accepted the chain from her cousin, or borrowed the money from him. Henry Leeson's nature was none of the softest. He entertained the highest possible sense of female honour. Whatever the fact might be, he boasted of always making his affections subject to his reason. And on that same evening, when they were alone, he said, after about twenty minutes had been spent in a restless and painful dialogue, in which neither were explicit, yet both saw that something remained untold-he said, sternly, for the fair and gentle face he looked upon had lost the radiance of truth," Thus much, Geraldine-thus much; beware at any attempt to deceive me; for, if you do so once, you will never do so a second time." The young wife wept, and wept bitterly; but though only four-and-twenty hours had elapsed since he dried her tears so anxiously, yet then he had not thought, and calculated, and placed one circumstance with another, to see how they tallied; and he had clung to the hope that she would have frankly told the truth when they were alone-he had pictured her with her pale weeping face, he had framed the gentle counsel, and heard the fond promise; he had hoped even that she had gone in debt rather than have been obliged to any man for a golden gift, which she feared to confess. Her aunt's extreme niggardliness prevented the supposition that she had bestowed any thing upon her save what even misers give-advice. Yet little did he imagine what the nature of that advice would be. Young men in general are careful enough as to what male society their wives mingle with; but they ought to be even more careful as to the female. A woman is on her guard amongst men, but amongst women her heart and ears are both open; yet what pernicious notions may she not imbibe from that dangerous class of persons called "women of the world." It would be almost impossible to trace how one small suspicion grew out of another; how Geraldine's heart heaved and ached under the consciousness that her husband regarded every thing she did with a prejudiced eye, and listened to her words with a jealous ear; how, having asked him for some fancy of hers, when he was in a mood not to grant a favour, he refused; and her aunt, who unfortunately happened to be present, took occasion to exult in the truth of her evil prophecy. “You see, Geraldine, I was right; every husband grows selfish sooner or later; and a poor woman who has no spirit is sure to be trampled on-never has a shilling to spend on herself, unless she manages." Geraldine had no broad ideas as to the duties of wedded life. She, happily for herself, had never thought of discussing the rights of women apart from the rights of men. She did not seek to disturb the beautiful harmony of nature, by setting up the weak against the strong-by endeavouring to reason a woodbine into becoming an oak; but she did think sometimes that as the oak did not afford much generous support to the woodbine, the woodbine might manage a little artificial support for itself. So she fell, by degrees, into her aunt's plan. She stinted the house to fill her private purse, and this narrowness rendered his home any thing but comfortable to her husband; but even this was not the worst. She, who had felt and mourned over her first untruth with so she grew up, would want so many things its father would It would be impossible to particularise the various POPULAR INFORMATION ON FRENCH TWELFTH ARTICLE-DU BELLAY AND DE BELLEAU. THE early portion of the sixteenth century witnessed I have no fear to die, as all My better part shall mock his wrath. Away with portraiture and bust! For the vain honours paid to dust, A sepulchre have given to me, "On high hill top I saw a stately frame, But shining crystal, which, from top to base, On hundred steps of Afric's gold enchase; Oh! world's vainness! whiles thus I did behold, A relative high in the church, Eustache du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, obtained for the poet a canonry in the church in the year 1550. But he did not live long to enjoy the benefit of earthly possessions after his return from Rome. At the very early age of thirty-one, Joachim du Bellay was cut off by apoplexy. The date of his decease was January 1555, and he was interred in the church of Notre-Dame. illustrious houses of Anjou. He was born in the year chan model, the olive being the chosen emblem of the much real bitterness of spirit, had become accustomed woe, for the rottenness within! Arthur Harewell always came to London in term time, and sometimes remained until it had been long over, Henry Leeson would hardly confess to himself that he regarded him with suspicion; and yet, though they fre quented the same club, walked together, went to the theatres together, and Arthur was the constant guest at his table, Mr Leeson was any thing but comfortable in his society. In indulging this feeling, he did his wife gross injustice. She loved her husband, and practised no deception towards him, except on the one point; but it would have been next to impossible to convince him of this. She was universally admired; her loveliness was matured into beauty. She was never absent from her husband's thoughts for ten minutes together; and yet he was the only person who appeared indifferent to her. Her memory was not always true to her falsehood: she often betrayed herself. She had lost her husband's respect. The vase was broken, and though much of the perfume remained, he did not seek to treasure it, but rather desired to have the power of turning from it altogether: each had a separate interest. And when he looked upon the only child God had given them---a girl--his heart sunk within him, "For," he said, "she will grow up a liar like her mother!" To do Geraldine justice, she endeavoured, strange as it may seem, to impress her daughter with a love of truth; but her ideas of right and wrong, in their bravest and highest sense, were confused--and precept in education is nothing worth without practice. She had not seen her mother since the birth of her child, as she had been abroad from ill health. Her aunt visited her but too often, for she became, unfortunately, the depositary of her secrets, and still advised her to keep her purse closer than ever, as be sure her child, as Spenser, in an address to the French bard, ex claims "Bellay! first garland of free poesy That France brought forth, though fruitful of brave wits, This last line alludes, it is probable, to a little piece While bravely some attempt to gain Seek to amass a golden hoard; I, whom the Graces love alway, I hate their honours of a day, To be what crowds can not endure. Have given me fellowship with gods; Beyond the Mississippi's shore I will not dread to leave this light, work of Belleau was one entitled the " Loves and New Transformations of the Precious Stones." This work has a resemblance in plan both to Darwin's Loves of the Plants and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Take, for example, the fanciful story of the origin of the Opal stone as given by Belleau. Iris, the many-coloured messenger of imperial Juno, is sent on some errand to to refresh herself, and there falls in love with Opalle, earth. By the banks of the Indus she stays a while a beauteous shepherd. He is so much struck, too, with the charms of the celestial envoy, that he swoons away; but he recovers, and, in converse with him, Iris forgets Olympus and all that it contains. The impatient Juno searches for and discovers her; when the mortal cause of the forgetfulness of Iris is changed by the angry deity into a stone. The lamenting Iris cannot undo the charm, but she blends together some of her rainbow rays, and, bestowing them on the stone, converts it into Opal. Our readers will readily see, that, though the poetry may be fine, no human interest can attach to such stories. Even Ovid's tales have more of the latter quality, in as far as real human beings are supposed by him to be the parties metamorphosed. But where all is fictitious and factitious together, the matter must be cold and dry indeed. Like Darwin, Belleau has only wasted his ingenuity. For our present purposes, however, it is fortunate that, in so many instances, the poets under notice should have left the most favourable specimens of their powers in the form of small pieces. Here is such a piece from the mint of Belleau. The object of this aspiration is to entreat Astræa, or the Star of Peace, to return to France. Fair Astræa, quit thy sphere, Thou, so long'd for in our clime; Civil flames have now too long