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Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 740, March 2, 1878

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers
        William Chambers

Release date: July 2, 2020 [eBook #62545]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, NO. 740, MARCH 2, 1878 ***




Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

NO. 740.      SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1878.      PRICE 1½_d._]




THE GAELIC NUISANCE.

SECOND ARTICLE.


A few months ago, in an article entitled ‘The Gaelic Nuisance,’ we
endeavoured to point out the impolicy of fostering Gaelic as the
vernacular tongue in the Highlands and Islands. Our observations were
variously received. Many approved of the article; by some it was
apparently misunderstood. On this latter account, we return to the
subject, in the hope of removing such misapprehensions as may happen
to exist. This time, at anyrate, we shall take care to be perfectly
explicit as to our meaning.

In the article referred to, we offered no objection to the use of
Gaelic, provided the young were brought up with a knowledge of English.
That was distinctly our contention, and we believe that such is the
opinion of all who think seriously on this important question. We
therefore repeat in terms on which nothing but perversity can put a
wrong construction, that the fostering of Gaelic to the exclusion of
English—for it practically comes to that—is a grave error; it is a
cruelty which merits exposure and reprobation. Why it is a cruelty is
very clear. As previously stated, the use of Gaelic as the only known
vernacular, keeps large numbers of poor people ignorant, it usually
fixes them to their place of birth, and accordingly excludes them
from earning their bread in the general competition of the world. It
is very easy for enthusiasts living at a respectful distance to write
in glowing terms about the antiquity of Gaelic, about the wonderful
beauty of Gaelic poetry, about the philological value of Gaelic
phraseology, about the satisfaction of being able to speak Gaelic as
well as English. These are not the points in dispute. Let people, if
they will, and if they can afford the expense, learn to speak and read
Gaelic supplementary to English, just as many of us learn to speak
and read French or German. The more languages that can be acquired
the better. About that there is no contention. What we deem to be
a scandal and a cruelty is the practice of rearing, or allowing to
grow up, groups of children with a knowledge of no other language
than Gaelic; the consequence being that they are for the most part
condemned to life-long poverty and ignorance. And that is what is done
through the mistaken policy of it may be well-meaning sentimentalists
and philanthropists, who are seemingly unaware of the misery they
are helping to perpetuate. The English language, like the laws and
constitution of the country, is a common heritage, in which every child
has a claim to be instructed, so that all may be qualified to perform
such duties as fall to their lot. Is it not, then, shocking to find
groups of old and young scattered about the Highlands and Islands who
cannot speak a word of English, and who cannot so much as sign their
names? We might almost say they have no more knowledge of newspapers,
or of English literature generally, than the lower animals, amidst
which in dreary solitudes they hopelessly pass their existence.

The Highlanders have scarcely had justice done to them. They possess
characteristics of a noble race. Faithful, honest, and steady in
civil life. Valorous as soldiers. Peaceful and law-abiding in a very
extraordinary degree. Those among them who by some good fortune quit
their native glens and mix with the Lowland population, speedily learn
English, and are able to converse as fluently in that language as in
their native Gaelic. In fact, wherever they are brought in contact
with English-speaking neighbours, they manifest no mental deficiency.
In many instances they have attained to eminence. Only where they are
habitually neglected, and left in untoward circumstances to vegetate
in primitive ignorance, do they shew anything like laziness, and
an indifference to improvement. From all we happen to know of the
Highlanders, they only need to be put in the way of being cultivated by
education and contact with the outer world.

In hinting at educational deficiencies we tread on tender ground. There
is an Educational Act applicable to the whole of Scotland, whether
the mainland or islands. No spot is exempted from the operation of
a school-board. Although the Act was passed in 1872, it appears from
one cause or other that there are districts where no schooling is
available, and children are suffered to run about wild. In an article
in the _Scotsman_ newspaper of January 5, 1878, a correspondent writing
on the wretched condition of the Highland ‘crofters,’ or occupants of
small patches of land, refers to the educational deficiencies in the
parish of Barvas, on the west coast of Lewis. Here is what he says:
‘At present, the children know not a syllable of English; the women
and thirty per cent. of the men are as ignorant; and twenty per cent.
of the people married cannot sign their marriage papers. One thing
certain is that the people are themselves totally unprepared for the
good that the Act is expected to do them; and that it will be only by
means of vigilant compulsory officers that its full operation will
be secured. In the meantime the schools in the parish have not been
opened; and ragged boys and girls hang about on the moor all day long
herding cattle, or idle near the wayside in companies of threes and
fours, holding fast by tethers, at the ends of which small melancholy
lambs are grazing.’ What a picture of primitive rural life! Education
practically non-existent. The compulsory provisions of the School Act
in a state of abeyance!

The island of St Kilda, to which we called attention, exhibits a small
population with no means of learning English, and who for religious
instruction in Gaelic are wholly dependent on the Rev. John M’Kay, a
minister appointed by the Free Church. This worthy individual, who is
a bachelor of advanced age, and whom, by mistake, we spoke of as being
married, can speak and read English; but with the exception of the
imported wife of one of the natives, he is the only individual on the
island who can do so, and acts as a general interpreter on the occasion
of visits from strangers. There is no school in the island, nor is
there any attempt to teach English. Is this a condition of things which
commends itself to philanthropists?

In a handsomely printed and illustrated work, _St Kilda Past and
Present_, by George Seton, Advocate (Blackwood and Sons), 1878, there
is an effective reference to the want of education in the island of St
Kilda. ‘Probably,’ says this observant writer, ‘the most beneficial
influence that could be brought to bear upon the St Kildans would be
of an educational kind. Through the instrumentality of the Harris
school-board or otherwise, an energetic effort ought to be made to
introduce a systematic course of instruction in English, with the view
of the inhabitants enjoying the vast benefits which would inevitably
ensue. At present, they are not only cut off from regular communication
with the mainland, but in consequence of their ignorance of the
language of the United Kingdom, they are debarred from the means of
enlarging their minds, and subverting their prejudices, by the perusal
of English literature. A recent number of _Chambers’s Journal_—to
which every English-speaking section of the globe owes such deep
obligations—contains an admirable article, from the pen of the veteran
senior editor, on the subject of “The Gaelic Nuisance,” to which I
venture to call the attention of all who are interested in the future
welfare of the inhabitants of St Kilda. The writer points to Galloway
on the one hand, and to the Orkney and Shetland Islands on the other,
as illustrative examples of the blessings which have flowed from the
substitution of English for Gaelic and Norse respectively; and in the
course of his remarks he makes special allusion to St Kilda.’

Thanking Mr Seton for this acknowledgment of the correctness of our
views, we pass on to a note lately received from a sheriff-substitute
in a Highland county. He says: ‘Allow me to thank you for your article
in the last part of _Chambers’s_ entitled “The Gaelic Nuisance.” I have
resided here for several years, and am convinced that the civilisation
of the Highlands is impossible so long as Gaelic continues to be the
language of the common people. I hope your article will open the eyes
of common-sense people to the necessity of abolishing Gaelic as a
spoken language, by the substitution of English.’

A gentleman connected by heritage with one of the outer Hebrides, sends
us a note, in which, after commenting on the grotesque objections
that had been made to our article, he observes: ‘We all understand
now—though a few may deceive themselves and others—that man is not
made for language, but language for man. We Highlanders are determined
to adopt the current language, just as we have adopted the current coin
of the realm.’ This is plain speaking; and we hope that the writer,
using the power which his position gives him, will in his own locality
see that the children are taught to read and understand English; such,
in our opinion, whatever others may think, being only a simple act of
justice.

In our former article we alluded to the case of Wales, in which
large numbers are as unhappily excluded from a knowledge of the
English language as are many of the Gaelic-speaking population of the
Highlands. We are glad to see that this deficiency is beginning to
attract attention, for reasons similar to those we employ. Recently
at a large meeting in connection with the Welsh Church in Chester,
presided over by the Bishop of Chester, as reported in _The Times_,
Jan. 10, the Dean of Bangor, in speaking of Wales, remarked: ‘Wales was
in a certain extent backward. In the power of influencing those outside
their own country, they were behind England, Scotland, and Ireland,
simply because their language excluded them from making their thoughts
and views known to those of different nationality.... He ventured to
hope that the day was rapidly approaching when every Welshman would be
able to use the English language.’ Such a public acknowledgment as this
is eminently satisfactory. It shews moral courage in combating popular
prejudice. We should like to see Highland proprietors quite as openly
avowing that it was time every Gaelic-speaking child ‘was able to use
the English language.’

The most conclusive evidence that could be advanced respecting the
serious disadvantage of maintaining Gaelic as an exclusively common
language is that offered by Mr Simon S. Laurie, the accomplished
Professor of Education in the University of Edinburgh, who lately
delivered an Address on the subject of Education in the Highlands.
According to a newspaper report of his address, he said in reference to
the Highlanders: ‘One thing needful was to secure for them freedom of
locomotion; so that when the pressure on one district became too great,
the people might move to another. Without a knowledge of the English
language, the country of the Highlander was bound round him as with
a brazen wall. He need not try to get out of it, because his native
language put him at such a disadvantage with other men that he had no
chance against them.... There was no doubt that the teaching of Gaelic
should be subordinate to the teaching of English. If they trained a boy
in a Highland school to read, write, and speak Gaelic, what were they
to do with him? How would we like to be in that position ourselves?
Fancy a boy at the age of fifteen or sixteen able only to point out
in Gaelic to a stranger the way he should take; would they not find
that he had been miseducated—in fact cut off from being a member of
the British Empire altogether? At the same time, while he held that,
he was of opinion that they could not teach English to the Highlanders
well except through the Gaelic. The Highland children learned very
quickly—more quickly than the Lowland children—they could soon read
with perfect fluency such a book as M’Culloch’s _Course of Reading_,
and yet not understand a single word; shewing that they would not learn
English well except through Gaelic. The aim of the whole teaching
should be to make the pupils thoroughly acquainted with English.’

With such a concurrence of evidence, and with the knowledge that there
is a School Act of six years’ standing, why, it will be asked, are
children in the Highlands and Islands still left to remain untaught in
the elements of education? That is a question that could perhaps best
be answered by the Education Board for Scotland. We can only conjecture
that the educational deficiency in various quarters is due to the
difficulty, for pecuniary reasons, in establishing and maintaining
schools on a proper footing consistently with the obligations of the
statute. Mr Laurie mentions that the school-rates press with a severity
which in some places is perfectly paralysing. ‘In Shetland, for
example, the School Boards were brought to a stand-still. They could
not face a rate of four shillings a pound; the same proprietors having
to pay not less than four shillings a pound for poor-rate and other
burdens besides.’ This agrees with what we have privately heard of
Shetland, where the rates of one kind or other very nearly swallow up
the whole rental drawn by proprietors. Mr Laurie states emphatically
as to this difficulty of school-rates, that ‘unless the government paid
what was necessary above fifteen-pence per pound, the Highlands and
Islands would not have the full benefit of the Act of 1872.’

