apparentiy, in doing so, have really been indebted to England for its chief portions. The habits and morals of the working classes are of the lowest possible descrip tion. It would be impossible to publish in these pages the unquestionable facts illustrative of their depraved condition. Virtue and truth seem scarcely known. As regards stealing, not one working man or woman is ever permitted to pass out of the premises without being care fuUy searched by persons employed for this purpose.* In spite of this, they manage to pilfer cotton and other articles. Baths are regularly taken weekly, but during the other days their persons are filthy. They lie on bare boards, and never change their clothes. When a new and commodious lodging-house was built for the work men of a well-conducted factory at Alexandrofski, near St Petersburgh, the workmen, after examining it, sent a deputation to the manager, who was my informant asking him what additional wages he meant to give if they went to his new house ! But I have been given to understand that the habits of even the middle and higher classes of society in Mos cow and St Petersburgh, -with some exceptions, is said to be as polluted as that of the serfs. The moral leprosy is covered with silk garments, and splendid uniforms, and highly respectable outsides, but there it is, neverthe less, in aU its vUeness. I have never in Austria or France heard, from those best informed as to the state of national * I learned afterwards in Finland that this never is required in the mills in that country. The -workmen are generally Protestants, well informed, industrious, and honest. 270 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. morahty, of more corraption than exists in Russia. But it is impossible to enter into details on this topic. Few things gave me a more painful impression of the morality of the people than the Asylum in Moscow — and there is one as great in St Petersburgh — for poor children. The buUding is magnificent, the education given in it excellent, and all its arrangements princely. Any child brought to it is at once received. I witnessed the pro cess. Two women of the working classes brought each a chUd. The clerk handed a ticket, with a number attached to it, to be tied round its wrist ; a corresponding number was inscribed in the ledger. No questions were asked. The woraen delivered up their children with more indifference than most people would part with a cat or dog. The children are next day baptized and vaccinated, and though they may be afterwards claimed, yet the vast majority never are. About sixty chUdren are each day thus' received at this one institution. There were in the house about 800 infants, under the care of several hundred nurses. The whole number of children under the charge of the institution is 30,000 ! The vast majority are boarded out in the countiy districts. God preserve to us our family life ! And defend us from such premiums upon selfishness and immorality ! The poor-laws are bad enough, but this is worse. But I am forgetting BiUo's, and the group at the end of the table. A word or two more, ere we part, on THE GREEK CHURCH. "Pray, what is your impression, from aU you have seen and heard, regarding the Greek clergy ? " RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 271 Mr H. " The description which Macaulay gives of the clergy in England in the days of Charles I. seems to me to be as nearly as possible characteristic of the estiraation in which the Greek clergy are held in this country. I presume that there must be learned men and good men among them, but assuredly, as a body, they are a miserable set, without any influence whatever in society and among educated men." " But the people respect thera ? " " Respect them ! that they certainly do not. The gross and prevailing superstitions of the raasses lead them, of course, to idoHse thera in their official capacity as representatives of heaven, having power to save or destroy ; but when ' the idols are disrobed of their gar ments, and appear as men, they are lightly esteemed. One never raeets a Pope in society. The nobleman who would ask him to come to his house to baptize his child, would never receive him at his table, but as a matter of course, send him to the servants' hall, to be suppUed with food and abundance of drink." " Are they immoral, then ? " " Not in one sense, I believe ; for every parish priest must marry, and when his wife dies, he retires to a monastery." Mr G. " I and my friend here have travelled over a great part of Russia, and have resided during the last nineteen years, several months at a time, in about four teen pro-vinces, and I can honestly declare that I never knew one parish pope who was not either a drankard or a gambler. This may seem to you a dreadful exaggeration, but such has been the result of our observation." 272 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Mr W. " But why should this surprise you ? They are taken from among the poor. They are miserably paid. Their education is wretched. No mental labour or eamest religious duties of any kind are given them to perform. They are mere machines dressed in splendid robes, spending hours every day in bowing, crossing, walking in procession, mumbling the prayers of a long wearisome liturgy as rapidly as is possible for'the muscles ; blessing pilgrims, exorcising evil spirits, baptizing infants, or administering the sacrament of the Eucharist to them with a spoon. All this endless routine of dull, dead ceremonies, on Sundays, week-days, feast-days, fast-days, with days for blessing fruit-trees, and the waters, and the anniversary services in the grave-yards, when all feast and get drunk over the graves of their households; think of all this among a people who cannot read, and have no Bible if they could, and without the slightest control from pubUc opinion, or opposition of any kind. Such a state of things must tend to degrade and produce a reac tion towards anything which will quicken his duU nerves and stupid monotonous existence." Here struck in a thorough Scotchman who was pre sent : — " I saw lately what I couldna' have beUeved un less I had seen it mysel'. The priest came to a steamer I was in on the Volga to bless the waters, or the boat hersel', I forget which. He was dressed in aU his falderalls,, and went through a' his manoeuvres ; and the bodie seeraed real earnest and a' the folk becked and bowed uncoramon. But after he was done he went to the steer age to drink wi' the sailors. So by and by, the engineer, John Brown, a countryman, who was looking down RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC, 273 through the companion window, says to me, ' That priest is a brute.' ' O John ! ' I said, ' I dinna like to hear yoii ca' ony minister o' ony persuasion by that name.' ' Just come here,' said John, ' watch me, and I 'U prove to your satisfaction that he is a brute.' So wi' that John gangs doon, and what do I see in a few rainutes but the priest roarin' and laughin' on his knees and hands on the cabin floor, and Johnnie on his back ridin' him wi' a baud o' his lang hair, that 's aye cambed doon the priest's back, in his hand for a bridle ! It beat a' ! So Johnnie came up, and said, ' Did I no tell you he was what I ca'd him. ? ' ' Weel a weel,' says I, ' I never seed a man ridin' a minister afore, and I dinna expect or wish to see it again.' ' Let hira keep a bridle on his ain mouth like a man,' said Johnnie, 'and nae- body will ride him wi' ane like a beast.' " But I must end the gossip at Billo's. The reader has it very much as I got it, and can draw what conclusions he pleases from it It is impossible to doubt that a nation like Russia must have many noble-minded men, and raany pious and learned clergyraen who are walking humbly with their God ; but I repeat it, that in answer to questions put to several persons who had ample opportunities of knowing the real condition of Russian society, — mer chants long resident in the country, missionaries who had for years come into close contact with its spiritual condition, officers who had mingled with every grade of society in the empire, — the impression conveyed by their statements and opinions was always much the same as that which I received frora the gossip at BUlo's. s 274 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The services of the Greek Church are to a stranger singularly wearisome and shockingly superstitious. The dressing and undressing of the priests, the taking off and putting off crowns and vestments ; the marching and countermarching, the swinging of ceiisers, the passing in and passing out of the sanctuary, the crossings and the bowings, exhaust the patience of the most curious. The beautiful chanting — for there is no instrumental music — with the wonderful bass voices, is too monotonous and constant to be pleasing or edifying. The people have no books and no seats, but form a great crowd sur rounding the open space in which the ever-varying spectacle by the gorgeously-dressed priesthood is taking place. The only part the people take in the service is by incessant bowings with the body, as if the multitude had St Vitus's Dance, — the only change of attitude being prostration on the pavement, with repeated kissings of the stones by the raost devout The devotions by those who at other times crowd the churches, especially at Moscow, the prayers before the pictures, the kissing of relics, the lighting of candles before them, the whole look of people and priest, impress one with a far greater feeling of ignorance and superstition than does the worship in Roman Catholic churches. Strange though it may seem, it was a positive relief to visit the Tartar mosque in Moscow, after an hour spent in the churches of the Kremlin. In a silent back street, and within a large open space, was the modest- looking mosque. The absence of pictures and images was itself a remarkable contrast to the bedizened and gaudy churches. There were about thirty worshippers RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 275 in the mosque. As each entered with his turban and caftan, he repeated a silent prayer, and, sitting do^wn cross-legged on a carpet, with his string of beads, he continued his devotions in sUence, and with apparent reverence. The service was after a while conducted by one person, who, with shut eyes and loud voice, repeated a series of prayers ; to join in which the muezzin outside of the door, with his fingers in his ears and his eyes shut, called all true worshippers, with very peculiar and loud accents, more like — with reverence be it spoken — a donkey braying, with unusual force and vehemence, than any other sound I ever heard. But, nevertheless, the mosque must perish in spite of its siraplicity ; and the church live in spite of its super stition. The distinctive peculiarity of the one is a false hood, and that of the other is truth. The one has the wood, hay, and stubble, with sorae precious stones, yet without the true foundation. The other has the founda tion, on which noble and eternal things shall yet be reared, when the fire of reformation consumes the pre sent superstructure. And there is hope for the Greek Church. It has never by any council, like that of Trent, solemnly bound itself by a decree to its peculiar dogmas, or pronounced a curse on all who dare to alter or amend them. It is free to reform itself without self-contradiction. The bigoted violence it has raanifested, and in some of the provinces of Russia still manifests, towards dissenters, especially Roman Catholic proselytes, is the effect chiefly of circumstances, partly political, partly social, which may any day pass away. Its persecutions are not a 276 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. necessary logical deduction from its professed creed.' There are many other hopeful signs for the Greek Church — such as a growing desire for a higher educa tion among the clergy ; the grand measure of the free dom of the serfs, which is foUowing up by a system of national education ; above all, the circulation of the Scriptures. This latter measure is only now being car ried out, with the approval of the Holy Synod, and chiefly through the influence of the Emperor. Last year 60,000 copies of the gospel has been issued in Russ and Slavonic, and were sold at less than eight- pence a copy. When these are disposed of, a second edition of 60,000 is to follow. After that, the whole New Testament wiU, for the first time, be printed and published in modern Russ, and in various sizes. The Old Testament is also being translated into Russ, but is not yet finished. The fact that the Greek Church is thus faithfully translating, and honestly circulating the Bible, affords the best ground for hoping that it may graduaUy reform itself " according to the Word." To aU these hopeful signs may be added the fact, already alluded to, of the parish priests being necessarily married men. By and by the rule may be relaxed which now compels them, when they become widowers, -to retire to a monastery, and never to marry again. But to pass for a moment from the Church to the State. One necessarily hears a good deal about the late war, with its effect on the nation. The drain of men and money must have been enormous. Half a miUion of the former, and a mUlion and a half of the latter, were RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 277 the estimates made by several intelligent residents whom I raet at Peterhoff, and who had been in the country during the terrible struggle. I was struck by the want of sUver coin in the country, when making small pur chases in Moscow. Several tiraes I was obliged to forego my purchases firom want of small coin, as the shopkeepers would not change the ruble note (3s.) for silver ; most of the bullion had been exported during the war. The authentic anecdotes related of the late Emperor during that trying time, make it more than likely that ¦ his mind was latterly affected. His fits of ungovernable passion, even with old Nesselrode, were notorious. The victory on the Alraa, which Nicholas at first would not believe, abusing the officer who brought hira the de spatch, was known by him some days before it was made public. An American gentleman, who saw him almost daily among his troops, told me, that so changed had he become during that short period, that without his know ing the cause, he had remarked to several friends that the Emperor must be severely ill, and that he looked like a dying man. The effect of his death was as if some great weight had been taken off society. AU acknowledged his power, and felt the presence of a giant among them. But there was an intolerable sense of bondage expe rienced by aU. Liberty of speech was irapossible. But since the accession of the present Eraperor, men can breathe and speak without fear of a secret poHce, of secret agents, or of a journey to Siberia. In fact, politics are now discussed, not only among private 278 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. friends, but among strangers, with perfect freedora. The liberty of the press is every day becoming more unshackled. The police laws, also, which affected the admission, residence, and departure of strangers, are being almost entirely done away with, and brought into harmony with the usages of other European countries. Let us not forget at what a late period of history Russia has entered the European family of nations. The good old General WUson, with whom I conversed at Alex androfski, had himself conversed with the great Cathe rine, who ascended the throne only thirty-seven years after the death of Peter the Great, who was almost the founder of the present Russian Empire. With a powerful and great governraent, an educated people, a reformed Greek Church, and an open Bible, what may not Russia yet become ! We may rejoice in the prospect for the sake of our common humanity. The immense boundaries of Russia extend almost with an unbroken stretch over a hundred degrees of longi tude, from the Baltic to the Rocky Mountains, and embrace more than the half of the northern portion of the habitable globe. They descend frora the snows of the Arctic Ocean to the burning steppes of Asia. She reigns supreme over a vast and busy population, as well as over hordes of roving barbarians. Her means of internal communication by her gigantic rivers ; the facilities afforded by her plains and forests for railways and telegraphs ; her immense mineral riches and bound less plains of fertile soU ; her unassailable mihtary posi tion when on the defensive; her almost unlimited command of men to supply her armies; the subtiety. RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC. 279 perseverance, and governing power of her officials, and the hardihood of her people, all promise a future for Russia, which, without affording any great cause of alarm to Europe, affords great cause of joyful antici pation to herself, and to all who wish civilisation to supplant barbarianisra. And if to this is added the hope of Christian truth irabuing a Church whose autho rity is acknowledged by eighty raillions of the human race, we may well look with profound interest on all that is taking place in Russia, and from our hearts wish her God-speed in the cause on which she has entered. As it is, can history show a more unexpected and unUkely combination of events, than the fact of the same year, and, we believe, the same day, witnessing the most despotic nation in the world freeing its serfs, and the model republic breaking up, in order that its Southern Confederation may hold its slaves by a tighter grasp, and bind them by a firmer chain?* NORMAN MACLEOD. * For the information of such of my readers as may wish to learn what provision is made to supply the ordinances of religion to British residents in St Petersburgh and Moscow, I may here state that there is a chapel in connexion with the Church of England in Cronstadt, St Petersburgh, and Moscow. The venerable and excellent Dr Law has discharged his duties with great fidelity in St Petersburgh for upwards of forty years, and is still hale and hearty. Mr M'Sweeny, of Cronstadt, himself an ex-officer of the British Navy, is admirably fitted, in every respect, for the position he occupies. There is a " British- American " chapel in St Petersburgh, which is "inde pendent " in its govemment, and is intended to meet the wants of those who are not disposed to accept of the services of the Episco pal Church. There is another in the same "connexion" at Alex androfski, a busy, manufacturing, small town, five miles from the 28o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. capital. These chapels are attended by men of various sections of the Protestant Church — Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congrega tional ; and the clergymen who minister in them are most catholic in their sentiments, liberal in their government, and faithful in their ministrations. As the British residents, including children, in and around St Petersburgh, amount to about 5000 souls, there is work to do more than sufRcient to occupy the lab&urs of all the clergy. xn. A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO. IF war has its drawbacks, and revolutionary move ments have their dangers, they at least have the advantage of instructing great masses of spectators in geography. During recent years the British public has become wonderfully well informed with reference to cer tain portions of the globe, which would, under ordinary circumstances, have attracted but little of their notice. Sabastopol and Takoo, the Volturno and the Chickaho- miny, are now household words ; and although probably few have been able to follow those intricate operations upon places with unpronounceable names, which the Turks have lately been carrying on against the Montene grins, there is a general impression that • the scene of warfare is on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, and that Cettinye, the capital ofthe country, which it was ramoured some months since had been taken by the Turks, after its raler had set fire to " the pubhc buUdings," is a city of some importance. But this is just the point where a 282 FEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. little inforraation fuUer than a map, and more correct than a telegram, can give us, raay be of use. That Cettinye is the capital of Montenegro is true, but nothing short of a visit to it can convey an idea of its public buildings. It was a wild stormy morning, when, hanging on by the tail ofa ragged pony, I aUowed him to drag me up the almost impracticable rock-cut steps which ascend frora the lovely Bocca di Cattaro, along the ragged face of " the Black Mountain." Below was the sea winding in a narrow channel fifteen miles long, between frowning precipices, their sides furrowed with watercourses, down which in places dashed white lines of foam ; above were black pine-forests and granite peaks. Where there is room for cultivation between the mountain base and the sea, vines and olives clothe its margin, and white vUlas reflect themselves in the clear water, but Cattaro itself has scarcely roora to stand, and seems to flourish on as little soil as the fir-trees that cling to the rocks above it. We know at once when we have exchanged Austrian for Montenegrin territory by the state of the roads, or rather steps. These are no longer constructed with the view of facilitating the progress of the traveller, but rather of increasing the difficulties of the ascent Now the path leads along a narrow ledge ¦with the most uncomfortable- looking ravine on one side, and crags which project as if expressly designed to push you into it, on the other- Here a rock in the middle of the road would suggest an insurmountable difficulty to any aniraal but one accus tomed to traverse it ; further on it is used as a convenient channel by an unceremonious stream which tumbles into it in a picturesque waterfall, and during a storm tumbles A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO, 283 out of it again with a violence that the traveUer finds it diflScult to resist. Occasionally we meet strings of light- footed Montenegrins hopping rapidly frora crag to crag, followed by no less sure-footed ponies with panniers, who monopolise the middle of the path, and expect us to pass on the outside, and not feel giddy ; ragged-looking women, carrying bundles of wood on their backs, follow painfully ; bare-footed and squalid, they contrast strongly in appearance with their liege lords, whose picturesque costurae, manly forras, and independent bearing, do not leave us in doubt as to which is " the better half" The Montenegrins being a warlike race, often do things like the Americans, "for a strategic purpose," and their ob ject in rendering all access to their country as impractic able as possible, it is easy to divine. It is the excessive difficulty of communication, no less than the bravery of these mountaineers, which has enabled them to protract over so long a period hostilities with the Turks. In three hours we have clambered up 5000 feet a^nd find ourselves on a high rocky plateau, with gigantic blocks of granite rising in grotesque masses on each side of the rugged path. The scene is barn and wUd in the extreme ; except here and there a weather-beaten pine or a stunted juniper, there is nothing to relieve the monotony of grey crags. We surmount these serrated ridges only to find bigger rocks pUed on each other beyond, and walls as regular as though built by some race of giants, hemming us in on both sides. Now and then we come upon a little isolated plot of potatoes or corn squeezed in among the rocks, but we may traverse miles without 284 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. seeing as much soil as would suffice for a respectable kitchen garden. After a little more scrambling we become curious to know where the habitations are, more especially as suffi cient time has elapsed since our departure from Cattaro to give us an appetite, and ultimately rest, with grateful feelings, at a small cottage not unlike a Highland bothy, while a gaunt feraale, in tattered garments, ministers to our wants by supplying us ¦with eggs, and a substance more like pressed curds than cheese. Her husband, an athletic man bristling with swords and pistols, regards us with a sort of suspicious apathy, and seems by no means disposed to satisfy that thirst for information, for which, as conscientious travellers, we are distinguished. Three or four of his countrymen who have followed our littie cortege out of curiosity, now collect round us, and lighting their long pipes, smoke and stare in sUence. We can scarcely realise, as we gaze on this uncouth-looking group, that a few hours ago we left a civilised tovra, where a band was playing in public gardens to fashionable ladies sweep ing the walks with their crinolines, or eating ices at littie round tables with officers resplendent in the gaudy uni forras of the Austrian service. The rocks we had traversed did indeed interpose as mighty a barrier as though an ocean rolled between our night's quarters and our launching place ; and our curiosity to reach the capital was not lessened by our first experience of Montenegro. At last we crossed a summit frora which a magnificent view spread itself before us, untU it was lost in the hazy distance, and we were told that the whole territory of Montenegro wa's comprised in the intervening space, and A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO, 285 that the gUmmer of water indistinctiy visible in a plain far away below us was the Lake of Scutari, while the blue outline beyond marked the raountains of Albania. Then we descended into a plain surrounded by a wall of rocks, and looked for the capital; for we were told that it was situated in its centre. In vain we inspected the area below us ; beyond a few miserable cottages we could see nothing to answer our expectations, and were not a little astonished when we learned that the assem blage of huts we were approaching was Cettinye itself It was idle to examine the one little street, about a hundred yards long, of which the town is composed, for a house of refreshment. An inn was a " public building" which the authorities had forgotten to supply. A cottage was pointed out to us, which consisted apparently of a " but and a ben," and was the residence of no less a per sonage than the Prince's father, but we had not at that time the honour of his acquaintance, and his mansion did not look as if it contained a spare room. At last we found a Dalmatian couple, who were the only foreigners in the place, and offered to take us in for a consideration. They inhabited the raost considerable building in the to-wn, for it had two storeys, and we soon installed our selves in a very dirty roora, containing a suspicious-look ing double bed, and sundry articles of Montenegrin wearing apparel ; a large chest, and a choice collection of arms stacked in one comer, induced us to beUeve that the real tenants of the apartment had vacated in our favour, an hypothesis we speedily found to be correct, though we were far from imagining how distinguished were the individuals we had dispossessed. I happened 286 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. to be sitting on the trank, as chairs were scarce, when the handsomest Montenegrin I had seen, covered with gold and sUver embroidery, and armed at all points, stalked majestically in, and politely asked me to rise. Indeed, so much impressed was I with this warlike ap parition, that I found little difficulty in assuming a con- ciUatory demeanour, and blandly offered hira my seat Instead, however, of sitting upon the trunk, he proceeded to unlock it, and displayed to my astonished gaze rows of neatly-packed money-bags. Some of these, contain ing gold and silver coins, he emptied with the utmost unconcern upon the table, whence they were swept by sundry attendants who had followed him into the room. This late occupant of our chamber, who lent it so con fidingly to two entire strangers, seeraed to possess more coin than I had supposed all Montenegro contained, and we were eager in our inquiries as to who he might be. Our surprise was somewhat increased, when we learned that our visitor was no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that the royal treasury was represented by the unpretending box which contained the floating capital of the Principality. It appeared that the big bed had been occupied until our arrival by the distinguished senator whom we now saw engaged in his financial duties, and his brother, a captain in the army, and we were indebted to them for the kindness with which they at once placed their own Hmited accommodation at our disposal. Soon the un usual news of the arrival of " distinguished foreigners " spread through the littie viUage, and sundry of its inhabi tants drop in and scrape acquaintance. Most of these A VISn TO MONTENEGRO. 287 have interesting feats of prowess to relate, and dwell for ever on the exploits they have achieved against the Turks. They wear different medals for these, and are all abundantly decorated. One stalwart warrior recounts how he and twenty-one comrades fought in a pass for fifteen days and nights against 8000 Turks, during which period they lost six of their number, but were ultimately reinforced, and drove back the eneray. Another, whose ragged clothes and haggard face bear witness to the trath of his story, informs us that he has only arrived the day before from an eighteen months' captivity in Turkey ; and that he is utterly destitute, nor have his friends, who are as poor as himself, any means of sup plying his wants ; and he casts a languishing eye on the treasure-chest All the while we are discussing a very indifferently-cooked dinner, and are conversing with these heroes in a variety of tongues. Generally we found Italian the most available, sometimes it was Turkish, and a few of the better educated spoke Ger man, often a mixture of all three. They are frank and cordial, anxious to indoctrinate us into Montenegrin politics, and ready to afford us inforraation. So few English, they say, ever come to their country, that they are flattered by the visit, and wish to make us enjoy it As war is going on, many people are from home, and the country looks deserted in consequence. Except the officers and non-comraissioned officers, the army receive no pay. Every man is in fact a soldier, and immediately after he has sown his crops he proceeds to the war, and fights until it is time to corae back and reap them, when there is a general lull in operations untU the harvest is laid in. 288 PEEP AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES, The regular army consists of only 8000 men, who are always mobilised, and upon whom all the fighting falls at seed-time and harvest Lately the women and chUdren have taken part in the defence of the country. The government of the country is chiefly carried on by a Senate, consisting of twelve persons, chosen by the Prince, who succeeds himself, not by hereditary right, but by the noraination of his predecessor. Thus the present Prince is the nephew of the late Danieli; his father, how ever, exercises practically the chief influence in the country, and in order to secure it to himself, is said to have had five of the leading men shot on the accession of his son. The view from our window was often animated and picturesque in the extreme. In the middle of the street stood a large tree, under which warriors collected and held solemn council. Each chief, as he moved about was generally attended by a dozen or more stalwart foUowers, who lounged after their lords all day, and whose only occupation was evidently fighting. Their short white kilts, bright -coloured jackets, slashed, ahd covered with gold and silver embroidery, and the handsome weapons, which formed a perfect chevaux defrise round their waists, gave them a wild, but at the sarae time, martial look. They seemed as rugged and impracticable as the mountains they defended, and conquest under such conditions would appear a difficult and in many respects a barren achievement A little distance from the village stands alone a Greek church, smaUer probably than any parish church in Scotland, though it is the only place of worship which the capital contains. Here I attended a solemn funeral A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO. 289 service one day, at which the whole of the royal family and leading members of the aristocracy were present. As the service was performed in Sclavonic it was unin teUigible to me, and the only function in which I could take part was to hold a taper, which I was obliged perpetually to light and blow out following the example of my neighbours, each of whora was similarly occupied. As the chanting was very monotonous, the atmosphere very close, the wax, when it happened to fall on one's hand, very hot, and as the distinguished congregation stood during the whole ceremony, I was not a little relieved when it closed, and the royal party, male and feraale, put up their umbrellas, and rushed across a slushy green in the pelting rain to the palace, which is indeed the only civilised-looking tenement in the place, and is nicely fumished with some of the luxuries of civilisation. Near it amidst overhanging crags of granite, stands another large building, with gloomy arches and deserted courts. This is used as a prison; 3-n arsenal, or any other national purpose ; here are confined Turks taken in war, and here are exhibited the trophies of the bloody field of Gahovo, immortalised in the annals of Montenegrin warfare, when some years ago five thousand of the mountaineers surprised and almost totally annihilated twelve thousand Turks, capturing all their arms, guns, and munitions of war, as a room full of rusty muskets and tattered flags testifies. There is not a single shop in this capital of Montenegro, as the inhabitants procure everything from Cattaro, but their wants are liraited, and at Rjeka, a town about three hours and a half distant, there is a T 290 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. smaU bazaar. A few more hours from this town brings us to the banks of the Lake of Scutari, and on an island a few hundred yards from the shore we see waving a Turkish flag, and beneath it a Turkish sentry. This is the frontier post of Lessandra ; to the east of it is visible through a telescope the line of forts which marks the usual scene of warfare, almost every foot of ground we tread is rendered famous by having once been the scene of some bloody encounter ; from behind the rocks, which form their natural defences, the highlanders wage a perpetual guerilla war upon their foe, picking off with their rifles their assailants, as they struggle to convey guns along paths fit only for a goat or a chamois. The Lake of Scutari, which is in shape not unUke the Lake of Gene-va, and about seventy miles long, is sur rounded on all sides by mountains, rising either abruptly from its margin, or in rear of a narrow plain which bounds its eastern shore. It is navigated by a stearaer, and in half a day we have once more changed the social atmosphere. The transition from the civilisation of Cattaro to the wildness of Cettinye, is not more striking than that which now greets the eye, as we wind along narrow lanes between high walls jealously concealing each house, with an occasional veiled figure fiitting along them. Here the familiar indications of Eastern life meet the eye at every turn. Turks in flowing robes are sraoking apathetically, and muezzins are calling people to prayers ; indeed, the place seems composed of mosques and graveyards. We pass along duU, lifeless streets, and arrive at last at a fitting termination to them, where all the Hfe seems to have been buried. The lanes A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO. 291 are ill paved, with deep mud traps, very treacherous at night When we get admittance at a small door in a stone wall, we probably find the mansion inside in keeping with the general air of dilapidation. There is a magnificent rock at the debouchure of a river frora the lake, on the summit of which is a picturesque old castle, containing generally an equally picturesque old Pasha, and commanding always a magnificent view ; and there is a filthy bazaar at the bottom roofed in from the sun, dirty, noisy, and crowded with a mixed Turkish and Albanian population, until sunset, when it is deserted and the inhabitants retire to the silent suburb. Scutari is', however, by no means a good specimen of a Turkish town, and only strikes by contrast. It contains too large a Christian population, and during the carnival there is soraetiraes an atterapt at gaiety. Preceded by two men -with long paper lanterns, and with trousers tucked up to my knees, I splashed one night through the mud to take part in some festivities, where I hoped to meet some of the elite of Albanian society. Scrambling up a rickety wooden stair, I found myself in a room so full of tobacco-smoke, that I could only at first diraly discern the company seated round it Strange sounds met my ear, which I discovered to proceed from a piano, twenty-four strings of whicii were broken, and a flute played by a traveUed Albanian, who had once been to Paris, and was gorgeously attired in the costume of the country. No less than six ladies graced the entertain ment with their presence, four of whom were in full Albanian attire, while two, fascinated by the attractions of crinoline, only retained the upper half of the national 292 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, dress. There was a great preponderance of men, but I discovered afterwards that a closed gallery was full of, native women, too shy. to take part in this semi-ci-vilised performance, who gazed curiously at their more advanced compatriots ; for dancing is a westem importation, and Albanian women do not generally join in festive meetings, and are almost as little seen as if they were Mahometans. The Prince of a Latin tribe, whose usual place of abode was somewhere in the neighbouring mountains, looked wonderingly on at the proceedings, which were con ducted by some of the Italian arid Levantine portion of the coraraunity. After we were tired of discordant music we had a game of " synagogue," which consisted in the whole company passing single cards to each other, and all shouting their names at the same tirae, which created a great deal of noise and laughter, though it was difficult to say wherein lay the point of the joke. Then a very ragged old woman handed round tea and lemon ade, and the Albanian ladies were persuaded to stand up and dance for the first time in their lives. My partner wore a gold helmet, a crimson and gold-em broidered tunic, open -worked in front, loose white trousers, tight . at the ankle, and thick embroidered stockings, with Turkish slippers : a pretty face, and a pair" of large black eyes set offthis picturesque costume. As she had never even seen a polka danced, it was not without much pressing that she was induced to kick off her slippers, and commence hopping about on her stocking-soles. Once off, however, she spun round vigorously, and peals of laughter from her friends in the gaUery rewarded her efforts, while the ludicrous A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO. 293 effect of a little woman running round one, in a short tunic, baggy trousers, and thick stockings, would have upset the gravity of the most sedate of partners. The exertion was becoming tiying, when fortunately a mum mer appeared in the costume of a dancing dervish, with an illuminated foolscap on his head, and a long grey beard, leading in another, closely veiled, and disguised as a Turkish woman ; so we put them in the middle of a circle, and joining hands, danced frantically round thera, until the ladies fell back exhausted, and refreshed themselves with the abundant use of tobacco, in a dense cloud of which I contrived to escape unobserved, and thus ended the last night of the Carnival at Scutari. A few days after I found myself in another part of the country, the guest of a Turk, during the sacred season of the Ramadan, when neither eating, drinking, nor sraoking, are allowed between sunrise and sunset "When night came, instead of boisterous merriraent, how gravely we sat on the floor at a low table, and dipped our fingers into the sarae bowl, and then smoked tchibouks and drank coffee, far on into the raorning. For it is only natural that when the day offers so little enjoyraent, as much as possible should be made, of the night And when at last I stretched myself on the floor on the softest of coverlets, I thought of the singular contrast which the observance of the Christian and Mahometan festival afforded, and wondered how it was that in both cases the religious instinct should err so widely, and in such opposite directions. Laurence oliphant. XIII. THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT. DURING the first three days' march, the irapressive, endless sUence of the desert — a sUence as of the grave — cast a raost powerful spell over my soul. Often did I stare vacantly for hours, ray eyes fixed on the distance before rae, and as ray corapanions beUeved me to be sunk in religious meditations, I was very seldora disturbed. I only half observed how, during the march, certain mem bers of our caravan nodded in sleep on the backs of their camels, and by their ludicrous movements and sudden starts, afforded our company exquisite amusement Any one overcome with sleep, would lay hold of the high pummel of the saddle with both hands, but this did not prevent him from either, with a forward lurch, knocking his chin with such force that all his teeth chattered, or, by a backward one, threatening to fall with a somer sault to the ground. Indeed this last often happened, arousing the hearty laughter of the whole party. The fallen became the hero of the day, and had to support the most galling fire of jokes on his awkwardness. THE CARA VAN IN THE DESERT. 195 The most inexhaustible fountain of cheerfulness was a young Turkoman, named Niyazbirdi, who possessed no less liveliness of spirits than agility of body, and by every word and movement contrived to draw laughter from the most venerable of the MoUahs. Although he was owner of several laden camels, he was, nevertheless, for most part, accustomed to go on foot, and ranning now right, now left, he alarmed by cries or gestures any group of wUd asses that showed themselves along our route. Once, indeed, he succeeded in getting hold of a young wild ass, which, through fatigue, had loitered behind the rest The young shy creature was led along by a rope, and was the occasion of really droll scenes, when its lucky captor gave a prize of three spoonfuls of sheep's-tail fat to any one who dared to mount it. Three spoonfuls of mutton fat is a tempting prize for Hadjis in the desert, so that many were seduced by the prospect of gaining it. Neverthe less they could make nothing of this uncivilised brother of Balaam's charger, for the unfortunate Hadjis had no sooner seated themselves on its back than they were stretched sprawling in the sand. Only after a march of several hours is general weari ness to be remarked. All eyes are then turned towards the Kervan bashi, whose gaze at such a time wanders in every direction to spy out a suitable halting-place, that is to say, one which will afford most plentiful fodder for the camels. No sooner has he found such, than he hiraself hastens towards it, while the younger raembers of the caravan disperse themselves to right and left to collect dried roots, or scrab, or other fuel. Dismounting, un packing, and settling down is the work of a few moments. 