Tempests do not ever roar In the trembling pilot's ears; Thunder, terrible and loud, Show to us thy lovely face, At this season fresh and new; Let, beneath thy honour'd hand, Let the heavens pour on the winds With honey and with manna showers; May enjoy a beauteous spring, On this fickle, shifting earth. Having nothing further of interest to give relative to the career of Remi Belleau, save that he died in Paris in 1577, we are the more pleased at having it in Our power to present another and concluding specimen of his verses, rendered by an able hand in the London Magazine for April 1822-a publication of so high a character that its brief career is much to be regretted. The piece alluded to is a Song on April. "April, sweet month, the daintiest of all, April, fond hope of fruits that lie In buds of swathing cotton wrapt, There closely lapt, Nursing their tender infancy. April, that dost thy yellow, green, and blue, When, as thou goest, the grassy floor Then on their light wing brush away, To tangle Flora on her way. Odours and hues, a balmy store, That earth or heaven can ask no more. Adown her neck and bosom flow; And in a wild profusion there, Her shining hair With them hath blent a golden glow. Of Cytherea haunt, are thine; And thine the breath, that from their skies Inhale, an offering at thy shrine. 'Tis thou that dost with summons blithe and soft, High up aloft, From banishment these heralds bring, Scud swift, and bear Glad tidings of the merry spring. April, the hawthorn and the eglantine, Streak'd pink, and lily-cup, and rose, And their sweet eyes for thee unclose. And in her litful strain doth run April, it is when thou dost come again, With gentlest breath the fires to wake, When winter's chill our veins did slake. The hives pour out their lusty young, Murmuring the flowery wilds among. His fertilising dews, that swell In manna on each spike and steru, And, like a gem, Red honey in the waxen cell. THE MISERABLE CLASSES. THE residuum of unutterable wretchedness which exists at the bottom of nearly all our large city populations, is beginning to attract the attention it deserves. We have received a letter respecting that of Glasgow, from Mr George Greig, travelling secretary to the Association for the Protection of Young Females, who has recently visited Scotland for the first time, in the course of a tour for the purpose of establishing provincial auxiliaries to the society of which he is an officer. Conceiving that the judgment of a stranger on this subject may be useful, we gladly give admission to Mr Greig's remarks: "Whilst lately on a visit to Glasgow, engaged in a most important and benevolent mission, I was so painfully impressed by the glaring contrast presented by the social condition of different portions of its vast population, that I determined, on my departure, to seek, through the medium of your Journal, for an opportunity to bring before the attention of the rightthinking part of the community some of the fearful evidences which have so powerfully operated upon my own mind. In the following statement of facts, I am not at all led by a desire to select Glasgow as a place especially distinguished by such scenes, believing as I do that, to a slight extent, that city is equalled by most of the large manufacturing towns of England; whilst I have no doubt facts of a similar character might be obtained in all the large towns of Scotland; and, from actual observation, I know that Edinburgh presents similar scenes to an almost equal extent. I have been induced, however, thus to publish the result of my personal investigations in Glasgow, because, from a knowledge of the enlarged Christian benevolence which actuates many of her citizens, I have a well-founded hope that, possessing as they do the means of lessening, if not of eradicating, the great evil of which the following narration presents but a faint though truth-telling picture, they will proceed to the employment of some effectual remedy. I The first miserable feature of the social condition of Glasgow that particularly drew my attention, was the constant prowling about of boys and girls, from six or eight to fifteen or sixteen years of age, in small groups of from six to ten persons, who are to be met with, in all parts of the city, morning, noon, and night, without any ostensible occupation, not even begging, but literally dragging on a most miserable existence; living in the streets by day, and, when completely wearied, at night resting upon the common stairs, or in areas. conversed with some of these destitute younglings, and found that most of them were fatherless, some without both parents; that very few, if any, had been employed in factories, so that want of trade could not account for their being in that situation; in fact, they appear, from all I could learn, either from themselves or from the police, to be a constantly accumulating portion of the population of Glasgow, who live by begging when they can, and stealing when they do not beg; and who have no other prospect at present before them but a life of crime, or an early death through destitution. From my frequent meetings with these youthful sons and daughters of want, I was led to inquire of Captain Miller, the intelligent and active Superintendant of Police at Glasgow, whether what had so forcibly struck me was of recent or casual occurrence; and he informed me it was only an evidence of a part of the fearfully increasing destitution in Glasgow, of which I might obtain additional proof by visiting the police buildings, and by personal examination of the houses and habits of the residents in some of the crowded parts of the city. To give myself still more proof of the startling fact which had already unsettled my enthusiastic notions of the unequalled moral condition of the Scottish people, I attended at seven o'clock one morning at the police buildings, and there counted one hundred and three unfortunates, who had been picked up the previous night by the police from the streets and common stairs, having no other home or abiding place. More than three-fourths of these were girls, from twelve to twenty years of age; the remainder, with a few exceptions of older women, being lads about the same age. On the same day I visited the Night Asylum, where a refuge is provided for the houseless poor, and in which from sixty to seventy inmates find, some a temporary, others a more permanent shelter. From the police buildings I went (accompanied by a policeman in plain clothes) to some of the crowded neighbourhoods, where the poorer part of the population of Glasgow herd together, and endure their most miserable exist ence-a living reproach upon their fellow-citizens. Your readers would little thank me, were I to unfold at length the sickening details of the fearful compound of vice and filth, disease and wretchedness, which I met with at every step in the Vennels, Havannah Street, New and Old Wynd, &c. &c. I shall therefore content myself with mentioning but a few of the facts gathered by me in those stagnant sinks of misery and miasma, which must serve as types of hundreds of similar instances which the observer of the dreadful condition of the inhabitants of these localities could furnish himself with. We first visited a small court, leading from the New Vennel, and there, in several rooms, not exceeding ten feet by eight, I counted as many as seven persons of both sexes, in many instances without either protection, or covering from the cold ground, except the miserable rags upon their backs. In some places the inmates were lying upon stones, and a piece of sacking, or other covering, appeared a luxury. The herding together of both sexes must act with a fearfully demoralising effect, and was evidenced in a number of cases, where we found boys and girls associated as man and wife. In one room, but little larger than a mere closet, we found a young woman, apparently about upon the floor, was huddled beneath a sack another seventeen or eighteen years of age; and in the corner, figure, which, on lifting the sack, we found to be a boy, who, upon being questioned, gave his name, and declared his age to be only fourteen years; this, the policevium from these places was most oppressive, and it was man told me, was a well-known young thief. The efflunot a little increased by the means which seem to be employed throughout all these miserable districts for carrying away their slops, &c., from their roomsnamely, an open trough.at each window, down which is poured all sorts of filth. As little