Evidently, the School Boards, notwithstanding their comprehensive and
compulsory powers, are unable to plant and sustain schools in all
quarters where required. The difficulty, it is observed, is financial.
Let us instance the island of St Kilda. Its inhabitants are said to be
seventy-six in number, while the annual rent exigible by the proprietor
is somewhere about a hundred pounds, payable in kind. How can the
School Board of Harris, with which the island is connected parochially,
be expected to build a school and sustain a schoolmaster for the
benefit of so small a population, in which there are perhaps only a
very few children of school age? To build a school of the ordinary
authorised type would cost at least six hundred pounds. And the payment
of a teacher with other expenses would amount to one hundred pounds a
year. The organisation of a school on this footing would go far beyond
what is desirable or what could be asked for from either the state or
the ratepayers.

A consideration of the financial difficulty leads to the conviction
that something very much less costly than the present school
organisation must in many parts of the Highlands be attempted, if the
children are to get any education at all. Mr Laurie very properly
remarks that children ‘would not well learn English except through the
Gaelic;’ meaning by this, we suppose, that the teacher would require
through the agency of Gaelic to explain the meaning of English words.
That surely would not be difficult to accomplish; nor would it be
unreasonable to establish schools on a much more modest footing than
those latterly sanctioned by School Boards. The Scotch were long
accustomed to see a very humble class of schools in secluded rural
districts. Often, these schools consisted of cottages of not more than
two apartments, one of which constituted the dwelling of the teacher.
These cottage schools were conducted at an exceedingly small expense,
yet they answered their purpose. Neither dignified nor imposing, they
were useful. They imparted to the few children in their respective
neighbourhoods a knowledge of letters. We are inclined to think that
a modification of this kind would solve some existing difficulties as
concerns the establishing of schools among the sparse population of the
Highlands and Islands. In short, it would be well to legalise a minor
or sub-class of schools, to be conducted at a small cost, designed to
effect a particular purpose, namely, that of communicating a knowledge
of the English language to large numbers of poor children who are at
present growing up in ignorance of any spoken tongue but their native
Gaelic, and who, in many cases, as is seen, have no education whatever.

We hope the nature of our pleading is no longer misunderstood. It is,
that all Gaelic-speaking children may in some shape or other be taught
to read and understand the language common to the United Kingdom.
There may be some statutory obstacles in the way. There should be none
in the light of humanity and common-sense. Perhaps we may return to
the subject. Considering that the welfare of successive generations
of helpless beings is concerned, the subject is too momentous to be
lightly treated, or to be swept aside by casual gusts of delirious
opposition.

        W. C.




HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.

CHAPTER XIII.—FATHER AND SON.


Sir Sykes was a weak man, and there are few readier elements of
mischief than that of a weak man in a strong place—meaning thereby a
position where there is authority to be abused. Some of the world’s
worst tyrants have been emphatically weak, mere spiteful capricious
children grown to man’s estate, and indued respectively with all the
powers of the purple, the royal jika, and the triple tiara. But then
the mighty system which they, unworthy, swayed, resembled some gigantic
engine put into motion by the idle touch of a truant urchin’s hand, and
crushing all resistance by the resistless force of its swaying levers
and grinding wheels.

A Devonshire baronet, in common with baronets elsewhere, does expect
to be to a certain extent the petty autocrat of his own fields and
hamlets, to find that there are those who court the great man’s
smile and tremble at his frown, and to hold rule within strictly
constitutional limits over the dwellers on his land and the inmates
of his house. The melancholy which had become a part of Sir Sykes
Denzil’s inner nature, and the indolence which had gradually incrusted
him, had prevented the lord of Carbery from asserting in practice the
prerogatives which he knew to belong to him in theory. Thus he did
not really administer patriarchal justice on his estate, as some hale
landlords do. His bailiff decided which labourers should be employed,
which dismissed, and what wages should be allotted to crow-boys and
weeding-girls. The steward arranged as to the barns to be rebuilt, the
repairs to be granted or refused, the rent of whose cottage was to be
forgiven, or which arrears were to be sternly exacted. Poachers whom
the head-keeper did not like, found Sir Sykes’s vicarious wrath make
the parish too hot to hold them, while luckier depredators wired hares
unpunished.

The part of a _roi fainéant_ suited better with Sir Sykes Denzil’s
languid habits than they did with his tolerably active mind. He was
well aware that the lethargy of King Log is always supplemented by the
not wholly disinterested activity of King Log’s zealous ministers, and
had formed frequent resolutions as to taking into his own hands the
reins of government and becoming in fact as well as in name the lord of
the manor—of six manors indeed, of which Carbery was the chief. These
resolutions had never been acted upon; but Sir Sykes had always been
able to lay to his soul the flattering unction that it rested with him
alone to choose the time for realising them.

The events of the last few weeks had given some rude shocks to the
baronet’s indolent self-complacency. He had been threatened with
consequences of which he, and he alone, could thoroughly comprehend
the direful nature, and he had been forced to a series of compliances,
each of which had degraded him in his own eyes. He had borne with the
cynic effrontery of the sailor Hold. He had beneath his roof, seated
at his table, in constant association with him and his, an unbidden
guest. Mr Wilkins he had, through an unlucky chance, encountered, and
instantly the fetters of a new vassalage appeared to be fastened on his
reluctant limbs. And he owed this fresh humiliation to the misconduct
of his own son!

Sir Sykes was very angry as he quitted No. 11 to seek out the chamber
in which Jasper lay, so angry that his temper overmastered for the
moment both the pleadings of natural affection and the instinct of
caution. He laid his hand brusquely on the door of the room which had
been pointed out to him as that to which Jasper had been conveyed, and
was about to enter, with small regard to the nerves of the invalid
within, when he felt a grasp upon his sleeve, and turned to be
confronted by the wiry figure, anxious face, and bead-like black eyes
of little Dr Aulfus.

‘Excuse me. Sir Sykes Denzil, unless I am very much mistaken?’ said
the doctor, taking off his hat with such an air, that Sir Sykes,
irritable as he was, felt compelled to acknowledge the bow. ‘Allow me
to introduce myself: Dr Aulfus, Benjamin Aulfus, Ph.D., M.D., M.R.C.S.
of Heidelberg, Edinburgh, and London respectively. We never chanced,
before to-day, Sir Sykes, to come personally into contact, and I regret
that the occasion of our first interview should be so sad a one.’

During this speech, the doctor’s eyes had taken stock as it were of Sir
Sykes’s aspect, and had read the signs of anger in his knitted brows
and quivering mouth as accurately as a mountain shepherd discerns the
portents of the coming storm. Nor was the reason far to seek. Gossip
had been busy, of course, with the private affairs of so exalted a
family as that which dwelt at Carbery Chase; and Sir Sykes would have
been astonished to hear at how many minor tea-tables the surgeon—for,
his medical diplomas notwithstanding, Dr Aulfus was consulted nineteen
times out of twenty as a general practitioner—had listened while
Captain Denzil’s debts and his father’s displeasure were freely
canvassed.

Of the arrival of Mr Wilkins and of the acceptances which the lawyer
held, the little man of healing could of course know nothing. But he
shrewdly surmised that Jasper had staked all that he could scrape
together, and probably more, on the event of the desperate race which
he had ridden on that day, and that his pecuniary losses had provoked
the indignation of Sir Sykes, already smarting under recent sacrifices.

‘You are very good, sir; I shall see my son, and then’——

Sir Sykes had got thus far in his speech, attempting the while to brush
past the doctor, when he found himself gently but resolutely repulsed.

‘Now, Sir Sykes,’ said the little man, interposing his diminutive
person between the tall baronet and the door, as some faithful dog
might have done, ‘pray have patience with me. Captain Denzil is my
patient. He has sustained severe injury, the precise extent of which it
is impossible yet for science to determine, and I am responsible for
his safety, humanly speaking—the pilot, in fact, with whom it rests to
bring him into port. We have just succeeded, by the help of an opiate,
in inducing sleep. It will not last long, on account of the smallness
of the dose. But it is of the utmost consequence that it should not be
broken; and in fact, Sir Sykes, my patient is my patient, and I must
protect him even against his own father.’

These last words were uttered in consequence of a renewed attempt on
the baronet’s part to force a passage, and the persuasive tone in which
they were spoken contrasted oddly with the firmness of the doctor’s
attitude.

‘Really, Mr Aulfus,’ said Sir Sykes, half apologetically, half in
dudgeon; but the other cut him short with: ‘Excuse me, Sir Sykes. _Dr_
Aulfus, if you please. It is perhaps the weakness of a professional
purist, but I do like to be dubbed a doctor; as your noble neighbour
and connection, the Earl, no doubt has a preference for the title of
“My Lord.” It has cost me dear enough, sir, that handle to my name;
kept me, I may safely say, out of a good four hundred a year of
practice I might have had, since old women and heads of families are
shy of sending for a regular physician; and that’s why such fellows as
Lancetter at High Tor, and Druggett the apothecary in Pebworth High
Street, rattle about the county, feeling pulses and sending out physic,
when a man who has more learning in his little finger than—— You
smile, sir; and indeed I was unduly warm. No selfish love of lucre,
believe me, prompted my remarks, but a sincere scorn for the prejudices
and gullibility, if the word be not too strong, of our Devonshire
Bœotians.’

By this time the doctor had succeeded in getting Sir Sykes into a
neighbouring room, the door of which stood invitingly open, and thus
securing the sleeper against the chance of being rudely awakened
from his slumber. The baronet too had employed a minute or two in
reflections which shewed him how unseemly was the part which he had
been about to play, while some dim consciousness that it was unfair to
visit on Jasper the unwelcome recognition and jocular impertinence of
Mr Wilkins, began to creep into his perturbed mind.

‘You forget, Dr Aulfus,’ he said mildly enough, ‘that I have as yet
heard no details as to the injuries which my son has sustained. They
are not, I apprehend, of a very serious or indeed dangerous character?’