296 PEEPS A I FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The hope of much-desired rest restores the exhausted strength. With speed the ropes are slackened, with speed the heaviest bales of merchandise are piled up in little heaps, in whose shade the wearied traveUer is ac customed to stretch himself Scarcely have the hungry camels betaken themselves to their pasture-ground, when a solemn stillness fills the caravan. This stillness is, I may say, a sort of intoxication, for every one revels in the enjoyment of rest and refreshraent. The picture of a newly-encamped caravan in the sum mer months, and on the steppes of Central Asia, is a traly interesting one. WhUe the camels, in the distance but stiU in sight, graze greedily, or crush the juicy thistles, the travellers, even the poorest among them, sit with their tea-cups in their hands, and eagerly sip the costly bever age. It is nothing more than a greenish warm water, innocent of sugar, and often decidedly turbid ; still human art has discovered no food, has invented no nectar, which is so grateful, so refreshing in the desert as this unpre tending drink. I have still a vivid recollection of its wonder-working effects. As I sipped the first drops, a soft fire filled my veins, a fire which enlivened without intoxicating. The later draughts affected both heart and head; the eye became peculiarly bright, and began to gleam. In such moments I felt an indescribable rapture and sense of comfort. My companions sank in sleep ; I could keep myself awake and dreara with open eyes. After the tea has restored their strength, the caravan becomes gradually busier and noisier. They eat in groups or circles, which are here called koosh, which represent the several houses of the wandering town. Everywhere THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT. 297 there is something to be done, and everywhere it is the younger men who are doing it, while their elders are sraoking. Here they are baking bread. A Hadji in rags is actively kneading the black dough with dirty hands. He has been so engaged for half an hour, and still his hands are not clean, for one mass of dough can not absorb the accumulations of several days. There they are cooking. In order to know what is being cooked, it is not necessary to look round. The sraell of mutton-fat, but especially the aroma, somewhat too piquant of camel or horse cutlets, tells its own tale. Nor have the dishes when cooked anything inviting to the eye. But in the desert a man does not disturb him self about such trifles. An enormous appetite covers a multitude of faults, and hunger is notoriously the best of sauces. Nor are arauseraents wanting in the caravan -carap when the halt is somewhat prolonged. The most popu lar recreation is shooting at a mark, in which the prize is always a certain quantity of powder and shot. This sort of diversion was very seldom possible in our caravan, as on account of our small numbers we were in continual danger, and had therefore to make ourselves heard as little as possible. My comrades were accustomed to pass their leisure tirae in reading the Koran, in perform ance of other religious exercise, in sleeping, or in attend ing to theur toilette. I say "toilette," but it is to be hoped that no one will here understand the word to im ply a boudoir, delicate perfumes, or artistical aids. The Turkomans are accustoraed to pluck out the hair of the beard with small pincers. As to the toilette of the 298 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Hadjis, and, indeed, my own, it is so simple and so prosaic as to be scarcely worth alluding to. The neces sary requisites were sand, fire, and ants. The manner of application I leave as a riddle for the reader to solve. Certainly, of all the nations of Asia, the Tartar seems to fit in most appropriately with the bizarre picture of desert life. Full of superstition, and a blind fatalist, he can easily support the constant dread of danger. Dirt, poverty, and privations he is accustomed to, even at home. No wonder then that he sits content in clothes which have not been changed for months, and with a crust of dirt on his face. This inner peace of mind could never become a matted of indifference to me. At evening prayers, in which the whole company took part, this peace of mind strack me most forcibly, and I thanked God for the benefits they enjoyed. On such occasions the whole caravan forraed itself into a single line, at whose head stood an iraira, who turned towards the set ting sun and led the prayers. The soleranity of the mo ment was increased by the stillness which prevaUed far and wide, and if the rays of the sinking sun lit up the faces of my companions, so wUd yet withal so weU satis fied, they seemed to be in the possession of all earthly good, and had nothing left them to wish. Often I could not help thinking what would these people feel if they found themselves leaning against the comfortable cushions of a first-class railway carriage, or amid the luxuries of a well-appointed hotel. How distant, how far distant, are the blessings of civUisation from these countries ! So much for the life of the caravan by day. By night the desert is more romantic, but at the same time more THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT, 299 dangerous. As the power of sight is now limited, the circle of safety is contracted to the most immediate neighbourhood ; and both during the march and in the encampment every one tries to keep as close as possible to his fellows. By day the caravan consisted of but one long chain : by night this is broken up into six or eight smaller ones, which, marching close together, form a compact square, of which the outmost lines are occupied by the stoutest and boldest. By moonlight the shadow of the camels as they stalk along produces a curious and impressive effect. During the dark starless night every thing is full of horror, and to go one step distant frora the side of the caravan is equivalent to leaving the horae circle to plunge into a desolate solitude. In the halt by day each one occupies whichever place may please hira best. At night, on the contrary, a compact camp is forraed under the direction of the Kervan bashi. The bales of goods are heaped up in the raiddle ; around them lie the men ; while without, as a wall of defence, the caraels are laid, tightly packed together, in a circle. I say laid, for these wonderful aniraals squat down at the word df command, remain the whole night motion less in their place, and, like children, do not get up the next morning until they are told to do so. They are placed with their heads pointing outward and their taUs inward, for they perceive the presence of an enemy from far, and give the alarra by a duU rattle in the throat, so that even in their hours of repose they do duty as sentinels. Those who sleep within the rayon find them selves in immediate contact with these beasts, and, as is well known, they have not the pleasantest smell. It 300 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. often happens that the saline fodder and water which these animals feed upon produce palpable consequences for such as sleep in their immediate neighbourhood. I myself often woke up with such frescoes. But no one takes any notice of such things, for who could be angry with these aniraals who, although ugly in appearance, are so patient, so temperate, so good-tempered, and so useful ? It is no wonder that the wanderers over the desert praise the camel as surpassing all other beasts of the field, and even love it with an almost adoring affection. Nourished on a few thorns and thistles, which other quadrupeds reject, it traverses the wastes for weeks, nay, often for months together. In these dreary, desolate regions, the existence of man depends upon that of the camel. It is besides so patient and so obedient, that a child can with one " tshuck " make a whole herd of these tall strong beasts kneel down, and with a " ber-r-r" get up again. How much could I not read in their large dark- blue eyes. When the march is too long, or the sand too deep, they are accustomed to express their discom fort and weariness. This is especially when they are being laden, if too heavy bales are pUed upon their backs. Bending under the burden, they turn their heads round towards their master ; in their eyes gleam tears, and their groans, so deep, so piteous, seem to say, " Man, have compassion upon us ! " Except during a particular season of the year, when, through the operation of the laws of nature, it is in a half-intoxicated, half-stupefied condition, the camel has always a striking expression of seriousness. It is impos- THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT, 301 sible not to recognise in its features the Chaldee-aramasan type, and in whatever portions of the earth he may be found at the present day his original home is unquestion ably Mesopotamia and the Arabian desert. The Turko mans disturb this serious expression of countenance by the barbarous manner in which they arrange the leading- rope through the bored nose. With the string hanging down to the chest, the camel resembles a European dandy arraed with his lorgnon. Both of thera hold their heads high in the air, and both are alike led by the nose. As the word of command to encamp is enlivening and ' acceptable, so grievous, so disturbing, is the signal for getting ready to start. The Kervan bashi is the first to rouse himself At his call or sign all prepare for the journey. Even the poor caraels in the pastures under stand it, and often hasten without being driven to the caravan ; nay, what is more extraordinary, they place theraselves close to the bales of merchandise with which they were before laden, or the persons who were raounted on thera. In a quarter of an hour everybody has found his place in the line of march. At the halting-place there remains nothing but a few bones, gnawed clean, and the charred traces of the improvised hearths. These marks of human life in the desert often disappear as quickly as they were produced ; soraetiraes, however, they are preserved through climatic accidents for a long time; and succeeding travellers are cheered by falling in with these abandoned fireplaces. The black charred spot seems to their eyes like a splendid caravanserai, and the thought that here human beings have been, that 302 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. here Hfe once was active, makes even the vast solitude of the desert more like home. It is remarkable that the imposing aspects and most frequent natural phenomena of the desert do not fail to impress even the nomads who habitually witness them. As we were crossing the high plateau of Kaflan Kir, which forms part of Ustijort, ranning towards the north east, the horizon was often adorned with the most beautiful Fata Morgana. This phenomenon is undoubt edly to be seen in the greatest perfection in the hot, but dry, atmosphere of the deserts of Central Asia, and affords the most splendid optical illusions which one can imagine. I was always enchanted with these pictures of cities, towers, and castles, dancing in the air ; of vast caravans, horsemen engaged in corabat, and individual gigantic forms which continually disappeared from one place to reappear in another. As for my nomad com panions, they regarded the neighbourhoods where these phenomena are observed with no little awe. According to their opinion these are the ghosts of men and cities which formerly existed there, and now at certain times roU about in the air. Nay, our Kervan bashi asserted that he also saw the same figures in the same places, and that we ourselves, if we should be lost in the desert, would, after a term of years, begin to hop about and dance in the air over the spot where we had perished. These legends, which are continually to be heard among the nomads, and relate to a supposed lost civihsation in the desert, are not far removed from the new European theory which maintains that such tracts of country have sunk into their present desolation, not THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT. 303 so much through the operation of natural laws as through changes in their social state. As examples are cited the great Sahara of Africa and the desert of Central Arabia, where cultivable land is not so much wanting as indus trious hands. As regards these last countries the asser tion is probably not without sorae truth, but it certainly cannot be extended to the deserts of Central Asia. On certain spots, as Mero, Mangishlak, Ghergen, and Otrar, there was iri the last century raore cultivation than at present ; but taken as a whole, these Asiatic steppes were always, as far back as the raeraory of raan goes, howling wildernesses. The vast tracts which stretch for raany days' journeys without one drop of drinkable water, the expanses many hundred mUes in extent of deep loose sand, the extreme violence of the climate, and such like obstacles, defy even modem art and science to cope with them. " God," said a Central Asiatic to me, " created Turkestan and its inhabitants in His wrath ; for as long as the bitter, saline taste of their springs exist so long will the hearts of the Turkomans be full of anger and malice." arminius vambery. XIV. FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. WITH the fresh morning sea-breeze, and along the moist shoreland, we journeyed from our encamp ment under Ataka, towards the long desert-levels that sur rounded Ajerud and Suez. And when the sea-breeze had died away into the calm, dead heat of noon, and we had paced for some hours over steamy flats flickering with the mirage, we reached Suez, with its great bare, white khans and warehouses, rising so strangely from that great, bare, white desert, without a tree or blade of grass to relieve its -dreariness. Fancy a nuraber of Turkish houses to have broken loose from Cairo, and a number of Italian from Malta; and that, after performing a series of voyages to their own satisfaction, they should all have run ashore on the same barren sandbank, each disposed as best suited its o^wn convenience, and you have some idea of Suez. It is where no town would ever be buUt in the natural course of things, and where any town looks wonderfuUy out of place. It is the creation of FROM SINAI TO SiRIA. 305 our Indian Overland Transport Service, and most thoroughly realises that idea. Everything seems to be labelled " transport " — houses, men, camels, — all there simply for an occasion, en route for somewhere else. The inhospitable shore produces nothing of itself — its very well is bitter. Everything there is " by transport." Your beef-steak has, in all probabUity, been fed on the green pastures of Goshen, and has had the benefit of being half-cooked in its hot " transport " across the desert ; whUe your potatoes smile at you with an unmis takable Irish grin. We were assured that the very water we drank was " by transport " from Bombay. And yet on this barren point you may have almost any Luxury, frora champagne to ginger-beer. There never was such an " omnium-gatherum" as Suez. It is a city of contrasts. Here you see a smart man-of-war's boat hooked on to a craft that might have been built in any period of naval architecture, from Noah's ark down to the Trojan war. In another place, a half-dressed lean Arab bends under the weight of a chest of specie. Dark Turkish khans rise beside European hotels. PUes of mail boxes, addressed to far-off colonies, lie half-sUted over with desert sands ; and bright English signboards alternate with texts frora the Koran. No one can rest in Suez. Should you sleep there for a night, it is with the con-. sciousness that the town, as well as yourself, may have every intention of "being -off" next moming — carried bodily away by the huge, oily-looking camels that crowd the " grand square.'' Yet Suez looks familiar to every Englishman, associated as it is with so many friends who have passed through it to the great empire of the East. 3o6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. So much so, indeed, that, at the first, one is almost dis posed to claim with it a Scotch cousinship, and to feel that, because you know so many who know Suez, that therefore Suez ought to know you. Suez stands on the point of a long, gravelly ridge. On one side it coramands a view down the Red Sea, which, at full tide, rises close up to its walls : while an arm of the same sea, like a broad river, sweeps round it on the other, and stretches up northwards, as far as the eye can reach. Sending off our camels to cross this channel at a ford a mile or two higher up, we took a boat for the purpose of going by sea, and joining our baggage at the wells of Moses, that are a few miles down the eastern "coast It was a glorious day. The sea was blue as the sky above us, and so purely transparent, that we were able to watch, far down in its depths, the changing varieties of formation at the bottom, according as we saUed over coral beds, or golden sands geraraed with shells, or waving forests of tangled weeds. Our boat was an Arab coble with a huge lateen saU, which sent her dancing in the fresh breeze over the crisp waves, that dashed up from her bows in sparkling showers of diamond hail between us and the sun, and then fell past us again in drops of Hquid sapphire. Even Suez seemed picturesque that day, as we floated away from its old, grey sea-towers. The view was not grand, nor rich, but wonderfully briUiant. There were only two colours, blue and gold— only the coasts of golden, desert hills, stretching far down on either hand, sunk in the blue setting of sea and sky. Yet their strange briUiancy was such as to make up in our eyes for the want of FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 307 wood and stream, and the green, famUiar uplands of our home scenery. An hour and a half brought us to the Asiatic shore under the Ayen Mousa, or Wells of Moses. These wells are about two miles up from the sea, and form quite a little oasis in the midst of the desert around them. They are seven in number, rising in a cluster of little mounds ; and, though their water is bitter and un palatable as far as man is concerned, yet they served to make our first "green spot in the wilderness." Beside the weU were a few rods of sandy soil; and there was no more melancholy token of the waste in which we were, than to see how valuable these few rods of soil were to the exiles of Suez, as witnessed to in their vain attempts to create something which might remind them of home and. greenness. The few yards of cultivable ground were divided out into little garden-plots. And here you could see where some Italian official had tried to erect for himself " a vUla ; " there, where sorae sensible fellow — a Scotchman, in all likelihood — was rearing cabbage for his " kail ; " and there, the rose, which formed the care and delight of some sentimental clerk in the Indian Overland Transport Service. Anything, in short, which could suggest the idea of cultivation seeraed pre cious. And, indeed, in our eyes, too, after our short residence in the desert, the shaggy palm-bushes, the feathery tamarisks and quivering acacias, the little spots of green barley, the Scotchman's cabbage bed, and, above all, the rose, bursting forth in full-bosomed buds, seemed unspeakably lovely. But this Ayen Mousa has for us a sacred interest. Its very name, like so many in the desert, recalls our thoughts to that history which has 3o8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, made its localities famUiar in every household in Chris tendom. Although there is nothing to lead us to identify these Wells of Moses either with Marah or Elim, with its twelve fountains and seventy palra-trees, never theless, it can hardly be supposed, but that a spot so well watered must have been the scene of a halt And if the conjectures in our preceding article, as to the scene Of the passage of the Red Sea, be correct, then may we well believe that Ayen Mousa was the spot around which the Israelites encamped on the morning of their deliverance. Here first did they realise their position as freed-men ^nd as the redeemed people of God, whom He was about to lead to the great covenant- altar of Sinai. Here, in all likelihood, had, been sung the triumphant songs of Moses and Miriam ; and from this point had begun that wondrous march, in which " God went before His people." Until we drew near the Hammam Faraoon, the scenery continued to be of exactly the same description. On the left were the long, level heights of Er Rahah, with the plain along which we journeyed, sweeping flatly down frora its roots, and stretching in dreary monotony before us. On the right we had this plain rimraed -with the blue sea, slipping in its thread of tender colour between it and the white, distant shores of Africa, the broad masses of Ataka, the open sweep of Tawarak, and, further south, the purple ranges of Deraj. For a long day we rode on under a scorching sun over this weary waste. Now and then a shaUow hollow, soraetiraes a quarter of a mUe, some times a few yards broad, and graced with the sounding title of " Wady," came down from the left These wade's FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 309 are but the dry channels of winter torrents, which have left traces of water having once been in thera, not only in their fretted hollows, but in the dry herbage that is tufted here and there on their surface, like sea-grass on a wide shoreland. The character of the ground is not sandy, but that of a hard, crusted gravel, across which ran the carael-tracks, as sheep-walks do on a Highland waste. After passing Hawarah, we soon began to move into the network of rolling hills and valleys that lie in the neigh bourhood of the Hammam Faraoon. First, the alraost green hollow of Gharundel was reached, with its hidden waters and its groves of feathery tamarisks, and then Useit, with its tufted palm-trees. Either of these places suit the position of Elim, though I confess to a preference for Useit. For, so grateful was the shade of its little palm-trees, that I love to think of them as descendants of the " seventy " pf Elim, and to suppose that Moses may have rejoiced under the greenness of their ancestors. The true desert palm is a noble little savage. He stands to the cultivated palm much in the relation that a rough Shetland pony does to a slim thoroughbred. Unlike the great whipping post palms of Egypt, stripped bare up to their impudent parasol-looking crowns, the desert palm fans out from the very ground, and hangs back again in wild picturesque festoons, and shaggy knots of greenness. And now the weary levels were left behind, the scenery was changing at every step, and we felt ourselves being gradually intro duced to the wondrous mountain desolations of the peninsula. Between us and the shore rose the black, weather-stained shoulders of the Hamraam Faraoon, 310 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. while our path towards Tayibeh lay over tangled hUls and barren hoUows. As we drew near Tayibeh, we caught our first glimpse of the great Serbal rising over the foreground of lower hiUs, and, leaving a valley on the left which goes directly to the Convent of Sinai, we entered, instead, on that great avenue which leads down on the right to the sea. Tayibeh, " the good valley," is also a most picturesque one. It is a deep gorge, winding in many foldsj between bare and majestic walls of lime stone, down to the shore, where it opens out into a fine plain. Its naked cliffs, sensitive to the slightest sound, echo back and ring, and repeat each note of the voice. A half-hidden stream flows down one part of it, nourish ing numerous tamarisks, but soon drank up and lost in the thirsty sands. Down this wady we may, in all truth, believe the Israelites to have journeyed- to their " en campraent by the sea." Down this raountain corridor had wound that long file, the soft white cloud in front, and behind it the orderly companies ofthe tribes. Down Detwixt those bare waUs of rock, resounding with the tread and confused noises of the multitude, had they journeyed, tiU where, on a sudden, the gorge opens on the shore, they beheld the broad sea flashing in the sun, and far, far away, the purple peaks of Africa, steeped in hazy glory. As I recaU that sudden burst of blue waves, that wide sweep of landscape, that fresh shoreland, the words "encampment by the sea" seem to have a new and wondrous beauty. For if, even to us, the surge, breaking and sparkling over countiess sheUs, the cool, moist sands, the light sea-breeze, the white curl and motion of the waves, were so unspeakably lovely, after FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 311 the dry, silent, death-like waste we had come through, what must it have been to that weary multitude ! How must the children have revelled along that bright shore, caught up its corals glittering with sea-drops, or with shouts of joy drawn forth its dank weeds, while the elder pilgrims, drinking in the fresh breeze, gazed eagerly across to the lessening coasts of Egypt, or sought a further view of the barren land before them. Long must that "encampment by the sea'' have remained precious in their memories ! Through naked mountain-ranges, the traveller journeys by means of the "wadys" or desert valleys — that are quite unlike the valleys of any other country. They are not raountain gorges, or " hollows," not Uke the " glens " of our own Highlands, with their broken edges and shaggy brows of heather, and perpetual murmur of deep- throated " burn " far below, as it swirls and scoops the iron rocks into sounding caves. The glen of the desert is a pebbly road, almost level, and having an appearance as if some great torrent had filled the mountain ravine with its sand and stones, and then, gradually lessening, smoothing the surface even, had left it dry and sUent There is no deep central channel, no gentle sloping up wards, no shelving off. The wadys twist themselves, like serpents, deep into the heart of the hills — ^but ever run ning flat as a road — while the mountain-walls sink into them on either side as suddenly and steeply as cUffs into the sea. The object which most resembles them is a Swiss glacier — say the Mer de Glace — twining itself up into distant solitudes Uke a river — with, on either side, the black, naked aiguilles raising their rocky edges high into 312 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the blue sky. Speaking generally, the wadys vary from thirty to two hundred feet in breadth, and here and there bear upon their surface the feathery tarfah or tamarisk, the thorny acacia, or the broom-like "retem." Along the bases of the mountain, too, we find in many places green-nodding creepers, the clustering lasaf or hyssop, and the wild i-vy, in knots almost luxuriant. Another characteristic of the desert is its intense silence. When any of us for a moment wandered frora the party, it can scarcely be iraagined what a painfiiUy nervous effect that unbroken stillness produced. It really weighed upon the heart. If you raade a noise, you seemed almost to hear the silence that followed. And this very silence, combined with the nakedness of the mountains, and the narrowness of their rocky ravines, served to produce another effect 'viz-, a wondrous sen sitiveness to sound. Like singing in sorae great empty hall, each note was prolonged and echoed for miles. When you ran up a chord with the voice, it was like striking the strings of some vast harp. Suddenly the notes mingled themselves in a thriUing harmony, that ran off, ringing and repeating itself, tiU wandering to the topmost peaks, it floated away in the faintest melody. Many a time in the course of the day would we stop our caraels for the pleasure of thus hearing Tennyson's bugle song reaUsed — " O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, further going ! O sweet and far from cliff and scar. The horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The report of a gun seemed to shake the mountains — the FROM SINAI TO SYRIA, 313 roar would flap and buffet on from cliff to cliff, as if the hills were shaken with a wUd laughter ; and then, when you thought it all over, again you heard it caught up by sorae other rocky corridor, and rpUing away in distant mutterings. How grandly in such a land as this must have sounded the morning shout of the ten thousands of Israel — " Rise, Lord ! and let Thine enemies be scattered ! " How much grander still the thunderings of the lawgiving, when " even that Sinai itself was moved at the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel." And no wonder that such a land, thus sublime in scenery, and so awing in its perpetual silence, should have been the vast cathedral in whose stUl recesses have been nourished religious thoughts that have told upon the history of raan ! I think we can, with all reverence, trace a deep purpose in the providence of God, when He led His chosen servant Moses, to that " Horeb in the wilderness ; '' and can well suppose how he, who had been first prepared for his great raission, by being taught in the house of Pharaoh " all the learning of the Egyptians," was, by the same wise counsel, to receive still deeper lessons and a far profounder education, amid the solitudes of Midian. For as he wandered alone be neath the great blue vault, or rested under the awful shadows of Jhe mount of God, how, in the deep stillness of the desert air, must the sense of his own utter frailty, and the perishableness of all that human glory he had left in Egypt, have been brought home upon his spirit ! As he beheld the unveiled majesty of nature, how horrible must have appeared the reraerabrance of the calf-worship, the unclean rites and mysteries ! and how quickly, as by 314 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. a flash of intuition, would he then reaUse the grandeur of the tradition of his wondrous nation — that there is a Living God— a great I AM, who had pUed these moun tains, who was knowing and caring for him, the fugitive —for him, the little speck on the bosora of that vast waste — ay, and gazing in upon him with an unslumber- ing eye ! Surely it was also for a like deepening of eternal truth upon the soul, that Elijah, in his hour of weakness, was led into the same mighty temple. And Paul, too, for three years, was prepared of God "in the desert" for his mighty mission. Nor should we forget the influences of simUar scenes on that other wondrous asserter of the truth of a One God — the false prophet Mohamraed. For, however horrible and polluted his reUgion may be, I think we can still gaze through the mists and veils of sin and self-deception, back to the flush ofan early dawn — to a tirae when the young carael-driver, as he rested under these raidnight heavens, was visited by the thrill ing consciousness of a Presence, who, hushing the voices of the world, spake horae to his heart — that thought — which, after the lapse of raore than nine centuries, and in spite of untold crime, yet coraraands the reverence, and sways the hearts of millions of our race — " There is no God but One ! " A steep ascent, and an equally steep descent, brought us out of the faraous Written Valley into the great Wady Feiran. I wish I could convey in words a just idea ofthe very strange character of that scenery — the raagnificence of the mountain-forms, massed on either hand in walls of smooth granite, rolling and sweeping up to the deep- blue sky, or shattered into rough scaurs and " corries," FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 315 and that level road all the while winding on like a river, amid the vast silent desolations. On and on you ride, and as you tum bend after bend, that river-like road ever runs in front, twining itself among the roots of the same great mountains, streaked and veined with colour. Yet, lonely as it is, the pilgrim sometimes meets, even there, relics of humanity, as to the parentage of which he is left in less doubt than regarding the rock-writings of Mokatteb. I remember that, on tuming one of these " bends " in Feiran, the attention of our whole party was called to something black and glancing on a ledge of granite in the distance ; now it flashed in the sun, and now it seemed as if it were a black crow — a pilgrim crow — whicii had thus taken up its shelter under the over hanging rock. What could it be ? And, eager for discovery, we all rode rapidly forward. Imagine, how ever, the denouement 1 As we drew nearer and nearer, the truth dawned on us, until at last it stared farailiarly at us — " Bass & Co.'s India Pale Ale. None genuine without my signature." Uncorked, empty, lonely, amid the desolations of Sinai ! Yet so it is. You find chicken bones scattered on the summit of the Sacred Mount, egg-shells sprinkled in the foot-print of Mohara- raed's camel, and mysterious shreds of the Times corae fluttering on the breeze, across the wastes of the ArabaL Verily, " Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsaras." All that afternoon, and late into the evening, we rode through Feiran — winding deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain-land. We were aU very tired, having been in the saddle frorii before dawn, and what 3i6 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. vwth clambering at Meghara, and examining inscriptions at Mokatteb, were decidedly ready. for rest. The hot, hot sun had all day been scorching, but now it was sinking into the west, and we were fast sinking, too, into that state of sulky crossness, which, I have noticed, is the general effect of hunger and fatigue, even on the best-natured. Bend after bend was turned, and yet there was ever the same stretch before us for two or three miles, and no "' tents ! " But when the turn did come, a scene was presented to our eyes of such fairy- Uke beauty, that everything else was forgotten, and a murmur of surprise and delight burst from aU our lips. Closing up the vaUey in front of us, rose Serbal to nearly 7000 feet — the grandest mountain-form I have ever seen — not a cone — not a round lump — but a mass, towering with proud sweep up to a broad crest, and there shattered into a coronet of granite peaks. The sun had left the valleys, and while they were all sunk in deep shadow, behind the purple hill which shut in El- Hessue, rose this Serbal srait with sunset — a very marble throne, o'erlaid with burnished gold, and glowing in the rich evening splendour. And El-Hessue itself ! It may be that the contrast it presented to all that dreary land we had been journeying through gave its beauty an undue colouring in our eyes, but as I picture it now, beneath that glorious mountain, its shaggy palm woods, its groves of acacia and tamarisk, sunk in blue shadow; when I recall the musical voices of the naked Arab children, as they ran about in the soft, balmy twilight, the veUed women, the strings of goats and camels, the white tents pitched under the thorny shittim-trees, the joy with FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 317 which we trod once more on deep black soil, and heard the- hum of insects and the chirp of birds ; when, above all, I remember that night-scene — that " soft, still night," when the lights of evening had faded one by one frora Serbal, and every mountain-top seemed lost in a depth of stars — the crowd of Arabs grouped around the fire under the trees, while all the vaUey was hushed into balmy peace — a peace made only the deeper by the murmur of hidden waters — El-Hessue seems now, as it seemed then, the realisation of some dream of child hood, a spot in the world far from man, of perfect beauty and peace, an oasis in life of love and innocence, a garden of the tropics set amidst etemal solitudes, a very fairy-land — ' ' Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag. Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag; Droops the hea^vy-blossom'd bower, — hangs the heavy-fruited tree, — Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea." And if evening was glorious in Feiran, morning was no less so, hanging its sunlit dew-drops on the tresses of the palm and feathery tamarisk. Amidst its fresh early beauty, we rode from El-Hessue, on to the most interest ing spot in the neighbourhood, the ancient Paran. The configuration of Feiran is such, that, while you are winding round the roots of Serbal, and are" in reality within a very short distance of its base, yet it is, at the same time, only at one or two points you ever gain a glimpse of the mountain itself, a wall of. lower hills 3i8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. generally shutting out the view. But whenever it is thus unfolded, it seeras ever grander and grander, form ing, along with the surrounding objects, a scenery that IS, m some places, to my mind, quite unrivaUed. Palms and tropic plants in quiet groves below, naked rocks and ragged scaurs around, and high above the massy Serbal, with its clustered granite pinnacles — a very cathedral pUe ; all this seen, not in the broad blaze of noon, but with the soft lights and tints of moming; when here, a spear-like sunbeam shooting athwart some dark cleft, was flashed back from the smooth sheet of rock, or broke into a thousand glancing lights on the bright leaves of the hyssop, whUe there, all was deep, cool shadow. A few mUes above El-Hessue, a valley comes in from the right, caUed Aleyat ; and at its junction with Feiran, there is a low hUl standing in the broad vaUey, like an island in a river. On this hill and around it, stood the old Christian and episcopal city of Paran. It is covered to the present day with the broken-down waUs of houses, araid which the rains of churches, and of an extensive monastery, can stiU be traced. There are many ceUs in the rocky hUls around that had once been the abode of anchorites, whose very graves are unknown. These decayed sanctuaries, like many an other lonely rain in the East, tell a sad tale, recalling at once a period when Christ was ¦worshipped, and bearing, at the same time, a touching witness to the desolating track of Mohammedanism. Clambering over the cram bling walls of dry stones, I easily gained a position which commanded a view of the whole surrounding locality- supposed by some to have been the scene of, at least, FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 319 two of the remarkable incidents of the exodus — the striking of the rock in Rephidim, and the battle with Anialek, — perhaps, also, of the raeeling with Jethro. Standing on the hill of Paran, we see the Wady Aleyat running in front straight up to Serbal, which is here bared down to its very roots — and on either hand stretches Feiran. Looking up Aleyat towards Serbal, there is seen a grove of palms, and a scanty stream. I am afraid, however, that the true associations which ought to attach themselves to the locality, must be dis- tiriguished from the incidents alluded to above, unless we suppose, in comraon with Lepsius, that this great Serbal was indeed the mount of the law-giving.'* Cer tainly, if mere magnificence of forra were a sufficient ground on which to proceed, the claims of Serbal, in its lonely majesty, would stand pre-eminent ; but the absence of any plain, such as is necessary for fulfiUing the conditions of the law-giving as described to us, * Ritter, Stanley, and Lepsius, all agree in placing Rephidim at Serbal. Lepsius, in doing so, is quite consistent with his theory that Serbal was Sinai, though certainly the reasoning by which he arrives at this is, to say the least of it, very strange, as he says that Moses would naturally fix his longer halt at Feiran, knowing it to be the best-watered valley — and yet recognises this same "well- watered Feiran " as the place of murmuring and the smiting of the rock ! Both Ritter and Stanley, while they place Sinai near Gebel Musa, yet believe the term "Horeb" to extend to the cluster of Serbal, and that Serbal itself was also designated by the title of " Mount of God." But as the two clusters are so wide apart, it seems more natural, along with Robinson, Laborde, and Raumer, to fix Rephidim nearer the ranges connected with Sinai. .The whole narrative, as will be seen afterwards, becomes thus less constrained, and the only difficulty that will remain is the con textual position of Exod. xix. I, 2. 