pains are taken either to pour the whole of such refuse into the trough, or to cleanse the trough after it has been used, there gradually accumulates, at each window, a heap of the most disgusting nuisances; and while this exists within doors, the want of drainage without, and the the troughs empty themselves, with the utter imposconstant recurrence of open receptacles into which all sibility for a current of fresh air to pass through these crowded lairs, make the atmosphere almost, without a figure, thick with pestilence. In going from the Vennel into Havannah Street, we went by the side of the Burn,' a stream which, even at this wet season, was green with putridity; the houses (or dens) by its side seem to be, if possible, worse than the neighbourhood I had just left. I crawled into some of them, for the entrances were little more than three or four feet in height, and found that dampness here increased all the evils which the poor residents in these places shared in common with their neighbours. The ground floor is slightly higher than the bed of the Burn,' and when that stream rises a little in height, the water must find its way through times the case, the Burn' overflows its banks, the the earthen floors of these rooms; but when, as is somewhole of these miserable tenements must be almost instantly flooded, and the inhabitants run great danger of being drowned. In the dark places in Havannah Street, I found cases of equal destitution and want, immediate vicinity of the college-the residents in rendered the more striking from their being in the which cannot open a window without inhaling the dreadful atmosphere arising from these last harbourages of misery. In one room in this neighbourhood, we found a poor girl lying upon the floor, whe told us she had been there for thirteen months with a sore leg, which almost prevented her from moving; and she had thus been subsisting upon the charity of the other less miserable than herself, could not see a fellowoccupants of the same dwelling, who, though scarcely creature die before their eyes, without sharing their poor pittance with her. We asked this wretched creature whether she had been visited in that time by any minister? She answered, No. By any elder? No. By the town's surgeon? Alas! he had come to visit another inmate of that dwelling, but having no orders to visit her, left her to suffer from her festering sores. We then went to the wynds and closes upon the south side of Trongate and Argyle Street, and there found cases quite parallel in want, misery, dirt, and disease, to those we had just left, with occasional instances of similar charity towards such as were a little worse (if possible) than the rest. There we met, upon one common stair, with two girls, and, at the top of the stair, with a man, who, we were told, had crawled there early in the morning, as he said, to die; and, truly, he did not seem to be far from death. One of the girls told me that she had slept upon that stair every night, for three weeks past, having no other home. In the Old Wynd, among many places of a similar character, and to which the description of the places in the Vennel will equally apply, we went into one room, about twelve or thirteen feet by seven, in which we counted fifteen living human beings, without bedding of any kind, crowded together, to keep each other warm. I was much struck by the strange exclamation of one of the women, 'God had need to be very mindful of us!-for, truly, I thought, their fellowcreatures, and fellow-citizens, seemed to mind them but little. I could extend these most painful details to a great length, but I trust I have already shown enough to arrest the attention of the well-thinking people of Glasgow; and having thus faithfully pointed out some of the dark evidences of the evil, I will endeavour, on another occasion, to suggest a remedy." LEAMINGTON SPA. LETTER FROM A VISITER. A QUARTER of a century ago, Leamington was an obscure unnoticed village; now, it contains 14,000 inhabitants, many very handsome public buildings, broad elegant streets, splendid hotels, and baths, boarding-houses, libraries, news-rooms, conveyances of all kinds, and conveniences of every possible description. The scenery around is beautiful. Rich meadows and corn-fields, with noble trees dotting the hedge-rows, and here and there clumps, larger or less, of the famous oaks and beeches of Warwickshire, make up what is called in common phrase "a charming country." The muddy, sleepy, little river Leam crawls through the valley, adding little to its beauty, except when at a distance the sunlight falls through the rich masses of foliage upon its bosom, when it serves as well as a finer river to reflect the beams, and produce a species of beauty which only river and wood scenery can exhibit. You must recollect, in order to understand the character of Leamington, that it lies in a country very famous in the most romantic times of our history-that Warwick, with its castle, called by Sir Walter Scott "that fairest monument of ancient and chivalrous splendour which yet remains uninjured by time"-and Kenilworth, with all its romance-and Stratford-on-Avon, with its still deeper and more abiding interest-surround the place, and impart something of their character to it. In the heart of "merrie England," associated as this part of the country is, in the minds of us North Britons, with all the superstitions and fine mellow old jovial customs of our ancient writers-with the May-pole and the Christmas carol-the stout October ale, and Puck and Robin Goodfellow, and the "mistletoe bough," and many a "Midsummer Night's Dream" of fairies and witches-and ten thousand other frolics and fanciful recollections-one feels here really in England--the England of Shakspeare and Miltonthe England that grew the oaks that built the ships that conquered the world-"merrie England," "old England" our fatherland! The idea of being in this time-hallowed country, in the very heart of this heart of the world, gives me very great pleasure, made up of indefinable sentiments and from indefinable causes all of which, however, have reference to a love of country and a pleasant mellow influence from our old poetry. But I forget this is a watering-place, and, after all, not a proper theme to awaken imaginative or enthusiastic emotions. To keep to our statistics, then, and guide-book descriptions. The houses in Leamington are well built, and look elean and handsome-made of brick, the dark brick of Warwickshire, coated over with cement, so as to resemble stone. Although the general effect produced is that of cleanliness and elegance, still the damp marks on the stucco, and the cracks and flaws made by time, unless the coating is kept very perfect, spoil the appearance to me; and I should almost rather see the honest plain brick than all this starched and painted gentility. Some very elegant houses there are in the Elizabethan style, both small and large, the sweetest places I ever saw; and I am resolved, as soon as I can afford to build a house, to have a handsome cottage like some of those here, placed in a garden, with comfortable gable-ends, and quaint windows and doorway, and chimneys running from the ground in the shape of ancient pilasters, &c. They are very commodious and comfortable in the inside, I am told, and are really very charming without. There are plenty of churches here, some of them very handsome. The Baptists and Independents have also very neat places of worship. The baths and pump-rooms are very well-nothing very extraordinary, but well managed; half a pint of water at 8 o'clock, walk in the garden-half a pint again at a quarter past S, another walk-such is the routine. The waters are principally saline, gently aperient; but there are some sulphureous like Middleton, and one or two chalybeate. The saline waters, however, are the staple; and for the rich, high-fed, and plethoric frequenters of the place, must, together with moderate diet, in general produce beneficial effects. The walks round the neighbourhood and in the town are very pleasant, the streets being broad and regular, the flagging ample and dry, the shops attractive, but the wares somewhat high. Every thing, of course, is done here to attract visiters, and to minister to their comfort. No sweep is allowed to walk on the pavement; if a man's chimney takes fire, he is fined by the commissioners; and any nuisance is promptly and severely punished. Fireworks and exhibitions of divers kinds in the gardens amuse the company in fine