‘Umph! Dislocation of right shoulder, now reduced, but attended with
much pain; severe contusion on temple; some bad bruises, and complete
prostration of nervous system from the stunning blow and violent
concussion of spinal cord,’ dryly rejoined the doctor, summing up the
facts as though he had been a judge putting the pith of some case
before a jury. ‘These are all the results that I know of’—— And he
paused, hesitating, so that Sir Sykes for the first time felt a genuine
twinge of alarm.

‘Have you any suspicion, doctor, that there is something worse than
this?’ he asked, drawing his breath more quickly.

‘I don’t know. I hope not,’ returned Dr Aulfus thoughtfully. ‘Our
knowledge after all is but cramped and bounded. I remember once at
sea (I was assistant-surgeon in the navy and also on board Green’s
Indiamen, before I graduated in medicine) seeing a look in the face of
a young sailor who had fallen from the mizzen shrouds to the deck, very
like what I saw, or fancied I saw, in Captain Denzil’s face to-day.
But that was a fall, compared with which even the accidents of a
steeplechase are trifles,’ added the doctor more cheerfully, and with
an evident wish to change the subject.

‘It is a mad sport, taken as a form of excitement,’ said Sir Sykes,
his resentment beginning to turn itself towards the institution of
steeplechasing; ‘worse still, when mere greed actuates the performers,
brutal curiosity the spectators.’

‘I quite agree with you, Sir Sykes, quite,’ chimed in the doctor, with
a bird-like chirrup of acquiescence. ‘The mob, my dear sir, whether in
decent coats or in torn fustian, is animated by much the same spirit
which caused the Roman amphitheatre to ring with applause as wild
beasts and gladiators, pitted against one another in the arena, stained
the sand with’——

Here Captain Prodgers came in on tiptoe to say that Jasper was awake
and sensible; that he had twice asked if his father had not yet
arrived; and that he, Prodgers, had volunteered to make inquiries,
and hearing the sound of voices as he passed the half-closed door,
had entered. ‘You, Sir Sykes, I have had the pleasure of meeting once
before—at Lord Bivalve’s, in Grosvenor Place,’ he said with a bow.
‘Captain Prodgers of the Lancers,’ he added, by way of an introduction.
The baronet returned the bow stiffly. He had some recollection of
Captain Jack’s jolly face beaming across the Bivalve mahogany; but he
felt anything but well disposed towards the owner of Norah Creina and
the man who had led his son into the present scrape.

‘A friend of my son’s, I am aware,’ said Sir Sykes half bitterly.

‘And I am afraid, “Save me from my friends,” is the saying just now
uppermost in your mind, Sir Sykes,’ returned Captain Prodgers. ‘But
I do assure you that, hard hit in the pocket as I have been in this
precious business, I’d sooner have lost the double of my bets, than
have seen that poor fellow knocked about as he has been. I’m no
chicken, and sentiment don’t come natural to me, but I give you my word
that had the tumble turned out as bad as I feared it would when first I
saw it, I should—never have forgiven, myself, that’s all.’ Having said
which, Jack Prodgers mentioned to the doctor that he should be found
when required in the coffee-room, and with another bow to Sir Sykes,
withdrew. The baronet, guided by Dr Aulfus, entered the darkened room
where Jasper lay.

‘Is that you, sir? I thought you would come,’ said the hurt man from
the bed, stretching out his feeble hand, and as Sir Sykes took the
thin fingers within his own grasp, his anger, smouldering yet, seemed
for the moment to die away, chased by the crowd of early recollections
that beset his memory. He could remember Jasper as a lisping child, a
quick intelligent boy, unduly indulged and pampered it is true, but
bold-faced and free-spoken at an age when many a youngster, far nobler
in every quality of heart and head, is sheepish and tongue-tied. In
those days father and mother had been proud and fond of the boy, and
Jasper’s future prosperity had been no unimportant element in Sir
Sykes’s schemes and day-dreams.

‘You do not feel much pain now?’ asked the baronet gently.

‘In my arm and head I do,’ said the patient, stirring uneasily.

The doctor, as he adjusted the pillows, smiled hopefully. ‘A very good
sign that,’ he whispered to Sir Sykes; ‘better than I had hoped for,
after the draught. I think we may pronounce all immediate cause for
anxiety to be over.’

‘When can he be moved?’ asked Sir Sykes, in the same cautious tone.

‘To Carbery? I should say, if he goes on as well as he is doing now,
to-morrow,’ replied Dr Aulfus. ‘I will write down some instructions,
with which it will be well to comply, for it will be some few days at
least before he can resume his former habits of life.’

‘What are you two conspiring about?’ demanded Jasper, with an invalid’s
customary peevishness, from the bed. And then Sir Sykes had to resume
his seat and to say a few soothing words.

‘You’ll soon be well, my boy,’ he said kindly; ‘and sooner back with us
at Carbery, under your sisters’ good nursing. Dr Aulfus here will, I
hope, contrive to come over and give us a call every day till you get
your strength again.’

Dr Aulfus said that he should be delighted to attend his patient at
Carbery Chase, and indeed he looked radiant as he said it. A physician
is, after all, a man, and probably a parent, and little Dr Aulfus had
a wife and was the happy donor of six hostages to fortune. He valued
the privilege of professional admittance at Carbery very highly, less
on account of the emoluments directly derived therefrom, than of the
many small people who would augur well of his skill, since beneath a
baronet’s roof he should prescribe for a baronet’s heir.

The brief conversation between Sir Sykes and his son was rendered the
less marked because of Jasper’s habitual reticence, and of his father’s
unwillingness to touch on any topic that might prove painful. Thus the
lawyer and his bills met with no mention, and the steeplechase would
also have been passed over, had not Jasper himself said: ‘I told Jack
Prodgers I shouldn’t go in for cross-country work again, except with
the hounds in winter. No fear, sir, of my donning the silk jacket any
more, after this sharp lesson of aching bones and empty pockets. Don’t
be angry, please, though, with poor old Jack. He meant all for the
best, he did.’

Sir Sykes replied that he had already had the pleasure of shaking
hands with Captain Prodgers, whom he had formerly met, it appeared,
in London society. And soon afterwards, in compliance with an almost
imperceptible motion of the doctor’s head, he withdrew; and Captain
Jack was recalled to keep watch, uncomplainingly, beside his friend’s
couch, while the patient dozed or talked in snatches.

‘Smoke away, old man; it rather does me good than not,’ Jasper had
said, and the captain’s cigar was seldom extinguished during his vigil.

‘He’ll do!’ was the little doctor’s cheery whisper as he paid his early
morning visit to his charge. And soon after noon, Jasper, pale and
tottering, and with his bruised arm in a sling, was helped into one of
the Carbery carriages and propped with cushions; and under the tender
escort of his two sisters, Lucy and Blanche Denzil, was slowly and
heedfully conveyed home to Carbery Chase.




OUR SEA AND SALMON FISHERIES.


In the department of fishing-industries the march of scientific
inquiry has already borne good fruit. The influence of the weather,
or more properly speaking of the variations of temperature, on
the plentifulness or scarcity of our food-fishes, has grown in
importance as an element in determining the success or failure of the
herring-fishery, for example; and at more than one fishing-station
thermometrical observations are daily made by the fishermen, and
reported to the meteorological authorities, who in their turn deduce
generalisations and laws from the observations thus recorded. Thus the
teachings of the formerly despised ‘science’ are beginning to bear
fruit, and to be openly and fully recognised; and in the future, the
fisherman, as a result of the generalisations just alluded to, may be
able to determine with tolerable accuracy, before setting sail for the
fishing-grounds, the chances of a successful or unsuccessful day’s
labour. Add to this, that, with increased knowledge of the conditions
of life, development, and general history of our food-fishes, wise
legislation may provide for the protection of these fishes and for
the determination of the proper periods for the exercise of the
fisher’s art, and it will be owned that the gains from a scientific
investigation of the fishing-industries are simply incalculable.

For these reasons we have peculiar pleasure in noting the appearance
of a small volume, under the title of _Sea Fisheries_, by E. W. H.
Holdsworth, and _Salmon Fisheries_, by Archibald Young, Commissioner
of Scotch Salmon Fisheries (London: E. Stanford. 1877). The work is
produced under the joint authorship of two gentlemen long connected
with this important branch of British industry. To Mr E. W. H.
Holdsworth has been allotted the task of giving an account of the
sea fisheries of Britain; whilst Mr Archibald Young, one of the
Commissioners of Scotch Salmon Fisheries, has undertaken the task of
giving an account of the interests connected with the capture of the
king of fishes. Mr Holdsworth has to do with the salt water, Mr Young
chiefly with the fresh.

Within the last sixty or seventy years, the herring fisheries of
Scotland, chiefly prosecuted on the north-east coast, have risen to be
a most important national industry and source of wealth, the value of
the catch in a good year amounting to between two and three millions
sterling. Needing no cultivation, the sea yields an annual harvest
almost incredible in amount. Of course much capital is embarked; but
without the hardihood, the enterprise, and the daring risks encountered
by the fishermen, all would be unavailing. It is seen by a late Report,
that in the united fisheries of herrings, cod, and ling, in 1876,
nearly fifteen thousand boats, decked and undecked, were engaged, the
total value of which amounted to upwards of a million sterling. Ever
on the outlook for what will advance the interests of the herring
fishery, the capitalists engaged in the business have latterly added a
fast-sailing steamer to the fleets of boats; by which means herrings
caught at a considerable distance are transferred from the boats to the
steamer, rapidly brought into port, and being there properly prepared,
are despatched by railway to various parts of the United Kingdom.

Railways, by facilitating transit, have been immensely advantageous
to all kinds of fisheries. It might now be said that by this ready
means of transit the most inland towns in the country are now as well
supplied with fresh fish as towns on the coast; in many cases better.
Ice has also played an important part in the transmission of fish to
distant places. Salmon being thus preserved till it reaches the market,
arrives in the best condition, and is sent to table fresh as when
caught. One has only to look at the quantities of beautiful salmon
and other fish spread out on marble benches of the fishmongers in any
of our larger towns, to see what railways and ice have done for this
branch of industry.

Mr Holdsworth expresses strong regret that the prospects of the Irish
fisheries are not by any means of a promising kind, as far as the
cultivation of the art or industry is concerned. All authorities agree
in regarding the coasts of Ireland in most instances as representing
fishing-grounds in which stores of wealth lie unheeded and uncared for.
This is a state of matters much to be deplored, for the sake of all
parties concerned—fishermen, consumers, and the nation at large. Some
years ago, when we were in Ireland, we heard it mentioned that much of
the fish sold in Dublin was supplied by fishermen from the coast of
Wales; and we likewise heard that large quantities of dried white-fish
were introduced to Portrush by fishermen from Islay and other western
isles of Scotland. Though it is stated that the famine of thirty years
ago has had much to do with the depressed state of the Irish fisheries,
and that emigration has also affected them, we yet fail to see why, by
a little enterprise, the still resident natives should not be able to
beat both the Welsh and Scotch out of their own market.