320 PEEPS' A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. precludes Serbal from this ' honour. For there must not only have been a mountain into which Moses ascended, but also a plain on which the witnessing tribes were gathered. Early Christian tradition may indeed favour Serbal, but no mere tradition can be accepted where we find the natural features of the ground inconsistent with the Bible narrative. That Serbal was, however, a mountain sacred to the heathen, and consecrated to Baal, is very probable ; and so long as at its base we tread on the dust of that once flourishing Christian town, whose bloody end seems for ever clouded in mystery, there must attach to that spot in the wilder ness a peculiar and undying interest. Passing into the great Wady Es Sheikh, through a natural gateway of rocks, we soon found ourselves in a country of a completely different character. Instead of the shut-in magnificent rocky corridors, by which we had wound around Serbal, we were now in a compara tively open region, with low roUing hills around us. These hills had a most remarkable aspect Their formation was sandstone, but as there were numbers of " trap-dikes " squirted up their centre, which, from their hardness, remain undecayed, while the sandstone has fallen and crumbled off them, they present exactiy the appearance of waves crested with black foam, — as if a tossing sea had suddenly been petrified. That night we encamped in the Wady Es Sheikh, and while the tents were being fixed, and Yussuf, our old Nubian cook, was engaged in his favourite operation of mur dering one or two half-starved hens for dinner, plucking them (there was no use remonstrating) before they were FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 321 half dead, I climbed, with the rest of our party, to the sumrait of a sandstone hill, and enjoyed a wide and imposing view. We were in the midst of a billowy sea of roUing hills, such as I have described, while to the west and east there were islanded two great mountain- ranges — that of Serbal, whence we had just come, and the larger cluster of Musa and St Catherine, enclosing, the " Mount of God " — itself stiU invisible ; but the knowledge that it was " somewhere there," waked up a thousand eager hopes. A wavy, sea-like plain, its surface rolling in billowy hills, two clusters of mountains islanded in the distance — one cluster grouping itself round the serrated and shattered crown of Serbal, the other towering up before us in vast forms, beyond the most distant of which we knew was the sacred " Mount of God;" — such was the character of the scenery in the Wady Es Sheikh, ou which we were travelling from Feiran to Sinai. We joumeyed amidst these tangled hills towards the latter mountain-group, drawing ever nearer and nearer, until at last the noble Wady ran along its very skirts. Yet there seemed at first, to our eye, no entrance into its secret labyrinths.; for, as far as we could see, it was surrounded by an unbroken wall of rock, that in a low line of black ened granite, about 800 feet high, girdled round the whole of the inner and grander masses. As we rode for some time along this vast enclosure, and realised that the sacred Horeb-altar of the law-giving was there, withdrawn far within, we felt, indeed, as if encircling the outer waUs of a mighty temple. Nor was this feeling a bit lessened, when suddenly we turned into the majestic portal of 3 22 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. natural rock, where, as if cut for it by the chisel of a great king, the road, as even as an avenue, passed through a cleft about forty feet wide, on either side of which rose the frowning gateway of weather-stained and gloomy granite. It was, indeed, an imposing, nay, even solemnising approach to the sacred shrine of our pilgrim age. But this gateway has an interest for us of a more distinct character. In all likelihood it was here, or in the immediate neighbourhood, that Rephidim was, with its smitten rock, and the battle with Amalek. Passing through the great natural gateway which we have described, we entered at once the great mountain- cluster of Horeb. We were again amidst vast granite ranges, and advancing by a broad and majestic avenue towards Sinai. A ride of an hour or two brought us to a point where three or four wadys meet, forming an open among the hUls. Here stands the tomb of Sheikh Saleh, a low, rade hut of stones, but reverenced as their most sacred shrine by the Arabs of the Peninsula. We dis mounted, and entered the building. There was nothing inside in the way of ornament, or tp show that the Arabs were disposed to be extravagant in their expressions of respect for the memory of the dead Sheikh, whoever he may have been. A few scraps of soiled linen, and hand kerchiefs and camel-haltiers, formed the sole adornments; and these were presented, I suppose, as votive offerings, for diseases cured, or camels saved from breaking down in awkward places. Around the rude hut were one or two graves, where, as in consecrated ground, were de posited the remains of devout Towara. Once a year the open plain, in which stands the tomb, is fiUed with the FRQM SINAI TO SYRIA. 323 black tents of the tribe ; for from all parts of the penin sula they then assemble here to perform some sort of religious service in honour of their saint — but of what nature I know not, as an Arab's reUgion is about as in visible an adjunct of his existence as need be. Theo retically, it seeras to be to Hnk Mohammed on to every age and individual history, frora " Mousa" downwards ; and, practically, to be useful for asseverating the most honest raotives before discussing the terms of a bargain in which he is resolved to cheat if he can. When we had examined the tomb, and again resuraed our journey, one or two of our escort stayed behind to pray. I think it was the only time I saw them thus en gaged during our whole journey. Leaving a raore open country behind us, we now en tered on that long stretch of the Wady Es Sheikh, ¦which leads up to the Plain Er Rahah and the Mount of God. We were now only eight miles from Sinai, and before us ran this great avenue — like sorae vast cathedral aisle, by which we were approaching the stiU vaster and more solemn altar. In about an hour we caught our first view of the Gebel Mousa. For as the Wady Sebaiyeli opened up on our left, (of which more anon,) we saw at its further end the high top of Sinai — a bold crown of rock, with the mountain not slopuig, but falling down at once from its summit in a vast precipice. In a minute or two we again lost sight of it and continued on in the sarae great Wady Es Sheikh for about an hour, when at last we emerged on the noble plain of Er Rahah, beheld the famed cUffs of Safsafeh frowning above us, and encamped by the so-caUed HUl of the Golden Calf. It was now 324 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. about two in the aftemoon, so considering it impossible to attempt the mountain that day, we determined to devote the rest of it to a visit to the Convent of St Catherine. The point where we were encamped was at the mouth of the valley in which the convent stands, caUed after the old Sheikh of Midian — the Wady Shou- aib, or of Jethro. It rans up from the plain Er Rahah, towards Gebel Mousa, with the vast shoulders of that . mountain enclosing it on the right, while the bare rocks of the Gebel ed Deir are on the left The summit of Gebel Mousa, or the traditionary scene of the law-giving, is quite concealed from the view by these shoulders which I have described, and it is not until you have gone as far as the convent, more than a mile up the valley, that it is visible. We found, to our astonishment, a regular road, almost macadamised, leading up frora the Er Rahah to the convent, and which appeared to us, as the sea-weed did to Columbus — a harbinger of humanity further on. The "House of the Desert" is nobly situated, with its massive and quaint pile of grey battleraents rising abraptly and boldly on the first rocky slope of Mount Sinai. As we drew near it, the green plot of garden- ground, the dark cypress trees, raingled with the fresher colouring of the fig and almond, afforded quite a new and most grateful contrast to the bare desolation of the wil derness. And now that we were under the high walls of the fortress, the question was, how to get in. At the highest part there was a Uttie covered stage, with a windlass and a rope dangUng from it, such as one sees on the side of a cotton mill at home, but no door was visible. The FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 325 primitive and feudal appearance of the whole place made one almost expect to find a horn hanging, on which, as true pilgrims, we might summon the warder to the waUs. In absence, however, of the ancient horn, and there being neither modern bell nor knocker, we shouted lustily, and in a short time a little, old, wizened, cross, dirty face presented itself at the windlass. We passed up to him our comraendatory letter from Cairo ; and while the old raan shuffled off to read it, we ensconced ourselves to lunch under the waUs. A crowd of lean, hungry Arabs, the servants of the monks, gathered round us, ready to pounce on all fragments, worrying up any stray orange-peel, and crunching the chicken bones like dogs. As we finished, the padre again appeared, and requested to know how we wished to enter. He in formed us that there was a door near the garden, and the windlass, and to make our choice. Preferring the old- fashioned way of the rope, I asked the old raonk to lower it for me, and so down it carae with a stick tied to it to act as seat. Getting stride-legs on the stick, the signal was given to haul, when two stout fellows began slowly and soleranly to wind me up like the weight of a clock. The barrel of the windlass was very small, and they were very lazy, so that I had full lime to enjoy the process. Slowly, higher and higher, now spinning round and round, now swinging hitch against the wall, with all the sensations which I can conceive a bale of cotton to have when subjected to a similar operation, I was pulled gradually up to a level wilh the cross, dirty, old monk, and by him hooked in and landed. And when in, what a strange spot is this same convent ! — a perfect hive of 326 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. buUdings !— a multum in parvo ! — a little city, with its houses, churches, streets — aU squeezed within the four walls of a not very large edifice. In the centre, the long- pointed roof the church rose beside the minaret of a mosque, and all about were labyrinths of galleries,. and wooden stairs, balconies, dormitories, mysterious-looking passages, and numberless liltle gables and angular pieces of roofing. When I had joined my friends who had entered by the garden door, we were led into a comfort able room, where, seated on divans, we were regaled by the monks with palm-wine, date-bread, and coffee. A young monk attended us, whose whole stock of lan guage, beside his native Greek, Consisted of about twenty words of Italian and six of Arabic. Mustering up as rauch Attic as I could, I informed hira that I was a " Diakonos " of the Church as well as he, when Tie be came very kind, came over and took me by the hand, and commenced leading me by it, like a child, to see the convent A most inhuman noise, as if a multitude of old iron pots were being extremely ill-used, startled hira, however, frora his amiable task ; and as we concluded that the sound proceeded from " the rude cymbals calling to prayer," we went up to see them. High up on the battlements, under a long low roof, we found sus pended a lump of metal and a beam of wood, about ten feet in length, on the latter of which an athletic acolyte was labouring with aU his might swinging a huge hammer as at a forge, while another servitor kept up a ranning accompaniment in the shape of a sort of kettle-tinkering fantasia performed ad libitum ¦with a smaller hammer on the piece of metal. The combined sound was deafening FROM SINAI TO SYRIA. 337 and perfectly distracting, nor could I imagine a better defence for the convent against any enemy with ears, tiian to keep the cymbals going. They say there are no fleas in St Catherine's ; if so, I can divine the cause, for I am certain no respectable flea could possibly pul up with this frequent disturbance. When the last echo of the wood and iron had died away, the clash of a bell summoned us to vespers, and we went down to the chapel. We found the chapel a fine massive building, rich in mosaics, silver lamps, curious Byzantine pictures, and deliciously cool, still, and peaceful, after the hot sun and the cymbals. I felt happy in the prospect of wor shipping once more with a Christian community, and was prepared to overlook many differences. The cere mony was, of course, according to the Greek ritual, but alas ! performed with such irreverence and indifference that I found it impossible to associate the least idea of devotion with what was going on. In the evening we returned to our tents at the Hill of , the Golden Calf, and when the sun had set, we strolled up the wide, silent plain of Er Rahah. It was only when we had thus gone for sorae distance up in front of it that the trae character of the Ras Safsifeh was seen by us. Travellers usually approach Sinai from Feiran by the Nakb el Hawie — the Pass of the' Winds — and thus entering Er Rahah at its fiirther end, have the advantage of seeing the Safsafeh form the first, in all its glory, rising abraptly like a vast altar, at the east end of the magnifi cent plain, which slopes down to its base. As we, however, advanced to it from the Wady Es Sheikh, and so scarcely saw it until we were encamped at its base. 328 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the peak, which is supposed by many to have been the scene of the law-giving, was lost to our eyes in the con fusion of other summits. But when we had thus gone for some distance up the Er Rahah, we could easily conceive the strict accuracy of the description which Stanley gives of the appearance of these cliffs in drawing slowly near them frqra the west " Far in the bosom of the mountains before us, I saw the well-kno^wn shapes of the cliffs which form the front of Sinai. At each succes sive advance, these cliffs disengaged themselves from the intervening and surrounding hills, and at last they stood out — I should rather say the columnar mass which they form, stood out alone against the sky. On each side the infinite complications of twisted and jagged mountains fell away from it^ On each side the sky encompassed it round, as though it were alone in the wilderness. And to this great mass we approached through a wide valley, a long-continued plain, which, enclosed as it was between the precipitous mountain-ranges of yellow and black granite, and having always at its end this prodigious mountain block, I could corapare to nothing else than the iramense avenue — the ' dromos,' as it is technicaUy called, through which the approach was made to the great Egyptian temples ! " It seemed to our eyes, too, in the dim twilight, with its deep and glooray scaurs searaing it from base to sum mit, and fronted by the wide and solitary plain, on whose surface, and surrounded by the vast mountain waUs, you felt shrivelled into insignificance, to be indeed a suitable scene for the imposing solemnities of the law-giving. And it was with a sense of deep awe that in the still FROM SINAI TO SYRIA, 329 moonlight we again retumed under the awful shadow of the dark cliffs ; and ere we retired for rest, gazed up on those bare and silent masses, rising high into the starry sky, whose rocks we knew had once echoed lo the voice of the great thunderings, when " even that Sinai itself was moved at the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel." donald maoleod. XV. STREET SCENES IN CANTON. THE market-place at Canton, which consists of a street about twelve feet broad, situated just outside the European factories, is a scene of much interest to a stranger ; but it is necessary on entering it to look out for your pockets, or they wUl probably be picked. Here will be observed the different trades located together both in the market-place and the streets, one street being occupied by carpenters, another by blacksmiths, &c. ; but the most disagreeable part of the market street is that appropriated by the butcher shops, the smell from which in hot weather is very offensive. Meals of all kinds are hung up for sale, excepting veal, which is seldora seen, as the Chinese, not making use of milk, rear all their calves. In the market raay be observed, hung up for sale, numbers of ducks, which have been split open and dried in the sun ; also rats preserved in the same manner, some being very large. Once a Chinese passed me with a cage in his hand. STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 331 which appeared to contain two small black sucking pigs ; but, on closer inspection, I found them to be rats, weighing jDetween 8 and 9 lbs. each. These had been fed up for sale, and were being hawked about. It is not an uncommon thing to see a leg of a horse hanging up for sale ; this was clearly indicated to me by the hoof, when inspecting the meat which was being sliced up for sorae poor people. One day, when taking my walk, I came across a dog that had just been killed and scraped ready for the pot, and a short time afterwards meeting a friend of mine and telling him of it, he, to convince himself of the fact, lifted up the pot's lid, when the dog's clenched teeth were at once seen, proving his nature : near were some poor Chinese waiting to buy a portion when cooked. Passing out of the market-place, and walking through the narrow streets adjoining,' one may see a nuraber of soothsayers sitting at little tables ranged by the side of the street, and around them may be observed an eager group of men having their fortunes told, and from the expression of their countenances one would think that they had implicit belief in the statements made. Araon gst the group was one man having his fortune told, who appeared to be a great ragamuffin ; and the soothsayer, perhaps judging frora appearances, was evidently giving him very bad news, whilst pointing to lines on his hands and bumps on his forehead as proofs of his statement, during which time the greatest anxiety prevailed. The next characters met with, seated in the same manner at little tables in the streets, may be dentists or doctors. The latter has his table covered with pots 332 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, containing different ointments ; also in baskets by the table may be seen roots of plants and fresh herbs to be boiled down for use. When a Chinese gets a bad wound or fracture of bone, the part is'bandaged up with a large plaster, and the patient is kept quiet In most cases the wounds heal very quickly, on account of their simple diet. The Chinese never use the knife, nor have they any idea of surgery or of anatomy. On one occa sion a Chinese cook we had on board our ship com plained of being, ill, and although he was attended by the surgeon of the ship, yet he had not sufficient con fidence in his treatment, and therefore requested leave of absence for a few days, to enable him to see a Chinese doctor. He accordingly went, and returned well after three days ; but he was considerably raarked about the body with sraall red spots, ¦which he stated was the effect of the pinching he had undergone to proraote the circu lation of the blood, which is one of their cures for headache. The dentist, whom we come to next, is as great an impostor as the physician, although he displays a number of teeth on his table, which he states to have extracted without pain, and exhibits two small bottles containing some white and grey powders with which he accom plished the wonderful operation. I had heard a great deal of their power in this art, but was wonderfully surprised al being told by an Eng lish doctor that he had himself seen the operation per formed, and had implicit belief in it, for he stated that many years back, when he was surgeon of a large Indian ship trading to Canton, and when lying at Whampoa, STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 333 (the anchorage for these ships,) he had to perform an operation on one of the young officers of the ship for a hare lip ; but in consequence of a tooth protruding just where the incision was made, the wound would not heal, he therefore recommended the oflncer to have the tooth out. It so happened, whilst this conversation was taking place between the doctor and his patient, that the Chinese corapradore, who attended upon the ship to provide different necessaries, and who always under stands a little English, overheard the conversation, and said he would bring a Chinese dentist on board who would extract it without pain ; whereupon it v/as agreed he should be brought, and on his arrival he proceeded first to rab the gum of the tooth with a little white powder, and then, after using another sort of that mate rial, he placed his finger at the back of the tooth, giving it a flip, and out it came without any suffering to the patient further than making the gum swell a Uttle. This story appeared to me so improbable, unless the tooth had been previously loose, that I made several inquiries frora different Chinese on the subject, and all stated that it could be effected — one of the number saying he had undergone the operation hiraself without ¦ pain. Not being able to credit all these statements, as they ap peared so contrary to reason, I was determined to find out from personal experience, whether there was any truth in the matter. An opportunity was soon offered me, as a tooth was giving me sorae inconvenience, so I ordered a dentist on board, and raentioned it to sorae of my brother officers, who particularly asked to be allowed to see the fun, as they called it. When the 334 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. dentist made his appearance, the first thing was to con clude a bargain as to his charge. He accordingly in spected the tooth, which was a double one, and, shaking his head, he pointed up to my cheek-bones, saying, the fangs ran up so high, he could not extract it under nine dollars. He was immediately called an old scoundrel by the owner of the tooth, and offered one doUar ; that, he said, was too sraall a sum, but agreed, at last, to extract it -without pain for two. Accordingly he com menced the operation by inserting some white powder under the gum, at the same time forcing the gum back. Afler using another powder he began to tap the tooth to see if it was loose, and then got me to sit down on the deck, and placed my head between his knees. This made me expect sorae foyl play ; but then it struck me he would not dare to impose upon an officer on board a man-of-war, where he would probably get a thrashing. I therefore complied with his wish. He then introduced something into my mouth, wrapped up in soft paper, and, in another moment, I felt as if the whole jaw was being wrenched off, and snap went something ; this was the whole crown of the tooth which was broken off, causing excruciating pain. The scoundrel released my head, looking much ashamed of himself; fortunately for him he was an old man, or else, in all probability, he would have been obliged to undergo the sarae operation at the hands of his patient, to see what effect the powder might produce on him. On inspecting the instrument of torture, I found it was a common pair of nippers that are used for pulUng out nails ; so ended my experience in Chinese tooth-drawing. Mentioning this circumstance STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 335 afterwards to a respectable Chinese, he stated that the man I had employed was not a number one man, and said, if I wished to have another out, he could supply me with a person he could trast' The next person of consequence, seated likewise in the streets waiting for customers, is the barber, who generally has plenty of employment, as the lower class of Chinese, whenever they want to appear smart, have their heads shaved, excepting a small round at the back of the head, where a tail is aUowed to grow. When a Chinese dies, the relatives always shave the head and dress the tail, which they tell you is malting him " die proper." The tail was formerly imposed upon them by the Tartars, who conquered the country, and made the people wear this distinguishing mark as a sign of subjec tion ; but, in course of years, it became fashionable, and was wom by all classes, and now it is considered a dis grace for a native to be without one. The only people who pretend to have done away with the usual custom of tails, are the long-haired rebels, but the greater part of them also wear it ; otherwise, should they fall into the hands of the mandarins, they would at once be known. The Chinese are very proud of their taUs, and extend them considerably below the waist, by adding, with the braids, silk to make them longer. I once asked my taUor, who was a great dandy, and evidently very proud of his tail, what he would do supposing he was deprived of that ornament ? He im mediately put his hand across his neck and said he would cut his throat I have seen men's taUs cut off for punishment, and the head shaved afterwards, to pre- 336 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, vent a new one being attached, which otherwise is very skUfuUy done if any hair at all is left A friend of mine having a hard run after a Chinaman, just managed to reach the tail that was flying out behind, when he thought he had him safe, but off it came, and the owner escaped. In all Chinese streets may be seen an immense num ber of beggars, the greater part being children ; and I leamed, on good authority, that such is the infamy of their parents, that often they destroy the eyesight of their children, for the sake of obtaining a livelihood by their begging, as the laws of China provide for the sup port of the blind, by permitting them to enter any shop, and there remain till sunset Should the proprietor re fuse to give alms, they make so much noise as to drown all conversation between the shopman and his custom ers, for which purpose they soraetimes use gongs, and beat together pieces of bamboo, as an accompaniraent to their squeaking voices. These beggars generally go in a string of three or four together. On entering a shop to make purchases — if one is supposed lo be a good customer, the doors are im mediately shut, to prevent the bUnd from entering — different prices are always asked, according as one is an old customer or not ; a stranger can never do wrong by offering exactly one-half the price first demanded. In many cases I have succeeded when not wanting an article, but merely making the offer for experiment ; but the best plan of dealing with them is, when they lower their price to raise yours a little, at the same tirae shaking the dollars in your pocket, so that the China- STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 337 man may hear them ; this will give him encouragement to go on, as they never Hke letting a doUar go out of their house, if by any means they can obtain it It is most amusing to a stranger to hear an old hand making a " pigeon," which means a bargain ; and it generally begins by the purchaser saying, " How muchee this piecee?" — the answer may be four doUars, — the purchaser then says, " Two doUars can do." The Chinaman will then, wilh a show of indignation, say, ' " No can." The purchaser then rattles the dollars in his pocket, and says, " Can ; " and after several exchanges of " can '' and " no can," the bargain is at length concluded by the shopkeeper saying, "You too muchee hard ; mi losee plentee too muchee mone." On one occasion, taking -a walk with a brother officer through the streets, we were determined to try the patience of a shopkeeper; so we went in, and asked the price of a great number of things, without conclud ing any purchase ; at which the shopman seemed much displeased, and said, " You talke, talke, talke, so long-e, long-e, long-e, and you no ma-ke the pigeon ; " at which we were con-vulsed with laughter, and the shopman, understanding at once what our object had been, began to laugh too, and said, " You ma-ke play pigeon." The silk embroidery shops will repay one for a morning's visit to them, the work being exquisitely fine, and the colours of the floss silks remarkably briUiant The preparation of this article, in its different stages, affords occupation to a large section of the lower orders ; and from the greatness of the population, and consequent competition, labour is so cheap that the poor people earn 338 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. no raore than the value of about threepence a day, upon which they can subsist, and manage to support a wife and family. Most to be admired are the carvings' on wood and ivory; not that the representations are exact, but the detail so elaborate. It is particularly in figures of men and women, temples, houses, boats, and flowers that they most excel, but animals they have no idea of representing either in carving or painting. The sandal-wood boxes afford very pretty specimens of their handicraft, and vary frora a dollar to twenty each. About the time of New Year, which happens in February, when rents become due, and yearly settlements take place, various articles are hawked about the streets for half the price asked at other times. A walk into the picture shops is very inter esting. The first representations generally placed before a stranger are the various raodes of punishment, some of which are very dreadful. The subjects of painting they mostly excel in, repre sent the same as in their carvings on sandal-wood, but they have no idea of perspective, as it will be observed, in most pf their paintings on rice paper, there is no fore ground. They are very clever at copying photographs. Wishing to have one copied, and demanding the price, the artist, on examining it, said, " Four • piecee, man twenty dollars : " two small chUdren and one woman were reckoned all the same as men. Having agreed to the bargain, the Chinaman produced a copy in about a fortnight, adrairably done. A man, named Yungua, on the Queen's Road at Hong Kong, is superior STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 339 to any of the Canton people, and wUl copy a miniature, however delicately painted. Il was from him that I purchased a book, containing about a hundred figures, which composed a marriage procession of a great man darin. The price was only twelve dollars, and far sur passed anything I had ever seen of their painting. Some of the shops containing Chinese lanterns afford a little interest to a passer-by, as there are many different sorts, ranging from fourpence to twelve pounds. But very pretty ones may be bought for about two pounds, having painted glass sides, supported on a framework of- figured brass-work, ornaraented with black fringes of silk round the lower part of the lamp, and having also crim son silk tassels arranged about it very gracefully. The cheapest sort of lamps are those in the shape of a globe, and made of a transparent substance, called lumju, (a preparation of rice.) These are used at night by all classes of Chinese, and many on a larger scale, deco rated with a little painting, are always to be seen at night placed over the doors of the shops. The curiosity shops afford a Uttle interest ; there are, however, but few things particularly good in execution. The quaintness of the different articles is their only recoraraendation. The same may be said of the china shops, where is seen an immense quantity of china, so much admired for the purity of clay, and the brightness of the colours in the various paintings, which consist principally of bad representations of human figures, and flowers of soraewhat better execution. A great price is asked for old china, and very little of a superior quality is procurable in the city of Canton. 340 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. In walking through the streets, one often meets with various processions, such as a mamage, which may generally be known by being accompanied with music. The marriage procession of a great mandarin is very interesting to observe, as he sends all his servants to attend the bride to his house, where he wails to receive her. Heading the procession are raen with gongs, who call the attention of the people to clear the way ; and iramediately following them are bearers of flags that denote the office of the mandarin ; then follow musi cians beating tom-toms, and blowing upon squeaking pipes, also men carrying large boards with gUt letters on them. Being anxious to know the meaning of this, I asked a Chinese shopkeeper who understood a- littie Canton-English, " What for this fashion ? " He repUed, " That teU hira faider, that tell hira mo-der, grandfaider, grandmoder." I said, " You mean his pedigree ? " To which he answered, " Yes ; so fashion." In this procession are generally seen a few sedan chairs preceding the bride, in which are placed various presents of sUks, &c. : these are attended by gentlemen who have the charge of presenting them. Soraetimes the bride's friends may send something for her, when a young girl, sitting astride of a pony, will be the person in charge she being attended on each side by servants. But the ¦ most extraordinary part of the procession is that which just precedes the bride, consisting of executioners, liclors, and banners, together with female attendants. FoUow ing the above procession comes the bride, sealed in a handsorae gilt sedan chair, and completely shut in from STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 341 the public gaze. She is carried by four bearers, and attended by a guard of soldiers. There is another procession soraetiraes lo be met wilh, of quite a different character, which consists of a number of unfortunate creatures being carried to the execution ground, which is situated outside the city walls, and about two miles from the Factories. Here is a lane, enclosed by the backs of houses, appropriated for that purpose, and having a door at each end to keep the mob out I happened once to be taking a sketch of this ground from the top of a carpenter's shop, situated at one end of it, when, in a street below me, a great noise suddenly proceeded from a parly of Chinese, who were carrying in people for execution. These unfortunate prisoners had their arms tied behind their backs, and their tails twisted up in a knot on the top of the head. They were each sitting in a basket slung frora a baraboo, carried by two raen, who, as they brought in their victims, pitched them out, utterly regardless as to how they fell. The execu tioners, with their assistants, placed them in four rows, making them kneel down ; many of them were so weak, that they kept tumbling on their sides, when they were lifted up and placed again into position. On the roof of the carpenter's shop were some respect able Chinese witnessing the execution, and met on the foreground below were the junior mandarins in wailing for the arrival of their chief, who was to superintend. Around the walls were placed coffins ready to take the bodies away. At the farther end of the lane stood the 342 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. executioners, ready to commence ; and on the left, half way up, was a trough in which the heads are thrown after execution, and standing close to it were some men, dressed in black, with spare swords under their arms, for the use of the executioners when their own became blunt After the lapse of a few minutes, during which time a dead silence prevailed, in stratted a mandarin, upon which the doors of the lane were shut, and the execu tioners coraraenced the work of death, by decapitating those nearest them, and then working down the rows, so that the poor creatures in the rear saw the death of those that knelt before them. I turned away from the scene, till a friend of mine, who was ¦with me, said he wanted to point out something strange, and on looking round he showed me a body kneeling upright without its head ; and whilst looking at this, one of the assistant executioners came and pushed the body over. He then went on to the next victim, and lifting the arms, (which were secured behind the back,) the head bent forward, it was then severed wilh one stroke of the sword, and fell a yard frora the body. The executioners changed their swords after every fourth stroke, and generaUy used both hands. The handles ofthe swords were about nine inches long, and the blade about two feet in length by two inches in breadth. On this occasion sixty-eight criminals were executed in four minutes, by four executioners ; and during the tirae of execution, not a murmur was heard throughout the ranks, and the only sound that broke the general STREET SCENES IN CANTON. 343 Stillness that prevailed, was the click of the sword as it severed the heads, and the falling of the lifeless bodies. No doubt these poor prisoners had welcomed death, lo save them from farther misery in the dungeons in which they had been confined, and where they had been occasion ally beaten wilh bamboos, and nearly starved to death. Directly the execution was over, the mandarin and suite retired. The heads of the culprits were lifted up and thrown into the trough, where they are left as a warning to passers-by. The bodies are put into rude shells of coffins, and carried out for interraenl by the bearers who brought them there ; but should any of the deceased's friends wish to take a body, they are aUowed to do so, but not per mitted to have the head. The perquisite of the executioners are the clothes of the prisoners. They are also allowed the value of about one shilling and sixpence to provide each prisoner a coffin ; bill instead of procuring them at that price, they buy rude shells for about half the sura aUowed, and by breaking the bones of their victims, pack two in one coflan, so that in the burial of two culprits they pocket about three-fourths of the money allowed. Observing a wooden cross placed against the wall, and asking the use of it, the Vice-Consul at Canton, from whom I received a great deal of information connected with Chinese punishments, told me that the cross was used for lashing those who were condemned to be cut into ten thousand pieces, which is the punishraent for parricide ; and that once he happened to be passing, when he saw a poor woman undergoing this excessive 344. PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. cruelty, but he heard the executioner had been bribed to insure death the first stroke of the knife. He then pro ceeded to carry out the sentence, by making about fifty cuts, the terra ten thousand pieces being intended to produce fear. The number of people generally executed at Canton yearly is between two and three thousand; sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty are executed at one time. XVI. ON THE ATLANTIC. AS the sun was setting upon a lovely summer's even ing, we were steaming it bravely down Channel in one of the superb " Cunard liners." We had, since the forenoon, bid farewell lo our friends at Liverpool — glided slowly down the Mersey — ^passed the bell buoy — that eerie and lonely warning farewell and welcome, midst waves and storms, to homeward and outward bound. We were now almost " fairly out to sea." The Welsh mountains rose like masses of clouds in the east. West ward, a mass of golden light spread over the sky and tinged the waters ; while far and near were scattered sails of fishing craft and pilot-boats, with vessels of all rigs and size, on their voyage to or from every region ot the globe. I pass over, at present, any notice of the splendid vessel, and that (to me) sublime sight the majestic engine, rolling her, with unhesitating and resistless power, upon her path of three thousand mUes, against sea and storm. 346 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Nor shall I tell you all my guesses about the country, clime, professions, &c., of the seventy male and female passengers who mustered around the dinner-table ; nor all my wonder at the marvellous order and punctuality with which the sumptuous meals were served. Nor shall I burden you with all my many crowding thoughts, hopes, fears, anxieties, expectations, as I paced the deck alone, and saw the sun — and with the sun, the land — depart, and the clear stars appear, and the first night upon the deep close around, and realised that the voyage had really coraraenced, which, if God prospered us, was to end in a new world, and amidst a new scene of important, difficult, and highly responsible labours. When I first entered the cabin, before getting under weigh, the first object which caught my eye was an in valid passenger, who was in a berth next the one assigned to my friend and myself. A single glance told a sad tale. The sufferer was a man apparently about thirty years of age. The sunken yet hectic cheeks, the skeleton hands, the brilliant eye, the hollow and incessant cough, were s)rmptoms of consumption far advanced, which could not be mistaken. I sat down beside hira, and expressed my sympathy for him, teUing him I was a clergyman, and would be very happy to be of any service to him. He expressed his thanks, and told me he had no friend, and hardly an acquaintance on board ; that his famUy lived in Boston ; that he was in hopes the sea-voyage on his way horae would be of service to him. His very hopes made his case to me more sad. I felt assured his voyage was near its end ; and that whatever was to be done must be done quickly. I began as gently as possible to make ON THE A TLANTIC. 347 him converse upon the things belonging to his peace; and before our steamer was out of the river, he had so far unburdened his mind as lo tell me that he was not indifferent to such subjects, but that he was a Uni tarian. This made me the more anxious to improve every hour. Before night set in, we had many short conversations. I read and prayed wilh him. He was removed at night to a berth near the deck, where there was more air. My friend also read wilh him. The weather has continued beautifiti. The sea is calm. We have passed Cape Clear. The Irish hills are fast departing in the distance, and mingling with the clouds. . . . Now are we out on the great deep — " Nothing above and nothing below But the sky and the ocean." There is something very striking in this sight of the boundless sea : the horizon sweeping round and round without any interraption ; the blue dome of heaven on all sides resting upon it, with the vessel and its people aS; the centre, and the only human-like object within' the vast circumference. , I do not reraeraber having seen this before. In crossing the channel to and frora the Con tinent, though out of sight of land, it was always hazy, and I never could realise the grandeur and loveliness of this vast ocean view. But perhaps my mind was now in a mood to receive the most sober and least-gladdening impressions of things. My poor patient has passed a very restless night I fear his time is not to be so long even as I anticipated. He grants the Divine authority of the New Testament 348 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. and the perfect truthfulness of Christ and the apostles. He is an unbeliever rather than a ^wbeliever in Christ's Divinity. He is candid and upright ; and in such trath- ful ground, surely truth must, if sown, sooner or later, bring forth fruit. I have, therefore, read the Scriptures to him. I tried to awaken, in liim, from a sense of his own wants, a sense of the need of such a Saviour as Jesus Christ I also pointed out to him* several of those pas sages in which the same names, titles, and attributes are ascribed to Christ as to God. I dwelt upon that marvel lous combination of the Divine and human, which is seen in all the acts of Christ's life, from His cradle to His ascension. I showed to him how the Scriptures demand the same supreme love, homage, trust, and obedience to Jesus, as they do lo the only living and true God ; whUe He is held out as the only person in the universe who saves men from guUt, from ignorance, and from sin ; and I asked. Who is this Jesus Christ ? Who is this I am to love and serve as God himself? Who is this who invites a weary and heavy-laden world to come to Him for rest ? — who promises, through faith in His blood, to pardon a world's guilt ; who bids leamed and unlearned to sit at His feet and receive His words as eternal life ; who com mands kings and nations to be subject to Him, promising to defend aU who trast Him from the power of Satan, and to deliver them from the power of sin ; and, finally, to receive them frora the dead,— save them at the day of judgment, and give thera eternal glory, and that, too, be- ' cause they believed in and loved Hira ? Who is this inlo whose hands we are to commit our aU, soul and body, in the hour of death, in the persuasion that He can keep ON THE A TLANTIC. 