weather, and concerts and theatrical exhibitions of various kinds (though there is no regular theatre here) are ready to help the visiter off with his time. You don't meet so many invalids here as I should have expected. Pale-faced ladies and wretched-looking men in Bath chairs you do here and there encounter, but, on the whole, I think the great mass of disease that seeks Leamington is a very tolerable, out-of-door, bathing, water-drinking, sight-seeing, sort of ailment -young fellows knocked up with too much town dissipation older gentlemen with jolly round red noses and middle-aged ones with bloated faces and elephantine legs; or, young ladies wan and chalkyolder ones with a withering bloom and jaunty step; or decidedly aged, comfortable dames, with marks of good living on their faces, who spend half their lives in Leamington, and the other half in Bath, for the sake of luxury and "the waters." I don't like to see tall, lounging, young fellows, from twenty to thirty, "flag-hopping" down the Parade, with quizzing-glasses and canes, staring at the ladies, and emitting now and then an inane laugh; in fact, I know no sight more thoroughly contemptible than a group of these poor, worthless, useless, young men, brought up to be of no earthly value to society, and insulting the community, which their very presence disgraces. But I do like to see the very handsomely dressed and elegant women, neat and lady-like from top to toe, languidly sliding, or coquettishly tripping, up and down the Parade, in a sunny morning at three o'clock in the afternoon, as Paddy says. These lady-birds are here at home; and the absence of every thing like usefulness about their lives and appearance, which is intolerable in the great, lazy, hulking men, is quite as it should be in the women. Certainly, the way of walking now in fashion among young ladies is of somewhat questionable propriety; the chest being far too much projected, and the walk itself something a little worse than affected. For my part, I am beginning, I find, to admire the middle-aged (I mean the young middle-aged) ladies most now-a quiet, composed, collected, somewhat dignified manner, with a correctness in dress gathered from experience, and a comeliness that the enjoyment of domestic affection breathes over them; this is my style of beauty. now and then; and in the dusk, as you come home, there you have the indefatigable mediciner wheeling away from an hotel or a nobleman's mansion, home, I presume, to his dinner. "Deuced bad, only thirty," meaning fees, the doctor was heard to say one day. "Thirty guineas a-day!" The common story is, that this gentleman realises an annual income of fourteen thousand a-year out of the consequences of the united hard labour and pampering of old England. MR JAMESON ON NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA. MR R. G. JAMESON proceeded to South Australia in June 1838, as surgeon-superintendant of “the Surrey" emigrant ship; and having been induced to spend some time in that colony and New South Wales, and to visit New Zealand, he has since his return given the result of his observations to the world in a handsome volume. As the production of a well-educated man, possessing considerable powers of observation, and of a sober and moderate turn of mind, we consider it a book of some value to intending emigrants, besides having the advantage of being one of the latest reports on the subject. As we have already treated these colonies in a general manner on more than one occasion, we do not feel called upon to follow Mr Jameson in his observations upon them, a course which might result rather in dullness than in instruction. It will be better, we conceive, to present one or two passages of his book to which we find a particular interest attached. After giving a detail of the inconveniences which befell the first Adelaide settlers on account of the want of "a survey," he proceeds to remark, that it is a mistake "to suppose that the possession of a consicolonist. [Other qualities and circumstances being derable capital is indispensable to the success of a equal, we would suppose that a good capital was an advantage-but we shall let him go on.] On the contrary, it has been found, throughout the Australian colonies, that those who have eventually acquired the greatest estates, the greatest flocks and herds, or who have risen to the highest eminence as merchants, owed their success to the moral qualities of integrity and perseverance, or to a clear-sighted view of the circumstances of their situation, rather than to the original possession of capital." You may say of Leamington that it is essentially a genteel town; in the hunting season, which lasts all winter, it is crowded not only with invalids, old dowagers, and quiet luxurious people, but by many noble and wealthy families, who prefer it as a place of residence, and by sporting gentlemen, who find it a capital place for combining the luxury of a town life with field amusements. The Warwickshire Hunt has long been famous. I have only seen one bad coach, or vehicle of that nature, since I came, and that was the coach which brought me from the Hampton station to Leamington. The seats were all wet, and the inside generally was comfortless and shabby; three of the traces broke before we got started, so miserable was the harness; and the fare for coming eleven miles, in about two hours and a half, by this precious conveyance, was five shillings! How Leamington or the railway proprietors submit to such a state of things, is surprising. This was the only instance of the kind, however. The "flys," cars, barouches, phaetons, &c., which are to be seen in all He then gives the following case as an illustration : the principal streets, are extremely neat; the post-"During my residence in South Australia, I became boys generally ride on the single horse, their legs over acquainted with a colonist, who had for many years the shafts, instead of sitting on the box, so that an unobstructed view may be had of the country-no land, where, as he assured me, the utmost parsimony been a shopkeeper in a small sea-port town in Scotcontact with the coachman is necessary, and there is room, if need be, for a whole family. The post-boys, quite different from our fellows, are neat and well bred-jockey caps and leather smalls, with top boots, and clear harness and carriages, being the order of the day: fare, two shillings an hour. The Bath chairs are neat and convenient, some of them very elegant, and run over the well-flagged streets as smoothly and smartly as possible: fare, one shilling an hour. It is well known that if a horse has a particle of "trot" in him, a butcher's boy will have it out. The only sight approaching to excitement in this quiet and orderly town, is a member of this fraternity, with his hat off and hair streaming behind, his blue frock fluttering, and his legs working in convulsions against the ribs of the broken-knee'd, vicious-looking hack, that, with ears laid back, and eyes glaring, and mane fluttering, and tail in a quiver and quake, scours down the Parade at sixteen miles an hour, the rider leaning far over to one side of his Rosinante, in order to balance a huge, black-faced, dead sheep, or deer, whose legs stick out from the basket on the other. It would make an excellent picture. I have no doubt in my own mind that these fellows are often fined for furious riding; but to keep a butcher's boy out of a hard trot would baffle all the commissioners in Leamington, and Dr J. to boot. Having mentioned Dr J., I must give you a word or two on the subject, for no account of Leamington would be at all complete in which he did not cut a conspicuous figure. Dr J. is the idol of the placenumber 1, letter A. I have just come from the baths; the whole of the gentlemen's side was occupied by military men-generals, colonels, and majors-all patients of Dr J. A public dinner is given to him every year as a mark of respect. When he left Leamington last year for a month, it is said the town was deserted; and I am told a petition was sent to him, on his return, begging him never to do so any more. Ile drives about in a one-horse barouche or phaeton, very light and work-like, and in every street he stops three or four times, pops into a house, and shortly after pops out again, popping a guinea into his pocket. He is seen every where. Between 12 and 2 o'clock, when he sees patients at home, his door is besieged by carriages, and many persons of distinction go away daily, not being able to see the great