As regards the salmon fisheries, Mr Young leads us into a region which
is still in some particulars a field of debate and controversy. There
are very few readers, it may be presumed, who are ignorant of the
controversies, for instance, which have been carried on concerning the
correct answer to the question, ‘Are parr the young of salmon?’—a
query which Mr Young, along with the great majority of naturalists,
answers unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The natural history of the
salmon forms the starting-point of all knowledge of the fish, and of
the information necessary for determining the conditions under which
it may be properly and successfully caught—the terms ‘properly’
and ‘successfully’ in this case being taken as including the best
interests of the fish and its race, as well as the interests of its
human captors. Briefly detailed, the life-history of a salmon may be
said to begin with the ascent of the parent-fishes in autumn and early
winter to the upper reaches of our rivers for the purpose of depositing
their eggs. In each salmon-mother it has been calculated about nine
hundred eggs exist for every pound of her weight, and these eggs she
deposits in a trench, excavated by aid of the jaw, in the gravelly
bed of the stream. Fertilised after being deposited, by the milt of
the male parent, the latter covers the eggs with gravel by means of
his fins—the tail-fin being, as far as can be ascertained, the chief
agent and means in effecting this necessary action. Such eggs as escape
the attack of enemies—and of these, in the shape of aquatic birds
and of other fishes, the salmon-ova have more than enough—undergo
development, and are hatched in from ninety to one hundred and thirty
days.

It would be an interesting study were we to trace the stages through
which the young fish becomes evolved from its simple germ, and the
wondrous formation of tissues and organs out of the soft jelly-like
matter of which the egg is primarily composed. But want of space
forbids; and our readers must therefore fancy for themselves the
process whereby the hidden artist Nature works through development,
and at length shapes out the young salmon, or ‘parr.’ It may be
mentioned in proof of the small proportion borne by the salmon-eggs
actually deposited, to those developed, that authorities agree in
stating that out of three thousand eggs deposited, scarcely _one_ egg
may survive—so terrible is the destruction of young salmon. This fact
alone, as Mr Young argues, should tell powerfully as an argument in
favour of _artificial_ propagation; since out of three thousand eggs
which are thus hatched, at least one thousand young fishes may be
successfully reared.

The curious fact is noticed that in most if not all broods of salmon,
half of the parrs will become ‘smolts’—as they are called in their
next stage—at the end of a year or so, whilst the other half will
not become smolts _until after the lapse of two years and more_. This
incongruity, if we may so term it, has led to the questions, ‘Do the
parrs become smolts between thirteen and fifteen months after they
have left the egg, or at the age of two years and two months?’ Both
questions may apparently be answered in the affirmative, since each
brood exhibits this peculiar feature of some of its members coming
to the smolt-stage long before the others. Mr Young remarks on the
authority of a salmon-breeder in the north, that about eight per cent.
of the salmon hatched by this gentleman became smolts at the end of
the first year; about sixty per cent. at the end of the second year;
and about thirty-two per cent. at the end of the third year. These
facts would seem to indicate that the end of the second year is the
most natural period for the assumption of the smolt-guise, which, as
distinguished from that of the parr, exhibits a beautiful coat of
silvery mail.

The parr, it may be remarked, dies if placed in sea-water, whereas the
smolt thrives in the latter element. On reaching the sea, the young
smolt may measure from four to five inches. After a residence in the
sea of some six or eight weeks, the smolt returns to its river as a
‘grilse,’ which varies from five to eight or nine pounds in weight,
according to the time it has remained in the sea. After returning to
its river the grilse spawns, and then returns to the sea. The features
of the mature salmon are now apparent, and the fish increases in size
after each such annual migration to the sea. Indeed nothing is more
extraordinary in the history of the salmon than its rapid increase and
growth after these periodical migrations to salt water. Three salmon
which weighed ten, eleven and a half, and twelve and a half pounds as
they were migrating seawards, were duly marked; and on being caught
six months afterwards when returning to the fresh water, were found
to have increased in weight to the extent of seventeen, eighteen, and
nineteen pounds respectively. Although salmon usually return to the
rivers in which they first saw the light, yet it has been ascertained
that the practice is not an invariable one. There is no good reason why
one river should not suit a salmon as well as another, and in their
wide migrations these fishes are exceedingly likely to enter rivers
other than their native streams.

One of the most interesting topics touched upon by Mr Young in his
observations, is that regarding the relative late or early development
of salmon in different Scotch rivers. Prefacing, that a ‘clean’ salmon
is a fish that has been for some time in the sea, it has been generally
believed that rivers which issue from a lake are ‘early’ rivers—or in
other words that they are streams which clean salmon will ascend in the
early spring. But this idea receives little or no support from facts
as they stand. Many early Scotch rivers have no lake heads; whilst
many Scotch rivers which run out of or through lakes are late rivers.
Mr Frank Buckland thinks a river’s ‘earliness’ in the matter of salmon
depends on its proportion of mileage in length to its square mileage
of ‘catchment’—that is of the land-area from which the river is fed.
This, however, seems to us a whimsical theory, and might be disproved
by facts. As regards the ‘earliness’ of rivers, Mr Young’s theory is
that much depends on temperature; in fact, temperature is known to be
the chief cause which regulates the distribution of life in the sea,
and there is no one fact, so far as we are aware, which can be said to
militate against his views. His theory is, however, being tested by the
Scottish Meteorological Society at Inverugie; by the Duke of Richmond,
on the Spey; by the Duke of Sutherland, on two early and two late
rivers in Sutherlandshire; and by the Tweed Commissioners—the method
of testing being by thermometers applied to the fresh water of the
rivers, and to the sea near their mouths.

The latter part of the volume under notice is occupied with statements
relative to salmon fishery laws and legislation, a subject in which
the author is naturally deeply interested, and in which our knowledge
of the salmon naturally culminates when the fish is regarded from an
economic standpoint. In Scotland, it seems we are far behind England
and Ireland in respect that there are no Inspectors of salmon fisheries
empowered to make annual inspections and reports on the Scotch salmon
fisheries! And this fact becomes the more inexplicable, and the more
urgently demands remedy, when we consider that the Scotch fisheries
are many times as valuable as those of our English neighbours. Then
also, Mr Young has a most justifiable grumble at the fact that, in our
statutes, there are very inadequate provisions made for the removal
of artificial and natural obstructions in salmon rivers, and for the
prevention of pollutions; and no close-time for trout or char. The
importance of clearing away natural obstructions to the ascent of the
salmon in rivers is well exemplified when it is found that in Scotland
no less than 478 miles of river and loch are thus closed against these
fishes. No less forcibly shewn is the vexatious fact that rivers
are polluted and rendered unfitted for breeding-streams by means and
methods which the River Pollution Commissioners in their Reports
declare to be preventable at a moderate cost, without injury to the
manufactures with which they are connected.

Besides pollution, two things are especially detrimental to the
Scottish salmon fisheries. The first to be mentioned, is the abominable
practice of building weirs across rivers in order to send water
into mill-lades, and the ignoring of the law that requires that the
water shall be periodically diverted into the river again. Certain
proprietors, to make the most of their lands, give perpetual leases of
ground to manufacturers of one kind or other, with liberty to build a
weir and take water to turn their machinery. There may be provisions
in the lease as there is in law to the effect that the withdrawal of
water shall cease during the night and on Sundays. Such provisions
are, however, in many instances neglected, as giving too much trouble.
The result is, that the whole river, or very nearly the whole, except
in times of flood, is diverted into the mill-lade, whereby trout and
salmon are unable to surmount the weir, and are effectually barred
from getting to the upper part of the stream. In plain terms, by the
selfishness of a proprietor (or a pair of them, one on each side), all
who dwell on the river above the weir are deprived of the fish which
nature had bountifully assigned to them. Already in these pages we have
alluded to a scandalous case of this kind on the Tweed.

The second of the two things which act detrimentally on the Scottish
salmon fisheries is the circumstance that certain landed proprietors
near the mouths of some rivers possess a right to establish nets for
the purpose of catching all the salmon that attempt to go up the
stream. We do not contest the legality of their arrangements. We only
speak of the cruel way it acts on the rights of all who live in the
upper parts of the river, and on whose waters the salmon have bred.
While the lower proprietors catch the great bulk of the fish, those
higher up get but a miserable remnant. During the whole of the time
that the nets are on, the lower proprietors have a practical monopoly
of the fishings. Is that at all reasonable? As a consequence, first of
the weirs, and second of the netting system of the lower proprietors,
there is evoked throughout the upper part of rivers in Scotland, a
gloomy and almost vengeful hatred of the existing salmon-fishing
system. Of course the higher and middle classes take no part in
demonstrating their sense of the injustice that is committed. The
lower classes, less scrupulous, and indignant at the rapacity of
the weir-owners and lower proprietors, take such salmon as they can
get hold of in spawning-time, thus destroying by myriads in embryo
what should have been a vast national advantage. Detesting as we
do all sorts of poaching and irregularities, we are glad that the
Commissioners appointed to investigate the condition of the Scottish
salmon fisheries, have laid stress upon the miserable imperfections to
which we have ventured to draw attention.

Mr Young informs us that in 1874, as many as 32,180 boxes of Scotch
salmon were sent to the London market alone, the estimated value of
which might possibly be L.321,800. It seems to us, however, a hard
case that the great bulk of such valuable property should be secured
by proprietors at or near the mouths of the several rivers, to the
exclusion of those in the upper reaches of the streams, who ought
to have an equal right to participate in the annual fish-harvest.
Free-trade in salmon-fishing, so much as lies within the limits of
strict justice, is still in expectation. We commend the subject to the
further consideration of Frank Buckland, Mr Young, and brother-anglers.




RACHEL LINDSAY.

A SOUTH-AUSTRALIAN STORY.


Towards the end of November, about two years ago, I received the
following curt note from my brother Donald, who like myself is a
sheep-farmer in South Australia. ‘MY DEAR JERRY, Lizzie sends her love,
and hopes to see you when your shearing is over, as usual. If you’ll
say what day, I’ll fetch you from Ballarat.—Yours affectionately,

    DON GARDINER.’