349 what we commit to Him till that day? Was such a Saviour as this such a person as ourselves ? — a man only — a mere creature ? — or was He not " that etemal life which was with the Father, and which was raanifested to us," — that life which was the "Light of men," — that " Word which was God, and which was raade flesh," — " Immanuel, God with us ? " As I thus spoke, trying by these and other methods to raake him see, with the help of God's Spirit, the glory of Christ's work as inseparably connected wilh the glory of His person ; so that, if we could not be saved without such a Saviour, neither could we have such a Saviour without such a person ; and as I pressed upon him an immediate closing with Christ's offers, he looked up to me, and said, " Oh ! how often my mother told me those things ! " Were the prayers of a pious mother, (long dead,) which seeraed during her life to have been un heard, now about to be answered ? Were the advices which had been cast upon the waters, though as if there to sink for ever, now, upon the great deep, to bring forth fruit to God ? The day will alone declare it. But I could not but indulge the hope that it was so, as he said to me, when parting for the night, — to hira the night of death, — " I see how it is, that one must believe in Jesus the Son of God before he can be saved. I shall turn and pray to Him ; good-night ! " In the. raiddle ofthe night I rose and went to see how he did. I found the steward sitting beside him. I never saw a more tender, considerate nurse than that man was ! He did everything so cheerfully and feelingly. He read the Scriptures to hira, and tried to give him strength and 35° PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. comfort "The poor gentieman sleeps soundly," he said; "but I think his last sleep is near.'' In an hour after the heavy breathing ceased, and all was silent. One of my friends and I rose early this morning to corarait the body of poor L^ to the deep. The cap tain asked us to have the kindness to read the burial- service over hira. We consented to do so. In the judgraent of charily, I thought I could commit " the body of this brother " to the deep. My friend, who had also read and prayed with him, was of the same opinion. The morning was gusty. We were breasting a head- breeze, and the ocean was beginning to heave. The coffin, covered by a flag, was placed upon a plank close to the gangway. Gathered around were the captain and some of the crew, (dressed in their Sunday clothes,) with a few passengers. As the words were uttered, "We com mit this body to the deep," the end of the plank was lifted up, the coffin slid down, plunged into the sea, and — where was it % where was it ? It was the impossibility of marking, for a single moment, where it was, amidst the foaming waters, which, more perhaps than anything else, irapressed rae wilh a sense of that solemnity of a burial at sea, which aU who witness it never faU to ex perience. In the quiet and peaceful churchyard, we can visit the grave ; our human feelings, which cling even to the poor raaterial fabric, though we know that all we best loved has passed away from it are soothed by theknow- ledge, that " here Hes " the body, which is inseparable in our memories from the soul which gave it life. The green grave thus blends life and death, linking the seen ON THE ATLANTIC, ON THE ATLANTIC. 351 with the unseen. It is indeed a family resting-place, where all wait together the gladdening beams of the Re surrection morning. But in that sea-burial there is such a sudden change from the body being wilh us — a thing we can still call ours — lo its being to us nowhere. A mo mentary splash, and the ship passes on, and leaves it in the boundless, unfathomable, mysterious sea ! Yet in the ocean it is as safe as in the lonely churchyard. He who holds the mighty deep in the hollow of His hand, beholds and keeps all that is in it Like Jonah, the body may be entombed beneath the waves; but, like him, it is watched and guarded unlU the day of deliver ance comes, when " the sea shall give up its dead;" and then the vile body shall be fashioned like His own glori ous body, through that power by which He can subdue all things to Himself The weather for the last day or two has become chilly. The captain says we may hourly look out for ice. At this season of the year it passes our track, on its slow voyage to the warra south, where it raelts away in the high temperature of the Gulf Stream. Navigation amidst ice is at all tiraes raore or less dangerous ; whether the ice occurs in the form of icebergs, or in large flat masses, which are difficult to discover, even during the day, araidst the waves. This afternoon we were, all attracted to the starboard quarter of the ship by the announcement of " Icebergs." The day was beautiful, — the sky serene, — the sea raffled only by a pleasant breeze, before which we were ranning at the rate of about twelve knots an hour with all sail set, and the steam blowing off at the funnel-head. On 352 PEEPS. A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the distant horizon was seen a while silvery speck, gleam ing and sparkling in the sun. By and by another ap peared—a third — a fourth ; and the specks soon began to assurae more definite forms ; and as we rapidly neared thera, we found ourselves passing close to towering ice bergs. I cannot teU what a strange irapression these made upon me ; there is something so mysterious in their whole history. When was the keel laid of that huge one, like a hundred decker, which kept hi sight so long to-day ? Perhaps at the period of the Covenanters, if not earlier ! No eye but that of its Maker beheld it in some unknown region between Spitzbergen and the Pole, slowly building beneath stormy blasts and snowy drifts ; then broken off frora the glacier bed, and launched into the great deep, to coraraence its soUtary voyage of raany thousand miles, impelled by the irresistible ocean tide ; at last to disappear and be absorbed into the ele ment from which it was made, and, in ils final destruction, to be as unnoticed by human eye as in its early forma tion. Yet these very icebergs, in cooling the tempera ture of the air and of the Southern Ocean, perform an essential and important service in God's world. He has raade nothing in vain. All His works are still "very good." The scene this evening was magnificent beyond de scription, — I shaU never forget it. The sun descended to the horizon like a huge globe of bumished gold. A few fleecy clouds hung their gorgeous drapery above the departing orb, whose last rays were . reflected frora the glittering peaks of a raajestic iceberg, and lighted up a glowing pathway across the dancing waves, along which ON THE ATLANTIC. 353 we were rapidly gliding wilh every stitch of canvas spread. As the sun touched the sea-line, it seeraed for a moment to pause, then slowly sunk, untU there re mained but a single brilliant speck of gold, which in a second disappeared, leaving us in twilight To add to the striking character of the scene, a large whale near us ever and anon lifted his black back above the waves, and spouted his column of water into the air. You will be surprised to hear that such sunsets are by no means common. One of the passengers remarked that " he had crossed the Atlantic eight times, and had never seen a good sunset ; " the horizon being generally hazy. The brilliant sunset was followed by a day of gloora, and a night of danger. Yesterday a thick fog wrapped us in its cold grey mantle. Immediately before it came on, we haUed a small brig on her homeward voyage frora Araerica to Alloa. She was the first sail we had spoken on the passage. In answer to the ques tion, " Have you met much ice ?" we received the un welcome reply, " Yes, a great deal !" and, on further inquiry, we found that we should probably reach, during the night, the latitude in which the brig had encountered the ice in such quantity. This news was followed by the fog; and no "Scotch mist "which you have ever witnessed, not even the densest " eastern haar " which ever visited Edinburgh from the northern ocean, can be corapared with the fog upon the banks of Newfoundland. On it came like a great stream of dense palpable cloud, rashing over us. It was no thin vapour, which vanished before your immediate presence. It met your face. 354 PEEPS A T FOREIGN .COUNTRIES. and blew into your eyes. Standing at the stern of the vessel, it was impossible to see her bow. The ship be carae dim at the Yunnel, and was invisible at the bowsprit It was anything but a pleasant prospect to go plunging on, at fuU speed, with the darkness of night, added to the darkness of day, through an ocean strewed wilh ice bergs. It was like sailing at midnight through an archi pelago of rocks without a chart To come in contact with the one, would prove as certainly and as imme diately fatal to us, as to come in contact with the other. I walked the deck alone, before descending to my berth for the night. Forward at the bp-w stood the watch on the look-out, peering through the darkness ; and as the ship's bell tolled the passing hour, the ear caught their pleasant cry of " All 's well !" In the engine-room, the swinging lamps, and huge furnace fires, as their burning throats were opened to receive their supply of fuel, shed a lurid glare upon the wonderful machinery which im pelled our vessel onward. Day and night, since we left -Liverpool, and along a path of nearly three thousand miles, had those valves opened,- arid polished rods moved, and great levers worked, wilh unfaUing accuracy, driving us, with resistless energy, against -wind and waves. Sometiraes, when a heavy sea strack the ship, the giant iron arras, which turned the iramense paddles, seemed to pause for a second, as if to gather aU their strength into one effort of indomitable power; and then would they calmly and majestically revolve, and force the gallant vessel, araidst mist and darkness, through the roaring sea. When even puny man is wondrous in his works, what is man's Maker! The quarter-deck was ON THE ATLANTIC. 355 occupied by the captain and chief officer only. Under deck the helmsman all alone grasped his wheel, keeping his eye fixed on the compass, which shone brightly be neath the binnacle light. The huge monster, in spite of her 500 horse power, was mastered by his magic wheel ; and strange indeed it seems, that "the ships, which, though they be great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about -with a very small helm, whitherso ever the steersman chooseth.'' That same steersman is the very symbol of a Christian. He had nothing to do wilh how the wind blowed, or how the sea rolled, or whether it was light or darkness without; but to steer in the direction comraanded him, and according to the compass before hira, on which alone he had to fix his eye ; just as the Christian is not to be guided by things as they appear, — by the roughness or sraoothness, — the darkness or cleamess of his voyage. Enough for him ff his Captain commands him ; and God's Word, as his chart and compass guides him in the way he should go. What has he to do but to trust both ; and "argue not Against Heaven's hand and will ; or bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bear up, and steer Right onward ! " And thus, in the end, he will be safely and surely brought to his desired haven ! In passing the windows of the saloon, a striking con trast was presented between the scene without and within. Some of the passengers were playing cards. The few ladies present were knitting fancy work. AU 356 ¦ PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. were listening to a foreigner who was singing various ai from the popular operas, which he accompanied with 1: guitar. One could not help feeUng how soon and he suddenly all this might be changed for a scene of mi night desolation ! Before retiring to rest, I natural selected for my evening reading those portions of Sari ture associated with ".perils on the deep," the history Jonah, the voyage of St Paul, the 107th Psalm, and ll like. How rich is Scripture in affording instruction at comfort suited to every occasion and circumstance Iffe ! Verses and passages, which perhaps at one tir we almost passed over without any interest in thei become, at another period of our history, so full of mea ing, so precious to us, that we wonder why we never s£ their rich beauty before. God indeed gives us '' o meat in due season,'' and " liberally " suppHes our wan I lay down to rest, repeating the 23d Psalm ; but wh: preserved from all slavish fear, I confess that never w my mind more solemnised. Nor did I wish to bani; the idea of danger ; but rather to receive the good whi( the realising of it might bring. I .have been more th; once in similar circumstances ; and who has been without noticing how vividly one's vvhole life com before them, — ^how faithfuUy memory and conscience ( their work, — how then, if at any time, we weigh thin in just balances,^how false, how empty, every actit and state of being are felt to be, which have not bei according to God's ¦wiU, and have not fulfiUed His pt pose ; and how blessed a thing it is, and, above all olh blessings, to know God as our Father, and as the rest ai peace and satisfaction of our soul, when we feel ourselv ON THE ATLANTIC. 357 SO entirely in His hands, and may in a moment be called into His presence ! The wished-for morning at length broke. Most welcome were the sun's rays streaming inlo our cabin, which announced another and a brighter day. The first object which caught my eye on reaching the deck, was what proved to be the last of the icebergs. We were sailing towards it, and soon passed within a few hundred yards of it It seemed to have about an acre of surface. In the windward side it rose about thirty feel, and sloped down gradually to lee ward. The beating sea had scooped out a series of hollow caves in ils precipices, — and nothing could exceed the exquisite beauty of the waves as they rushed into these icy caverns, catching from their transparent walls an intense emerald green, which mingled with the pure sno-wy whiteness of their own crested heads. We sighted land upon Sabbath morning, but passed it at a considerable distance. It was Cape Pine in New foundland. We had divine service on board, as on the former Sabbath. Those services are attended by the passengers, and also by the officers and crew. In the absence of a clergyman, the captain reads the service of the Church of England. After preaching, we found, as on the preceding Sabbath, a great disposition on the pa;-t of several of the passengers to enter into frank and kindly conversation upon the traths expounded. As the subject of one of the discourses was the divinity of Christ, and the inseparable connexion between this fact, and our love and obedience to Christ as our Saviour, one or two, who had hitherto been Unitarians, discussed with • much earnestness the views advanced, and with apparent 3S8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES sincere desire of knowing the trath. I hope those Sabbaths were not without their fmit. The captain teUs us that he hopes to enter Halifax before morning. We had bid fareweU' to our American friends, who will have continued their voyage southward, before we can again meet The passengers drank our healths with many kind words after dinner to-day. We have received many cordial invitations from several to visit them if we go to the States. , There was on board a tall Kentuckian. He wore large boots, great-coat, and broad-briraraed hat. He seldora if ever spoke, but walked the deck in sUence, chewing tobacco all day long. He was never absent frora meals, and the only change which ever marked his countenance was the smUe which lasted during the hour after dinner, when the Yankees crowded into the covered place on deck, near the funnel, to sing Old Dan Tucker, and other " Nigger songs '' in hearty choras. I was not ' a littie surprised, when this specimen of the West carae up to rae, asking, "'Spect to visit Kentuck, sir? 'Cause if you do, I shall give you three days as fine coon shooting as ever raortal enjoyed ! " Though I had no hope of joining hira in his sport, I was touched by his kindness. Amidst hea-vy rain, we ran up this raorning, about fiye o'clock, to the wooden wharf at Halifax. The ship was discharging her cargo when we carae up on deck. At that early hour we were met by friends who then began an acquaintance which I hope will never end in this world or the next In a short time we had bade fareweU to that splendid steamer, — thankful for our short but ON THE A TLANTIC. 359 pleasant voyage, — and landed on the shores of a new world, wilh new duties, new cares, new hopes and fears before us ; but also new friends, and new labours of love, and an ever-present God as our hope and stay ! NORMAN MACLEOD. XVII. A WINTER IN CANADA. CANADA is invariably associated in the mind of an EngUshman with snow, and something like a shiver creeps over him when the name of the country is men tioned. It was, therefore, with feelings of rauch surprise that we listened to the speculations of the people as to the coming winter. It was with no feeUngs of dread that they looked forward to the winter's shroud that was to wrap up aU nature in the stillness of death. They longed for it, as the husbandman for a plenteous harvest, or the Israelites for the wonted faU of manna. They were as fastidious, too, about the proper timing of the fall as the husbandman is in reference to a shower of rain. The snow may fall very inopportunely. Great is the disappointment when it comes before the ground is sufficiently indurated by frost, or the lakes and rivers have acquired a sufficient crust of ice. In that case, the snow acts as a warm covering, the ice beneath ceases to increase in thickness, and a treacherous footing, during the whole A WINTER IN CANADA. 361 winter, is the necessary consequence. Great is the joy, on the other hand, when no snow falls till the ice is able to bear the skater or the sleigh, and the earth is hard as iron. This kindly feeling towards the snow can be accounted for on various grounds. The sudden sinking of the temperature, along wilh the fall of snow, produces a wonderful exhilaration of spirits. The languor induced by the extreme heat of summer is at once banished ; and men and animals seera intoxicated with the new and bracing conditions of the atraosphere. The small Nor mandy horses prance with delight, and can hardly be reined in. The Newfoundland dogs roll in ecstasy in the snow, and everything that can move abroad seems as if awakening from a long sleep. The more remark able effects are not seen, except when the temperature sinks considerably below zero. The sudden access of new life and spirits is usually accounted for by the dryness of the atmosphere. But it is doubtfiil whether this is a satisfactory explanation. It is more probably due to the fact that, with every inhalation of the air into the lungs, there is a greater proportion of oxygen. This may also account for the beneficial effects of the climate in certain diseased states of the lungs. It is not unusual for a catarrh to disappear, as if by magic, when the tera perature suddenly drops below zero. A similar effect is witnessed in the churches on Sunday. There is no coughing to disturb the preacher — all tendency to bronchial irritation being subdued. The beneficial effect of the atmosphere of Canada, in certain pulmonary ailments, is now so well understood that invaUds are 362 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. frequentiy sent to spend the winter there. ' We retumed from Canada, in the spring, with a young naturaUst of great promise, who has prolonged his life for several years by spending his winters in Canada, and his summers in Europe. His valuable coUeclions showed that science ag weU as his own health benefited by this necessity. The dryness ofthe atmosphere accounts for a CanadianX, feat, which at first looks like a traveller's story, viz., the '' lighting of gas by merely pointing the finger to the burner. The performer first shuffles with his feet along the carpel ; and, in presenting his finger to the burner, a spark of electricity is emitted which is sufficient to produce the effect The friction of the foot develops the electricity, which is conducted by the body to the point of emission. This feat, however, can be performed only in very low temperatures, and when the room is heated by a slove. Sometiraes the difference between the temperature of the room and that ofthe external atmosphere is loo", so that the most favourable conditions are afforded for the development of electricity. Another reason for welcoming the snow is the import ant consideration, that the country becomes a universal highway. Nature macadamises the whole country, and the settlers, shut up in the back woods, have now free access to the towns and cities. The lumberers can now drag their logs to the railway or the river, and fire-wood sinks in price as soon as the carriage becomes easy. Wheeled carriages disappear from the roads and streets ; and the sleigh, which is the peculiarly national vehicle of the Canadians, takes their place. - The sleigh is seen in every variety of form ; but it essentially consists of a A WINTER IN CANADA. 363 shallow, oblong body set upon a pair of skates or ranners. That of the farmer is of the radest form, with buffalo skins upon the cross seats. The more affluent citizens decorate their sleighs with gay trappings and bearskins, which flaunt over the back of the vehicle. The wheeled carriages .are generally inelegant and inconvenient, but all the resources of the coachbuilder are employed to render the sleigh bolh elegant and luxurious. To a stranger, a drive in a sleigh is a new and delightful sensa tion. The "rapid pace, the smooth and noiseless motion, the bright sunshine, the joyous excitement ofthe horses, the bracing atraosphere, all combine to refresh and exhUarate. The Canadian goes out for a pleasure drive at a temperature far below zero, and that in his open vehicle, whUe in England nothing but dire necessity would warrant one to go abroad in similar circumstances. This does not arise from the superior hardiness of the Canadian, for he is much more sensitive to cold than the Englishman who has newly arrived in the country. It is due altogether to the peculiarities of the climate. One never feels in Canada the raw, chilling cold which pierces through the whole frame in England. This is also ascribed to the dryness of the air, bul it is more probably owing to the highly oxygenated state of the atraosphere — a given araount of inhalation assimilating a greater araount of oxygen, and thus producing a greater degree of animal heat It raay be thought that life would be unendurable in an atmosphere 30° or 40° below zero. And such would be the case, if the physiological indications of the temperature corresponded with those of the thermometer. But this is far from being the case. The variation of 10° 364 PEEPS AI FOREIGN COUNTRIES. about the freezing point produces an incalculably greater physiological effect than a simUar variation below zero. One can hardly guess the temperature by his feeUngs within 10°, when the thermoraeter stands at the extreme * cold of Cariada. The natives and old residents usually wear fur caps and gloves, but the Englishman, when he first goes out, feels no necessity for any change in his apparel. In a few years, however, he is glad to adopt the customs of the country. At first,, the temperature of the rooms is intolerable, but he gradually comes to acknowledge their corafort. The popular explanation of this change is, that the blood is thinned by the summer heat, and that, in consequence, it is less able to resist the cold of winter. The explanation may be doubted, but the fact is not the less trae. Though the sensations indicate but imperfectly the de gree of extreme cold, there are other natural indications which cannot be mistaken. "When the thermometer is about zero, the snow emits a peculiar creaking sound under the fool, and the pitch of the note increases as the temperature faUs. The smoke from the chimneys also serves as a rude therraoraeter. When the temperature is moderate, it is hardly visible, as it proceeds generally from wood fires,, but when the temperature is very low, it is white like steam issuing firom the escape-pipe of a boUer. This is caused by the condensation of the warm vapour raingled with the smoke. 'I'here is stiU a third reason for the glad welcome of winter, viz., that it is tiie great hoUday season of Canada. Agricultural labour ceases, the navigation is closed, and coraraerce is no longer active. The winter is devoted to A WINTER IN CANADA. 365 social entertainments and out-door amusements. In these amusements the snow and ice are tumed to exceUent account. As soon as the margins of the lakes are frozen, the ice is thronged with skaters. This amuse ment is not confined to the male sex. The Canadian * ladies are seen in equal nurabers on the ice, and often excel the stronger sex in rapidity of movement and grace fulness of evolution. Great distances are often accom pHshed during a morning's exercise. A favourite feat is to circle round some of the group of the thousand islands at the lower end of Lake Ontario, and explore the winter aspects of this the most striking scenery of Canada. One of the finest sights is to witness the setting of the sun upon the frozen lake while the skaters crowd the ice. The red glare of the sun coraraunicates a peculiar hue to the ice, and as the group of skaters, with glancing steel, glide between you and the fiery ball, you feel that you have a traly Canadian scene presented to you. In the sunsets of Canada there is a lint which is never seen in England. It is a deep apple green. It is seen in its greatest intensity only in the lower St La'wrence, and it is worth while taking this route frora England, notwith standing its hazardousness, were it only to enjoy the gorgeous sunsets in autumn. It is not often that the Canadians can enjoy skating on their lakes and rivers. The opportunities are much fewer than in England. In Canada, when the snow falls, the ice is spoiled for the rest of the winter, as the cover ing reraains the whole season. In England, successive thaws present opportunities of forming new surfaces. With so strong a passion for skating, it was not to be 366 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. supposed that the Canadians should submit to have their arauseraents suddenly curtaUed by a faU of snow. They have therefore resorted to the device of artificial rinks. An extensive piece of ground is leVeUed and covered in by a wooden shed. The area is flooded with water at night, and a sraooth surface is forraed by the morning. A thin sheet of water is added every day to obliterate the roughening effect of the day's exercises. The rink is lighted up at night, so that the amusement may be con tinued after sunset By constant practice, the feats per formed are very wonderful. The rink is often crowded, and many a sharp turn is necessary, but each glides sraoothly in his ovra orbit, and colUsions are rare. The most intricate movements of the dance are also success fully imitated. Such a resource is very valuable in a country where the snow renders walking exercise very difficult. -The chUdren, instead of being cooped up in heated rooms, are sent to take a few hours' exercise in the skating rink, to which the family subscribes. It is only in the shallower part of the great lakes that the water freezes. The depth of water is so great, that it is only at the raargin that a crast is formed. The St Lawrence, however, is frozen through nearly its whole extent, so that, jp the case of an invasion from the Araerican side, the attacking force could readily ad vance on foot against aU the great cities and fortresses of Canada. The rigour of winter, however, wiU always prove a formidable barrier to an advancing army. Snow-shoeing is also a favourite arauseraent, though a stranger cannot weU understand the source of the pleasure it affords. To the Indian and'the back-woodsman it is A WINTER IN CANADA. 367 often useful, as without the broad support which the snow-shoe gives, it would be impossible to move across the country ; but when snow-shoeing is resorted to as an amusement, it is more for the difficulty than the ease of walking it is employed. Instead of easily moving along the beaten track with ordinary shoes, a snow-shoe walker seeks the untrodden snow, that he may display his agility encumbered by serious clogs to his movements. The movement is very ungainly, as the feet require to be so far apart, and this awkwardness is greatly increased when an attempt is raade to ran ; and snow-shoe races are coraraon during the winter. Snow-shoeing forms a regular part of military drill. It is quite conceivable, that the use of snow-shoes, in certain military movements, 'would give one body of men a great advantage over another, and, in former military operations in Canada, the advantage has been tested. Taboganing is an amusement borrowed from the In dians. The tabogan consists simply of a light board, or the bark ofa tree, shaped somewhat like a sleigh. Itis brought to the top of a slope, the party sits upon it, and he immediately glides down with a rapidity proportioned to the steepness of the incline. At Quebec, the cone of ice formed by the spray of the Montra^ency FaUs is era ployed for this purpose. Grave senators, as a relaxation from the duties of parliament, resort to the cone to enjoy this exciting and bracing exercise. The only disadvan tage is, that at every trip the party must carry both the tabogan and hiraself to the suramit of the cone ; but the rapid descent seems to be an araple compensation for the requisite labour. The Scotch have brought with thera to 368 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Canada the national game of curling, and it is enjoyed Uke skating under cover. The curUng-stone, though retaining the narae, is made of iron, as stone, in low temperatures, is found to be a material much too brittle. Though introduced by the Scotch, the game is a favourite one -with all the nationalities. The most remarkable device of the Canadian to gain amusement in his winter fetters is the ice-boat. We had not heard ofthe contrivance when we first saw one. It was startling in the extreme to see it glide with raUway speed across the ice like a phantom ship. At a distance, it appears precisely like a small yacht with its sails set It is simply a boat set upon a pair of long skates or runners. It is managed much like an ordinary boat, and, so smoothly does it gUde, that in a side wind it actually goes faster than the wind itself. When there is only a light breeze blowing, one is surprised to see the boat shooting across the lake as if impelled by a stiff gale. She can sail nearer to the wind than if in water, and the bite of the skate prevents her making any lee way. This device is not turned to any practical account ; the object aimed at is simply to enjoy the sensation of rapid locomotion, which, in all forms, seems to be very grateful to a Canadian's feelings. A stranger, on first landing in Canada, is at once strack with the more rapid rate at which aU vehicles move. Even waggons, heavily laden, are drawn by horses at a trotting pace. The leisurely waUi of the cart-horse ofthe old country is unknown in Canada. The only exception to the rule of rapid locomotion is the railway. The Grand Trunk, which rans along the A WINTER IN CANADA. 369 whole length of the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario, is both slow.and safe, and the safety is due to the slowness. Accidents frequently occur, but they are not very destruc tive to life or property. One train may ran into another, or get off the track, but the injury is comparatively slight when the speed is only fifteen or twenty miles an hour. When the speed is increased, the destructive power in creases in a much higher ratio. When it is doubled, the destructive power is increased fourfold ; or, in other words, the destructive power increases as the square of the velocity. This law accounts for the appalling char acter of the late collision on the Edinburgh and Glas gow Railway. The combined velocities of both trains would probably be not less than eighty miles an hour, which represents a crashing energy sixteen times greater than that of a Canadian train running into a stationary object at the rate of twenty mUes an hour. The danger on English railways arises frora the deraand of the people for speed. In Canada, the safety is due to the financial necessities of the line, it being rauch raore economical to ran slow than fast trains. In winter, thedifficulty of rail way travelling is so great that the sleigh frequently asserts its superiority. In Toronto and Montreal, the street raUway system is adopted, but the snow drives the cars off, and large sleighs are employed instead, so that, for a considerable part of the year, the rails are practically useless. An ingenious Yankee, resolving to baffle the cliraate, strewed with salt the whole line of railway in Toronto, expecting that the raUs would be thus cleared of snow, but the device failed, as the gritty com pound was not suitable for either rail or sleigh. 2 A 37° PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. It was found, on sending troops to Canada, last winter, that the real difficulty began with the railways. Under the adrairable management of General Lumley, the transport of the forces by sleigh frora Halifax to Quebec was accoraplished with the greatest ease, though at first it appeared a most perUous undertaking. The officers and men enjoyed the journey as they would a holiday. When the troops reached Quebec, it was thought that every difficulty was over, as there was now railway com munication with the interior. • But here the dUficulty began. The railway, unlike the sleigh, was not intended, in its original constmction, to struggle against the rigour of an almost arctic climate. In a snow drift, the loco motive is like a maddened bull charging its enemy with the greatest impetuosity. It plunges into the snow, then backs out; and with deep drawn breath renews the charge ; but frequently its rage is impotent, it gives up the task in despair, and the slow process of the shovel must be resorted to. The engine carries in front a snow-plough for clearing the rails, but this is effectual only when the drift is not forraidable. Sometimes three or four engines come to the rescue of a train buried in the snow, and, with their united strength, charge through the opposing drift. It is one of the common incidents of Canadian travel to be snowed up in a cutting on a railway. The snow of Canada, almost invariably, falls in the form of fine, white dust, consisting of separate gritty crystals. The large flakes of England are almost never seen. This dry form of snow is much more liable to drift, and, with the slightest wind, it comes pouring over the edge of a A WINTER IN CANADA, 371 cutting in the railway, like sand pouring down from a sand-glass. It is one of the most unpleasant things in travel to be caught in one of these drifts. You may be in the midst of a forest, far from help ; and the Cana dian railways do not carry provisions, like those of their raore provident neighbours in the United States. The firewood may fail while you are under the snow at a tem perature below zero, and you may have the prospect of being snowed up for days in this miserable plight We had the misfortune of being snowed up, along with many others, on one occasion last winter, when we had an unexpected rescue frora our impending fate. We stuck fast in the wreath, after the usual attempts to push through. We could not even back out a-^d retreat to some spot where there was less chance of being buried up. When all the usual expedients were tried and failed, an American volunteered to go under the ma chinery, and shovel out the snow that clogged its move ments. He worked on with a hearty good-will, but it was all in vain ; besides, the feed-pipe was , frozen, so that the boiler could not be supplied with water from the tender. All the passengers had now given them selves up to blank despair. Night was fast coming on, and there was every prospect of spending it in the train, without food, and without the ordinary comfort of a sleeping car. The snow began gradually to rise around the carriages. It reached the windows, and then the light began to be gradually shut out by the ever-rising stratum. All looked wistfully through the narrowing chinks of the windows, and each had his speculations as to the dreary night coming on, and the thoughts of 372 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. anxious friends at horae. The situation was, however, not so miserable as to prevent one from admiring the beautiful forms assumed by the snow as it rose around the carriages. At first sight its surface appeared quite uniform, but a little attention showed that there was great diversity. Sometimes it was ribbed with parallel lines, drawn with great exactness ; at others, it was diver sified with minute conical elevations. Then there were concentric wavy lines, and all the various forms blended together. The process of formation was all visible be fore you by looking minutely into the structure. With the aid of a glass you could see the rainute particles rolling over and taking their aUotted place, so as to fit in to the general pattem. Some of the forms were not unlike the spiral nebulae which Lord Rosse's telescope has revealed to us ; and the great laws which pervade the universe can as well be illustrated by the play of atoms as by the revolution of worlds. The wisdora with which the Great Architect has planned all things, is stamped as vi-vidly upon the Httle as upon the great. The formulae expressive of the laws of the universe are altogether independent of magnitude. Our snow studies were soon curtailed by the closing in of night, and the pangs of hunger began to assaU the whole corapany, with no hope of having them appeased. It was like an angel's visit when a boy, with a Scotch accent, stepped into the carriage with a pitcher of hot tea, and a basket full of bread and cheese. This was sent by his mother, and he was told not to take anything for it Many were the blessings on the good woman for her timely supply. Her kindness, however, did not end here. She sent A WINTER IN CANADA. 373 down her eldest son to the train with the instruction that if he saw any " kent body," he should ask him to spend the night at her house. Her heart was large, but her house was sraall, and she could afford only limited hospitality. Her son, on looking round the train, soon recognised the son of a Scottish minister with whom we were travelling, and who is known throughout Canada for his labours of love in behalf of religious and philan thropic enterprise. We were fortunate in sharing the invitation ; but it was with no little difficulty we reached the settlement in the cleared forest. The snow, thawed by the sun, and subsequently frozen, forms a treacherous crust, which now bears you up, but the next moment allows you to sink to unknown depths. The deer is, from the same cause, easily killed in winter, as its small foot sinks through the crust, while the broader foot of the hunter bears him up. When we arrived at the farm-house, we were first ushered into the large kitchen, where we found the patriarch of the faraily sitting by the stove, with his daughter, son-in-law, and numerous grand children, all intent on showing hospitality to the rescued strangers. The grandfather, well stricken in years, be longed to the parish of Lesmahagow, in Scotland, and now that he had little more to do than sit by the stove and revive the scenes and stories of olden times, many were the questions he put to us about the present and former ministers of his native parish and surrounding district, showing that fifty years of exile could not eradi cate the love of his native soil. There could not be a finer picture than this homestead, of the successful career of a Canadian settler. And it is the rule for the Indus- 3 74 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. trious settler to achieve simUar success. This family en joyed an abundance of the comforts of life. The children were intelligent and well-educated. The house was equal in extent, comfort, and elegance to the ordinary farra- houses of England ; and, above all, the house and the extensive farm around were their own property. It may be said that their lot was, after all, but a moderate one ; but it ought to be remembered that the successful settler is, raost frequently, the farm-servant who would, pro bably, have never risen above that position had he remained at horae. The probability that the farra- servant will becorae in Canada a well-to-do proprietor, is as great as that he will continue to be a farm-servant to the end of his days should he remain in England. It was not merely the material prosperity of the above famUy that arrested our attention. We found that the religious training of the young was carefully attended to, and that their sympathies were awakened for missionary enterprise. Our companion in misfortune happened to be secretary to a society for the support and Christian training of orphan children in India ; and it was dis covered that some of the family were collectors and con tributors to the sarae society, which had strongly enlisted the interest of the neighbours in the district. There was much gladness when the discovery was made, and some of the young people in the neighbouring settlement were called in to enjoy the meeting. The secretary produced photographic portraits of the orphan chUdren, who were all known by name to the Canadian girls who contri buted to their support. It seemed to give thera no ordi nary delight to gaze on the swarthy features of the A WINTER IN CANADA. 