man. As you ramble about Leamington, you meet the doctor every was requisite to enable him to make the two ends of the year meet. Having a large and young family to establish and educate in the world, he was a type of that numerous class of men to whom the British islands, swarming with competitors in every pursuit, trade, and profession, afford no longer a tenable position. Emigration forced itself upon him, not as a matter of choice but of necessity; and having weighed well, on one hand, the lasting interests of his family, and, on the other, the inconvenience of moving, the breaking up of old acquaintances and settled habits, he finally resolved to emigrate. Preferring Australia to the American colonies, on account of its genial and delightful climate, as the field of his future efforts, and having by study become a convert to the South Australian principles of colonisation, Mr Cock obtained a passage for himself and family, and arrived in the colony by no means burdened with capital, or rather utterly unprovided with aught deserving of the name. He entered into partnership with a countryman of his own, similarly situated; and having calmly surveyed the state of affairs in the colony, he resolved to begin business as a colonist in bullock-driving, at that period, and for some time afterwards, an extremely lucrative occupation. The carriage of goods of every kind, besides furniture and wooden houses, from the landing-places at Glenelg and the port to Adelaide, afforded a most abundant source of profit to those who were masters of one or more teams of bullocks; the average daily produce of one team being from three to four pounds. In a few months Mr Cock and his partner had acquired a capital of two or three hundred pounds, part of which they invested in town allotments, and an eighty-acre section judiciously chosen at the foot of Mount Lofty, where the soil, consisting in general of a rich detritus, must be extremely productive in the average seasons. Their town sections rose rapidly in value; and a few small houses erected by Mr Cock upon his allotments, readily found tenants at a rent which constituted a yearly income of two hundred pounds. and latterly has become highly distinguished in consequence of Governor Hobson making it his residence. We have from Mr Jameson some curious notices of the arrangements by which the civilised people in this district maintained social order before regular law was introduced. "At the period," he says, "of my arrival, it contained little more than fifty European He now found leisure, amidst his increasing occu- dwellings-cottages of wood, white painted, with vepations, to establish an auctioneer's business, which he randahs; a church of the same materials, but of larger carried on for some time with success, but finally dimensions; and a native pa-a, or village, consisting abandoned, conceiving that more pleasing, if not more of about a hundred and fifty huts, enclosed by a high profitable, avocations might be found than that of and strong fence. The presence of ten or twelve large being instrumental in the selling of property belong-ships, besides a fleet of small coasting craft, and open ing to the necessitous and less successful of the com- boats and canoes, plainly indicated that the place was munity at a ruinous depreciation. He therefore already of some commercial importance, although as limited his mercantile operations to the safe and pro- yet it recognised neither flag, law, nor government, fitable one of selling goods on commission. and had neither a court of justice, a jail, nor a customhouse. Having purchased a few head of cattle, he established a dairy on his farm at the foot of Mount Lofty, the management of which devolved upon his partner, a practical farmer, whose wife possessed all the experience and activity necessary in their situation. When fresh butter was readily purchased in Adelaide at 3s. 6d. per pound, and eggs at 4s. per dozen (a Scotch farm-yard would be incomplete without poultry), it is evident that this undertaking would also be successful. Encouraged by the high price of sawn and split timber, for building and fencing, Mr Cock carried his operations into the Stringy Bark Forest, where he employed a number of sawyers, splitters, and shingle cutters, who were paid at a rate which enabled them, individually, to earn from 20s. to 30s. per diem, if expert in their trade, and of sufficient strength to encounter its fatigues. It was of little consequence to the employer how much he paid his labourers, since the produce of their labour was an article absolutely indispensable to almost every man in the colony, and he could readily sell it at a profit, or use it himself, with great advantage, in building and fencing by con tract. The necessity of disbursing large sums weekly in the payment of wages, was an inconvenience; but Mr Cock's judicious operations were precisely of that description which it is the interest of a banking establishment to encourage and assist by every means not incompatible with the rules of systematic business. Between the operations of a bank, and the pursuits of spirited and judicious individuals, there exists a relation of mutual dependence and support. It is from the exertions and enterprise of such individuals that a community has its vital circulation. Their example encourages the timid and shames the indolent. Their operations cause a rapid accumulation of produce, a quickened circulation of money, an increased consumption of merchandise; and it is from them that business derives that tone of health and vigour in which a banking and discounting establishment reaps its amplest harvests. It is here to be observed, that, like almost every man throughout the Australian colonies who has risen from an humble condition to one of affluence, Mr Cock is constitutionally and habitually temperate in short, a tee-totaller. To abstinence from ardent spirits and all unnecessary stimulants, he unquestionably, in a great measure, owed his clear judgment, as well as a physical constitution capable of undergoing much hardship and fatigue. It will readily be supposed, that in neatness and systematic management, his farm was surpassed by none in the colony. At this period, agriculture was to be considered as an experimental pursuit, and he, like other judicious colonists, conducted this part of his operations on a very limited scale. On his farm there was a space of two or three acres under a crop of maize, and a field was broken up for the reception of wheat. The maize was by no means equal to what I have subsequently seen in New Zealand; but it looked green and healthy, although the weather had recently been very dry. The soil and situation seemed to be well adapted for the culture of the vine, the orange, and the olive; and he informed me of his intention forthwith to cultivate the first-named plant, availing himself of the services of some of the German emigrants, who had just arrived in the colony. Whether or not he has carried his intentions into effect, and with what success, I have not been able to ascertain. He relied upon his dairy chiefly for the reimbursement of his farming outlay. In the neighbourhood there was abundance of fine kangaroo grass, which, at a small expense, he converted into hay and carted into Adelaide, where it was readily purchased at L.12 per ton. To conclude this lengthy but not perhaps uninstructive sketch, Mr Cock, who had struggled vainly for many years amidst the difficulties of a cheerless and precarious situation in Scotland, although endowed, in an eminent degree, with the clear and discerning faculties and the prudence which in all countries are most conducive to success in life, was thus, in less than two years from the date of his arrival in the colony, in the enjoyment of wealth, without having trenched upon any hazardous, speculative, or discreditable pursuit. 