‘_N.B._—Just begun to wash the wool. Lizzie’s sister says she has seen
my apparatus at Conolly’s, but I don’t think it. Ask Conolly.’

Conolly was a neighbour of mine, and he chanced to have brought me
Don’s letter, and to be lighting his pipe at my elbow while I read it.

‘Conolly,’ said I, ‘do you know any of Mrs Gardiner’s sisters? She has
an unlimited number, I believe, for I have met a fresh one—sometimes
two fresh ones—every Christmas for about half-a-dozen years, and here
is still another I never heard of. She appears to be acquainted with
you and this neighbourhood’——

‘O yes; that’s Cinderella,’ interrupted Conolly, as he abstracted a
bundle of newspapers from our joint post-bag and began to rip the
wrapping from them. ‘Haven’t you seen Cinderella? She was never out of
Tasmania, I suppose, until last spring, when she was staying up here
with the Macdonalds. The Macdonald girls called her Cinderella because
she had always been the one to stay at home and keep house while the
others went about. Her proper name is Rachel. O Jerry, Jerry!’ he broke
out suddenly, laughing in what seemed to me a very offensive manner (my
proper name I may mention being Gerald), ‘your sister-in-law Lizzie
will be too many for you. She won’t let you escape this time. She has
kept Rachel as her last card.’

‘If ever I marry a woman with such a name as that, I hope I shall be a
henpecked husband for the rest of my life!’ I retorted angrily, seizing
a paper-knife and beginning to tear away at the _Australasian_, so as
to drown further conversation upon what was a very sore subject.

My brother Donald’s wife Lizzie was as good and kind a little woman as
ever breathed, but like many young wives in happy circumstances, she
was a matchmaker. And being impulsive, effusive, and not quite—what
shall I call it? I don’t like to say she was not quite a lady, but that
would suggest my meaning—she did not pursue her calling with that
tact and judgment which its delicate nature required. I need not say
more, except that she had a number of spinster sisters, and one only
bachelor relative, who lived all by himself in single-blessedness on
his own fine and thriving property, and that I was that male victim.
I beg pardon of all the Misses Lindsay for using such a term; I was
not a victim as far as _they_ were concerned. But I did feel it hard
that I should be laughed at wherever I went as the captive knight of
half-a-dozen fair ones, when I had never had the choosing of one of
them.

When I received the above letter I had just seen my last wool-bale
packed on the last bullock-dray and started on its slow journey to
Melbourne; and the day after I set off myself on my yearly visit to
Don. He was less fortunate in respect of sheep-shearing than I, for
living in an exceptionally cool district, where an exceptionally wet
and wintry spring had kept everything behindhand, he had still all
his troubles to come. I thought of that as I buttoned myself into my
Ulster, which I was glad of that cold morning, though Christmas was
only a month off; and I reflected that I should be the only unemployed
man at the disposal of the household until the shearing was over, and
foresaw (as I thought) the consequences. I made up my mind, however,
that I would defy Lizzie’s machinations in a more systematic manner
than heretofore. May I be forgiven for so priggish a determination.

It was midnight before I reached Ballarat, where Don usually met me;
but upon this occasion I found a telegram stating that he was too
busy to leave his farm, and would send for me next day. So I had one
game of pool at the club and went to bed; and next morning enjoyed an
hour or two over newly arrived English papers and periodicals, and a
solitary lunch; and then the familiar old ramshackle buggy and the
beautiful horses Don was famed for made their appearance, and I set off
on the last stage of my journey. When I arrived at my destination it
was dark and raining heavily; and the groom who opened the stable-gate
told me that my brother had not long come up from the wash-place and
was interviewing shearers at the hut. I was wet and muddy, so I went
straight to my room without even asking for my sister-in-law, who was
usually in her nursery at that hour, and proceeded to make myself
respectable for dinner. Presently I heard Don about the passages (the
house was ‘weather-board’ and the partitions extremely thin) asking the
servants where I was; and then his head and a half-bared neck appeared
in the narrow aperture between my door and the door-post.

‘Glad to see you, old boy; but I’m too dirty to come in,’ said he.
‘Seen Lizzie?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Seen Rachel?’

‘Not yet. But I say, old man, would you mind telling me how many _more_
sisters you’ve got?’

‘No more,’ said Don with a grin. ‘She’s the last one, and she’s the
best of them all.’

‘Then I hope I may be allowed for once to enjoy the society of one of
Lizzie’s sisters, in a friendly way,’ I grumblingly responded (for I
may as well admit that Don and I had had confidences of old on this
subject). ‘Don’t you think you could give Lizzie a notion that I don’t
mean to get married, or that I’ve a sweetheart up the country, or
something of that sort?’

‘Not I,’ rejoined my brother, laughing. ‘I’m not going to spoil her
fun, poor little soul; you’re old enough to take care of yourself.’
And with that he went off, whistling cheerfully, to his dressing-room.

When I had completed my toilet, I gathered up some boxes of choice
cigars that I had been purchasing in town, and carried them to the
door of the adjoining apartment, which had been Don’s smoking-room
ever since I had known it. To my surprise, the bolt shot sharply as I
touched the handle, and I heard a rustle of drapery inside. A housemaid
coming along with lamps for the dinner-table called out hastily: ‘O
sir, that is Miss Rachel’s room now. The smoking-room is at the end of
the verandah, where Miss Carry slept last year. Mrs Gardiner wished it
to be changed because she didn’t like the smell of tobacco so near the
bedrooms.’

I took back my boxes, thinking no more about it, and went on to the
drawing-room, which was full of light and warmth and comfort, as
usual, and where I found two of my little nieces sitting demurely on
a sofa in their best frocks, ready to rush into my arms. Lizzie came
hurrying in after me, rosy and radiant, and with plenty of flounces
and colours about her, and gave me her own enthusiastic welcome; and
then Don, spruce and perfumed, joined us. Don in his early years had
been a dandy, and a little youthful weakness remained in him still. He
never came to dinner without rings on his fingers and subtle odours
in his clothes; and he was at great pains to keep a pair of Dundreary
whiskers accurately adjusted on each side of a closely shaven chin. He
had been ten years in the Bush, and had never objected to ‘roughing it’
in a general way; but he persisted in shaving himself every morning,
let what would, happen; which singular habit in an Australian country
gentleman very much puzzled his bearded friends. I for one, used to
quiz him as well as I knew how, when I saw him swathe his neck in
a handkerchief, before going out to his work, if the sun shone too
strongly; but I respect his little vanities nowadays, and hope he will
keep his white throat and his Dundreary whiskers as long as he lives,
bless him. He took one of his little girls on his knee, and questioned
me about my station matters and about Conolly’s sheep-wash (which was
_not_ so well furnished with improvements as his own, much to his
satisfaction); and Lizzie gave me an account of the development of her
respective children since I had seen them last, including the cutting
of the baby’s teeth; and then the dinner-bell rang.

‘Where’s Rachel?’ inquired Don.

I turned a languid eye upon the door when we heard the sound of a
distant rustle, expecting to see one of the smart and smiling damsels
I was so used to, and wondering whether this one would be dark or
fair. With a slow and quiet step she came along the hall and entered
the room, and my heart began suddenly to beat in a very unpleasant
manner. She had a delicate, thoughtful, but piquant face, wavy brown
hair modestly and becomingly set, and a slight figure daintily dressed
in pale blue silk, with a little white lace about throat and arms; and
yet she was the image of Marie Antoinette in Delaroche’s picture, only
with a more majestic dignity of carriage, if that could be, and a more
cold and calm disdain upon her face. As soon as I saw her, and felt the
exceedingly faint acknowledgment she vouchsafed when we were formally
introduced, I intuitively guessed—with a horrible sense of shame and
mortification—that she had overheard what I said to Don in my bedroom
through those card-paper walls!

I never thought I should feel so concerned at standing ill with one
of Lizzie’s sisters as I felt before that evening came to an end. All
through dinner I saw, without looking, offended dignity in the poise of
her head and the studied repose of her manner, and heard the ring of it
in every inflection of her voice, though it was so subtle and delicate
that only a guilty conscience could detect it. It was a great deal
worse in the evening, when Lizzie began her fussy little contrivances
for throwing us together. The poor little woman never had so
impracticable and aggravating a sister to manage; and I never met one
who attempted to treat me with such open indifference and thinly-veiled
contempt. It is unnecessary for me to state the consequences. I began
to interest myself in this Miss Lindsay as I had never interested
myself in the others. I began to hanker for her good opinion, as I
had never hankered for theirs. I longed to set myself straight with
her, and beg her forgiveness for a thoughtless insult that I would
have given worlds to recall, and to feel that the way was open between
us to meet and associate as friends. This longing grew apace as the
evening wore on, but the prospect of its gratification grew less
and less. Until the little ones were taken away by their nurse she
devoted herself to them, telling them stories most of the time in a
dark corner, whence merry chatter and ripples of subdued laughter came
flowing out to us; but when they were gone, the bright vivacity that
was her true characteristic went too, and she became Marie Antoinette
again.

With an amiable wish to make things pleasant, Lizzie asked her to pour
out the tea; but she merely stood in front of me at the tea-table,
with her little nose in the air, and asked me whether I took sugar and
cream, in a high clear tone that brought a puzzled wonder into her
sister’s face and a slow smile to Don’s. I came and stood beside her,
to take the cups from her hand (her pretty head was about level with
the flower in my button-hole), and she tried to ignore me, but could
not. Her hands shook slightly and a little angry flush came and went
in her face; but I preferred that to having no notice at all. Later on
she went to the piano, and sung song after song for the delectation
of Lizzie and Don, neither of whom had the hearing ear and the
understanding heart to appreciate the pure quality and poetic sweetness
of her voice. By this time I was very low-spirited, and I drew away
from my host, who was growing sleepy after his hard day’s work, and
took a chair near her—which of course was a signal to Lizzie to leave
the room. As she sung on, forgetful of me and of everything but the
poetry awaking in her, and as I studied the pose of her slight figure
and half-bent head, and the now dreamy happiness in her face, and
listened for the first time after many years to the true translation of
a language that I loved, a vague perception dawned in me that there was
some latent fellowship between us. And then I felt that Fate had indeed
been hard.

The silence of the room was presently brought into strong relief by a
deep snore from Don, whereupon she suddenly rose from the piano and
saw that we were virtually alone. ‘Good-night, Mr Gardiner,’ she said
promptly, holding out a somewhat reluctant hand and stiffening back
into her unnatural stateliness.