375 chUdren about whom they had often talked. How marvellous the power of that faith that could blend in one the hearts of children in the snows of Canada and on the plains of Hindostan. As the evening advanced we withdrew to the parlour, which had now been heated and lighted for our reception. Before retiring for the night, the head of the faraily took down the " big ha' Bible," as was evidently his wont, and after the singing of a psalm and the reading of a chapter, we joined in prayer at the throne of grace. Long will that forest home, with its hospitality and devotions, be gratefully remembered. As to the train left in the cutting, it was released during the night, several engines having come to the rescue. In the morning the settlers turned out, and cut the snow wreaths on the turnpike-road, so that we might be sent on by sleigh in time to keep our engagements. It was not always that we were so fortunate in receiv ing aid in our difficulties. On another occasion we had, as we supposed, the good fortune to get, by special favour, a seat in an express train which was conveying a British regiment to Toronto. The journey, which ought to have been performed in ten hours, took alto gether three days, — the whole of the time being spent by the officers and soldiers in the cars, and that, too, with out sleeping berths. The officers filled one car, and the privates the others. The men were fortunately provided with three days' rations, but the officers had nothing, as they trasted to their wants being supplied at the different stations. They were, during one part of the journey, without any food for twenty-four hours. We admired rauch the good-humour with which they bore it aU. The 376 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. long weary hours were whiled away by various methods. The older officers chaffed the younger, and all told stories of their adventures in many lands. Araong the nuraber, there were sorae excellent mathematicians and classical scholars, and their stores of knowledge furnished themes for graver conversation. The pangs of hunger seemed to be greatly subdued by sraoking • tobacco, of which they had an abundant supply. It was matter of surprise that English officers should have so few resources in such an emergency as this. Instead of attempting to scour the country for food, they patiently endured hunger, smoked their Cigars, and stuck by the train immovably fixed in the snow. The good points of the Canadian cars are all bor rowed from those of the United States, and, certainly, no people excel the New Englanders in ingenious con trivances for doraestic and travelling comforts. The great feature of these cars is their sleeping-berths. In a few minutes a day car is converted into a sleeping car ; and, when thus changed, it presents the appearance of a long passage, with three tiers of shelves on each side. These shelves form the berths of the passengers who choose to pay' for this luxury. One learns to sleep in course of time with wonderful soundness. It is also an econoray of tirae, for the traveller can often so arrange as to do his travelling and sleeping at the same time. It is also possible, in this way, to evade the equality system of the States, by which all classes travel in the same carriage. A higher rate is charged for these con vertible cars, and consequently the company is more select. In long journeys, a car in the States is' set apart A WINTER IN CANADA. 377 for refreshments, so that meals may be had as on ship board. Iced water, a stove, and retiring rooms, are found in every car, so that, in long journeys, the incon veniences of English railways are much felt by those who have been accustomed to travel in America. An other great advantage of the American systera is, that the passenger may move about from car to car while in motion, and speak to any one of several hundred people whora he raay wish to meet He can also at pleasure take an airing outside of the train, instead of being im prisoned for hours together in the car. In the short dis tances of English railway travel, the necessity for such conveniences is not so rauch felt, but in Switzerland and other parts of the Continent the American plan is being gradually adopted. There is a popular notion in England that frost-bites are so dangerous and frequent that mutUations are very coramon, and that it is not unusual to raeet unfortunate martyrs to the climate deprived of ears and noses. A frost-bite, however, does not infer any mutilation or serious inconvenience. The effect is simply to arrest the circulation in the part, but it is readily brought back by gentle friction with the glove. On entering a warra room, it is advisable to apply snow to the affected part that the warmth may not be too sudden. No bad effect is left except when the circulation is long arrested. The parts raost liable to be bitten are the ears, the nose, and across the teraples. The party raay not be aware of a frost-bite, but the whiteness of the part arrests the atten tion of others, and it is held courteous to stop a stranger on the road and tell him of the danger. The part 378 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. blisters if frozen for a considerable time, but we have never met with a case in which any part of the face was mutilated. In the hospitals, however, there are occa sional cases where the feet are so badly bitten as to require amputation. Such cases frequently arise from intoxication, and subsequent sleeping in the snow. Let us now tum from the cliraate to the people of Canada. Perhaps the most frequent inquiry in England at present refers to the loyalty of the Canadians ; but no one can reside in Canada, for however short a period, without being convinced of their devoted attachment to the British throne. There are keen political parties, violently differing on local matters, but loyalty is a universal sentiment and it is much deeper than mere self-interest. There is even a warrath of feeling on the subject which one does not find so strongly expressed at horae. The raost tangible expression of loyalty was given last winter, when the whole population rose as one raan to drill in volunteer corps. The promixity to the United States does not at all tend to enlist their sym pathies in favour of Araerican institutions or American alliance. The effect is the very opposite, and when any anti-American feeling exists at horae, it is sure to be found in Canada in an intenser form. A strong patriotic feeUng is rising everywhere, but, instead of tending towards a severance from the mother country, its aim is to secure a closer alliance in feeling and interest. Not the least loyal of Her Majesty's subjects are the Red Indians. They look upon the Queen, whom they style their " Great Mother," as a bounteous female deity, supplying thera with blankets and amraunition. They A WINTER IN CANADA, 379 listen with indignation to all questioning of her right to universal dominion. It is told of a Scotch divine, that, wishing to enlighten an Indian tribe on the subject of co-ordinate jurisdiction, he ventured in his address to question the Queen's authority in spiritual matters. This was treading on perilous ground, and the address was brought to a sudden close by an angry flourish of the Erastian chiefs tomahawk over the head of the speaker. Whether it be the effect of climate, or of the concourse of different nationalities, it is undoubted that the native Canadian youths display great precocity in their manners and early education.. In the common and grararaar schools, the pupils display a greater degree of quickness and intelligence than in sirailar schools in the old country. Time is not yet given to see whether this early promise is to result in future greatness. The names best known in Canada, are those of men who have been imported from the mother country. There is, however, one man, a native of the country, of whom the Canadians are justly proud, and whose name is not unkno-wn in England. We refer to Dr Ryerson, the founder and chief superintendent of the educational systera of Canada. No man has done so much to mould and develop the character of the people. He travelled in Europe, and carefully studied the educa tional systems of different nations. The system which he planned, and which has been adopted by the Legis lature, is substantially that of the United States, in which the educational activity of the various religious bodies is entirely ignored. As a necessary consequence, the 38o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. teaching is exclusively secular. In a new country, tiiis system is the one most generally acceptable, as the various churches have to struggle for their existence, and are glad that the State should take upon itself the burden of education. When, however, society is better organised, and the churches gain an easier position, educational life is inevitably awakened ; and whether with or without the aid of the State, they will engage in the work of edu cating the people. Dr Ryerson saw this tendency, and, at an early period, was constrained to give separate grants to the Roman Catholics. This anomaly could not long be continued ; and last winter a bill was intro duced to give separate aid to all Protestant denomina tions that choose to engage in the work of national in struction. Canada thus practically abandons the system of the United States, and adopts that of England, in which aid is given to all denominations, if they impart a due amount of secular knowledge. Evidence is afforded even in the United States, that the common-school sys tem is only provisional, and that the State must yield to the educational activity of the people acting through their various churches. Already, almost every denomi nation has begun to erect schools for itself, though as yet no aid is derived from the State. The first demand for separate aid is always made by the Roraan Catholics ; and the next step of aiding other denorainations is in evitable. We found it to be the opinion of a high educa tional official in the State of New York, that in less than ten years the coraraon-school systera would begin to disin tegrate, from the necessity of giving separate grants to the Roraan CathoUcs. He clearly saw that the system A WINTER IN CANADA. 381 of England was the only one that could satisfy the edu cational activities of a highly developed state of society, and that the mechanical uniformity of the comraon school was suited only to the early periods of a new country. Although the educational systera of Canada is only in a transition state, it has worked, so far, admirably. There is, perhaps, no country where the advantages of a common school and academic education are so accessible to the mass of the population. The result of this is shown in the very large proportion of the youth of Canada who devote themselves to learned professions. The aptitude usually displayed by the youths at the uni versity augurs well for future achievements in literature and science. The winter of Canada is prolonged into spring, or rather the spring is altogether sunk as a distinct sea son, and the winter is terminated by the commence ment of sumraer. It is well on in June before vege tation makes any marked progress, and then nature advances with a bound. The days are, however, often very hot before there is any symptom of spring; and one wonders that nature should not take a start with such heat, but the cold nights are an effectual check to vegetation. Even in the coldest days of winter, the direct rays of the sun are hot, the latitude of Upper Canada, to which we chiefly refer, being considerably lower than that of England. In returning from Canada, we selected the route by Boston. In passing through the New England States we saw few signs of the war. The aspect of things was very different frora that of last year, when we travjUed 382 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. along the same line. It was then the roraance of war, and the whole country resounded with war songs and martial rausic. Now it was the terrible reality of war, and little outward demonstration was visible. There seemed to be no lack of prosperity, and raany insisted that war was very profitable. It is not difficult to un derstand how the manufacturing or commercial towns of New England, and Boston in particular, should de rive substantial benefit in the meantime. The immense sums spent upon array stores have enriched a numerous class, and stimulated to an unhealthy prosperity various branches of manufacture. While in Boston we visited the workshop of the dis tinguished optician, Mr Alvan Clarke. Our chief object was to inspect the great telescope, of which we gave an account in a previous number of Good Words. On our former visit it was only in the process of construction, and it was uncertain how the optician would succeed on a telescope of such unwonted diraensions. It was now corapleted, and, mounted in a temporary tube, swung against the tower of the observatory. The focal length is 23 feet, and the diameter of the object-glass is 18^ inches. It was executed for the University of Missis sippi ; the contract price of the object-glass being ^^2237. On account of the war, it was impossible for the Southern University to fulfil its part of the engagement, so that the telescope is now in the market It was with treraulous anxiety that Mr Clarke first tested the tele scope, by turning it upon the stars ; for, however well it stood the other tests applied, there is none so trying as the fixed stars. It was first tumed to the raost con- A WINTER IN CANADA. 383 spicuous star in the heavens, viz., Sirius ; and we may well imagine his satisfaction when he instantly discovered a companion star, which had hitherto eluded the search ofthe most powerful telescopes in the world. This com panion was not only seen, but seen with ease, in all con ditions of the atmosphere. Mr Bond, whose observatory is only about half a mile distant, on learning the discovery, tumed his great equatorial upon Sirius, and also detected the companion, — thus illustrating the fact, that an inferior telescope may descry an object previously undiscernible when once its existence is made certain by a superior telescope. The discovery is interesting, not only as testing the po-wer. of the telescope, but as throwing light upon a physical phenoraenon which long puzzled astronoraers. The proper raotion of Sirius has long been an enigma, and it was supposed that there was a dark body in its vicinity disturbing its motion. This bright corapanion will probably solve the difficulty. It is only four seconds' distant from Sirius. The telescope was next tested by durecting it to the great nebula in Orion. Twenty new stars were discovered in a small space around the trapezium, which has been often explored by the most powerful telescopes. These tests clearly establish the superiority of Mr Clarke's over all existing telescopes. The process by which such satis factory results were obtained was minutely explained by Mr Clarke. He claims merely the merit of working the glass into the requisite shape, the glass itself being sup pHed by Mr Chance of Birmingham, which was of fault less exceUence. The glass must be worked into a con vex shape to form an image; but the difficulty lies in 3 84 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES, giving to a large lens that exact degree of convexity to every part which is necessary to form a well-defined image. The object-glass is made large, so as to secure brightness in the image, but brightness is of little value unless distinctness or definition is also secured ; and, in order to secure definition, each portion of the glass must have precisely the same focus as every other part. The object-glass may be regarded as a compound eye, consisting of innumerable constituent eyes, each of which forras an image of the object. The vision is not satis factory unless all the images perfectly coincide to form a single iraage. If one eye be of longer focus than another, the resulting corapound image' is indistinct, as if the object vizere seen through a fog. If the hand be placed over the object-glass of a telescope, so that only a small part of its surface is left uncovered, that part wiU give a distant image, if the instrument is well executed. If successive parts be left uncovered, the same result wUl be obtained. If, however, the glass is not well figured, one part may give a good image, while another will give an imperfect one with the same adjustment of the eye-piece. The object of Mr Clarke was, therefore, in the course of the working, to test every part succes sively. For this purpose, he divided the object-glass into rings or zones, like the target of a rifleman, and each zone was worked so as to bring it to a given focus. To secure this object, he formed a long tunnel, leading from his workshop through his garden, which had its terraination in the waU fronting the road. This end was filled up with a board, having a smaU hole in the centre. The hole served as a star, the image of which was to be A WINTER IN CANADA, 385 formed by the lens. ' The lens was mounted on small wheels, so as to admit of being moved backwards and forwards to catch the exact focus. When any particular ring was to be tested, the rest of the lens was covered up, and if the focus was found to be too long or too short, the glass was removed to the workshop, and there sub jected to the requisite manipulation. Innuraerable trials were necessary to give the lens a faultless figure. The difficulty was increased by the circumstance that the glass was compound, one part being flint-glass and the other cro-wn, so that four surfaces required to be ac curately figured. This compound structure is necessary to render the glass achromatic. There is much un willingness to part with this noble instrument to foreigners, and efforts are making to retain it in the States. On our former visit we sought refuge frora the turault of war in the workshop of Mr Clarke, but now we found that our friend had also caught the war furor, and could with difficulty speak on any other subject. His art was also tumed to war purposes. Astronoraical instruments were abandoned, and he was busily engaged in making smaU telescopes, to be fixed on the barrels of rifles, which probably proved more lucrative than the astronomical telescopes. This affords an illustration of the raanner in which the war, while it injures one branch of trade, ira- proves others. Mr Clarke is the inventor of a new rifle, which did much execution in the rifle pits at Norfolk. It is short and very heavy — the metal of the barrel being half an inch thick. The bullet is a solid cone, without any cavity, and is loaded at the muzzle by the aid of a 2 B 386 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. ring, which is put on before loading. The barrel recoils upon a spring, so that the shock is not felt tiU the baU has left the piece. Greater steadiness, of aim is thus secured. We explained the contrivance to Southem officers, who afjferwards crossed the Atiantic with us, but they were unwilling to aUow that there was any novelty in this Northern invention. They held that they were far ahead of the North in aU munitions of war, ha-ving now factories in which aU modem refinements are exe cuted. These officers had ran the blockade at Charles town, and joined the Cunard steamer at HaUfax. Dur ing the whole voyage they had an eager circle of listeners around them, as they gave thrUling details of their exploits in the South. The Southern versions of the Northern victories were listened to with keen relish by the EngUsh passengers. The Northerners, though largely prepon derating in numbers, were dumb before the more fluent and fiery Southerners. They, however, took the oppor tunity of muttering, in private, deep imprecations against their foes. One of the most atrocious was that of an apparently pious New Englander. " If it be necessary, but only if it be necessary for the maintenance of the Union, we shall exterminate man, woman, and child, as the Lord commanded the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites." The mission to England of the Southern officers was not, of course, di-vulged, but we afterwards learned that they manned the war steamer. No. 290, which eluded the pursuit of the Tuscarora. It was attempted to console a Northerner by saying, that he ought to be proud that the glorious Union should have nurtured such brave soldiers in the South, but his reply A WINTER IN CANADA. 387 was — " "What would you think of a son who slapped his father on the face ? " With such co^ibustible elements, an explosion was at one tirae feared, but a lady of Boston acted as mediator between the parties, and, thanks to her persuasive powers, she charmed down the rising storm, and succeeded in keeping the peace. On our visit to the observatory of Albany last year, we found the astronomer Mr Mitchell on the eve of starting for Washington to join the array. Since that time he has been promoted to the rank of general, and is now one of the popular heroes of the North. Though advanced in years, he has been distinguished for his brilliant and rapid movements. His name is, however, connected with one of the greatest atrocities of the war, viz., the outrage on the boarding-school in Alabama, to which the aristocracy of the South sent their daughters to be educated. Those who know Mr Mitchell best, are per suaded that every means in his power would be used to restrain his soldiers ; but in the American army the best officer can exercise only the feeblest discipline. Science wUl have reason to lament, should his fame be tarnished by so foul a deed. william leitch. XVIIL VISIT TO A SLAVE -MARKET IN WASHINGTON. " T T is right down there, sir. You see that long avenue? A -»-that is Maryland Avenue ; and you see the white house to the left? — that's it sir. Ask for Mr Williams. Any one will teU you. He is a very civU gentleman, sir; I can assure you be is." All this was said to rae upon the roof ofthe Capitol of Washington. The house so pointed out was a slave market. I had read an account of a simUar mart alleged to exist at Baltimore, but which, I had been assured by a Yankee, was " all a lie — no such thing in Baltiraore — had lived all his life there — an in vention of anti-slavery humbugs,'' &c. In vain had I in quired at Baltimore for the said market. My informant said there was none. " Was there one in Washington then?" "No such thing. A slave mart !— must go south for that. None here. What queer idea Britishers have of America ! So ignorant — old prejudices — envy — jealousy at our free institutions." ' A . SLA VE-MARICE T IN WASHING TON. 389 I had spent a little tirae in seeing the sights of Wash ington — such as the beautiful rauseum, post-office, the splendid coUection of models of American patents, &c. Araong other things I had seen the original Declaration of Independence; Washington's sword ; and the printing- press at which Franklin had worked as a joume)Tnan printer. An inscription upon the press records that when FrankUn was agent in London for Massachusetts, in 1768, he visited the printing-oflice of Mr Watts, in WUd Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields ; and going up to this press, he said, addressing the printers, " Come, my lads, we wUl drink together ! It is how forty years since I worked Uke you at this press as a journeyman printer." He then sent for some porter, and drank, " Success to print ing ! " There are also a series of excellent portraits hung round the large room in the museum, of famous Indian chiefs, who, frora time to time, have come to Washington to form treaties on the part of their tribes with the American Government. These represent the last of the genuine red-skin warriors, and differ more from the various oratorical pretenders to the rank of chieftainship in the far west, who occasionally visit this country, and appear in fancy dresses upon platforms, than an old Lord of the Isles differs in his rank and ideas from an Edin burgh Highland porter. We also visited the President. Having had letters to the Secretary of the Government for the department, I first called upon the secretary, and found him alone, reading in a small room attached to his oflSce, with his legs up upon the table. It was my first introduction to a Republican high official. The ease and "simplicity'' 390 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. of the attitude strack me. Mr accompanied us to the presidential mansion, or ""White House," as it is caUed, being built, like aU the public buUdings in Wash ington, of white marble. A boy opened the door. We followed the secretary up-stairs. " No ceremony here, gentlemen." He tapped at the door, and we were in vited by a voice within to " Come in." We did so, and found ourselves in the presence of the president Mr Polk. He was a plain raan, of short stature, rather dark com plexion, large forehead, and hair erect. A table covered with papers was before him, and an immense spit-box (pardon the mention of it) beside hira — an article of fur niture one gets very faraUiar with in the States, seldora having to laraent its presence, but sometimes its absence. It was the first ofa series, remarkable for their size, which had been ranged at fitting intervals from the entrance-hall to the presence of the first magistrate. Nothing could exceed the president's kindness. He entered frankly into conversation regarding . But we must presume that like conversations with royalty, those of the presi dent must not be repeated ; especially as I must return to Mr Williams, Maryland Avenue. But I cannot ascend to the sumrait of the dome of the Capitol without passing through the building. So let us enter. It is indeed a noble raarble building, and worthy of the republic. It cost upwards of half a mUlion ster ling. Its length is 350 feet. The entrance-hall is very imposing. It is circular, and reaches 120 feet to the dorae above. Its walls are adorned with some very striking frescoes ; the subjects being the treaty of Penn with the Indians — the landing of the PUgrim Fathers — A SLAVE-MARKET IN WASHINGTON, 391 resignation of Washington — taking of Burgoyne, Corn wallis — and the baptism of Pachahontis. Congress was not sitting at the time. We visited, however, the Repre sentative Hall and Senate Chamber. Both are of a semicircular shape, and very beautiful. The former is supported by piUars of variegated marble. The only memorial of the past existence, and sign of the expected revival of Congress, was a board with the standing order of the House painted upon it, " No sraoking allowed here." From its position, I thought it possible that it might have special reference to the stove ; and anxious to be accurate, I remarked to ray conductor that surely such an intimation was unnecessary for raembers, especially in the House. But he threw out a few hints and facts about " raen from Kentucky and the far West," which made me suspect that the stove alone obeyed the order, and that to some of the members it was not always imperative, but raerely suggestive. The -view from the surarait of the Capitol is interesting. The city, which lay at our feet, had a lonely and deserted look. It contains ten large streets or " avenues,'' five diverging frora the Capitol, and five from the president's mansion. These are not yet, however, lined with build ings — great spaces intervening between the clusters of houses. But in the humour in which I then was, neither the city, nor the winding Potomac, nor Virginia beyond it, (the birthplace of tobacco,) so engrossed me as Mr Williams' house in Maryland Avenue. I was afraid to press my ci-vil guide with the subject of slavery, so near the centre of republican freedom. To put questions or offer remarks upon the grand controversy on the very 392 . PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES, summit ofthe Capitol appeared dangerous. I might find fiery antagonists, and be mistaken, perhaps, for Garrison or George Thompson ; and all this suggested the un pleasant idea of too rapid a descent to the base without the help of the stair. But the replies to my queries were most gentle, clear, and precise. Mere matter of course statistics. No blush or words of explanation accompanied them. It was pure ignorance, indeed, in me to expect any such demonstration. " You will be sure and ask for Mr Williams ; a very civil gentleman you wiU find him, I expect" That was aU, but it was sufficient. "There is, then, a slave-market here ?" I said, carelessly. " Oh! no, sir ! Not a market, but only a place where business is transacted, and where, of course, Mr WiUiams will either buy or sell for you." " I quite understand," said I ; " a private market where any one may buy or sell slaves, but not a public market where every one may do it ? " Whether he appreciated or not the niceness of my distinction, I know not. He nodded assent— sraUed — and in a few minutes I was whirling in a cab down Mary land Avenue. " With my own eyes," thought I, " shall I now see this strange sight — a brother man for sale ! " I soon reached the house, and asked for Mr Williams. I was shown into a parlour, and found Mr Williams to be possessed of all the good civil qualities for which he was recommended. I felt at first a little awkward in asking to see the slaves. I might have known that to do so was as much a matter of business there, as it is here to ask a cattle-dealer to show his stock. But I could not throw off the idea that he must be ashamed of hiraself, or lowered, at least, in the eyes of a stranger. It seemed A SLAVE-MARKET IN WASHINGTON. 393 like asking to see contraband or stolen goods from a man who passed himself off as a gentleman. Mr Williams had, of course, no such idea ; and he at once told an as sistant to show me the slaves. We passed round the house, and soon were at a large gate, grated with massive iron bars, through which a black woraan and one or two men were conversing, as at the door of one of our prisons, with their friends, who were in a court within. The heavy door was opened by my guide, and turned lazily upon its hinges as we entered the opened area. One side of this court was formed by Mr Williams' dwelling- house, whose upper -windows looked into it. The lower story was below the level of the ground, and was entered by a few descending steps. This was the abode of the men. A small barrack, which formed the other side, was for the women. The first object which met my eye was a pleasing-looking female slave, carrying a child in her arms. She iraraediately came up to me, and said with a peculiarly sad look, " Oh ! sir, if you buy me, buy my child ! " My heart sickened. " Five hundred dollars, sir," remarked my guide, puffing his cigar. " Where is her husband ? " I asked. " He is a free man," was the reply. And this wife and mother was separated from him perhaps for ever ; and for a few doUars I could have cut the last reraaining cord, and have separated the mother from the child ! " I wish, massa, you take pity upon the two young girls in the house there," said an old negress ; " they are come to live here a fortnight ago, and it not agree with them, poor things ; not well, massa." I turned away, and told thera I was not corae to buy them. There were, in all, only five or six female 394 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. slaves. The old slave was cheerful, and said, " I wish get a good master — old now — not much work." De scending to the lower story, I found four men in it Two were stretched on ragged pallets, sound asleep ; a third was playing the banjo, and singing Dan Tucker. " Quite contented, you see," said my conductor. "That," thought I, " is the last stage of man's degradation." I hurried aAvay. As I carae to the iron gate, which had been locked again on our entering the court, the black negress without was weeping bitterly, and saying through the grated door to the mother with the child, " Keep up your heart ; keep up your heart" My conductor said a few merry (!) things, by way, I presume, of helping her to do so. Acknowledging Mr WiUiams' bow from the upper window, from which he was leaning looking into the yard, and sraoking his cigar as he contemplated his property, I passed through the group at the iron gate, and was again in my cab. " And this," thought I, " be neath the shadow of the Capitol of the great repubUc, which would witness to the world for the freedom and equaUty of man ? This, in a land of Christian churches ! — this " — but I cannot describe my feelings. I had, like every one, heard over and over again of slavery with all its horrors ; and its facts were commonplace things. But here were none of its worst horrors ; here it was in its most mitigated form ; and yet the impression made upon me by seeing instead of hearing was overwhelmingly bitter. Men and women, my brothers and sisters, bought and sold, without crime— without their consent — slaves for life — slaves frora chUdhood ; — it was enough. It needed no whip — no slave-ship — to make it horrible A SLAVE-MARKET IN WASHINGTON. 395 and disgusting. Before I reached the hotel the choking feeUng of sorrow had given way to the joyous and thank ful thought that there was not a slave in aU the wide dorainions of old England ; and whether I sang aloud or not I forget, but " God save the Queen " ascended in full-voiced chorus from my heart, and it seemed more than ever a national anthem of praise. Next day I was sweeping along the waters of the Chesapeake in one of those immense stearaers which are in keeping with the vast scale of everything in the States. The voyage, for instance, down one of their mighty rivers equals in miles the distance between Liverpool and New York. Some of their steamers are 1000 horse power, and saU twenty mUes an hour in still water. Fifteen of those immense arks, formed in line, occupy a mile in length. Each carries 1000 passengers. The traveller, when he lands at New York, enters an omnibus containing twenty people ; is driven to a hotel which ac commodates 600 ; and dines at a table-d'hbte with three or four hundred fellow-travellers. In his journey, he may find himself in the crowded streets of a city with sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants, and be told by his guide that he remembers when the first tree was cut in the square. But I am digressing from the point which led rae to speak of the steamers. After pacing the deck, or rather the decks, and quietiy looking around rae for some person who carried about with him those mysterious marks of a raan who has something in him which a travel ler might like tb hear, I fixed upon one who was seated by himself, in a musing attitude, as he chewed the pro- 396 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. duct of Virginia. He was an elderly man, with an intelligent countenance, and that quick, arixious-looking eye, which seems to sweep every now and then all round the person, as if to guard against being surrounded by an enemy. He was dressed in a long greatcoat of light- coloured cloth, and wore a broad-brimmed hat. He seemed to be a farmer. It is not difficult to get into conversation in the States. The people are always most civil and kind to strangers. The only difficulty is at times to reject civilly their desire to know your whole history. I found the Scotch method of answering one question by another to be a very efficient kind of con versational manoeuvre. My acquaintance had come the day before from Richmond, Virghiia. We were soon in the cross-fire of mutual examination. I had fortunately taken the lead in the queries, and meant to keep it as long as possible. " Have you many clergymen in Rich mond?" "Too many, I calculate," was the reply. " How is that? I should have thought that, being obliged to pay them yourselves, that your small supplies of money would have lessened your supplies of clergy." " As to that, sir, we do not pay them very high ; nor should they be paid at aU ; for a man should labour for love, sir — for love, sir, and not for doUars. But I meant to say we had not clergy enough." " I don't understand you." "I daresay not," he said, with a half-chuckle, half-grin ; " I guess thera is new ideas to a Britisher. But my opinion is, sir, that every man should be a clergyman ; so that we have too many regular ones, be cause we have not enough of right ones. D'ye see ?" " I do," I said ; "and should have no objection to see A SLAVE-MARKET IN WASHINGTON. 397 the regular clergy everywhere have more assistance. But may I ask, friend, are you a clergyman of this sort your seff?" " I am, sir." " Do you preach ?" "I do, sir ;" and he eyed me all the whUe with a serio-comic look, as if he said, " What think you of that ? that is something new." " I 'm a Campbellite," he added. " Pray, what sect may that be ?" I inquired. " Sect, sir ; we have many sects in this part of the world ; but I guess John CampbeU is the man who wiU swamp them all." " And who is John Campbell?" I asked. "What! did you never hear of John Campbell ?" he exclaimed, with looks of astonishment. I was reminded of Hallyburton's characteristic trait of the Americans, when he represents his Colonel Slick as asking the Duke of Wellington if he had never heard of Dr Ivory Hovey, or Deacon Snodgrass? and, amazed at his Grace's ignorance, exclaimed, " Well, then, I am sure they have heard oiyou ; but, to be sure, we are an intelligent people !" But I knew some thing more of John Campbell of America, frora his published dispute with Owen, than his Grace knew of the Doctor or Deacon ; but wishing to get my friend out upon slavery, I was about to ask hira some questions on the subject, when he seized the thread of conversation which I had imprudently dropped, as I was meditating how to open the campaign. He therefore took advan tage of his position to put the well-known query, " What do you think of our country?" I expressed my admira tion for much I had seen ; but wound up my panegyric by saying, " Yet there are some things which puzzle me in it." " As how, sir ? " " Why, yesterday, for instance, I saw your declaration of independence, and in an hour 398 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. after was offered a slave for sale." " I daresay, sir ; I dare say ; but what of that ?" " What of that ! " I exclaimed. " Why, your declaration begins by asserting the equality of all men; and" " A glorious doctrine, sir !" he said, energetically ; " a doctrine which you Britishers would need to learn ; and which General Jackson tried to teach you at New Orleans. Yes ; aU men are equal ; and the day will come when our Republic " " Be it so," I said, mildly interrapting him ; " I am not going to dispute that point at present ; all I meant to say was, that it seemed to me a gross inconsistency to assert that all men were equal, and then to buy and sell slaves." " Buy and sell slaves ! pooh ! pooh 1" " What !" I ex claimed, "have you slaves?" "I have, sir." "Doyou whip them ?" " I do, when they need it." " Do you teach them to read ?" " I guess not ; they'd soon leam to conspire and be at our throats. Read ! No." " Or do you sit beside them at the comraunion, or in church ?" " I guess, stranger, you never sat beside a nigger, or you would not ask that." "And yet,'' said I, getting indig nant, " you assert all men are equal !" With perfect coolness he replied, " I see what you are after : all men are equal; but you don't suppose a nigger is a man!" Astounded at the syllogism, and not a little amused at my clerical friend, I said nothing ; whUe he went on soUloquising, " A nigger a man ! nonsense. Look at his head ! look 'specially at his heel ! No, no. He 's right off from human natur'. He was Created, sir, to sarve the white, — fit for nothing else. If he was not created for that purpose, it is odd, I guess, that he has sarved him for six thousand years ; and wUl sarve him," A SLAVE-MARKET IN WASHINGTON. 399 he said, rising to look for his luggage, " till the end of time ?" We were nearing the wharf, and having also to attend to my own luggage, the conversation ended ; and so ends a jotting from my journal about Washington and the slave-market NORMAN MACLEOD. ¦ XIX. FIRE IN THE WOODS. I CAN conceive of nothing in this world more awful than one of those fires which haye frequently rushed through forests in North America, with more fearful ra pidity and destructive fury than any lava-stream that ever poured from the fiercest volcano. The first time I ever saw the traces of such a conflagration was in Nova Scotia, between Halifax and Truro, on the road to Pictou. The driver of the stage — and a better or merrier never mounted a box, or guided a team through mud and over corduroy — pointed rae out the spot in which he and his charge had a most narrow escape. While pursuing his journey along one of these forest roads, ramparted on each side by tall trees that show but a narrow strip of blue sky overhead, he found himself involved in voluraes of smoke bursting from the woods. It did not require the experience of an inhabitant of the great Westem Continent to reveal to him instantly his terrible position. The woods were on fire ! But whether the fire was far FIRE IN THE WOODS. 401 off or near, he could not tell. If far off, he knew it was making towards him with the speed of a race-horse ; if near, a few minutes must involve hira in the conflagra tion. Suddenly the fire burst before hira ! It was crossing the road, and forraing a canopy overhead ; sending long tongues of flarae, with wreaths of smoke, from one tree-top to another ; crackling and roaring as it sped upon its devouring path ; licking up the tufted heads of the pines, while the vrind whirled them onwards to extend the conflagration. What was to be done? To retreat was useless. Miles of forest were behind ready to be consuraed. There was one hope only of escape. Nathan had heard in the raorning a report, that a mill had been burnt The spot where it had stood was about six hundred yards ahead. He argued, that the fire having been there, and consumed every thing, could not again have visited the same place. He determined to make a desperate rash through fire and smoke to reach the clearance. The conflagration was as yet above him like a glowing arch, though it had partially extended to the ground on either side. He had six horses to be sure, tried animals, who knew his voice, and whom he seeraed to love as friends ; but such a coach ! — lurabering and springless, and full of passengers too, chiefly ladies ; and such roads ! — a com bination of trunks of trees buried in thick mud. But on he must go, or perish. Bending his head down, blind, hardly able to breathe, lashing his horses, and shouting to the trembling, terrified creatures, and while the ladies screamed in agony of fear, Nathan went plunging and tossing through the terrific scene ! A few 2 c 402 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. minutes more, and there is no hope, for the coach is scorched, and about to take fire ; and the horses are getting unmanageable ! Another desperate rush — he has, reached the clearance, and there is the mill, a mass of charred wood, surrounded by a forest of ebony trunks growing out of charred earth ; — the fire has passed, and Nathan is safe ! " Oh ! sir," he said, " it was frightful ! Think only if a horse had stumbled or fallen ! or had the fire caught us farther back ! — five minutes more would have done it, sir ! " That sarae fire consuraed a space of forest ten miles long, and three broad ! But what was such a fire even, to the memorable one which devastated Miraraichi, in New Brunswick, about twenty-five years ago ! That terrific conflagration is unparalleled in the history of consuraed forests. It broke out on the 7th October 1825, about sixty miles above the town of Newcastle, at one in the afternoon, and before ten the same night it had reached tvventy miles beyond ; thus traversing, in nine hours, a distance of eighty mUes of forest with a breadth of about twenty- five ! Over this great tract of country, everything was destroyed ; one hundred and sixty persons perished ; not a tree was left ; the very fish in the strearas were scorched and found lying afterwards dead in heaps. The raorning of that dreadful day was calm and sultry ; but, in an instant, smoke swept over the town of Newcastle, (situated on the river Miraraichi,) which turned day into night The darkness was so unexpected — so sudden — so profound — that many cried that the Judgment had come. But soon the trae cause was sus pected. Suspicions were speedily foUowed by certainty. FIRE IN THE WOODS. 