'I'he presence of his father, and the whole of his kindred, who have subsequently joined him, will tend greatly to enhance the enjoyment of his well-earned independence." The Bay of Islands is an extensive district in the northern part of the north island of New Zealand. It has long been partially and irregularly colonised ness. lar tribunals; for in a few months after Captain Hobson had established his police court and petty sessions in the Bay of Islands, it was found that offences were committed, not only more frequently but of a graver nature than during the good old times." STRANGE TRAITS OF RECENT TIMES. THE remarkable characteristic of our country is unquestionably the boundless individual freedom, joined to the complete protection given to every personal right. Perhaps it is only the strength and prevalence of this noble feature of our land, which makes any occasional exception from it the more striking. Howthe contrary, much good, from pointing out a few ever this may be, there cannot be any harm, but, on traits of comparatively recent times, in which we see consolidated. The keeping of such traits in mind, the leading principle, as it were, not fully firmed or may have the effect of more thoroughly assuring the consolidation of the principle of the sacredness of individual rights. In the year 1807, three hundred French prisoners Mid-Lothian, under the care of a company of soldiers. were kept in a small country house at Greenlaw, in As these men occasionally made attempts to escape, very strict regulations were enforced for their secure keeping: in particular, there was a strict order that every light should be extinguished, and that the prinight. This was all very well; but, while such an soners should be perfectly quiet, after nine o'clock at order, and several of the like nature, were issued for Kororadika, in the beginning of 1840, contained about three hundred European inhabitants, of all ages and sexes, exclusive of the numerous sailors whose nightly revels constituted the only interruption to the peace and harmony which usually prevailed. These gentry resorted, also, in great numbers to Pomare's village, in the inner anchorage, near the new township of Russell, where Pomare himself, the greatest chief of New Zealand, carried on the lucrative trade of grogselling, besides another of a still more discreditable kind, for the convenience of his reckless customers French, English, and American. Here might be seen the curious spectacle of a still savage chief enriching himself at the expense of individuals who, although belonging to the most civilised and powerful nations of the world, were reduced to a lower degree of bar-mally for the regulation of the prison, a verbal order barism by the influence of their unbridled licentious- other, to the effect that, if lights were seen and noises was also handed down from one set of guards to anthe sentinel, on calling out to them to obey the rules, heard in the prisoners' apartments after nine, and if found himself disobeyed, then he was to discharge his piece through the window. This order was in force for a considerable time, until at length a Captain Rowan, of the Stirlingshire militia, thought proper to mitigate it so far as to require that, before such a step was taken, the officer on guard should be called to judge as to its necessity. Soon after this regulation was made, about ten in the evening of the 7th of January of the year above mentioned, a noise was heard and the ground floor. The sentinel reported the circumlights observed by the sentinel in one of the rooms on stance to the sergeant, and the sergeant to the officer in the guard-house, a young ensign, who immediately repaired to the spot, and called twice in at the window to order the enforcement of the rules. No notice being taken of the order, the officer commanded the sentinel to fire in at the window. The man obeyed-missed fire-and was commanded again. He now fired, and the shot penetrated the body of a prisoner, by name Charles Cottier, who appears to have been at the time quiet in his bed, and who died of the wound next day. Hitherto no legal restraint upon crime or violence had existed in New Zealand. The authority of Mr Busby, the British resident, was merely nominal. That gentleman lived on the opposite shore of the Bay, at the distance of five miles, and his visits to Kororadika were few and far between; but had he lived in the heart of the settlement, he could have exerted no authority either to punish offenders or to settle disputes. The natives respected him as the representative of the British government; and among the Europeans he was rendered popular by his courteous and conciliatory deportment. His appointment, however, led in nowise to the maintenance of order, or the prevention of crime; and his interference in the affairs of individuals, without the power of enforcing his decisions, could have produced no satisfactory result. Yet crimes, misdemeanours, and larcenies, were of remarkably rare occurrence; and in no part of the world were the persons or the property of individuals more secure than in this little settlement, within whose precincts no lawyer had ever yet shown his face. The stores were full of merchandise, to the value of between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. The merchants and grog-sellers were known to have in their possession large quantities of specie; nevertheless, the crimes of robbery and housebreaking were unknown and unfeared. Moreover, many commercial bills were in circulation, which were in every case duly honoured. In a word, no statements could be more widely at variance with truth than those which represented the Bay of Islands to be a nest of outlaws and criminals. However ungenerous it may appear to throw a shadow of suspicion on this pleasing picture of primitive virtue and good conduct, yet it might, perhaps, be argued that the absence of crime and misdemeanours arose less from any aboriginal purity of heart and mind, than from the circumstance of the people being sensible that they were bound together by one common interest, and that the maintenance of social order was indispensable to the safety of their lives and property. Hence they effected this by the influence of a judicial association, the members of which, dispensing with the tedious and expensive forms of justice, scrupled not to act as constables, and to apprehend summarily the culprits they were to try. If, after as complete an inquiry as the circumstances admitted of, the accused was condemned, they then passed immediate sentence upon him, and forthwith proceeded to put in execution the punishment of banishment, preceded by the more dreadful operation of tarring and feathering. Having been stripped, and covered with an enduring coat of the proper materials, the prisoner was led several times backwards and forwards along the beach, to the tune of the Rogue's March, and great was the joy with which the natives beheld this august ceremony. The culprit was then put into a canoe, and ordered to leave the beach of Kororadika, with the positive assurance that his reappearance in the neighbourhood would entitle him to a repetition of the same process. Resistance to the mandates of this tribunal was useless, for its members could, if necessary, call in the ready and willing assistance of the natives. Mercantile operations, therefore, were carried on to a considerable extent and with implicit confidence, and debts paid with scrupulous regularity. It was correctly assumed, that since every able-bodied member of the community could obtain a good subsistence with very little labour, no indulgence or mercy could be properly extended to those who gave way to criminal propensities. Were we to judge by facts, we might suppose that the summary processes of this species of Lynch law were more efficacious than regu The officer, who bore an excellent character, was subjected to a full and careful trial, when Mr (now Lord) Jeffrey exerted his eloquence in his defence; but he was found guilty of culpable homicide, and being of opinion that, though he had an express order sentenced to nine months' imprisonment-the court for what he did, the circumstances demanded the exercise of the discretionary power with which he was invested. The case is only alluded to here, on account of the recklessness shown by such an order as to the life of men in the situation of prisoners of war, within the last thirty-five years. A singular attack upon individual liberty occurred in the West Highlands in 1805. A poor Baptist preacher, settled in a meeting-house there, and who had once been a herring-curer, was preaching one Sunday on the beach to a small congregation, when a neighbouring gentleman, attended by a proper force, seized him and sent him to Greenock to the care of the officer superintending the press-force of that place. Not only was he not allowed to take leave of his family, but an interdict to recover his person and a writ of habeas corpus were successively defeated by the speed with which he was hurried from Greenock to Ireland, and from Ireland to a vessel in the Downs. The justice had heard some exaggerated story of his calling