I took it and held it and looked into her face; and I tried to tell
her, as well as plain ‘good-night’ would do it, that I knew what had
happened and wanted her to forgive me. I think she guessed what my look
meant, by the sudden crimson flame in her face; but she walked out of
the room with as much dignity as she had first walked into it, without
another word.

       *       *       *       *       *

The early days of December were cold and wet, and the shearing was
a protracted and troublesome affair. Don hovered about restlessly,
whether in or out of the house, always bothered and anxious, and
paying frequent visits to the barometer. The ladies clung to their
fireside as if they had been in England; and I tied myself to Lizzie’s
apron-string with an abject alacrity that puzzled and charmed her.
My opportunities for ‘improving the occasion’ were many, but somehow
I could never turn them to account. The pride of that little maiden
was quite beyond my management. Lizzie threw us together; she left
us alone; she did all that in her lay to further my desires for a
reconciliation and an understanding; but the implacable resentment
of the last of the Lindsays towards me for that wretched slip of the
tongue was a stone wall I could not climb over. The worst of it was,
she did and said nothing tangibly offensive; and I was precluded by all
sorts of considerations from mentioning the subject we were both (and
that we both knew we were) thinking of. So matters went on day after
day. And before a great many days were past I was over head and ears
in love—I may as well say it and have done with it—and began to feel
desperate and dangerous. She walked about the house with her grand air,
my Queen Marie Antoinette, my little tyrant that I could almost have
demolished with a finger and thumb; and I, standing six feet three in
my stockings, had to acknowledge that she was invincible as well as
unmerciful. Unregenerate savage as I was, I had faint longings now and
then to take her by those slender shoulders, and shake her.

There were times when she became her sweet self, and could not help
it though she tried; and these times were born of music. She and I
both loved music with that special love that nature permits to a few
people; but to no one else in the house did the ‘heaven-born maid’
present attractions. Don, hard at work all day, could go to sleep after
dinner in his arm-chair; and Lizzie, after her manner, could go out of
the room in the middle of the most charming song. Then, when we were
singing together, or when she was gentle and gracious with the spirit
of melody in her, then was the oil thrown upon my troubled waters. At
times such as these it flashed across me that she was aware of it.

At length on one of these occasions I made a dash at her guarded
citadel; I will not say in what words, but with the blundering
foolishness that I suppose characterises all implied aspirations;
albeit with sufficient plainness to leave no chance of being
misunderstood; and then I had indeed to bite the dust for once in
my life. She had been singing _Ruth_ with the most touching pathos
and abandonment—‘Where thou goest I will go, and there will I be
buried’—and I could not stand it. Don was in the room, but snoring in
that comfortable undertone which denoted a sound and quiet slumber. She
stood with her back to the piano, and the sheet of music trembling and
rustling in her hands, watching his nodding head in the distance, and
turning her delicate profile to my view.

‘No; I will not,’ she half whispered with haughty rapidity. ‘You should
have known I would not. I do not particularly want to marry anybody,’
she added, flashing round upon me with her crimson face; ‘but I will
never marry _you_. I made up my mind to that long ago.’

Everybody knows how, in the supremely solemn moments of one’s life, one
is apt to be assailed with most incongruously ludicrous ideas. In spite
of my bitter mortification at her reply, an absurd rhyme that I had
heard somewhere, flashed into my head:

    Do not be like Nancy Baxter,
    Who refused a man before he’d axed her.

I believe she saw the ghost of a smile that might have hovered round my
eyes when I begged to know why she had made up her mind never to marry
me; and that made her savage.

‘Because you think I came here to be made love to,’ she retorted, with
all the concentrated contempt that her sweet face and voice could hold.
‘You think Lizzie and I have been plotting to catch you—you think we
wanted to inveigle you into marrying me! I know what you are going to
say’—as I rose and seized her hands, to stop her—‘but it is not the
truth. I _heard_ you’—lifting her angry eyes, now wet with unshed
tears, to mine—‘I heard you, with my own ears, tell Don to warn Lizzie
beforehand that you did not want to be married.’

‘I know you did,’ I replied, tightening my hold of her hands, while she
made feeble efforts to get away; ‘and I wish my tongue had been cut out
before I could have insulted you and her like that. Forgive me, Rachel;
I have been punished enough.’

‘I cannot,’ she answered, still panting with her excitement. ‘I should
be ashamed of myself if I could take a man who had even _thought_ of me
like that.’

Two tears began to trickle from her eyes, and a little hysterical catch
in her breath betrayed to me that her defiant courage was failing her.
I would not let her go. Love and shame and a resentful disappointment
made me a little savage too.

‘I never _did_ think of you like that,’ I said sternly; ‘and you know
it. I must hold you till I clear myself—I cannot bear it’——

A log tumbled in the grate, and Don woke up. She caught away her hands
and sped out of the room; and I walked through a French window into the
cool summer night, too full of wrath and love to speak to anybody.

This was how we stood when at last (on Saturday, the 18th of December)
the true Christmas weather came, and we found ourselves in the hot
afternoon alone on the croquet-lawn—alone for the first time since my
stormy wooing was interrupted. Don being still busy in the sheep-yards
and shearing-shed, I had been playing singly against Lizzie and her;
and now Lizzie had been called away to the nursery to consult with
a needlewoman who was at work there. We were both anxious (though
for very different reasons) to leave off playing when our chaperon
had departed; but it was not easy to do so in the middle of a game,
especially as she had instructed her partner to play for both of them
until she returned. So we knocked the balls about for a few minutes
in embarrassed silence, and then had an altercation as to which hoop
Lizzie had been through; and then we both got a little huffy, and
played, first with indifference, and then with a malicious energy,
which resulted at last in my sending her partner’s ball into the
thickest Portugal laurels in the shrubbery.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’ I exclaimed with compunction, as she solemnly
marched off to look for it. ‘Let me find it for you.’

‘Do not trouble yourself,’ she replied sharply; and immediately dashed
in between the laurel and a very prickly rose-bush, whose long sprays
caught her muslin dress and tore it. I saw her straw-hat amongst the
big dark branches, and her little hand searching under them for a
moment or two; then she started up suddenly with a quick cry, and
bounded into the path again.

‘What is the matter? Have you hurt yourself,’ I asked anxiously.

Her hat fell to the ground, and she stood before me with the blazing
sun on her pretty head, and a wide-eyed horror in her face. ‘Wait a
minute for me!’ she panted breathlessly; ‘I want you to help me—I have
been bitten.’ Before I could collect my senses to understand what she
meant, she had sped like a flash of light into the house; and dashing
into the laurel bush, I saw what had happened. A big black snake was
gliding away from the spot where she had been kneeling.

What was to be done? I stood still for a moment paralysed; then I sent
up a hurried prayer for help, and simultaneously ‘cooeyed’ three or
four times with all the force of a powerful pair of lungs, for Don at
the wool-shed. Then I hurried after her, and met her coming through the
door of my brother’s dressing-room with one of his razors in her hand.
Her face was white and set as she seized my hand and hurried me into
the smoking-room, which was near us, and turned the key in the lock.
I knew what she wanted; and I set my teeth in an agony that no words
could express, and which I can never think of now without a shudder.

‘Look!’ she said piteously, with a little sob in her throat; and I
looked, and saw one of the fingers of her left hand tied round tightly
with a piece of string below the first joint, and the end of it already
livid and swollen and shewing the unmistakable punctures of the snake’s
fangs. She laid her other hand on my arm, and looked up at me with a
beseeching face that nearly unmanned me.

‘Help me!’ she whispered eagerly; ‘now—now; before the others come!’
And she held out the razor, open and shining. ‘It is no use to suck
it—it only wastes time,’ as I seized her finger and put it in my
mouth. ‘Don’t, don’t! I want to be on the safe side. I don’t want to
die! O pray, pray help me!’—now sobbing passionately—’or else I must
try to do it myself. I won’t cry out; I won’t mind it. I will turn my
head away.’ She laid her finger on the edge of the table, and I took
the razor from her, and with all the courage I could muster, excised
the wounded part. She bore the cruel operation without a murmur.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour afterwards the commotion in the house was over, but the
shadow of death was on it. Rachel was in her bed, white and faint and
breathing heavily, twitching with weak fingers at the bedclothes,
and staring with dull eyes into the sad faces around her. I knelt in
my room close by with my head on my outspread arms, weeping like a
child as if my heart would break, and listening to the creaking of the
doctor’s boots and the whisking of skirts and whispering of awed voices
on the other side of the thin wall. There was nothing else that I was
privileged to do, now that I had done that dreadful thing which they
told me might be the saving of her precious life.

As the twilight fell, the voices in the sick-room took a louder and
more cheerful tone; and presently one of them called softly: ‘Jerry, I
want you.’ Lizzie met me in the passage with a tremulous tear-stained
smiling face. ‘The doctor says she will be all right now, and that she
has to thank you for it,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t stay here any longer;
go and have a cigar with Don.’

I seized her hand and kissed it, and looked at her with my wet eyes
full of foolish emotion, too glad for speech; and the brightening
intelligence of her countenance was curious to note. ‘I thought you
didn’t care for each other,’ she said archly; ‘but,’ she added drily,
‘I suppose I was mistaken.’

‘Don’t suppose anything, Lizzie, there’s a good girl. But let me know
when I may see her,’ I replied earnestly.

‘All right—I understand—I’ll let you know,’ she said, nodding her
head vigorously with an air of mystery and importance; and then I went,
not to have a cigar with Don, but to walk about the dark garden alleys,
alone with my thoughts.

Our patient improved steadily all night, so much so that the family
assembled at breakfast as usual. Then a great hunt was made for the
snake (at Lizzie’s instigation, on the children’s behalf), which lasted
a long while and was wholly unsuccessful. Then church-time came, and
the buggy was ordered to take the servants and the little girls to
church; and the hot day wore on. Towards evening, as I was loafing
about the garden, Lizzie came running across the croquet lawn—where
the balls and mallets were still lying about as we had left them,
though it _was_ Sunday—and told me that Rachel was up and dressed, and
that she chanced to be alone in the drawing-room.

I stole in to her in the twilight with my heart beating fast; and for a
few moments she did not notice me. She was standing by the open piano,
small and white and weak, with a shawl wrapped round her, gazing at the
silent key-board, with tears running down her face. No one could look
less like Delaroche’s Marie Antoinette than she looked then.

I took three long steps and reached her side; she gave a great start
and turned round to meet me. ‘I shall not again be able to play to you
for a long while!’ she said, looking up at me for sympathy in this new
trouble with her soft wet eyes.