403 as the flames were seen bursting through the gloom. Every one made for the river; sorae got into boats moored near the beach, some on rafts of timber, while others stood in the water. Terrified mothers with their families, decrepit old men and woraen, and, worse than all, the sick and dying, were hurried, in de spairing crowds, to the streara, to escape the flaraes which were already devouring their houses, and making a bonfire of the thriving town. Each succeeding hour added some new horror to the scene. The rarefaction and exhaustion of the air by the intense heat over so great a space, caused, as was supposed, such a rush of cold air frora the ocean, that a hurricane rushed in fury along the river, tearing burning trees up by the roots, hurling flaming branches through the air for five or six miles, (which set fire to the shipping, and to the woods on the other side of the broad stream,) causing, at the same time, such a rolling sea up the river as threatened to swamp the boats, and sweep the miserable refugees from the rafts ! It seems incredible, but we beUeve there is no doubt as to the" fact, that the ashes of the fire feU thick on the streets of Halifax, St John's, Newfound land, and Quebec ; and that some were carried as far as the Bermudas, while the smoke darkened the air hundreds of mUes off! That terrible night is fresh in the raeraory of all who endured its horrors. One of my informants, speaking of it, said, "No language can describe it ! I do not think I shall see anything like it again in this world or until the last day 1 I was in a druggist's shop getting medicine for my wife, who was confined to bed with fever. The druggist was pouring 404 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. a few drops into a phial, when Hterally, in a twinkling of an eye, it becarae so dark that he could, not see to drop the medicine, and I could not see his face ! ' The last day has come !' we both exclaimed. I left the shop to go home ; but it wa? so pitch dark that I could not see the road, and had to walk in the ditch which bordered it Guided by the paling, and assisted by a friend, I got my wife and chUdren to the river, and placed them on a raft ; and what a scene ! — what weeping and crying of those whose relations lived in the settle ments farther back, and for whom they knew there was now no escape ! But there is no use talking about it No tongue can find words to picture that night ! Fire, and smoke, wind and water, all spending their utmost fury ; the children crying — the timid screaming — the sick in misery — the brave at their wit's end — and all knowing, too, that we had lost many friends, and all our property. I shudder to think of it ! " That fire has left singular traces of its joumey. The road from Newcastle to Bathurst, near the Bay of Chaleur, passes for five or six miles through a district, caUed The - Barrens. The scene which raeets the eye of the traveller is perhaps unequalled. Far as the eye can reach upon every side, there is nothing but desolation. The forest extends, as it has done for ages, across plains, and vanishes over the undulating hills which bound the distant horizon. But whUe all the trees, with most of their branches, reraain, spring extracts no bud frora thera, nor does summer clothe even a twig with foliage. All is a barren waste ! The trees are not black now, but white, and bleached by sun FIRE IN THE WOODS. 405 and rain : and far to the horizon, round and round, nothing is discerned but one vast and apparently bound less forest of the white skeleton trunks of dead leafless trees ! That immense tract is doomed to reraain barren, perhaps, for ever, — at least for many long years to come. It is avoided by the emigrant ; — nay, the very birds and wild beasts seem to have for ever deserted it. The trees would not, in a country of forest, pay the expense of cutting them down for firewood, even were the chop ping process of half-burnt trunks less difficult and disagreeable than it is : while the land has become so scourged by the exuberant crop of various plants which grow up in such soil, when cleared by a fire, as to be comparatively useless in a colony of countless acres yet untouched by the plough of the settler. Though no such fire as that which devastated Mira raichi ever visited any of our colonies before or since, yet partial fires are very common. I saw a very respectable Scotch emigrant in Prince Edward's Island, whose house was suddenly caught by one of those dreadful visitations, and two interesting daughters were burnt alive, before their father, who escaped, could warn them of their danger. It is impossible to dwell upon such scenes without the thought being suggested to the mind of that last conflagra tion which is to destroy the world, (and thereby, perhaps, to usher in a new heaven and a new earth,) even as the old world was destroyed by water. This fact in the future history of our world is very clearly revealed : "The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day 4o6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." And again, " The day of the Lord will corae as a thief in the night ; in the which the heavens wUl pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shaU.be burnt up!" Many people scoff at this. The coraing fire is disbelieved now, as much as the coming flood was dis believed in the days of Noah ; and so St Peter foretold when he said, " There shall come scoffers in the last days, walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where is the promise of His coming? " or, "Where is His promised coming ? " But God kept His word to the old world, and all perished save one family. And equally certain is it, that " the heavens and the earth, by the same word, are kept in store for the perdition of ungodly men." It is true, that centuries may pass without any signs of so awful a -judgment, and unbelievers begin to think that God " hath forgotten." But " a day with the Lord is as a thousand years !" and "the Lord is not slack concern ing His promise, as some men count slackness ; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance!" Let us take advantage of our Lord's goodness ! If we repent not, it shall be with us as with the old worid, — " we shaU aU likewise perish." How dreadful is a house on fire !— but we may escape to the house of a neighbour. How dreadful is, a city on fire ! — but we may flee from it to the mountains, and be safe. How dreadful is a whole country on fire ! — but some river, or the ocean, may afford a place of safety. But a world on fire ! the elements melting with fervent heat ! the earth and the works therein burned FIRE IN THE WOODS. 407 up ! — whither shall the impenitent and unbelieving fly ? To God ? Plear, O sinner. His warnings in time ! — " When your fear cometh as a desolation, and your destruction, cometh as a whirlwind ; when distress and anguish cometh upon you : then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek rae early, but they shall not find me : for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord : they would none of my counsel ; they despised all my reproof: therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices ! " (Prov. i. 27-31.) ShaU they fly to Jesus ? He also teUs them what must be His sentence ; " I know you not; depart frora me, ye that work iniquity ! " There can be no hope for the impenitent then, but there is hope now. " Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation!' " To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts ! " Beware of giving your hearts to what cannot last or be your life, when tirae shall be no more. What can " the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life," do for you on that day? But, seeing all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of persons ,ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness 1 " Yet those who know and love Jesus may rejoice. " The world," indeed, " passes away, and the lust thereof" Let it pass ; who will mourn over its funeral pUe ? But all that is worth keeping will be preserved. " He who does the will of God abideth for ever ! " WhUe this world is kept in store for the per dition of the ungodly, a better world is reserved for the godly : " Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 4o8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. righteousness." Wherefore, beUever, "seeing that ye look for such things, be dUigent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless ; and account that the long-suffering of our God is salvation ! " And again, " But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the chUdren of light, and the chUdren of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others ; bnt let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night ; and they that be drunken, are dranken in the night. But let us, who are ofthe da.y, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Hira." NORMAN MACLEOD. XX. THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. IT was a magnificent autumnal evening. Our ship was covered with canvas towering to the very truck ; her studding-sails spreading outwards like the wings of an immense sea-bird, and herself "staggering,'' as the sailors say, under a fresh quarter-wind, with as much as she could carry, neither less nor more. The horizon was clear — a rare thing at sea — and gave promise of a glori ous sunset We were in the middle ofthe Atlantic, and not a sail in sight ; so that we seemed to be the living centre of the whole visible world, — of the ocean which swept around us, and the blue dome of the cloudless sky that descended over us, resting its huge rim upon the cir cumference of the plain of waters. The passengers had finished dinner, and were pacing the deck ; or, broken up into little parties, were singing, telling stories, reading, or gazing over the bulwarks upon the ruddy rays of light becoming more intense in the western clouds that gathered round the setting sun. Such delightful evenings on ship- 410 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, board always spread a happiness throughout the whole vessel. Sickness and moroseness are both banished; and those who ordinarily "dwell apart" become frank, affable, and comraunicative. It was so with one of the passengers, whgse appearance and manners had arrested my attention ever since we had left harbour. He was a man of ordinary stature, and of a light wiry make. There was something peculiarly strik ing in his countenance, yet one could hardly tell what that something was. The features were all small and well formed ; the complexion dark and swarthy ; the hair lank and jet black ; the eye — yes, therein lay the mysterious something. For four days I never heard that man open his lips. He sat during meals at the comer of the table near the door of the saloon, nearly opposite tg me, and separated always by a considerable gap from his next neighbour. He seldora raised his head while eating ; never partook of more than one dish, and of that very sparingly, eating very rapidly, and never drank anything stronger than water ; so that his raeal, begun always late, and taken in silence, was over in a few minutes, and his seat again empty. When on deck he paced up and down frora moming tUl night, speaking to no one, and apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. His step was as pecuUar to himself as were his other manners ; short and rapid, and noiseless, like a wUd beast speeding onwards towards its prey, he seemed to glide along the deck. But no one could look at that face without feeling there was some thing behind it "out of the common." That eye ! How quickly it glanced round, and seemed to fasten on every- THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 411 thing and everybody ; now changing to calm sadness, brooding in deep thought ; or suddenly — one knows not why — becoming fixed with a sharp piercing glance of fire, beneath the contracted eyebrows, as if it gazed upon a spirit ; while the nostrils were distended, the lips com pressed, and the features lighted up with deep emotion. A total stranger myself to aU the passengers, I could not make the inquiries, which I felt prompted by curio sity to make, about this unknown person. But one day after dinner — on that beautiful autumnal evening I have described — two passengers beside me, while conversing about the great eraigration then taking place from the United States to the shores of the Pacific, happened to forget the name of some dangerous pass. " What is the name?" exclaimed a Yankee, stamping his foot with irritation, and knitting his brow. "Jonada del Muerto between Chihuahua and Santa Ffe," said the unknown one, -without lifting his eyes or speaking another word ; then rising from his seat, he proceeded to the deck as if he had uttered something in a dream. " Queer chap, that ! " remarked one of the speakers, as he gazed after him ; " I knew he IcBowed it, if man did." " Who is he ? " I inquired. "Well, I expect,'' said the Yankee, "that he does some business in the far west. I heard a St Louis man — that tall, red-haired fellow at the other table — say, that his life would be one of the loudest in any language, if it were in print." This description, peculiar though it was, made me desire a closer acquaintance with the stranger; and ac- 412 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. cordingly, I was soon on the quarter-deck beside him, and after a few distant and cautious approaches, based upon the state of the weather, the appearance of the ship, and prospects of the voyage, &c., I managed to come so near him as to ask, aUuding to his remark in the cabin, whether he had traveUed far in the west His answer, expressed in quiet and courteous language, prompted other questions ; and these led to replies and counter- questions, untU hour foUowed hour, and the gorgeous sunset was hardly noticed, and the rush of the waves was unheard, and the heave and pitch of the vessel un- perceived, and the whole scene around me became as a dreara. My corapanion was one of those characters to which an island Hke ours can no more afford room than a crib in the zoological gardens can afford scope to the camel or antelope for the' display of their endurance or swift ness. His life, in its several features, may be very briefly stated. He was a Germafa, well born, and connected with at least one noble family in Scotland. He had early left Europe to " push his fortune " in America. Partly from a love of adventure, and partly from the hope of opening up a new line of trade, he had, soon after landing, traveUed across the continent, and penetrated north to the Columbia River, and south to Mexico and California. He ended by purchasing some mules, load ing them with merchandise suited for sale or barter-; and taking a few intrepid spirits with, him to share the dangers and profits of his enterprise, he commenced a regular business, which had increased upon his hands, until at last — after fourteen years of great success and singular THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 413 endurance — he was eminently " the merchant of the wilderness.'' His plan of operations was this : — He had thirty wag gons, each waggon having attached to it ten to twelve mules, guided by two raen, dead shots, armed with rifles. Their caravan, therefore, consisted of about 350 mules and 60 men. " Now, suppose these waggons loaded with merchan dise, purchased chiefly in Manchester, and worth many thousand pounds," I asked the merchant, " what was the journey which they pursue ? " " Why, I '11 tell you," was his reply. " It 's rather a long one. Starting from New York or Philadelphia, I go right across to Ohio — sail down the river to the Missis sippi — up the Mississippi to St Louis — from St Louis up the Missouri to Fort Independence, four miles inland ; and there we all meet and begin our real journey in earnest to the west." " Pray, how far must you travel before beginning what you call your ^i?(z/joumey?" " Oh ! not far — only across the United States, and down one river and up another — let me see — perhaps about two thousand mUes." A pretty long introductory start, thought I. " But whither," I asked, " after your start frora Fort Independence ? " " Twenty mUes," he repUed, " bring us across the Indian Unes, and then we are clear of the settlements. Our course lies alraost due west by south, for about a thousand miles across the prairie, until we strike the river Mora, ninety-five mUes east from Santa Ffe. Passing 414 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. a spur of the Rocky Mountains caUed Taos, I divide my company ; sending thirty of my best men with the half of the goods along the Rocky Mountains, and as far as the Columbia, to trade with Indians and trappers for their furs. This journey occupies about six raonths. I proceed myself with the second division due south for about twenty-one hundred mUes more to Durango and Zacatecas. " And how long does this journey take ? " " I leave Fort Independence in the month of AprU, and reach Santa Ffe in about three raonths ; and in six raonths more I am back to Santa Ffe from the south on ray way horae. For fourteen years I have been alto gether only about three years in the settiements. I have constant traveUing each year at the rate of about six hundred miles a month." Such was the route of the merchant of the wUderness. Perhaps some of my young readers may endeavour to trace it on a map ? It is something like a joumey ! Space would fail me to recount a tenth of his strange adventures and hair-breadth escapes. The mere physical strength required for such a j ourney is immense. He and his men; during the twenty-four hours, had never more than two and a half hours of sleep ; and were obliged to supply themselves with food by hunting the buffalo, or killing any garae they chanced to meet. They cooked on fires. made frora the dry dung gathered frora the grassy prairie, and lived for months without bread or vegetables. It is seldom that such visitations can be provided against Two or three years before I met the merchant, he had been placed in circumstances which demanded all his THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 415 courage and decision of character. They occurred some where near the Rocky Mountains, and during one of those sudden and heavy falls of snow which he has once or twice encountered in his journey, and which lasted ion five weeks at a time. The cold at this tirae was extreme. After toiling some days through the snow to reach a river, the whole company got so benumbed and down-hearted, that a halt was called by one of his men, who had, on more than one occasion, exhibited a tendency to rebellion. They all refused to go farther, though the river was within marching distance before sunset, if they put forth all their energies to gain it The plan of the mutineers was pro bably to desert the waggons, and go off with the mules. I forget now the details ofthe story. But I well remember the description he gave of his feelings, when he found himself hundreds of miles from any settlement, in the presence of sixty deterrained men with loaded rifles, and on the verge of mutiny. He knew that not a moraent was to be lost So, going up to the ringleader, he com manded him to mount and proceed. On his refusal, the merchant drew a pistol and shot him dead ! He then went to the next, and gave the same command. The mesmeric power of fearless determination and authority was felt, and the whole band proceeded. He took the first opportunity of explaining all his reasons to thera ; and while they adraitted, after their danger and sufferings were over, that he was right, and had saved their lives, he insisted upon giving himself up to justice when he reached the States. Being freed from blame, he then petitioned Congress for a law to regulate such authority as his in the wUdemess. 4i6 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. " Were you not afraid of your Hfe ? " I asked. "With sixty rifles against me,'' he repUed, "my life was easily taken. Either of us must succeed. If they did so, we must all have perished ; if I did so, we were safe ; I was like the captain of a mutinous crew at sea." What firmness, courage, and self-reliance from a sense of right ! One of the most singular escapes he had was during his last journey home. From some unknown cause, pro bably the flooding of distant rivers, the prairies often become like a shoreless sea, full of scattered green islands, which mark the more elevated knolls. One morning he and his band found themselves on such an island. " We had just reached," he said, " Prairie Fork, — two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest settlement at Fort Independence. The creeks were full. To proceed with our mules, for even a few miles, was impossible. Most of my men would have been drowned. Fortunately, they had a large quantity of buffalo meat, and from the space of ground which was dry, and the probability of the water somewhat abating, food could be obtained for the mules. But the settiements must he reached to get assistance, or aU might perish. I resolved to make the attempt on foot. Taking a smaU quantity of buffalo meat with me, I started alone, cominitting myself to the care of God,— for it was a terrible journey, such as I never had to encounter before, and never can again. I once rode with three mules eight hundred and twenty mUes in eight days, yet that was nothing to this journey ! The water had risen forty feet in sorae places. After almost every mile of dry ground or shallow water, where I could THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 417 wade, I was obliged to swim some creek or deep gully. One night I swam six large creeks. The cold was also great ; yet, by God's help, I travelled the two hundred and fifty miles in twelve days. I could not have slept more than two hours in the twenty-four, and then it was a sort of feverish doze in my wet clothes, on a prairie knoll. For the last four days I had not a particle of food, and was compeUed to eat, or rather to gnaw, my leather mocassitu and braces. My clothes were almost all torn frora ray back. To add to my sufferings, I strained ray ankle, and for the last hundred and ten miles — wet, naked, famished — I dragged myself along with great agony. , I at last reached the end of my joumey, dreadfully swoUen ; and for six weeks I was confined to bed. Assistance was sent my men by a large escort with light canoes. With the loss of many of my mules they at last arrived, but tod^fve weeks to perforra the journey. Thank God, I saved thera ! But it was worse than even the Jonada del Muerto." I was told that this adventure had attracted great notice in the United States at the tirae, though I never met any ac count of it. I believe it was strictly true. Another " peril in the wilderness " is frora the Indians. The Blackfeet and Raphoes are the deadliest ene mies to the white man : no distance will weary them. The merchant arranged his camp every night in prepara tion for an attack. The waggons were drawn up in a double van ; the raules and men in the centre ; while a watch was placed outside. If the alarm was given, his men with loaded rifles ranged themselves under the protection of the waggons, and thus their position was 2 D 41 8 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. almost impregnable; Often, however, in a desperate at tack, they came to a hand-to-hand struggle ; but though occasionally some one of his men were kiUed, they came off always conquerors in the end. A ludicrous incident occurred in one of these engagements. One of his men had been scalped by the Indians some years before, and survived, as very few have ever done, the terrible opera tion. He procured a wig when at the settiements, and again was in a scrimmage with the savage foe ; and again the knife was ready to encircle the head whose hair was seized by the Indian, when, lo ! the whole scalp came away of its own accord, and the bald head lay shining on the grass 1 The Indian looked horror-struck. Expect ing to meet a foe, he was persuaded that he had met a magician, and dropping both the wig and his tomahawk, he fled with a yell from the field of battle, leaving the enemy in possession of his precious life, and of his pre cious peruke, with the tomahawk to the bargain, as a trophy ! Some of the Indian tribes are aU cavalry regiments. The Cumanchoes are a splendid race, numbering many thousands. They are all beautfful riders, women as well as men, and their hair being permitted to grow until it reaches far down their back, waves gracefully in the wind as they charge at fuU gaUop. Their ease on horseback, the singular rapidity and agility of their movements, can only be equaUed by the most practised riders. This moment they sit erect, in the next they are invisibla While charging, they stoop down, and draw the bow on the right side of the horse's neck, but, suddenly stopping, the horse is wheeled round, a.nd nothing is visible but a THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 419 part of the foot of the rider : his whole body is now hanging down on the other side of the horse, and his existence is discerned only by the arrow that coraes whizzing from the unseen foe. The practised rifleman often shoots through the horse's neck to hit the Cuman- choe's head, which he knows to be on the other side. So chivalrous are these Arabs of the westem desert, that they often give warning of their intended attack, that there may be a fair stand-up fight. I may add, that they are all teetotaUers, a virtue which, in the absence of charity in the Indian, may yet by sorae be thought capable of covering a multitude of sins in theraselves, though the warriors deem it essential as a means of inflicting severer chastisement on others. But the Blackfeet ! These are the black snakes in the grass. The poor trappers have singular escapes from them. Unless I had perfect confidence in my informant, the facts which he related, and which others have since confirraed, of what some men are capable of enduring whUe effecting their escape from these wolf-like pursuers, seem altogether incredible. " WeU," said the merchant, " it is wonderful ! Such a feUow as Kidcarstens, for instance." " Who was he ? " I asked. " Oh ! a famous half-breed, who all his life was araong tiiose wUds. Kidcarstens was once roused up by four warriors of the Blackfeet, who had vowed to kill him, as he had scalped one of the tribe in battle. They came on him as he was trapping on the North Fork, more than two hundred miles .from Taos. I know the spot well. He had nothing for it but to throw away his precious 420 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. rifle arid traps, and ran for his Ufe. He did so, and Jack could run, I assure you; he was aU small bone, with muscle Hke whip-cord. He never stopped, ate, or slept, till he reached Taos : and then he was only a few railes ahead of his foe. He stopped to drink in crossing the streams ; that was all he had during the terrible race ! " " A race of two hundred miles ! impossible ! " I ex claimed. " Longer, sir, — longer, I believe ; I have taken three days to the same journey on horseback, at the rate, I calculate, of more than seventy miles a day. No man who knows the Blackfeet and Kidcarstens would doubt it They beat most ranners ; but Jack beats all ! Talking of escapes from Indians," he continued, while he burst into a hearty laugh — a rare thing for my singu larly grave friend, who seemed often to have caught the statue-like composure of the Redskin, — " the best I ever knew was old Peg-leg Smith. We called him Peg-leg because he had a wooden leg. He trapped . along the Rocky Mountains, and sold to me, or to the Hudson Bays, at the mouth of the Columbia. Peg had a white horse — his only companion for raany a long day. His weapons were a long bowie-knife, and a rifle that never missed ; but powder and shot were more precious to hira than gold or diamonds. He knew the haunts of the Indians, and their habits so weU, that he managed generally to keep out of the way of unfriendly tribes. But once on a time either Peg was out of his way, or some roving Blackfeet were out of theirs, and so they spied him, and he fortunately spied them. Well, I need not tell you that the white horse was soon put to his THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 421 paces to gain the nearest but yet distant settlement of friendly Indians. Away went Peg, and after him went the Blackfeet, with a yell that might have made any man but an old trapper give up in despair. Miles were soon passed, until the savages were a good way behind, and sometiraes out of sight ; but he knew well that, once on his trail, they would run along it, without a halt, like bloodhounds, ay, weeks after he had passed ; for these fellows can follow up the trail of a deer even six weeks after he has gone over the ground, and can detect his track, however frequently crossed by others ; and, in the end, run hira down ! Poor Peg's horse left a surer im pression behind than the deer ! The enemy was coming on. Once dark, he thought he would cheat them, and arrive among his friends before daybreak. But the old horse was becoraing wearied. The sun had yet a good yard or two to descend. On he went, however, for some miles farther, always keeping a good look-out towards his rear, till, on reaching a height, he saw two of his enemies far off, but other two very close upon him, in full cry ; so that it was evident they raust very soon corae up with hira, more especially as he had entered on a mountain path. What was to be done ? A few minutes raore and they raust be on him ! He first unslung his rifle. He must risk one shot at all events, though but one more reraained in his pouch. He made another preparation, which I shall tell you of immediately. Halting on a rising knoll, he dismounted, made his obedient horse stand like a statue, and calmly waited the approach of the two Indians, who must suddenly appear round a sharp turn, towards which he pointed his unerring rifle. 422 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Suddenly one of the enemy rushed on the' path with a cry of surprise, and, in a moraent, lay dead. The other appeared in a second after, when Peg-leg, having un strapped his wooden leg, flourished it over his head; then presenting the stump to the foe, he flung the wooden leg at the Indian's head ! But the savage, seeing his corapanion dead at his feet, and seeing too, as he fancied, a real leg coraing towards him, he stood for a raoraent panic-strack by this exhibition of witchcraft, and spring ing out of sight, was seen no more ! Peg reached the settlement in safety, with his leg under his arm. The other Indians, he afterwards leamed, had been warned by their companion to retire with all speed from the great wizard. Poor Peg-leg ! The last tirae I saw him was at Jack Nolans', the tavern-keeper at Fort Inde pendence. He had come in to sell his skins, and spend his money on drink, as he did every three or four years, for he had no other way of spending it Banks are few, and securities uncertain, among the Raphoes and Black feet ! Peg drank more than he could pay for, and Nolans seized the old horse for the debt, and told its master to die when and where he pleased, but he would get neither liquor nor horse tiU he paid for both. Alas ! there was no trapping at Fort Independence. Peg could as well have paid your national debt The horse was accord ingly locked up in an outhouse, the door being fastened with a huge padlock, the key of which hung as an orna ment near Mr Nolans' bed. Early in the morning. Peg rose, stepped a few paces back from the padlock, covered the lock with his rifle, blew it open, limped in, and in a trice was mounted on the old horse. Mr Nolans, alarmed THE MERCHANT OF THE FAR WEST. 423 by the shot had come out in his night-dress to see what was the matter, but only got a peep of Peg, with his leg projecting like a bowsprit between him and the sky, on the top ofa prairie knoll, waving his hand as he_and his old horse retired once more to live, and I suppose to die, among the Rocky Mountains ! " " What a Hfe ! " said I. " Ah ! my friend, you have never tried it ! Once begun, it has a charm which acts Hke spirits to a con firraed drunkard ; you may suffer frora it, but habit pre vents you frora giving it up. I begin to fear I myself could never live in the settlements. As for such a raan as Peg-leg Smith doing so, you might as well try and get an eagle to strat along the streets of New York." The last time I saw the merchant was in Liverpool . and after a long chat, he wished to give me, as a parting gift — wiU the reader guess what ? — a scalp of an Indian whom he had slain in battle ! I begged he raight not take the trouble of searching for the relic. But a chord had been touched by the very mention of the scalp, and he fell into a reverie staring at the fire, while he slowly sraoked his cigar. At last the puffs of sraoke got quicker and quicker — the stern expression carae to the eye — tiU, staraping with one foot on the floor, and clenching his hands, he said, with intense energy, " I shall yet do for him!" "For whom?" I inquired. "That scoundrel Raphoe Indian who shot my brother ! " In the rich and populous " settlement " of Liverpool he was dreaming of the far west, and arranging, in his own mind, for his next attack upon the Raphoes, to revenge the death of a brother whom they had killed I 424 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The last accounts I received of A. S., the merchant of the wilderness, were lately frora an old friend who now resides in Mexico. On asking hira whether he had ever heard of such a person, he replied, " His name has been well kno-wn in Mexico and the far west for nearly thirty years as a very remarkable, honest, enterprising, and daring man. But I have lost sight of him for years. He returned, I believe, to Germany, after having made money in California, but could not resist the attractions of the wilderness, and so he went back again to the far west. The last thing I heard about him was an incident very characteristic of the man. A diligence in which he was travelling near Mexico was attacked by a strong party of banditti, and robbed. The only one of the passengers who showed fight was a little, athletic, black-eyed man, who sat on his luggage with a loaded revolver ' in each hand, gazing with a stern look on the banditti. 'I know,' he said, ' you cowardly scoundrels, that you can kill me and rob me, but not before two of you, at least, are first shot by me, for I never missed. So keep off!' They did keep off; and the merchant of the wilderness thus saved his Ufe and property. I' have not heard of him since." Such a strange Hfe of energy and courage is worth knowing about. NORMAN MA-CLEOD. XXI. DAYS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. • ALTHOUGH no missionary hymn is better known or more frequently sung than Bishop Heber's, al though nearly every child knows something of " India's coral strand," ofthe history of its people and its present condition, how few have any acquaintance with " Green land's icy mountains," with its scattered population, or its geographical or zoological peculiarities. My aim in writing this paper is to contribute information obtained in rather a desultory manner during various visits to the western coast of Greenland, and to give sketches of the habits and social condition of the Eskimo people, from intercourse with them during those visits. The coast of Greenland is visited by the whaling ships which annually make their voyages to the icy seas of Da-vis' Strait and Baffin's Bay ; lately by the different ex ploring vessels sent by the English and American Govern ments to search for Sir John FrankUn and his missing companions ; and by the Danish ships which, during the navigable season, are despatched to supply the settle- 425 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. ments scattered along the coast with a renewed stock of provisions, and to carry back to Denmark the products of Eskimo hunting and fishing. Greenland belongs to Denraark, and its trade is raonopoHsed by the Govern ment, the Royal Danish Company yearly sending out ships freighted vrith European goods and provisions, and bringing back skins of the reindeer, seal, walrus, bear, &c., vast quantities of codfish, and occasionally dried salmon. The Danish settlements and habitations of the Eskimo are situated along the coast from Cape Farewell, the most southern point of Greenland, to lat. 73° N., and at each settlement a governor or chief factor resides, with his small staff of Danish officials and workmen. Round them gather a mixed Eskimo population, subsisting by the chase, the results of which they bring to the Danish store-house, and barter for goods and provisions. It was in the middle of July that I first saw the coast of Greenland. The mountains in the neighbourhood of Cape Farewell looked in the distance like the teeth of a jagged saw, peak after peak looming out of the mist, and showing their uneven tops covered with snow, which clothed their slopes down to the sea, or inland to the valleys lying between them and the mountains of the interior. No narae seemed to be more inappropriate than Greenland ; nothing appeared but dark rock and unsullied snow. On landing, however, I found some little vegetation ; greener than other Arctic lands it may be, and is, but to one whose recollections were fresh of the pleasant grassy fields of our own country, the narae seemed a mockery. DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 427 On a nearer approach to the coast, the low land appears stretching out as islands, with interlying passages and sounds, barren and bare enough in appearance, but free from snow during the sumraer. Nearer stUl, at the dis tance of a mile or so, there appears a considerable quantity of verdure among the small valleys, though the vegetation which covers them is of a brownish colour. FoUowing the windings which are visible between the islands, we pass up the deeper fjords, where is the greatest quantity of vegetation to be seen in all Greenland : some six or eight miles up the fjords the land is even covered with stunted willow and birch bushes ; these are the only representatives of " forests" in this barren land, and never attain a greater height than four feet The hollows and slopes of the raountains are covered with loose stones of corisiderable size barely hidden by these bushes. At the extremities of the fjords the raainland should appear; that lying outside is more or less surrounded by the sea, formed into peninsulas and islands, and bearing a resera blance to the deeply-indented Norwegian coast Access is obtained from one fjord to the other by crossing the flat valleys which intervene, which are pleasanter and richer in vegetation than the others ; but beyond them it is impossible to pass, on account of the ice-mass cover ing the interior. The vast icebergs which thickly strew these seas have their origin from the ice-fjords and the coast glaciers, thus : this frozen mass being constantly pushed forward, a sort of outward draught takes place, its surface becomes crevassed and fissured by passing over uneven ground, and the exposed face of the glacier being eaten away 428 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. by the warra water at its base, becomes top-heavy, breaks away from the mass, and a new child of the Arctic is launched into the world. The icebergs vary in size according to the. glaciers from which they have been formed, and the conditions, under which they have been separated. Imagine St Paul's Cathedral, St George's HaU, or Holyrood Palace floating upon the surface of the water, having five or six times its own size under neath : picture it made of the purest white marble, carved into innumerable doraes, turrets, and spires. Again, iraagine sorae vast island undulated, caverned, and massive, or some iramense but mastless Great Eastern — glistening in the sun, reflecting hues of the emerald, beryl, and turquoise; here you may see one towering heavenward, "As a stately Attic temple Rears its white shafts on high;" then another without a single elevation, presenting to the eye nothing but an irregular crevassed- surface. The forraer are not raore beautiful than dangerous ; the ice navigator knows that they may tum over at any mo ment the water in which they float gradually melting that portion which is submerged, the centre of gra-vity slowly moves up toward the water-line, and the slightest shock is sufficient to upset the whole mass. The solid, squarish bergs are those used by the shipmasters as temporary moorings. Drawing perhaps some 300 to TOGO feet, they ground and act as anchors to the ships. On these bergs are usually found small lakes oi fresh water, the ice being oi^land origin./ The con^ DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND, 429 stant action of the powerful Arctic sun thawing the sur face, the water either coUects in pools or miniature lakes, or trickles down the side. It is alraost impossible for those who have not seen them to imagine the sublimity and grandeur of a belt of these ice-islands. Their fantastic shapes, traced out in pure glistening white against a pale blue sky, floating in water of a still deeper hue, forra a picture which but few artists could paint They strew the Arctic seas in thou sands, and float south to be dissolved in the warm waters of the Atlantic, becoraing the dread of the navigator of the Newfoundland banks. The reader may try to conceive the difficulties and dangers which beset vessels navigating the northern seas, and picture the imminence of the peril should they encounter a heavy gale : the air thick with fog and snow-flakes, the ropes stiff with frozen spray, the bitter temperature benumbing the hands and feet the ship surrounded by huge mountains of ice, roaring and crashing, heaving and rearing, one against the other, and against the poor ship — now she is tossed against the ice, — now the ice- blocks beat and bump against her side, — masts and yards crack, — bells ring, — men shout, — the storm howls,— every minute seems to be the last,' — " And the boldest hold their breath for a time." As we approached the Spitzbergen ice-stream, we found the sea strewed with detached pieces of ice, with occasional sraall packs some four or five mUes in extent their colour varying frora the purest white to a deep blue, according to the shape and the reflected light The 430 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. waves surging against the masses sounded like the dashing of the sea against' a rocky coast The wind falling calm, we were enveloped in fog, and had to get up steam to urge our way through this frozen barrier, which often Touled the ship, and caused her to shake from stem to stern, and at times altogether arrested her progress. The most fantastic shapes were at times assumed by the ice. I remember one group in par ticular, the grotesqueness of which was remarkable. It consisted of a gracefully-formed pelican of ice, escorted by a huge water-jug, and both apparently surrounded by barn-door fowls, AU round these were multitudes of the most queerly-shaped monsters ; you can hardly mention one faraily of animals which