in question the lawfulness of war in his sermons, and, thinking this "seditious and immoral," had bethought him of bringing the press into force as a means of ridding the country of him, but without taking care to ascertain his own title to interfere. In reality, the whole extent of the powers of a justice with regard to the press was to give information of any suitable man in his neighbourhood, and protect the press party in its proceedings. The preacher, after enduring every hardship and indignity proper to his situation for six weeks, was liberated upon a petition to the Lords of the Admiralty, who at the same time gave him a protection for the future. He raised an action before the Court of Session, against the gentleman who had so strangely interfered with his liberty, and gained the cause with a hundred guineas damages, the lords, with one exception, taking strong views against the defendant, whom they could not admit to have acted in good faith in the case, in as far as he took an oblique way of getting quit of a man whom he supposed to be dangerous, though they readily owned that his intentions appeared to have been good. So recently as 1790, the Lord Justice-Clerk, or supreme criminal judge of Scotland, asserted and acted upon a right, which he considered as inherent my hat in crossing the fort; and by the lightning I in his office, to open any letters as they passed through We started on the 11th, and put ashore at the head of the Edinburgh Post-office. On the 14th of April in a rapid to examine if there was enough of water to that year, a gentleman who had been fatally victor in pass, but found the keel would have to be partly una duel, fled from justice, and was outlawed. A writer loaded. We were two days getting all the boats over to the signet in Edinburgh, who had been his legal this cursed place, one of them being so much damaged agent, receiving his rents from his land-steward, conthat she had to be unloaded, and hauled high and dry ducting a law-suit about a salmon-fishing, and so forth, to be repaired. Here the country has in many places was surprised, five days after, to receive his letters, a curious appearance, the river being hemmed in by five in number, through the medium of the Justiceprecipices on each side, which have been washed by Clerk, with the appearance of having been opened and the rains into every shape; they have the appearresealed, and bearing on the exterior, in each instance, ance of the ruins of an old cathedral in some places, the words, "Opened and resealed by me, Robert Macin others of fortifications, whilst here and there the queen." The fact may appear difficult of belief; but, appearance of old walls would make a person think remote as the period now is, the agent still lives, and that more than nature had a hand in the formation. the present writer has actually seen several of the letThere is one large rock called the Citadel, which ters, bearing the above inscription. The gentleman stands jutting into the river not less than 300 feet in immediately waited upon the judge, and remonstrated height, and another at a little distance which very bitterly against an act so injurious to his feelings and much resembles Pitt's Monument in Edinburgh; but to his interests; but was informed that there was sufowing to the inclemency of the weather, I did not ficient authority for what had been done, and that Sir much enjoy the rugged scenery, which is here and Thomas Miller, the preceding judge, and others at an there enlivened by a band of bighorn, hanging, as it earlier period, had constantly followed the same pracwere, on the brow of the precipice, and regarding us tice. It was persisted in next day with regard to an "I may now," he continues, "give you a sketch of securely as we glide past far below them. We started equal number of letters. The victim of this procedure boat-voyaging on the Missouri. You say in your last again on the 13th, but had not procceded above three was on this occasion alarmed respecting his wife, then letter you would like to try it as a novelty, but you miles when we were forced to put ashore owing to the about to be confined for the first time, fearing that would find it confoundedly rough work, and eke an-high wind; here we remained all day. Some of our her receiving any letters from her relations which had noying. How would you like sometimes to be stopped men went to hunt, but were rather unsuccessful. been so treated, might give her a dangerous shock; and three and four days in the same campment, lying by Starting again on the morning of the 14th, we passed on representing this to the Justice-Clerk, he obtained a fire in the woods, or snoozing it off in a lodge, Arrow River, but had gone only a short distance, a promise from his lordship that no letters addressed Indian fashion; and sometimes forced to put ashore, when a mackinaw got aground. We put ashore to to the lady would be so treated-the gentleman, how- when wood is scarce and little shelter to be had, in a wait for her, but before we could get her off, the wind ever, giving his word of honour in return, that, should high north wind, and the snow like to take the skin began to blow so hard that we could not again start any such letters contain references to the duellist, they off your face? All that and much more has he to that day. I played cards and read to kill time. 15thshould immediately be handed to the judge! The undergo, who tries voyaging on the Upper Missouri. Started early, and passed the Judith River. This is a agent took a protest against the proceedings of the But that is nothing to a voyageur. By and by the place where the Crows generally cross to steal horses Postmaster, and sent a memorial for the opinion of weather gets better, the fires begin to blaze, the kettles from the Blackfeet. There is plenty of timber here English counsel. Mr Scott, then Solicitor-General to boil; and after stowing away a few pounds of meat, for the purpose of concealment, and every point is full (afterwards Lord Eldon), gave a characteristically cau- and smoking a pipe, contentment and good humour of Indian forts, in one of which Mr C. and I took up tious opinion, but upon the whole concluded that the resume their reign, and all former sufferings and pri- our quarters, having been again forced to put ashore act of the Justice-Clerk was without legal grounds. Mrvations are forgotten. In my last letter I gave you on account of the wind. We remained here during Thomas Erskine pronounced at once that the judge a long account of my trip down from my post to Fort the rest of the day. 16th-Up and off by peep of day, was liable in terms of the Post-office act of Queen Union in a canoe, accompanied by one man only, and but had to put ashore in consequence of the wind, Anne, in a penalty of L.20 for every one of the letters he old and frail. It was rather a dangerous voyage; which detained us till late in the afternoon; when opened. However, the complaints of the agent never but, thank God, it ended well, as you must now know. we again started, and passed the rapids of Holmes went farther. Thereafter, when playing at whist On this occasion, however, the case was different; for and Rondin, on the latter of which one of the boats with the Justice-Clerk in private society, he was ac- I had, instead of one companion, at least thirty-five got aground: it was nearly dark when we got her off, customed to remind him of this debt, and when he or forty, and off we went right merrilie.' We started so we camped at the foot of the rapid for the night. was the loser, would tell his lordship that he would on the 3d of April 1841, from Fort Mackenzie for Fort We are now fairly in what the voyageurs call the write off the matter in his post-office account. Union, with the returns, consisting of 1108 packs of Mauvaise Terre; the precipices rise abruptly on each robes, and a good many packs of other peltries; in all, side of the river to a tremendous height, and are about 1136 packs, in one keel' and three mackinaw washed into a great many curious shapes, intersected boats-this being my first trip on water in this country by deep gloomy ravines which run far back; there are in a large boat the whole under charge of Mr C., a few stunted pines here and there, which in their one of the partners: I was second in command. We appearance harmonise well with the dismal character made a very good stretch the first day, and camped of the place. Here, also, we saw large bands of at night very much fatigued. The morning of the bighorn, but they are very poor at this season." 