When she said that—instead of making me the little speech I had
expected, thanking me for saving her life—I put out my arms. And
though we said no word, we forgave one another.

And how pleased Lizzie was when she saw the last of the Lindsays
transferred to my unworthy self.




IRRIGATION IN SOUTH AFRICA.


The irrigation of lands by water-channels connected with rivers is
accepted as an important means of agricultural development in countries
subject to protracted droughts, where rain falls only at distant and
uncertain intervals. The irrigation caused by the periodic overflow
of the Nile is a noted case in point. But for the annual overflow,
temporarily deluging the land for a foot or two, Lower Egypt would be
barren instead of a scene of fertility. In a country like England,
where there is, generally speaking, too much moisture, the chief
consideration is to dry the land sufficiently by draining, instead of
flooding it with water; the lesson being thus taught that as regards
the culture of soils every country must act according to circumstances.
In India, also in Ceylon, there are some remarkable instances of the
value of irrigation, and in these countries much more of the same kind
requires to be done to avert the horrors of lengthened drought and
famine. On this subject, we propose to say a few words regarding large
tracts in Southern Africa, which are very much in the condition of
those parts of Egypt fertilised by the waters of the Nile.

We speak first of the river Oliphant, which falls into the sea on
the west of Cape Colony, and which has various important affluents.
The land through which these streams flow is of a most desolate
character—broad belts of sand, interspersed with low scrubby bush,
swelling into moderate hills, with rugged mountains for a background.
Upon the country in the lower part of the Oliphant River rains have
no appreciable effect; but when the soil is thoroughly soaked by the
overflow of the streams, after the periodical inundations, and then
covered by the deposit brought down by the floods from the upper
districts, its fertility is wonderful. The average yield is more than
a hundredfold. The quantity of land of this character along the Lower
Oliphant alone was estimated by the government surveyor in 1859 as
eight thousand seven hundred acres.

Thus, like Egypt with its Nile inundations, those districts of Cape
Colony—otherwise almost barren—are annually fertilised. But unlike
Egypt, the country is unprovided with any means for utilising to the
full extent the advantages thus conferred. No appliances are prepared
for the purpose of storing the water thus brought down; no artificial
channels are cut for directing it and spreading it over a large area;
and when the short rainy season has passed, the inhabitants are content
to sit down and wait for the next ‘periodical.’

A characteristic story is told by a colonist who visited the locality
some years ago: ‘I strolled along the banks of the river, and was much
struck with the extremely fertile appearance of the soil, and the very
little which had been done for turning it to account. It seemed as
if the Creator had done everything for the country, and man nothing.
Scarcely any rain had fallen for some time past, and the river had
not overflowed its banks for more than a year. The stocks of grain
and vegetables were getting very low. The farmer was complaining much
about the long protracted drought; and when he had finished, I took the
liberty of pointing out how he could, by leading out the stream for the
purposes of irrigation, or by fixing a pump to be propelled by wind, on
the river’s bank, secure an abundant supply independent of the weather.
He seemed to listen with some interest to the development of my plans;
and I began to hope that he had decided upon doing something to relieve
himself of the difficulty; but eventually, after turning round and
scrutinising the whole horizon in the direction of the river’s source,
as if in search of some favourable symptom, he yawned heavily, and
merely observed in Dutch: “Oh, it will rain some day!”’

Of the Zout or Holle River, the most northerly of the tributaries of
the Oliphant, Mr P. Fletcher, the government surveyor, says: ‘By its
arteries it brings together the rich karroo soil of the Hantam and
Hardeveld and the rich sandy soil of Bushmanland. The best crop of oats
I have seen in Africa was in the deposit of this “periodical.” Other
portions are of a very saline character. At a rough guess, I believe
that in many spots a dam might be constructed three or four feet high,
and a couple of hundred feet long, which would flood several hundred
acres, thereby rendering them richly arable. I have measured some of
last year’s “slick” two feet deep; this, of course, was under the most
favourable circumstances; but by the use of dams, the deposit might
be regulated, the fresh slick might be allowed to deposit to its full
extent, so that in a few years the lands would be out of the reach of
ordinary floods, if desirable that they should be so. By this system
of irrigation, even the most saline basin would become available to
agriculture, and about nine or ten thousand acres on the banks of this
one periodical river might be brought under cultivation, which would
even excel the richest soil in the “Boland” (upper country).

‘Several tributaries to the Zout River have extensive karroo deposits;
some of their basins reaching to nearly one mile in breadth, and their
fall being so little, that, standing in their delta, a person cannot
sometimes judge with the eye which direction water would flow. Their
water-course, which winds through the middle of the deposit, is always
well defined, and shews a longitudinal section of the plain. Except in
ordinary heavy rains, those channels carry off all the water without
overflowing, while a few pounds would leave them in a condition to
produce fifty, eighty, or even one hundred-fold. Such is the nature
of several tributaries of the Hartebeeste River. I have not seen the
latter, but have been more than once informed that it has in some
places a deposit of five miles in breadth, that when it does overflow,
there is abundance of grass for all the cattle that visit that quarter.
If this description of the Hartebeeste River be correct, the products
it may be able to yield either in the form of grain or pasture for
cattle would appear to most people fabulous. We have here, and not here
only, but over an extensive portion of the whole colony, the richest
soil in the world lying at present for two-thirds of the year utterly
unoccupied, waste and worthless.’

The Hartebeeste is the last principal tributary, from the south,
of the Orange River, and rises in the same chain of hills as the
Tanqua, one of the tributaries of the Oliphant—namely, the Roggeveld
Berg, receiving affluent streams from the south-east and south-west,
draining in fact nearly the whole of the central northern part of the
colony. This district is at present almost neglected. The chain of
hills in fact, which runs from east to west across the centre of the
colony, cuts off the northern half from the mass of the colonists,
notwithstanding the fact that here is the most fertile land in South
Africa.

The Zak, as the upper part of the Hartebeeste is called, is another
instance of the wonderful effects upon the soil of periodical
inundations. The following particulars are given in Mr Noble’s book
on _Cape Colony_. In the dry season these streams are comparatively
small, and often a mere succession of pools; but after rains they run
briskly, and where level with the banks, overflow and soak the adjacent
flats. In many places so very even is the country that they may be
said to have no defined channel, and form extensive sheets of water
a few inches deep. The Zak River at two hundred and fifty miles from
its source thus varies in breadth from one to four miles; and further
on from Onderste Doorns to Leeuwenkop it widens as much as ten miles.
Along its course is the most valuable part of Great Bushmanland. Water
can be obtained in its bed even when dry, and its valley generally
affords pasture to cattle during both the winter and summer months.
After floods, there are extensive alluvial bottoms on each side of
it, where agricultural products of every kind might be raised. These
are now commonly used by the squatters as sowing lands, without any
labour or trouble beyond scratching in the seed. One overflowing of the
soil is sufficient to insure a crop even although no rain should fall
afterwards. The returns are something marvellous, especially those of
wheat.

In 1859 the number of Europeans settled on the irrigable portion of
the Oliphant was estimated at one hundred and twenty souls. When there
was an overflow of the river, they were active enough; day and night
they worked incessantly; the sun and the moon alike witnessed that they
did not eat the bread of idleness. But talk to them of improvements in
the way of artificial irrigation by dams or pumps, and they ridiculed
the idea. Such was the description given at that time; and such, with
very little alteration, is an accurate statement of affairs now. The
population of Calvinia and Clanwilliam, the two districts drained by
the Oliphant River, was in 1875, 15,856, of whom only 2046 were classed
as ‘urban.’ These figures of course include the natives as well as
the settlers; but they represent an enormous advance in population
since 1859. It is probable that if measures were taken to secure the
permanence of the advantages which are now only temporarily enjoyed,
the population and wealth of the districts would rapidly increase.

Of the fertility of the soil without any attempt at cultivation,
there are abundant evidences. A sandy plain apparently as barren as
the Sahara itself is suddenly transformed into an expanse of waving
grass for hundreds of miles, so soon as the annual rains occur. This
‘twaa-grass’ or Bushman grass is an excellent fodder for horses and
cattle, which thrive and grow fat upon it in a few weeks: even when
dried up in the winter it is better feeding than any available green
pasture. The natives scratch in their seeds and leave them to ripen,
which they do without the least attention, and whether the country is
visited by drought after the summer rains or not.

The principal drawback to the complete cultivation of the lands is
the absence of roads or water-carriage. The Orange River, though a
magnificent stream, and navigable in certain parts of its course, is
blocked by narrow gorges, shallows, falls, and other impediments, and
is useless as a water-way. In time probably, it may be made available,
by means of inter-communicating canals to enable the rapids, &c. to
be passed; but at present the community must look to the extension of
roads and railways for the means of fully utilising the produce which
would be raised if a ready market could be found. In this respect a
decided step has already been taken. A railway of ninety miles in
length has been constructed from Port Nolloth on the north-west coast,
in Namaqualand, to the upper mining districts, its terminus being at
Ookiep. On the most difficult portion of the route the cost has been
very little more than a thousand pounds a mile for this distance;
and it might be extended further eastward at a still less cost,
to the great advantage of the country drained by the Hartebeeste.
Another railway, or a good system of roadways, is wanted to open up
the Oliphant water-shed; and with these means of carrying away the
produce—all that is necessary—the immense natural resources of the
district would be fully developed. In the Fraserburgh district, where
the Upper Zak river rises, substantial houses, springs, wells, and dams
have already been constructed, and plantations and gardens are being
extended; but then from Fraserburgh excellent roads run east and west;
and the railway to Cape Town comes as far as Beaufort, situated sixty
or seventy miles south-east.

Finally, in Great Bushmanland, diamonds have been found; but there are
far greater and more permanent sources of wealth than diamond-fields.
Sheep and oxen can be raised, and their wool and hides turned to
profitable account. Wheat, grapes, and vegetables of all kinds will
grow in abundance. In fact, for pastoral and agricultural qualities
the country is unsurpassed. Here then is a field for the enterprising
emigrant from our own country. Capital alone is wanting for its
development; and capital however small, judiciously expended, must
be at once remunerative. We are glad to be able to add that an Act
has been passed by the Cape Parliament for granting facilities to
landowners for obtaining by loan or otherwise the means of improving
their lands by irrigation or other similar permanent works.

Other districts prove how the colonists have succeeded in turning what
was, more really than Great Bushmanland or the Lower Oliphant can be
said to be, a ‘howling desert’ into valuable farms, by opening up
springs, making dams, forming irrigation channels, and planting trees
where no trees existed, and where water was only an occasional and very
ephemeral visitor. There is no reason indeed why the ‘Nile lands of
South Africa’ should not rival in productiveness the great ‘world’s
wonder’ in the north of the continent; after which, from natural
circumstances, they have been not inaptly named.