did not seem to have its icy representative, the oddity of their forms causing as much arauseraent as the beauty of their tints occasioned admiration. Having passed through this ice-streara, we still con tinued our landward course. Finding, however, by the aftemoon of the i8th July, that we could not get sight of the shore, we shortened saU, let down steam, and lay-to till the fog should clear off and show us our position. This it did at six p.m., revealing a beautiful coastline as it lifted off the land, the landscape bounded by the far inland white mountain-tops, clear cut against the deep blue sky. Farther north, along the coast, we saw the " blink " of the glacier, which there stretches along, or rather forms the coast-line, for eight or ten mUes, relieving, with its gleaming whiteness, the sombre aspect of the black and barren peaks of primary rock on either side. / s DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 43 1 And now we saw a couple of kajaks coming off to wards the ship. These kajaks are frora eighteen to twenty feet long, tapering to a point at both ends, Hke a weaver's shuttie, some fifteen inches wide, and eight or nine deep, flattish above and convex below. The frame is made of laths of wood, and covered over with seal skin prepared by the Eskimo, and sewed on whilst wet. A sraall hole is left in the middle, surrounded by a ledge : into this the native " wriggles," sitting with his body at right angles to his legs ; then fastening his sealskin shirt, or "jumper," he forms a continuous water-tight surface up to his throat. Seated thus, with his "payortit," or paddle, held by the middle in his hands, by altemate strokes with its right and left blades he propels the canoe at the rate of six to eight miles per hour, passing through waves and encountering seas which, in an ordinary boat, would be neither safe nor pleasant. These natives brought us some eider-duck eggs, and received biscuit in exchange. We then stood in toward Frederikshaab, eight or nine bergs appearing in sight, but none very close to us. The evening was beautiful, and seemed warm and agreeable compared with the previous one. Cautiously saiUng between the islands, guided by an Eskimo pilot, we reached our destination in the moming, and moored near the Danish brig which had arrived with provisions, &c., for the use of the settlement. We were at anchor in a small cove, flanked on either side by hills 600 or 80G feet high. The end of the bay opened to the interior, which, sorae two or three miles off, was shut in by mountains. Scarcely was our anchor down before 432 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the ship was surrounded by kajaks. Soon numbers of woraen, girls, and chUdren trooped along the rocks abreast of the ship to the nearest point, where they sat laughing and jabbering to their hearts' content. On the ladies of the community being pointed out to me, I was rather incredulous. The only mark which distinguishes their dress from that of their lords is the presence of a " top-knot" Their hair, instead of being dressed in the ordinary way, is drawn upwards to the crown of the head, and then tied in a knot ; this is surrounded by a ribbon, the colour of which varies by the social position of the wearer. Some of them displayed considerable taste in the selection of the pattern of the ribbons, which are, of course, imported frora Denmark, and are very probably of English manufacture. We were speedily visited by the Danish officials, namely, the chief factor, his assistant, and the priest. Dr Rink, the Royal Inspector of South Greenland, who happened to be at the settlement at the time, also came on board. We found these gentlemen very agreeable and intelligent. The inspector, a man of high scientific acquirements, was promoted to his present position after having been for raany years engaged in a mineralogical .survey of Greenland. Pastor Barnsfeldt who, with his wife, had been for some time resident in the country, gave us some interesting statistics, illustrating the social condition of the Eskimos. The assistant-factor had only been two or three years in Greenland. He had formed one of the noble band of volunteers engaged in the war with Sleswig and Holstein ; he was a knight of the order of Dannebrog, and wore his decoration. Chief-trader DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 433 MoUer, father-in-law to the inspector, for many years resident in the country, was becoming tired of its mono tony, and anxious to return to Copenhagen. Accompanied by these gentlemen, we went on shore, and partook of their hospitality. The houses of the officials are all built of wood, thickly coated on the outside with black tar, the windows and doors being double, and painted white. They are ^ept spotlessly clean, according to the custom of the Scandinavian peoples. The beams supporting the ceiling are plainly seen, giving to the room an aspect not unlike the ward-room of a man-of-war. The side-panels are' painted blue or green, the rest of the walls being white ; the stove in the corner is brightly polished; the floor without carpet, and beautifully clean ; the windows adorned with a few European garden flowers, which bloom with difficulty in this inhospitable region. After luncheon, we walked some way into the interior, passing the neat little wooden church in which the natives have a Lutheran sermon every Sunday or hoUday, and visiting, on our way, some of the huts. These are essentially dirty and disagreeable, to one unused to their ways. The better class have a wooden frame and a vrindow ; but the greater part have only a shell made of sods and earth, with a few props of wood or bones of the whale in the inside. The approach to the interior is' through a narrow passage some 3^ feet high, opening into the hut, which rises to an elevation of five feet or so. A raised dais serves the purpose of a seat by day and a bedstead by night. On this dais the ladies sit, tailor fashion, and occupy themselves in domestic work. 2 E 434 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Cooking is performed by means ofa stone lamp hanging at one extremity of the platform, and supplied with blubber and moss. In a small hut of about six feet square, seven, eight, or even a larger number of persons wUl contrive to exist ; and as personal cleanliness is not a virtue practised by the Eskimos, the heat and the offen sive smell may more easily be iraagined than described. The ablutions of the men generally consist in moistening their fingers with saliva, and rubbing the salt spray from their faces ; the mothers use their tongues, Hke cats, to clean and polish their children. The men do not dress their hair in any particular fashion, merely shortening it over the forehead, and allowing it to hang down on the cheeks and neck ; the women often wrap a handkerchief round their heads, to keep them warm, as the drawing .up of the hair to the crown leaves the greater part of the head uncovered. The shape of the Eskimo face is somewhat oval, the greatest breadth being below the eye, at the cheek bones ; the forehead arches upward, ending narrowly ; the chin is a blunt cone ; the nose is more or less depressed, broad at the base, with somewhat thick ened nostrils ; the lips thickish, but the teeth generally very white and regular. Occasionally, among the young women, we saw a good-natured pretty face ; but the old women are frightfully ugly. Their teeth drop out; they discontinue the use of the head-band, showing a bald place where the hair has fallen out by being puUed against the grain ; the face, deeply furrowed, assumes a very harsh expression ; and the legs are bowed by the constant use of the " taUor posture " whUe sitting. The resemblance between the sexes is further increased by DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 435 the absence of beard and moustache among the men, any stray evidence of either being ruthlessly puUed out by means of a couple of shells. We were not sorry to escape from the stifling atmo sphere of the huts, and presentiy leaving the settlement behind us ; and crossing a swampy valley traversed by numerous strearas, we proceeded up the raountains, over some ridges of yet undissolved snow. I was fortunate in my companion. Dr Rink never seemed at a loss, he had a ready and instructive answer to all my questions, whether they related to flowers, minerals, or the physical condition of the country. Climbing to the top of the first hUl, we took a survey of the district; wUd and rugged in the extreme, the whole interior visible from the point where we stood appeared to consist of mountains with intervening winding passages, I cannot call thera valleys, for our idea of a valley is connected with verdure and softened beauty, whUe these passes are covered with blocks of stone and boulders, very few flowers inter spersed araong thera, and those apparently pleading for life. We were happy enough to obtain a few rainerals, some speciraens of rough garnets, aUanite, tantalite, molybdenite, &c., with copper, tin, and iron ores in small quantities. Passing round the comer of one of the huge blocks which bestrewed our way, we startled a couple of hares quietiy feeding at its base; they scampered off some distance before one of them fell at the discharge of my gun. At that season it did not differ in appearance and colour firom the hares of this country, but its coat becomes completely white in the winter time, giving it a greater 436 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. chance of escape from its enemies ; it is then generally traced by its footprints,, an Eskimo being able to dis tinguish by the shape and feeling of these whether the track has been made days, hours, or minutes before. As the spring advances after the long winter, they are often found sitting at the corner of a stone, intently gazing at the sun. We found a pretty good sprinkling of flowers during, our ramble : a species of buttercup was occasionally seen in the marshy plain behind the settleraent ; a variety of poppy, with its large yellow flower, looking like a sickly chUd with an overgrown head, peeped out from under the shelter of a piece of rock; while the Alpine stitchwort occasionally showed itself, reminding rae of the common flower in our own hedges. In some few favoured places the hill-sides would be covered with the purple saxifrage, while StiU more rarely specimens of other species of this Alpine genus of flowers were obtained. In one seques-: tered nook my eye was delighted with the sight of a violet and a campanula in cordial juxtaposition, and the presence of a dandelion and an alchemiUa almost in duced the idea that I was on a Scotch mountain, among civUised people, rather than among glaciers and Eskimos. The most ambitious growth here was that of beech and -ivUlow bushes, eighteen or twenty inches high, having stems about the thickness of a man's thumb. These are gathered by the natives as firewood for the winter in the Danish houses. As we continued our walk we came to the edge of a, small lake, on the far corner of which some ducks were quietly floating. By a series of manoeuvres, the chief of DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 437 which consisted in almost breaking one's back by stoop ing, we crawled frora behind one .block to the next, and succeeded in getting within shot, when we obtained a couple of brace. On our way back to the ship a thick fog came on, rendering our clothes rather weighty objects to carry when weU saturated by it ; and had it not been that my companion was weU acquainted with the country, we should have been at a loss to find our way, as scarcely a landraark was visible. When, we got on board and changed our clothes, we felt quite ready for our dinner, of which our four Danish guests partook with us. Our conversation was at first limited to an interchange of looks and gestures, as only one of our party understood Danish thoroughly. Dr Rink, however, speaking EngUsh fluently, by the additional aid of French and German, we contrived after a time to be quite a voluble party. It was amusing to hear the disjointed sentences at one end of the table, commenced in Gerraan and eked out with French at the other, the patois consisting of an alter nation of English and Danish. After coffee we went on shore, where we found our men ,had preceded us, and were showing their gallantry to the Eskimo young ladies. The sound of the fiddle at tracted us to a very small ballroom, twenty-five feet square, where from sixty to eighty people had managed to crowd themselves, and were dancing to their hearts' content. The drapery of the ladies not requiring rauch extra space, it was marvellous to see the ease with which they glided in and out of this close-packed assemblage, always keep ing time to the music, which consisted of two violins, a 438 PEEPS A T- FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. flute, and a tub-end covered over with sealskin, serving as dram for the nonce. One of the sailors had elected himself master of the ceremonies, and, seated in the win dow, endeavoured to keep proper order, greatly to the detriment of the room, it must be admitted. This had evidently not been cleaned since the last stock of blubber- casks and seal-skins had left it; and fiUed with this crowd of not very cleanly persons, going through the exciting exercise of a saUor's reel oran Eskimo dance, with only the door and one window as ventUators, the effect may be ima gined when the latter was obstructed by the major-domo. A glance in was quite sufficient for us, and we proceeded to have a look at the different " buildings " of which the settleraent consists. The principal ,are the governor's house and the neat wooden church already mentioned, which boasted its belfry and organ, and- had seats for some 150 people. Close down to the water's edge was the store-house, in which the fraits of the last winter's hunt were deposited, consisting of seal and reindeer skins, blubber, &c., to the value of about 15,000 doUars. Then there is the import store-house, where a miscellaneous as sortment of articles, biscuit, blankets,, and bullet-moulds; stockings, shot, sugar, and stewpans; rice, rifles, and ropes, &c., were to be found in incongraous proximity. Currency consists of paper notes, printed in Copenhagen, which become valuable on their arrival in Greenland, little silver money changing hands. After seeing the different pUes of goods stowed away in these buUdings, we tumed our attention to the exterior of the dweUings of the Eskimo. Round one of them were grouped a number of natives, talking in a slow, hesitating way; one DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 439 of them seeraed from his looks to be rather irate, but the easy manner in which he aUowed his words to gurgle out of his throat, would not have led any one to suppose that he was otherwise than at peace with all mankind. The interesting operation of cutting up a seal which had just been brought in, was going on inside one of the huts ; the dainty bits, such as the liver, &c., were taken possession of by the favoured ones of the household, to be cooked over the stone blubber-lamp. A couple of old dames were entertaining each other over a cup of coffee, which luxurious beverage was the first-fruits of the seal-skin just deposited in the store. We next visited the minister's quarters, where by Madame Barnsfeldt we were entertained at tea, which seeraed all the more refreshing coming from the hands of the only European lady within raany miles of us. On return to the ship at even that late hour, we found a number of kajaks, the owners of whicii were bartering with the sailors newly-caught cod-fish for the morrow's breakfast ; these fish are so abundant in the season, that thirty per hour is the usual catch. Heartily tired after my day's ramble, I joyfully tumed in for the night, which was gloomy and dark for this part of the world, the ship and settlement being wrapt in a mantle of the wettest fog I ever remember to have seen. My face and hands were sore from the innuraerable mosquito bites, those wretched insects making incessant onslaughts on me during the heat of the day; an ungreased skin being evidently a novelty to thera, they showed the apprecia tion of the delicacy by their voracity. The next day was spent more particularly in ascer- 440 PEEPS ATFOREIGN COUNTRIES. taining the botany and geology of the neighbourhood of Frederikshaab. There is only one peculiarity about the latter which I need allude to here — the presence of iraraense boulders in the valleys and near the shore, at a considerable elevation above high-water mark ; several of them weighed at least above twenty-five tons, and one at least was much larger. These must have been de posited either by icebergs or glaciers. Most likely at some previous period the valleys in which these boulders lay had been under water, and some icebergs stranding there had deposited thera. Sorae authorities, however, suppose the valleys to have originally been the beds of rivers, and that these immense stones have been preci pitated into the stream and rounded in situ. The former is the more probable theory. Near the entrance to the harbour I saw a boulder some ten tons' weight stranded about five feet above high-water mark ; this had evidently been brought in frora seaward by some floe-ice, as it was of quite a different lithological charac ter from that on which it rested. Another pecuharity which I raay mention en passant, is the presence of a number of dykes of trap which traversed the gneissic formation of the hills, some of them being several yards wide with altered gneiss on either side. On the 28th April we made the land near Holstein- borg ; not being aware of the exact position of the settlement, we kept along the coast to avoid the nume rous shoals and sunken rocks. Being early in the; season, the latter were topped by sea-ice of considerable thickness, -which was somewhat an aid to us in finding DAYS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 441 out their position, but being simUar in appearance to small pieces of ordinary floating-ice, they were often mistaken for it, to the great risk and danger of the ship. We passed many icebergs aground near the off-lying islands. The afternoon being thick and foggy, as it often is in spring in Greenland, and a native who had been out seal-hunting in his kajak coming alongside, with the bight of a rope at either end of the kajak, he and it were brought on board. Being acquainted with the coast line even in a fog, he piloted the ship in and out of the island passages as easily as if she had been his own canoe. Presently the sun burst through the clouds for a while, dissipating the mist and affording us a peep of the coast along which, we were creeping. Occasion ally we passed the mouth of one of these wondrous fjords, the sight of which would alone repay a visit to the North ; its deep and placid waters winding inland amid every variety of scenery and colouring of which these grim Arctic regions are capable, or we coasted under cliffs some thousand feet high with their minia ture glaciers between rocks of gneiss ; the stillness of the uninhabited land, the smooth clear water, the ship steaUng along -with nothing to break the solemn silence, save the plunge ofthe seaman's lead or the flap of some wild-fowl passing us, while the awe of our silence was intensified by the constant fear of being overwhelmed by a dibMe or avalanche. Our pilot soon left us, as he had some distance to go before he reached his home. Scarcely were we left alone before it began to snow ; the fog came down again from off the land ; 442 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. again we had to grope our way. Fortunately, however, other Eskimos had been out hunting; two of whom came on board and pUoted us between the islands to the sheltered bay at the head of which the settlement stands, just outside which the assistant factor came alongside with a boat's crew, the coxswain taking the ship in to her berth, where we let go in seventeen fathoras, mooring her to the rocks with bow and stern hawsers. The natives in their kajaks at once crowded round the ship ; fastening their frail canoes together with pieces of seal line, numbers of them came on board, and showed, by hauling on the hawsers, ropes, &c., that they would wiUingly do us a kindness. When the deck was cleared, and all the ropes coiled down, an immediate barter was set up between the sailors and the natives ; sealskin boots, trousers, and jumpers soon changed hands, and many an old jacket, &c., went on shore. The greatest demand among the young ladies was for silk handkerchiefs, which they used as head bandages, and their triumph was considerable when one of them became the happy possessor of so rare and prized an article ; as there were but few on board available for barter, they were soon at a high premium. Being early in the season, there was some little night ; consequently the ship's deck was deserted soon after ten a'clock by all except the quartermaster of the watch. The next moming was bright and lovely, with a pleasant breeze off the land ; the harbour in which we lay was well land-locked, so that we were secure from any of those williewaws so frequent in the fjords DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 443 of this coast Snow lay thickly over aU the land, the summer sun having only denuded the surface of a few rocks, the houses of the settleraent having a coating of black tar, had alraost entirely thrown off their winter covering, and stood out weU on the white background. The littie chapel, with its heaven-pointing turret, was buried on aU sides in snow, the windows and doors being the only spots free from it : a deep pathway, with a four-foot bank of snow on either side, formed the approach to this house of God. As the evening closed in, the sight of the setting sun was splendid. Close to us was the arra of a fjord, at the upper end of which, as if wedged in between the rocks, the sun was sinking. The few clouds iraraediately above were of a deep golden hue, in striking contrast with the dark purple of those some distance beyond ; the rays reflected from white snow, dark rock, and blue water gave innuraerable and gorgeous tints ; the moon came peeping over an adjoining headland; the rocks were mirrored in the water, which seeraed rising to kiss the golden sunbearas ; our boat lay idly by the shore ; and it was only when the low quack of a coming flock of ducks brought us back to material things that we were reminded that the game-bag was not yet full. The next day being Sunday, we had, as usual, divine service on the lower deck, after which I went on shore, as the sound of the bell told that the time for service approached. " It was a little church, and plain, almost To ugliness, yet lacking not its charm." Groups of Eskimo women and chUdren were walking 444 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. quietly thither as I landed, and when I reached it, it was almost full. Taking a seat close to the door, I felt a thrill of pleasure in worshipping God among these far- off children who also call Him Father. The minister, with his gown and frill, reminded me, by his dress and general appearance, of the pictures of Luther. As the organ began to sound, and the rich roll of the young voices swelled up to the rafters of the little sanctuary, a sympathetic chord was touched, and more than one English voice joined in the song of praise and thanks giving. The pastor delivered a short address in Eskimo, and, after again joining in a psalm, the little congre gation dispersed. It did one good to hear the melody sung by the women and children, the men's voices giving solidity to the tune with their lower octave notes ; of course, all sang in unison. I copy here a verse of one of their hymns : — ' ' Gudimit pingormet silla tam^nna Nagliunguarsusia tekkoa, Sajmaminiglo okarpok imerma ; Amadlo ama sennaissauaka ! Saerbsarmeta tanko okauziagut Sorarpok innardlugalloarmerput." The Danish Government deserves much commendation for the attention bestowed on the spiritual welfare of the Greenlanders ; and the success which has hitherto attended the labours of the pastors who have under taken the care of this people must, in sorae measure, corapensate thera for their banishment and its unusual privations. After dinner, taking a walk over the rocks, I had a DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 445 fine view of the sea and its countiess islands. It was indeed a lovely maritime landscape, out of the power of better pencils than mine to depict Beneath me lay our own ship, snugly sheltered in the little cove; outside, a heavy bank of vapour seemed roUing to the southward ; in the north-west, low billowy clouds appeared with their blue bases and white tops ! — " And, in the west, dark masses, plash'd with blue, "With outline deep of misty steep and dell, Clomb o'er the island topS." In the evening there was a halo round the sun, — that is, a circle of light forty-five degrees in diaraeter, with the sun for a centre, and the mock sun on either side, on a plane passing horizontally through it. This phenoraenon is dependent on the reflection of the solar rays frora sraall snow crystals, with which the air is often loaded in these northern cliraes. Returning from my walk late, I re mained on shore, and supped with the govemor. The priest, his wife, and the two assistants joined us. We partook of an excellent repast consisting of venison, dried salmon, ptarmigan, and other delicacies, which seemed strangely out of place in this secluded spot As I proceeded to my boat, the Eskimo dogs which were there coUected made the night hideous by baying the moon, — the coming gale seeraing to have stirred all their innate powers of howling. Seaward all looked black even our vessel, whose taU raasts, pointing heavenwards, seemed to invite the storm. On Monday it blew half a gale aU day, and snowed constantly. It was miserably. cold, so that I did not leave the ship, except for a couple of hours, to sit with the governor. On Tuesday there. 446 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. was only a gentle breeze from the northward, and scarcely a cloud to be seen. " Blue sunny sky above ; below, A blue and sunny sea ; A world of blue,, wherein did blow One soft wind steadily." An iceberg, about i6o feet high, had come into the harbour during the night, and gleamed brightly against the dark rocks. I again ascended a neighbouring mouti- tain, and froni an elevation of 1800 to 2000 feet, had a good panoramic view. As the sun reached its highest, and seemed to rest before it declined, the sky formed a splendid picture. In the north nothing appeared but the deep azure of the sky ; east and west the sun shone glaringly upon the solid masses of flocculent clouds which appeared above the horizon. Massively they seemed to roll, one upon the other, rivalling in their whiteness the few icebergs that lay along the coast, and shading into deep neutral tints. Now they seeraed to sprout out lines into the blue expanse, as though they wished to root themselves in the sky ; whilst to the south they rose higher and higher, losing their cavemed appearance, and looking like white-crested waves. The hues of silver frost, purple and neutral, would have enchanted a painter, while the hopelessness of any attempt to catch them, and transfer theif fleeting beauty to his canvas, would well-nigh have broken his heart. In the afternoon I took a photograph of the settle ment. In the evening I visited the carcases of three whales, which, having been denuded of their blubber, lay stranded on the shore, and served as banqueting-rooms DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 447 for the Eskimo dogs. These were so satiated with their repast, they could hardly screw up their taUs upon their backs — their way of manifesting pleased recognition — but lay alongside the scene of their enjoyment, smiling benignly, and unable to move. Our approach frightened away some half-dozen ravens, which had been attracted by the carrion lying at our feet. These birds are found very far north ; I reraeraber seeing two in the middle of January, at a temperature of 50°, flying as leisurely as if it had been the hottest day experienced by any of their species. These sarae birds built their nest and breed in lat. 72° N., showing an instance of a bird which breeds both in arctic and tropico-temperate cliraates. Those which we now disturbed from their feast flew lazUy away, and settled on a rock a few yards from us, evidently looking upon us as intraders, and patiently awaiting our departure. A few words about the Eskimo dog, which has been mentioned here for the first time. This animal, whose services are indispensable to the inhabitant of Northern Greenland, is not unlike our shepherd's dog in its general aspect, but is more muscular, and has a broader chest, owing, in a great measure, to the hard work it is inured to. • The ears are pointed, and, with its long muzzle, serve to increase the wolfishness of its appearance. An ordinary well-grown dog wiU be somewhat smaller than a Newfoundland dog, but broad, like a mastiff. The coat of this dog consists of long hair, and in the winter it is further protected by a soft, downy under-covering, which does not appear during the warm weather. Their, education begins at a very early age. When 448 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. about two months old, eight or ten puppies are harnessed to a sledge with two experienced runners, and by means of frequent and cruel beatings, and angry repetitions of their names, they are taught their duty, but not without much hard labour on the driver's part, and great patience. Personal experience has taught me some of the peculiar difficulties of managing a puppy dog team. Each dog is harnessed to a separate line ; and these, being about eight abreast, fully endowed with all — and more than all — the playfulness of young aniraals in this country, the effect may be pictured when, all jumping on each other in most adraired confusion, the lines become entangled, and are -only set right after many efforts. This process has to be repeated again and again, as the garabols or quarrels ofthe young dogs render it necessary. The whip, too, would puzzle a London cabby, and is not easy for a novice to use — a lash from twenty to twenty- four feet long, attached to a handle one foot long; it requires no small amount of dexterity to avoid wounding your own person in an atterapt to make an exaraple of one of your pupils. When trained, however, they are guided only by a touch of the whip to the near or off leader, and over sraooth ice, with a light load, can be made to go seven or eight miles per hour. The voyage from Holsteinborg to Godhavn was rather tedious. Being prevented by fog and ice from at once reaching our destination, I was enabled to dredge, and procured a considerable variety of treasures — star-fishes, holothurias, Crustacea, annelids, and shells. On the evening of the loth May, we had hoped to find ourselves in port, but our wishes were not realised, and we were DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 449 in much danger. . At one time we were startled by finding the end of one of the Kron Prins Islands right under our bow. We had not much time to make our escape, being hardly more than half the ship's length off, before perceiving our perUous position. At another time we found ourselves within forty yards of a formid able iceberg, which the fog had hindered our seeing. Had we struck it our hopes of escape would have been truly small, as we were going six or eight knots an hour. On the nth we made the Whalefish Islands, after beating about all day, and anchored*in thirteen fathoms. From the hiUs near us we could view the changes going on in the ice off the south end of Disco Island ; and a Danish official — the cooper — residing in a small settle ment on one of the group, was able to give us further information on this, to us, momentous point Two of us went ashore to shoot ducks, but were not very suc cessful. Walking over Kron Prins Island, I found the tomb of a young English seaman, with its quaint, hornely epitaph. It brought sad thoughts to my mind. Insensibly iraagi nation carried me to the torabs of our countrymen who had perished in far distant lands, martyrs to science, often to their unselfishness; especially that of James, the navigator, who met his fate two hundred years ago, after a perUous voyage, in which he found himself caught in the ice in Hudson's Bay. His puny craft shattered and wrecked, he and his crew wintered on an island which bears his narae, and on it the graves of some of the brave fellows were discovered ¦" 2 F 45° PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. with this epitaph above them, fastened to a rade cross : — " Their lives they spent, to the last drop of blood, Seeking God's glory and their country's good. So have they spent themselves, and here they be, A famous mark of our discovery. "We that survive perchance may end our days In some employment meriting no prSjise ; They have survived this fear, and their brave ends Will ever be an honour to their friends." Or it might be the graves of Sir John FrankUn and brave Lieutenant BeUot, or less distinguished names, unknown to fame, but shining brightly, no doubt, in the unseen register on high. For six days we were detained at the Whalefish Islands ; but on the 17 th May we at last anchored close to the settlement of Godhavn, the. seat of the Northern Inspectorate of Greenland. It is ^ituated on a spur of metamorphic rock, which juts out in a peninsular forra from Disco Island, the mainland of which is composed of trap or basalt of recent igneous origin. These rocka reach the height of 3000, 4000, or even 5000 feet, and are, in some places, formed into piUars, in a raanner which may be imagined by those who have visited Staffa or the Giant's Causeway. Numerous high fjelds are found in the island, and there are three fjords of con siderable extent, — North, Middle, and Disco Fjords, the latter the largest, and nearest the settlement The situation is singularly beautiful, with its promon tory separated from the land by a bay of haff a raile in width ; and a walk of another half mUe brings you to DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 451 the foot of the beetiing cliff of dark rock, like the turrets of some giant fortification, stretching darkly be fore the traveller, and presenting the same aspect from seaward, — inaccessible, inhabited only by sea-birds, such as guillemots, looms, ducks, gulls, &c. Our stay at Godhavn was marked by little incident. Danish hospitality, as displayed to us by Inspector Olrik, was even more warm than at Holsteinborg or Frederikshaab ; but to relate the incidents of each day would be only a repetition of those in the previous pages. A few remarks on the religion and social life of the Eskimos of Greenland will fitly conclude these crude and imperfect sketches of this distant land. It is always difficult to obtain a correct idea of the religion of a heathen people. The stranger must first becorae acquainted with their language ; and before this task has been accomplished, the priests have most probably become jealous of the curious inquirer, and either corapletely raystify him, or refuse to expose their religious ceremonies to his ridicule. In the case of Greenland, these ordinary difficulties were further in creased by the severity of the climate, and the scanty population presented a very uninviting prospect for missionary enterprise. It was not till the tirae of Pastor Egede that any atterapt was made to ascertain the religious condition of the Eskimos, or to apply to their case the ameliorating influences of Christianity. At that tirae (172 1) they beUeved — as the "wild" Eskimos of the arctic regions do stUl — in the existence of two great and a number of inferior spurits. The chief 452 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. of these, " Tongarsuk," the great spirit, is supposed to give power to the " angerkok," or priest, who is the medium of communication between him and the people, by whora he is only known by name, which is never mentioned without becoming reverence. This great spirit is supposed to assume different forras, — at one time that of a man, at another that of a bear, while often he is spoken of as purely spirit. The other great spirit, supposed to' be the principle of evU, is repre sented as a female, but has no name. The angerkoks profess, by raeans of their famUiar spirit, to charm away bad luck frora the hunter, to change the weather, or to heal the sick. The lesser spirits are believed to control the different eleraents, and frora their ranks Tongarsuk selects the familiars for the priests. One of these lesser spirits, who ¦ rules the air, is supposed to be so vicious, that the Eskimos are loath to stir out after dark for fear of offending him. Egede found among these people some confused idea of a deluge ; but the tradition only existed in a vague and undefined form. They believed, to sorae extent, in the eternity of matter, having no idea of creation. They supposed the sun and moon' to be brother and sister, who having quarreUed, the sun bit off one of his sister's breasts ; and the maimed appearance presented by the moon is caused by her turning her wounded side to the earth. The aurora borealis is supposed to be the' game of "hockey," played by the departed spirits of their friends and relatives. Now, however, owing, under God, to the unwearied labours of the Danish and Moravian missionaries, these DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 453 superstitions are relics of the past Christianity, although in a low form, is the nominal religion of Greenland, and even the " angerkoks " profess to be converted.- I saw the last of this race — an Ul-looking man — who gave in his adherence to Christianity some time ago. At each settlement there is now a pastor, and also a schoolmaster, who is employed by Government to give the young Eskimos the rudiments of a good general education. I have frequently been surprised at the amount of information possessed by these children, some of whose pertinent answers to questions proposed might have put to the blush many of our own " national " scholars. They are also taught to sing when young; but as they pass beyond the control of the master before the complete formation of the voice, it is rare to meet with a bass or tenor singer. Occasionally a more culti vated person is raet. I reraeraber being introduced to an Eskimo young lady at Godhavn, Sophie, who sang very sweetly, played the flute, violin, and concertina ; and, besides speaking Danish fluently, had a tolerable acquaintance with English. Of course, this was a very exceptional case. Eveiy Sunday and hoUday, the Httle churches at the different settlements are filled with an Eskimo congre gation, and a sermon is preached, alternately in Danish and Eskirao. The effect of this is, that in Danish Green land, I believe, there is not one heathen reraaining. In Smith Sound, and on the western shores of Baffin's Bay or Davis Strait, the Eskimos are yet in the darkness of heathenism, and there are many " angerkoks," who believe all the superstitions I have mentioned ; but in 454 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Danish Greenland all these are abandoned, except a few customs which are followed more from habit than belief, and are not more absurd than raany which obtain in any country district in Great Britain or Ireland. From incidental reference to the social life of the Greenlanders, some idea wUl have been already gained of its nature. Filthy in his person and habits, and re gardless of the amenities of civUised Ufe, yet the Eskimo is not a savage, being possessed of a certain negative amiability of nature which would prevent his being placed in that category. On the whole, he behaves well in his social relations, — is a moderately affectionate son, hus band, and father. By the by, I did see one case where the husband, holding the wife by her top-knot, adminis tered several sound cuffs ; but I do not doubt that he had strong provocation. This was the only use to which I have seen the top-knot applied. The occupation of the Eskimos, though substantially the sarae throughout Greenland, differs soraewhat ac cording to the latitude. In South Greenland, it is seal- hunting and cod-fishing. Seated in his kajak, with his spear alongside, his coil of Hne in front, his sealskin buoy behind, two bird-spears on the upper part of the canoe, and his rifle inside, the hunter takes his departure, putting on a white calico juraper over his sealskin if he be likely to meet with ice. Paddle in hand, and gliding through the water at the rate of six mUes per hour, he soon sees a seal's head above the surface. Cautiously getting his spear ready, as he rests on his paddle, and clearing his line, he quietly foUows in the track of the animal, whose keenness of hearing obUges him to be as DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 455 noiseless as possible. Arrived within proper distance, he launches the spear, which striking the seal, leaves the harpoon-head sticking, and away go line, buoy, and prey. The buoy prevents the seal frora sinking too low, or swimming to any distance. If the wound be not fatal, the animal quickly rises to the surface to breathe, and, the spot being indicated by the buoy, the ready hunter, adroitly darting another spear, ultimately succeeds in his object Itis then hauled on the top of the kajak, or fastened alongside. The hunter is often content with killing one ; but should he meet with any piece of floating ice, knowing the propensity of the seal to bask and rest on these, he paddles up to them. The white jumper now stands him in good stead. The animal, aroused by the plashing of the paddle, rises on its hind flippers, gazes with its large, lustrous eyes at the kajak ; seeing the white surface, mistakes it for a piece of ice, and resumes its former position. The hunter now balances himself as well as possible, and, taking a good aim, fires, often killing the seal, but occasionally inflicting mere flesh wounds, or even missing his aim. In the first case only he obtains the object of his pursuit In Middle Greenland, the Eskimos add the pursuit of the deer, in the spring and autumn, to the two descriptions of hunting mentioned above. The hunters resort to the passes and valleys frequented by the deer; then lying in wait for the herd, they single out their garae, and either get it at once, or, wounding it, stalk as is done in Scotland. The numbers which are daily destroyed in this manner, during the season, are so great, that the natives often do not encumber themselves with anything but the skin and 456 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. the tongue, the latter being considered a delicacy ; they leave the bodies to go to waste. At times, however, the deer are very scarce. In North Greenland, besides seal-hunting and deer stalking the Eskimos are occasionally engaged in the chase of the walrus and the narwhal, (or sea-unicorn ;) but as the danger is great, the natives are loath to attack either single-handed. In one of the settleraents I met a man whose brother, having harpooned a walrus, was at once turned upon by the infuriated beast, who, in the sight of my informant, struck him in the back with his tusks, and killed him at one blow. This same man had another brother drowned in his kajak, after having har pooned a walrus. The line not being, clear, the animal, in sinking, dragged the canoe under water. Sometimes a gale off the land springs up whilst the hunter is out at sea. His only chance then is to raake for the nearest ice, and hauling his canoe upon it, to drift with it till the gale be over. This ice has at times, though rarely, drifted more than half way across Davis Strait. In case of such accident befalling the hunter, he subsists by seal-hunting tUl he reach the western shore, that being the land towards which he then steers his course. One instance I have myself met, and it may not be a singular one, in which an Eskimo was lost sight of for four to five years, his family believing him dead. At last, however, he was brought home by a whaling ship from England, whither he had been taken, after being picked up on the western shore of Davis Strait, where one of these gales had drifted him. The perils of such a life can hardly be appreciated. DA YS AND NIGHTS IN GREENLAND. 