4th was bitter cold, and nearly a foot of snow had fallen during the night. It continued to blow a gale, accompanied with heavy snow; so that we had a lodge put up, which we brought with us in case of our being unable to travel, and remained quite snug the whole day. On the morning of the 5th we started, although it was bitterly cold, and proceeded very well till about eleven o'clock, when the keel got fast aground in a rapid. Freezing as it was, all the men had to get into the water, where they wrought about five hours, but could not get her off. I went below to where the small boats had put ashore, and had one of them unloaded, and sent her to take out part of the load of the keel, after which we got her off. Four or five of the men were seized with violent cramp, owing to being too long in the water. The day was as cold as any I ever felt in Scotland. Early on the morning of the 6th, we commenced reloading the mackinaw, and started; weather still cold. We had not proceeded far when one of the mackinaws got aground. We had to put ashore with the other boats, and send all hands to get her off. It was so late before we could succeed in this, that we could not start again; but had to commence unloading a small boat that had got damaged in the morning. During the night it snowed very hard. The water was, however, baled out of the unloaded boat in the morning; and after stopping the leaks, we reloaded her with all expedition, the weather looking very dull. We had not finished covering the load, when the snow again commenced. Mr C. and I had our lodge put up, as, owing to the snow and cold, we could not start that day. Here we remained till the 10th, the weather as cold and severe as any we had the whole winter. Fortunately, I had some books and a pack of cards, with which Mr C. and I whiled away the time. You can have no idea how annoying it is to be laid past in this manner. Every day seemed a week; and as I had to see all the boats attended to, I never had dry feet half an hour in the day. During this time, the snow fell upwards of two feet in depth. We shall not of course be supposed to draw these traits of past times into notice from any feeling unfavourable to the parties whose conduct was amiss. We thoroughly believe that all of these parties acted with what they conceived to be good intentions; or, if not in any one instance, it may be hoped that time has brought better views and better feelings. We only wish to illustrate that spirit of particular eras, under which individuals are always more or less liable to act. The two first anecdotes tend to show the moral effects of a state of war: let us add to them the not less remarkable fact, that, so lately as the end of the reign of George II., a man taken up on the streets of Edinburgh for swearing (a vice indulged in by every gentleman of that age) was next day shipped by the magistrates on board a tender in Leith Roads! It cannot be sufficiently impressed on the minds of the humbler class of people, how severely war always presses upon them. They are generally the most easily induced to look favourably on a proposal to have a war, and yet are those whose comfort is most invaded by the horrible scourge. LIFE IN UPPER MISSOURI. In the last volume of the Journal (Nos. 474 and 476), we gave extracts from some letters written by a young person engaged in the trade of peltry-collecting in the Upper Missouri territory in North America. They presented a lively and striking picture of a life spent in the most complete abstraction from society, and varied only by adventures with savages and wild animals. Another letter, written by the same individual in May 1841, gives some even more forcible sketches of existence in Upper Missouri. He describes himself as having been promoted to the charge of his fort, which is the remotest of a chain on the Missouri River, and as performing this duty in a dress resembling that of Robinson Crusoe, yet always maintaining robust health and high animal spirits. The occurrence of a prairie storm in the summer of 1840, gives occasion for the following modestly related anecdote of a presence of mind sharpened by a continual exposure to danger amongst unfriendly Indians:-"I used always," he says, "to sleep in one of the bastions, it being cooler and more free from vermin than the rooms, and safer in case of accidents. I went up about eight o'clock, and sat down smoking my pipe by one of the ports. The evening had been oppressively hot, and about this time the sky in some places was black as pitch. In a short time it was black round and round; the clouds descended till they appeared almost to touch the ground; the atmosphere was close and suffocating. I remarked to an American, that, if I mistook not, we were going to have a fearful night. The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when I heard like a low moaning sound among the ravines. Presently the gale commenced, accompanied by the loudest thunder, the most vivid lightning, and the heaviest rain, I ever saw. It shook the bastion to its foundation. We ran down; I lost We made a start on the morning of the 10th, in spite of the cold, which was piercing. I saw two large bears after we started. We had not proceeded far when the keel boat got hard and fast aground; the mackinaws, however, passed. After trying in vain to get her off, until the men could stand no longer in the water, I went in the yawl with all hands, and had one of the mackinaws unloaded, and took out part of the cargo of the keel; this lightened her, and we got her off; reloaded her and the mackinaw the same evening, and went a little below where there was timber, and camped for the night. Many of the men had their legs dreadfully swollen with the cold water. Several other days passed in a similar manner, no one without some unpleasant accident; and when they had been out fifteen, they had only proceeded as far as one could easily have ridden in two. On the morning of the 5th of May, amidst stormy and wintry weather, they started from the neighbourhood of a place called the Round Hill. To continue the journal of the young trader-"We passed immense bands of buffalo to-day, and saw the work of the beaver in our last camp. They had about two hundred trees cut down, as neatly as if chopped by an axe, some of them as thick as my body. We kept on making a little each day till the 11th, on the evening of which day we arrived at Fort Union, having been no less than thirty-nine days on our trip." The following is his account of his companions :"The voyageurs are generally either Canadians or French creoles. Some few are of other countries, but none are equal to the first mentioned, either for enduring the hardships and fatigues of a voyage, or the changes of the weather. Uncle Toby speaks of 'our army in Flanders' as something considerable in the way of swearing; but Marlborough's men must have been sober Christians in comparison with our voyageurs. They are always worst when engaged in rough work. They are, as might be expected, woefully ignorant, and scarcely one can read a single word. One would think that, from the nature of their occupations, they would be unhealthy; but that is not the case; for, with the exception of rheumatism from being obliged to go so frequently and in all seasons into cold water, they seldom have any disease. Indigestion is certainly not one of their complaints; the quantity they eat is enormous. Some of them, when we were lying by in consequence of the bad weather, would cook and eat from morning till night. One day I particularly observed an old Canadian of the name of Mallet; he first discussed about three pounds of meat roasted on the fire like a steak; he had hardly finished that when the cook of the large boat called the men to breakfast; there he ate as much boiled meat as would have served you for three days at least, drank about a gallon of the broo, and then put the marrowbone of a bull and about another pound of meat to the fire to be cooking, whilst he cut a pipe of tobacco and smoked it. I saw him the same day eat two more marrow-bones and nearly a whole goose, besides taking his share of the mess. But there are few of them a bit better; it is incredible what they can stuff into themselves. Though growling is a part of their nature, they are very respectful to their superiors; they make themselves upon such free and easy terms, as would to you appear pretty much like forwardness. The moment their fatigues and sufferings are over |