ALBATROSS NOTES.


Far out in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, often two thousand miles
and more from the nearest land, sails the albatross in its graceful
and powerful flight; now following in the wake of the ship, to catch
any chance morsel that may have fallen from the cook’s waste-basket;
now skimming along the water, and occasionally snapping up some small
ocean-waif from the crest of a wave; or with a few vigorous strokes of
its broad wings, gliding easily round and round the vessel, though she
may be going at the rate of a dozen knots an hour.

No passenger to southern lands can have failed to note the
extraordinary powers of flight of this magnificent bird, and the
wonderful ease with which it sweeps for some minutes together through
the air on expanded motionless pinions, rising and falling slightly,
and taking advantage of the gravity of its own body and the angle at
which the wind strikes its feathered sails to prolong the course of
its flight with the least possible effort. Seldom, except in very
calm weather, may it be seen to alight upon the water, from which it
rises with difficulty, running for some distance along the surface.
The ends of the wings clear of the water, it turns towards the breeze,
and rises into the air in a gentle curve, in exactly the same manner
as a paper kite. That the albatross follows a ship for many days in
succession, sleeping at night upon the water, and coming up with her in
the morning, there can be no doubt. We have watched them for several
consecutive evenings during fine weather, in the latitude of the
trade-winds, settling down on the water at sundown, and preening their
feathers, until they became mere specks in the field of the telescope;
but they were with us again in the morning soon after sunrise; some
strangers among them perhaps, but several which, from some peculiarity
of marking, we knew to be our companions of the day before. In one
instance, a conspicuous mark had been made by a pistol-bullet in the
wing of an old brown-headed and curiously pied bird, by which he could
be identified beyond doubt. The second or third flight-feather had
been shot away, leaving a clearly defined gap in the wing as it came
between the light and the eye; and this bird followed us for three days
after having been fired at, though we had been sailing an average of
nearly eight knots an hour. One of the most striking examples of their
endurance on the wing, however, is the fact, which we have more than
once observed, that the same birds which had been unweariedly following
us in the day, accompanied us throughout the whole of the succeeding
night, as could be easily verified by the light of the moon.

It is a not uncommon practice with passengers to endeavour to catch
these noble birds by a bait fastened to a hook and buoyed with corks.
That such a cruel practice should ever be tolerated, even ‘to relieve
the monotony of the voyage,’ is to us inconceivable, and can only be
accounted for as the last resource of a brutally morbid fancy.

The albatross is essentially the scavenger of the ocean, and we doubt
whether it makes any attempt to capture living fish unless when very
hungry, for we have seen flying-fish rising in quantities while the
albatrosses made no attempt to catch them. That the nautilus is
sometimes eaten is evident, for we have taken it from the stomach; but
the chief food is dead fish and other refuse. In the South Atlantic
we passed the dead body of a small whale, on and around which were at
least a hundred of these birds, either gorged or gorging themselves
with the blubber; and guns discharged at them failed to induce many of
them to take wing. We had on one occasion an opportunity of observing
how rapidly these birds collect about a carcase. Like vultures or
ravens, when an animal dies they discover it very speedily, and flock
to the scene of the banquet. On a hot still evening in the South
Atlantic a horse died, and when cast overboard next morning, the
gases already formed by decomposition enabled it to float. The few
albatrosses in our company immediately settled down upon it; but in
less than an hour we could see through the telescope a great cloud
of the birds on the sea and hovering round the unexpected prize, the
almost entire absence of wind having kept us within two or three
miles of the spot. It may be that the (usually) white plumage enables
stragglers, far out of human ken, to see their fellows gathering in the
neighbourhood of food; others again from still more remote distances
may see them, and so on; until stragglers over hundreds of miles of
space may be gathered to one common rendezvous.

The greater part of the year is passed by them at a distance from
land; but they flock to barren and almost inaccessible rocks to breed.
There the female lays her one dirty-white egg in a slight depression
upon the bare earth, the sitters being frequently so close together
that it is difficult to walk without touching them. They are totally
indifferent to the presence of man, and merely indicate their resent of
his intrusion into their nursery by snapping at him as he passes. The
parents share the labour of incubation and rearing the young, and when
this is over, they all go seawards together, and silence and solitude
once more reign where all had lately been clamorous and busy life.

The range of the albatross is very considerable, and it may be met
with to the extreme limits of the temperate zones of both hemispheres,
in the South Atlantic and North and South Pacific Oceans, both at sea
and near headlands and isolated rocks. During the months of May and
June in the northern, and the months of November and December in the
southern hemisphere these rocks are tenanted by countless numbers of
albatrosses and their smaller brown relations, known to sailors under
the name of ‘Mollymawks.’ No one who has visited an albatross nursery
will readily forget the scene. Placidly sitting upon the one precious
egg is the parent, male or female as the case may be; and as far as the
eye can reach over the surface, the rock is crowded with the sitters,
indifferent to the presence of the human visitor. They know nothing
of man’s destructive nature, and they fear him not. Many of them have
never seen that curious biped before, and those which have chanced
to see him on his ships and to have suffered from his guns, are more
likely to have then regarded him as a part of the white-sailed monster
which traversed their ocean domain, than a separate creature; and fail
to recognise him as he ‘molests their ancient solitary reign.’

While viewing the interminable white forms thus crouching upon the
earth, above wheel in graceful circles hundreds of their mates, sending
congratulations in a hoarse piping voice to those beneath on the
progress of the all-important business of rearing the family. Here and
there sit callow uncouth nestlings; and from seawards come the parents
to discharge the contents of their maws into the insatiable stomachs of
the expectant young. Now and again one of the ‘bread-winners’ of the
family swoops past the observer on its twelve feet of outspread wings,
so near that he feels the shock of the divided air, and can realise
the immense strength of the muscles which propel the creature, who,
however, is a coward in spite of his size; for the skua gull, a bird
many times smaller than himself, will often attack him and compel him
to disgorge the product of his last foraging expedition.

As soon as the albatross has reared its young, a penguin frequently
takes possession of the deserted nest, and in the very cradle of a bird
destined to traverse the ocean on unwearied wings lies a nestling whose
wings will never develop into anything more than a pair of paddles!
Great numbers of albatrosses are caught by the natives of the North
Pacific coasts, who use the inflated intestines as floats for their
fishing-nets, and barter the hollow wing-bones with traders for the
European markets—these bones being familiar to us as pipe-stems. The
large webbed feet when inflated make good tobacco-pouches. We have
also seen the quills of the flight-feathers converted into floats for
roach-fishing; and many a Thames angler patiently watches from his
chair in the punt a feather which has probably helped to carry its
former owner over the length and breadth of the Pacific.




A NOVEL LIFE-BOAT.


Mr J. Manes of Fourth Avenue, Newhaven, Connecticut, has invented a new
kind of life-boat which seems to possess features worthy of notice.
‘His boat consists of a hollow globe of metal or wood, ballasted at the
bottom, so that it will always right itself immediately on touching
the water, and can never capsize even in the roughest sea. It has
compartments for water, medical stores and provisions, bull’s-eyes
to let in the light, a door for ingress and egress, a porthole for
hoisting signals to the mast, comfortable seats all around the inside
for the passengers, and a double hollow mast for supplying fresh
air, and for carrying off that which has become vitiated. On the
outside of the Globe boat runs a gallery, for the use of sailors in
rowing, hoisting sail, discharging rockets, or steering. Of course the
cases would be very rare when rowing, sailing, or steering would be
required, but in case of need, all three could be easily managed.’

In such a boat—which is like a large buoy fitted with a mast—the
passengers would be protected from rain and wind, and consequently to a
great extent from cold. This seems to us to be a very important point,
as many a shipwrecked person escapes drowning only to perish from
exposure to the weather. Mr Manes suggests that a propeller might be
attached to the boat to be worked by a crank turned by the passengers
on the inside. It is calculated that a boat twelve feet in diameter
would carry about fifty passengers, and that it could be carried on
deck or hung over the stern on davits, in either of which positions
it might be used as a cabin during the voyage; and further, if hung
on a universal point like a compass, it would retain its equilibrium
no matter what the motion of the ship might be, thus affording a safe
retreat for persons subject to sea-sickness.




AWA’.

LINES WRITTEN ON THE DEATH OF JEANIE, A FAVOURITE CHILD, AGED SEVEN
YEARS.


    Thou ’rt lyin’ cauld an’ still, my bonnie bonnie;
      The dews o’ death lie heavy on thy broo;
    Thy sunny smile nae mair will thrill this bosom;
      Thy sweet blue een are dark an’ sichtless noo!

    Hushed is thy fairy tread, my bonnie bonnie;
      Thy lips sae rosy red, I’ll kiss nae mair.
    O heavy thocht, that dims this ee wi’ sadness!
      O heart that fain wad break, wi’ anguish sair!

    I cry thy name in vain, my bonnie bonnie;
      For aye thy form, thy dear-loved form I see;
    O face sae fair! O locks o’ golden splendour!
      O guileless heart, that fondly throbbed for me!

    A dreary blank is mine, my bonnie bonnie;
      Nae mair thy merry voice will cheer my ha’;
    An eerie stillness fills the darksome dwelling,
      Since thou, my sweetest flower, wert ta’en awa’!

    The angels cam’ for thee, my bonnie bonnie,
      As saftly flickered oot life’s feeble flame:
    The tender Shepherd took thee to His bosom,
      An’ left me wi’ a lanely, lanely hame!

    But oh! thou ’rt wi’ the blest, my bonnie bonnie,
      Where pain will rend thy gentle breist nae mair;
    Oh, when this weary heart lays doun its sorrow,
      My ain wee lassie, may I meet thee there!

        JAMES SMITH.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Conductors of CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL beg to direct the attention of
CONTRIBUTORS to the following notice:

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

_2d._ To insure the return of papers that may prove ineligible,
    postage-stamps should in every case accompany them.

_3d._ MANUSCRIPTS should bear the author’s full _Christian_ name,
    surname, and address, legibly written.

_4th._ MS. should be written on one side of the leaf only.

_5th._ Poetical offerings should be accompanied by an envelope, stamped
    and directed.

_Unless Contributors comply with the above rules, the Editor cannot
undertake to return ineligible papers._

       *       *       *       *       *

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

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._







*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, NO. 740, MARCH 2, 1878 ***


    

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