457 however, by the inhabitants of these islands, scene fol lowing scene of danger and privation. Even the ordinary conditions of existence in Greenland would be considered fearful hardships by those " gentlemen of England, who sit at home at ease." DAVID WALKER. XXIL AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. WAKING, as I supposed, from one of those short troubled sleeps which chequer the monotony of the less violent forras of sea-sickness, I heard, to my great delight, the bell at the wheel announce a far raore ad vanced hour of the moming than I could have hoped. Already the cool light was penetrating the thick glass in the porthole of mycabin. I rose,and slowlycrept on deck. It was as if the bitterness of death were past, and I had awaked in the new world. From the narrow grave of ray berth, filled with a close atmosphere and haunted by un pleasant noises and motions, I came forth in the midst of the wide sea and sky. Through the crowds of French soldiers and other passengers, I elbowed ray way to the wheel, and there finding an open space, I looked around rae. Speedily sped the vessel southwards, away frora the cold winds and frosts of a northern winter, whose ad vanced guard had overtaken us on our way, and kept us for days iraprisoned. But now we had escaped. And the AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 459 sun would soon rise, and by the time he should have reached the zenith we hoped to be at anchor in the port of Algiers. This morning was a new vision to me. Over us hung, or rather stooped, the sky of the south, a deep violet, with much of the red in it ; wherein the stars sparkled with a keen steely lustre, like spangles cut frora sword-blades. Underneath flowed the sea, with great dashes of purple upon a slate-blue, that swept and rolled and floated away to the east where the sky-sea, barred with orange and yellow, told that the sun was near. Two or three sea-birds were following close behind us ; and suddenly through the waves came a troop of porpoises, rushing along with wondrous speed; shooting out of one wave, and plunging headlong into the next ; gamboUing, and coursing, and bounding, as if trying their z«/z'«^ against. the steamer, and easily able to pass her if they chose. I thought what a delicious life they had of it in the waves, with their cool slippery sides, that were always wet ; and how they felt as much at horae in the water as we in the air, knowing it was their only element And then I began to pity them that they had only the Mediterranean to swim in, and were so unlikely ever to find the way out into the great world-sea. But I knew that this was only the longing for freedom in me, which can never be stiUed by limitless room, but must find the boundless in another region than that of space and time. At length the hills arose and drew near. Ere long we saw the white city built up the face of one of the low range — the Sahel that guards the coast ; from the sum mits of which the pirates used to search the face of the sea for the white-winged game, that so often fled in vain 46o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. before the swift hunters of the waves. Soon we were in the midst of swarthy visages and glowing eyes, that might well belong to the descendants of those terrible men ; and ere long, we were guided by one of them to a hotel in the principal place of the town, where, by and by, we contrived to forget the horrors of the steamer in the less, but not less real, horrors which raingle with the comforts of a French hotel. It was the end of Novera ber ; yet, invalid as I was, I dressed next morning with the window open. The day was so glowing, the air so clear, and the colours of sea and earth and sky were so intense, that the whole scene looked like one of those pictures one does not believe in. Across the still blue bay, we saw the purple hills which continue the range on which the city is built ; and beyond thera rose in the distance blue mountains, with snowy summits, around which we could see the tops of lower hills crouching like lions at their feet. Above all spread the cloudless blue. The square on which my window looked, and which, open on one side, revealed the scene of which I write, was crowded with a bewildering variety of the most brilliant costumes. The splendid dresses of Moors and Jews mingled with the numberless varieties of the uni forras of French soldiers ; while the rainbow mass was relieved by the graceful siraplicity of the Arab bemouse, and the mournful white ofthe shrouded Moorish women, who seeraed already half-buried from life and clothed in the garments of the grave — where, even if the spirit lingered by the mouldering form, they could scarce feel less lonely and hopeless than they at least appear to the eyes of the EngUah stranger. The whole was filled with AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 461 military noises, in which the kettledrum, with its terrier like alarum, took a foremost part, and soon wearied us with its regularly-recurring noisy monotony. Indeed, we were very soon sick of the turault, indoors and out, and longed for the seclusion of the country. From the sea, the outline of the city, lying on the slope of the hill, soraewhat resembles in forra one of the Moorish horseshoe arches, but bent outwards considerably at the heel — expanding, that is, when it reaches the raore level ground at the base ofthe hiU. The whole mass is of a dazzling whiteness, resembling the escarpment of a chalk hUl ; for twice a year they whitewash the whole of their houses outside and inside, to protect themselves from the heat, though thereby they expose themselves the more to the injurious effects of the light. Sorae of the principal streets, where the mortifying hand of the conquerors has been at work, are entirely French in their appearance ; but as soon as you turn southwards, and commence to climb one of the streets which lead up the hill, you find yourself in an entirely novel en vironment ; wandering in the labyrinth of an apparently endless accumulation of narrow streets, and Stairs, and passages, and archways, shooting off in all directions ; some ascending towards the sunlight as you hope, others appearing to dive into the earth; all narrow, many so narrow that a Uttle person could easily touch both sides at once; many arched over, and many roofed in by the contact of the projecting upper stories of the houses on opposite sides. The design is to exclude the sun in all ways. The rubbish can only be removed on the backs of donkeys, of which you may often meet a troop 462 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. in your way emerging frora what seems the entrance to a splendid mansion, or jolting along a squaUd lane three or four feet wide. But, although the streets are so narrow, it must not be supposed that the town is there fore as ill-aired as, with such appearances, an English one would be justly supposed to be : for inside every house — whose hea-vy door looks like that of a prison — in these narrow passages is a square court open to the heavens, so that " each has its own patch of sky and little lot of stars." Along these streets I much enjoyed wandering. Sortie of thera are full of workshops (little rooms, or scarcely more than closets) open to the street, above which they are soraetimes raised a few feet. In these the various trades go on — tailoring, shoemaking, turning, tobacco-cutting, and others. Conversations might easily be carried on across the streets between the different artisans. I used sometimes to stand and watch them at their work, and generally saw something to interest me. One time it was the extraordinary development and use of the great toe, supplying the place of a thumb on the turning-lathe — one hand being employed to turn the lathe with a bow, while the operator sat on the floor on a level with his machine. Another time it was the covering of a button with a network of silk, or a stitch new to rae in shoeraaking ; or the moulding of red clay- pipes ; or the scraping of the shell of a clurasy musical instrument, which looked like a dropsical guitar. But I had not much opportunity for making acquaintance with these streets ; for, after many faUures, we 'at. length suc ceeded in finding an appartement in a large Moorish house, belonging to a French officer, at the distance of AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 463 two mUes from the city; and here we settled down for the winter, exulting in the hope of privacy and leisure, with an open silence all around us, wherein the soul might feel that the whole external world is (as Schleierraacher says ) the extension of the human body, and might flow forth and occupy its dwelling without hindrance from contact with uncongenial forms. The room in which we sat had a low groined roof, with vaulted recesses on one side, in which we soon contrived to put a French piano, and on a chiffonier in the other a statuette of the Venus of Milo ; finding thus some relief to the pictur esque dulness of the room. The floor was paved with coloured tiles, rising a couple of feet up the walls ; but the entire absence of red in any combination prevented these tiles from continuing to please me much. Then the room was disfigured by a huge French stove in one of the small windows, which, when it becarae necessary to use it added much to our discomfort by smoking. But through our little windows we saw the Mediter ranean at a furlong's distance ; and when its sunny face drew us out to the Uttle terrace at the top of the entrance-stair, we were in the midst of a glowing world ; the great hills in the distance, like an infinite hope, and the air fiUed with the odours of citron and orange- blossoms. Here our days passed quietly. For some tirae the weather was warm enough to sit reading out of doors upon the rocky cliffs by^he tideless sea; on which, when you looked up from your book, you might see the boats of the country, with their elegant three- cornered latteen sails on the long slanting yard, bound ing before a breeze from the west, when the white water 464 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. is coming out of the black, as my little girl said. Or in one of those cloudy days, which were comparatively rare there, you might see these boats dreaming along over a floor of delicate silver-gray, turning up ever as they broke the surface, and leaving behind them a track of brilliant intense blue, corresponding to a belt of the sarae colour that circled the edge of the far horizon. Or, if the sun had gone behind the hills, and sea and sky built up one cavern of calm blue, you might catch the rosy glow of a single sail, which alone, in the midst of the prevailing blue, reflected the sunset red. But over all, I think the colours of this new land affected me most Yet there were no gorgeous sunsets, such as in our England, to crown earthly vapours with un earthly glory. The sky was too clear for those. The hills lying immediately behind us prevented our seeing the actual sunset, whereof the only noticeable sign in middle air might be a pale pink vapour, in the centre of which might sparkle one diamond star. Nor was there any common grass — no fields vrith thick carpets of grass, wherein even the foot has its own sensuous joy, and whereon you may cast yourself down in silence when the love of the earth becomes too strong for happiness. Only once did the feeling of earth's home liness enter my soul. It was an early spring night. A heavy dew falls at sundown, but after that it is often warm and dry. We had just left the house of sorae Scotch friends, who, like ourselves, had spent the winter there, and who long ere this had become dear to us. It was a night of stars. Venus was going down in the west in a triuraph of glory, flashing red, and AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 463 green, and blue, like a sea-beacon, through the refract ing strata of the lower atmosphere. The whole night- vault was filled with the roarings of the waves, which a wind, since dead, had aroused, and driven landward to rave on the rocky shore. And suddenly to my soul came a scent of earth, of damp spring earth, an odour well known from childhood, which calls up thoughts of love and the grave, and mingles with either kind, for they are not far apart Then I recognised the common mother — knew that England and Africa were of the same earth, and rejoiced that she bore me. But with the new year a stormy time began. For many, many weeks there was more or less rain every day, sometiraes, but rarely, continuous for two or three days, accorapanied by violent storras of wind and Ught ning. Then we could go out but little. We read, or sat and gazed through our tiny windows on the turraoil- of the sea. Far out frora the shore reached the white chaos of the breakers. In mingling shades of green, and yeUow, and white, barred and patched with the purple shadows of the clouds, the sea tossed and foamed beneath the wind, which tore the glassy tops of the biUows into hair-like spray. During this season you raight soraetimes see fine masses of cloud, but seldom such as, during thunderous weather, may be seen, like grotesque masses of half-finished sculpture, pUed in Titanic confusion and magnificence around our sky. The rain falls like a cataract Once I saw the finest, rainbow I have ever seen. It planted one end of its arch close beside us, b^ween us and the sea, and rose aloft and stretched away the other where we could not see it for the heights 2 G 466 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. around us. I never saw one come so near. It would have been easy to find the golden key at its foot this time. But what struck me most was the intensity of its chords of thick colour. A second larger arc appeared beyond it ; but its root was planted far out in the sea, and its hues were thin, and vague, and ghostly beside the glow of the nearer. , With the night carae often the lightning and the thunder. It was so dark without that to us looking frora within, the windows appeared solid as the waUs, when suddenly a sea and sky iraraense asserted them selves with a instantaneous illumination of existence in the soul, flashing themselves in through the narrow win-" dows — ;for a small opening adraits a great space ; then darkness followed, rent and billowed by the thunder. Such a stormy winter had not been known by any of the French inhabitants. Now and then I took a few hours' ride in the surround ing country, araong the low hiUs which crowd the coast. As there are but few large trees, and at this season little vegetation, the countrj- has in many parts rather a bare look, but in the gorges between the hills there are raany bushes and small trees. The most striking plants are the prickly-pear cactus and the aloe. This cactus forras a defence around and throughout the Arab vUlages. But what seemed to interest me raost was the Arab ceraeteries. One of the largest of these lay on the top and seaward slope of a hill, frora which the inhabitants of the near vUlage, a noted nest of pirates, used to search the sea for their prey. Of this viUage only raiserable huts reraain amidst the ruin of Moorish houses. The numberless AN INVALID 'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 467 graves with their tiny vertical stones lie broad and bare to the sea and the sky— unlike the greater number of their churchyards, which lie in groves of olive and other trees. Suddenly, when riding along a narrow bridle-path, you find yourself in the midst of one of these chambers of the dead ; and looking back you see, perhaps, that for some little way you have been riding through graves, crowded among the roots of the trees. Over the resting- places of their chief men they build sraall mosques, or, in some cases, mere low-roofed huts, but better than many of the dweUings of the living. I entered one of these, and found the floor filled with torabs, one appar ently very old ; and one or two in the usual form of the more elaborate tombs of the country, with a high ornamented stone at the head and feet,' connected by two long side-stones, across which were little shelves with hollows for water, and I think flowers. Some earthen lamps stood on the old tomb ; and babies' graves were near the door. It was a solemn place. The light through the rents in the walls or roof fell in faint brown patches on the earthen floor. This, and that which entered by the low ever-open door, was the sole sombre illumination of the place, which had a cathedral stiUness and sacredness about it, raingled with that feeling of faint desolation which in every land and under every forra the forsaken graves of raen and women awake in the heart But oftener I went into the city, never tired of looking at the varied huraan forms that met me on my way. One cannot help wondering, when he sees the little, jerky, self-asserting, tight-laced Frenchman beside the stately. 468 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. dignified, reserved, loose-robed Arab, how the former could ever assume and retain authority over the latter. I have seen a power of conterapt and repressed indigna tion in the half-sidelong look with which an -Arab in a ragged bemouse regarded a Frenchman, who had tapped him on the shoulder with a stick to attract his attention. There is something in the bearing and manners of the Arab significant, whether tmly or not, of a personal dignity far beyond that common to the German, or French, or English. Two of them came once to our residence to reraove our piano before we left, A great proportion of the heavy carriage in Algiers is done by the Arabs slinging the weight on a pole which rests on their shoulders. Our breakfast being stiU on the table, I asked them to sit down and have some coffee ; which they did without the least embarrassment, half-lounging on their chairs, and chatting away in bad French, aided by gesture, with a thoroughbred ease rarely to be seen in our own country. I was proud of them. Their religion teaches thera that in the sight of God they are all equal, and they seem tp believe it more at least than Chris tians do ; and this, combined with their fatalism, which naturaUy destroys all haste and perturbation, produces an indifferent stateUness of demeanour which many a man of Norman blood and fabulous origin might well envy. One or two of thera, whora I came to know a little, used always to shake hands with me after the English fashion. Indeed, they seem to like the English much ; Inglese bono are frequently the first words you hear from their lips. Some EngHsh ladies we know had favour shown thera to the degree of being perraitted to 'an INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 469 enter the mosques without putting off their shoes, being only required to wipe them very carefully on a mat brought thera for the purpose. I was ataused at being recognised in the streets as an Englishman, because I was partly dressed in the Highland costume. But, indeed, the Highlander is the type of the EngUsh soldier with thera. This notion the native African troops have brought back with them from the Crimea, ©"nee I was standing in the principal market-place, when one of a little group of French and Maltese about rae touched me and pointed to the sign of a cabaret opposite, upon which appeared a Highlander and a Zouave fraternising hand-in-hand. They seemed desirous I should acknow ledge the relationship. There are raany negroes amongst the inhabitants of Algiers — the young remarkable, if rarely for beauty of features, yet often for the fine formation of the Umbs, and for delicacy in the texture of the skin. The old, on the contrary, both in feature and limb, are something frightful. I feel almost guilty of inhumanity in writing it ; yet so they affected me. Some of the Jews likewise present as exaggerated forms of the features pecuUar to . their race as caricature could desire ; whUe the Jewesses are almost invariably unpleasant-looking. In Tangiers, on the contrary, where there is a mixture of Spanish blood in the race, the Jews are, I am informed, a very fine people. But in Algiers, from being constantly treated with all the distinctions of a separate and inferior race, they seem to have degenerated. To return to tbe negroes. From the fact that the Moors do not permit their young woraen to go to the raosque, and therefore. 470 PEEPS AT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. ' that their religious necessities are left unsupplied, some of the negresses have attained great influence over the Moorish women; seeraing, indeed, to occupy the posi tion of priestesses between thera and sorae good or bad power which they attempt either to propitiate or disarm by barbarous ceremonies. At certain wells on the coast negresses meet one day in every week, to sacrifice fowls and perforra other rites. To these asserablies sorae of the Moorish women repair, to have their faces laved in the holy water, and be fumigated by the negresses with incense. But on frequent occasions they assemble in an appointed house — that is, in the central open court of one of the Moorish dwellings, and any one may easily gain admittance. At one of these I was present, but I should not choose to go again ; it left such an impression of doleful, uninteresting horror. Nor were the perform ances at all such as to be worth describing. They con sisted chiefly of intense bewildering noise from half a dozen drums, as many iron castanets, and some other instruments, accorapanied at times with a most peculiar shrUl whistle, resembling that of a steam-engine, from one or other ofthe negresses, with which they used to excite others to join in the second principal part of the perform ance — naraely, a kind of frantic and degrading dance, in which at one tirae they threw theraselves heels over head on the ground, and at another crawled backwards, beating tirae with their hands on the paved floor ; or, again, belaboured themselves with ropes, and pretended to stab themselves with knives. Whenever any one seemed going too far, or likely to injure himself, another patted him on the back, and at once brought him to his AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 471 senses. At le'ngth, however, one or two were carried away senseless. This kind of perforraance, I understand, is usually kept up to a late hour ; and in many cases, when the excitement reaches its height, marvellous tricks of jugglery are said to be performed, though I witnessed none of these myself that were at all wonderful. But the soleranity of the countenances of the performers and the appearance of earnestness in their work, whUe it had soraething ludicrous in it, I yet found impressive and affecting. May it not be, I thought, that even in this there are the first rudiments of the expression of an unknown need ? — an inward prayer, that is yet so un defined as to take no erabodiraent in articulate sound, but utters itself in howls and artificial noises ? These too are the children of the one Father, and there raay be even in these orgies soraething of prayer that reaches the ear that listens not for the form of the words, but the utterance of the need. And I could not help collating these barbarities with sorae forms of Christian worship, good enough in theraselves, but which, when exalted into the place of essential duty, seeraed to me equally sensele'ss with these half-animal utterances, and far raore provoking, as being forced on the attention by persons whose appearance and developraent in other things seem to justify the expectatiori of something rauch further beyond their negro brothers^ and sisters. At these exhibitions raany Moorish woraen are present, but they take no other share in the performances than receiving every now and then what seems a benediction, in the form of being twisted by the shoulders from one side to the other and back, accompanied by other manipulations 472 PEEPS A T FOREIGN CO UNTRIES. from the negresses; and inhaling now and then the odours of the fumigations proceeding from an earthen sherd with live charcoal, on which incense is sprinkled, and held under their faces. Very different in purport and effect is the worship of the Mohammedans, to whom, however, the negroes belong, at least in narae, although the remnants of old superstitions yet retain a power over thera. One fine moonlight night, during the fast of Ramadan, my wife and I set out to walk to the town, that we might see the principal mosque Ughted up for worship. Such good order is preserved under the rule of the French, and such is the quiet behaviour of the inhabitants generally, that we were far safer in doing so than we should have been in the neighbourhood of any large town in our own country. The streets were beginning to be deserted as we went through. After passing along a blank wall, within a colonnade in one of the principal streets, for some distance, a gloomy-looking door in it, on being pushed open, admitted us into a kind of piazza, which ran round three sides of an open court. In this passage a fountain stood for the frequent washing enjoined by their law. The fourth side of the quadrangle was formed by the open arches of the roofed part of the mosque, which inner part seemed a much larger quadrangle than the outer, and was all divided into small square portions, by lines of pillars and arches intersecting each other at right angles. The arches running in one direction were all plain, those crossing thera ornamented by having the underside cut into many little arches. Along every avenue of pillars, running from the entrance inwards. AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA, 473 was suspended a row of oil-lamps, consisting of glass basins with floating wicks. These rows, when approach ing the opposite waU, began to ascend, and the lamps were carried gradually up the wall a short way, so as to give the appearance of a long perspective of lights. There were very few worshippers present, and these scattered in Uttie groups throughout the buUding, but mostly at the upper end, where we heard the low tones of the priest's voice, in listening to which the worshippers now stood, now kneeled, and now bowed low with their foreheads to the ground. Once or twice a Moor, who seeraed to have some charge in the observances, waived us away with dignity when he saw us ; but we moved to a different part of the building, and had no other inter ruption to our curiosity. But the most picturesque point of view was the exterior court. Here the moon shone clear into the court, her light faUing upon a large tree in the centre, around which clung the stem of a great vine. As we looked up we saw one of the towers of the mosque rising high above us into the night, ¦with the faint gliramer of the moonlight on the glazed tiles which ornamented it near the top, around which was disposed a coronal of dull lamps, like those in the mosque below, and which showed reddish in the pale moonshine. Then on the other side opened the wide, strong arches, with the long rows of lamps stretching far into the distance of the mosque. Stormy as the season was, the common red geranium had been in blossom in the hedges all the winter through. We had never been quite ¦without flowers ; but now, as the spring came on, the new chUdren of the year began 474 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. to arrive. I am no botanist, and my knowledge of the flowers is like my knowledge of the human kind. I have a few friends, a good many acquaintances — of sorae of whom I should be glad to be rid — and a vast raulti- , tude pass before my eyes whom I have not yet learned to like or dislike. Now, sometimes I come gradually to know and value a flower for what it is ; soraetimes I love one for the sake of its friends ; sometimes I fall in love with ope all at once for itself, with a love that never leaves me. It was a mingling of the latter two of these loves that arose in me when I saw first the splendid blue pimpernel of this country. I had been intiraately ac quainted with its red cousin in England ; and that feeling blended with the new love for the blue one. It grows to a great size on the sides of the hills facing the sea — that is, the largest are as large as a small primrose. They grow in great multitudes, and are of a deep burning blue, as an artist-friend styled it A slender, snaky, curled grass, that crept along the ground on the tops of the cliffs above the sea, and moved me with some feeUng of repugnance, came out in the spring" a delicate Uttle blue iris. Indeed, the iris is a coraraon flower here in all colours. A kind of asphodel is comraon in the fields, and the marigolds and lupins are likewise in great quan tities. The varieties of grasses are very strange and beautiful. The cactus flowers had only just begun to appear before we left; but the acacia blossoms were wondrously rich and lovely, and filled the air around our dwelling with their odours. For ten acacia-trees stood on a terrace by our door ; and pleasant it was, with the brilliant moon overhead, leaning down towards the earth, AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 475 to walk on this terrace, looking out over the Mediter ranean, and hearing the low talk of the sea and the shore, each a mystery to the other, sounding on far below. When the warmer weather arrived, I ventured inland as far as the town of Meddah, which lies high among the mountains. Two ladies and myself formed the party ; and, seated in the banquette of the diligence, traveUed with rauch enjoyment, first through the plain of the Metidja to Blidah, and next through the gorge of the Chiffah to Meddah. The day after our arrival in BUdah, we strolled out through the town, and soon found our selves in the market-place. Here one of my companions seated herself on a sack of com, and commenced sketch ing some of the Arabs present We left her surrounded by a group of twenty or thirty Arabs, one of whom, grinning with arauseraent, was half-leaning, half-lying, over another full sack, and presenting his handsome face for the exercise of her skill. In submitting without repugnance to this operation, these Arabs differed very much frora those in Algiers, who would rarely, frora religious scruples, (representations of the human form being conderaned by their prophet,) allow their portraits to be taken. Indeed, the same lady had, on one occa sion at least, caused the sudden dispersion of a group assembled round a cafe, by proceeding to sketch it from the opposite side of the street. They hurried on their shoes, rose from their varied postures, and escaped as from an evil eye. Here the men appeared more free, but the women, in one particular, at least, less so ; for, whereas in Algiers aU the Moorish women show both eyes, in the interior the Arab women gather the haik 476 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. around the whole face except one eye, ¦which you cannot see from the accumulated shade around it. You are hereby delivered, at least, from the sad expression of eyes which, whether from the effect of the setting of white, or from the mystery of concealment, appear in variably beautiful. These eyes are always dark; for, although I have seen blue eyes, on more than one occasion, shining out frora these veiled face.s, I was assured they must belong to women of Turkish and not Arab descent How strange some of our fair Saxon woraen would look in the streets of Algiers ! for the French women are generally dark, too. But the dress of the countrywomen is very inferior, of course, to that of those living in the towns. Though when in the street the latter are dressed entirely in white, you can see through their thin upper garments the shining of their gold and blue or red girdles ; and the garments are so white that they look ghostly. If you were to see one at the end of a deep narrow passage, emerging from a yet deeper gloom behind, especially if at night and in the moonshine, you would think of a wanderiftg ghost, or the raising of the sheeted dead. But in the country they seem to dress in the same kind of wooUen stuff that the men wear. To return, however, to the morning in question. My other companion and I went outside one of the gates of the town, and seated ourselves on the grass. She commenced sketching, and I began to write a note. A little group soon gathered round us, of which two or three were native soldiers in the French array. With one of these, a fine-looking young fellow, who had been in the Crimea, I soon made friends, by AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 477 asking him to give me a cigarette ; the most common way of smoking tobacco here, out of doors, being to twist up a Uttle in paper prepared for the purpose. He granted my petition with the greatest alacrity ; and, having prepared the cigarette, proceeded — by inserting a corner of his handkerchief, which had no hem on it, in one df his percussion-caps, and scratching the powder at the bottom with the picker of his musket — to get rae a light He asserted the brotherhood of the English and the Africans, by laying his two forefingers together, and saying in French that they were all the same. I managed to have a Httle talk with hira in French ; after which we exchanged two sraall coins in memoriam, and he presented me with a Turkish one in addition. He then left me, but soon returned, bringing a beautiful bunch of roses, dripping with water, which he gave me. Something within me said, and says yet, we shall meet again. When we rejoined our companion, whom we left in the market, she told us that after she had finished her sketching, and was going away, one of the Arabs ran after her, and offered her three sous. She asked one who understood French what he meant by it. He said it was to get a cup of coffee with. Their own woraen have no raoney, and he had supposed the English woraen have none either, and wished to show her this hospitality. The gorge of the Chiffah is threaded by a fine road, one of the many the French have made in Algeria running along the sides of the mountains, often at a considerable height above the bed of the river. Along the most difficult part of this road, with no parapet on 478 PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES, the precipitous descent, and with very abrupt turns, we were driven by a heavy-browed, sullen-faced Moor, the only Moor I remember to have seen driving. To his muscular arm the seven horses he had in hand seemed no raore than his four to one of our English coachmen. This part ofthe journey was very fine, especially one portion, which was crowded on both sides of the ravine with waterfalls of every kind. One of these was very peculiar. It appeared to come right out of the face of the precipice, and after running a little way down, again disappeared, as if it had run back into the rock frora which it had sprang. Lovely ferns grew on the sides of the rocks, constantly splashed and dripping with the clear water that ran frora above. ¦¦ Though I dislike minute descriptions of scenery, and desire, with Jean Paul, that my friend should have the power of seeing Nature in large masses, yet sometiraes the most intense enjoyment flows from no more than a cubic foot of the earth's bulk. I reraeraber one little insignificant hollow, buUt of rough stones, and roofed over with a stone, in side which tumbled and gurgled, and murmured, and glided (I wish I might use the preterite glode) adown the three feet of its height, a plenteous cataract of clear, wUling water ; and all the sides of the tiny cavern were draped and purfled, and waved with the maiden-hair fern, with its black stalks and trembUng leaflets. But no descriptive arrangement of scenery is of much use. A single unexpected flash of words may now and then throw a real feeling of the scenery on the mind ; but the iraagination, generally outrunning the intellectual recep tion of a description, arranges at its will the component AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA. 479 elements of the scene, which afterwards refuse to be dis placed, even when the mind is better informed. Indeed, a composition painted to express the general feeling pro duced in the artist's mind by any landscape, may do more to give a real irapression of the nature of a country in its relation to the higher eleraents of our being, than the raost laborious portrait of real scenes in it, indispensable as these are to a perfect understanding of the whole ; because the state of rainute observation, the tension of the mind in attending, is inimical to those influences of the whole, which need for their perfection a lake-like calmness and passiveness of the spirit. It seemed to rae noticeable that both on my com panions and myself, the hot south wind from the desert, which prevailed during our short stay at Med^ah, pro duced effects simUar to those occasioned by a cold east wind at home. At length the time came for our return to green grass, and large trees, and grey skies, and the increasing turmoil of confused and confusing progress. On a bright African noon we embarked on board a French steamer for MarseUles. I must mention one raan, whose acquaintance I made for the short time it took to cross the Mediterranean and pass the custom-house at Mar seUles. We happened to be seated beside each other at the table d'hbte of the steamer. I was struck with his Scotch look, and so" were others on board. He had nothing of French about him to the eye, only the ear recogriised him as a Frenchman. His motions were British, and he even spoke French with more delibera tion than his countrymen. But he spoke English well 48o PEEPS A T FOREIGN COUNTRIES. though he had never been in England, and had only commenced learning it when at the age of forty-five. He was now sixty-three. I asked him if he had read Tennyson. He said he had not, though he had his works on his bookshelves. " My name," said he,- " is Tennyson, only spelled with an e instead of a y. My grandfather used to tell me that we were of Scotch descent, and thaf our family came over to France with Jaraes II." A most benevolent old man he seemed, attentive and kind to everybody. I happened to express a hope that they would not detain us long at the custom-house, else we should lose the train we wished to go by : which was of some consequence to me, as my purse was nearly empty, and I could not get it replenished before reach ing Paris. He said, " I shaU be happy to lend you some ; make yourself quite easy about that." And this, though our routes diverged as soon as we reached our port, and I do not know that he even knew my name. He helped us through the custom-house, got a carriage for us, and sent us away with kindness. His benevo lence had a happy combination of Scotch solidity and French politeness. And now we hastened northward towards our own island ; and the skies rose higher, and the stars were paler and further apart, and more of mystery brooded in the wastes of heaven. For we drew nearer to that region of' the North where the old hero, weary that the skies rested on the earth, pushed them aloft, that men might have room to live and labour. And so more of mystery in the aspect of the heavenly deeps dwells above the heads of the men who toil and struggle; than over the more noble AN INVALID'S WINTER IN ALGERIA, 481 forms of those who lead an incurious and easy life, wait ing only for what will come, and never asking what it may be. And if the more busy and earnest had purer faith in the Father of all, a yet more noble and more dignified repose would pervade the spirit, and, working outwards, impart to the visible form a greater majesty of composure than that produced by the unquestioning fatalism of the Arab. GEORGE MAC DONALD. THE END. I'RINTED HY HALLANTVNE AND COMPANV EDINBURGH AND LONDON BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG. At the Back of the , North Wind. By George MacDonald. ¦With Illustrations i>y Arthur Hughes Cloth, gilt extra, crown Svo, 7s. 6d. The Boy in Grey. By Henry Kingsley. With Illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. Evenings at the Tea-Table. With Illustrations. Square 32mo. 3S. 6d. Chamber Dramas for Children. By Mrs George MacDonald. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d. Heroines in Obscurity. A Second Series of Papers for Thoughtful Girls. By Sarah Tvtler. Crown Svo, cloth, gilt extra, 55. Banald Bannennan's Boyhood. By George MacDonald. With Illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 5s. Lilliput Lectures. By the Author of " Lilliput Levee." With Illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Square Bvo, cloth, gilt extra, ss. BOOKS FOR BOYS. In Handsome Bindings, with numerous Illustrations. Crown Svo, Price 3s. 6d. each. Famous Ships of the British Navy ; or. Stories of the Enterprise and Daring of British Seamen. By W. H. Davenport Adams. Now or Never ; or. The Trials and Adventures of Frederick Lons dale. By Charles Beach. Romantic Tales from English History. By May Beverley. The Tiger Prince: Adventures in Abyssinia. By William Dalton. Friendly Hands and Kindly Words. Stories of Kindness, Perse verance, and Little Helps. Winter Evenings ; or, Tales of Travellers. By Maria Hack. Grecian Stories. By Maria Hack. Heroines of the Household. By the Author of " The Heavenward Path." •Foxholme Hall, and other Tales. By W. H. G. Kingston. The Pirate's Treasure, and other Tales. By W. H. G. Kingston. Harry Skipwith. By W. H. G. Kingston. Noble Boys: Their Deeds of Love and Duty. By William Martin. The Holy Land, Past and Present, Sketches of Travel in Pales tine. By the Rev. H. S. OsBORN, M.A. Tales of Chivalry and Komance. By D. M. Smith. The Wave and the Battlefield: Adventures by Sea and Land. By Mrs L. Stewart. Tales of Many Lands. By M. Fraser-Tytler. STRAHAN & CO., 56 LUDGATE HILL. if''