This little scene over, Baker and his party traveled for three days westward over a flat, uninteresting country, and reached the Kafoor river, where one of the most deplorable misfortunes of the march presented itself.

The party were crossing the river over a natural bridge of closely-woven grass, and Baker had completed about one-fourth the distance, when, accidentally looking back, he was horrified to see his wife standing in one spot, and sinking gradually through the weeds, while her face was distorted and perfectly purple, and then instantly falling down as though shot dead. Springing to her side, with the help of some of his men he dragged her like a corpse through the yielding grass to the shore. Then, laying her under a tree, he bathed her head and face with water, as it was thought she had fainted; but she lay perfectly insensible, with teeth and hands firmly clenched, and her eyes open, but fixed. It was not a fainting fit; it was a sunstroke!

After watching by her side for two nights, Baker was gratified at hearing a faint "Thank God" escape from her lips. She had awakened from her torpor, but her eyes were full of madness ! She spoke; but the brain was gone! by

For seven days his wife suffered from an acute attack of brain fever-days of intense anguish to Baker; yet day after day, with the poor, suffering woman carried in her hammock, were the party forced to march, for famine had surely ended them all had they tarried. For seven weary nights he watched tenderly at her bedside, until finally nature succumbed, and he became insensible, thoroughly worn out with sorrow and fatigue. In the mean time, his men had put a new handle to the pickaxe, and sought for a dry spot to dig the wife's grave. We will permit Baker to tell the rest in his own words:

"The sun had risen when I awoke. I had slept, and, horrified as the idea flashed upon me that she must be dead, and that I had not been with her, I started up. She lay upon her bed, pale as marble, and with that calm serenity that the features assume when the cares of life no longer act upon the mind, and the body rests in death. The dreadful thought bowed me down; but as I gazed upon her in fear, her chest gently heaved, not with the convulsive throbs of fever, but naturally. She was asleep; and when at a sudden noise she opened her eyes, they were calm and clear. She was saved! When not a ray of hope remained, God

The grati

alone knows what helped us. tude of that moment I will not attempt to describe."

They pressed onward through a delightful country. Mrs. Baker constantly gained in strength, and all hands became more and more elated at the prospect of the speedy and successful termination of their journey. Baker, as usual, enjoyed himself with shooting, and never omitted an opportunity to bag game. One evening, while returning home, he was attracted by a noise in the. bushes, and saw a large animal endeavoring to steal away unobserved. Leveling his gun at it, he fired, and instantly a lion bounded hurriedly away. From his movements he knew that the lion was wounded badly; but contenting himself with the thought that he would find him dead in the morning, Baker proceeded on his way to camp.

An hour after sunrise, accompanied by some of his men, Baker sauntered out of the camp to hunt up the wounded beast. In a short time he traced him by his bloody tracks to where he lay crouched at the base of a rock, defiant and bold as ever. The lion's back was broken by the bullet, and his rear half was paralyzed; but the frantic efforts he made to get at his enemy proved him to be still a formidable antagonist. Taking compassion on the disabled brute, Baker fired, and a bullet crashing through his brain, stretched him dead.

On the 13th of March the guides warned. Baker that on the morrow the Luta-Nzige would be seen, which so transported him with joy, that he could not sleep that night. These are his impressions and feelings of the following day: "The 14th March.-The sun had not risen when I was spurring my ox after the guide, who, having been promised a double handful of beads on arrival at the lake, had caught the enthusiasm of the moment. The day broke beautifully clear, and having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath the grand expanse of water,-a boundless sea horizon on the south and south-west, glittering in the noon-day sun; and on the west, at fifty or sixty miles distance, blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about 7,000 feet above its level.

"It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment; here was the reward for all our labor-for the years of tenacity with which we had toiled through Africa. Eng

land had won the sources of the Nile! Long before I reached this spot, I had arranged to give three cheers with all our men in English style in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery, when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about 1,500 feet above the lake, and I looked down from the steep granite cliff upon those welcome waters -upon that vast reservoir which nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was wilderness-upon that great source so long hidden from mankind, that source of bounty and of blessings to millions of human beings; and, as one of the greatest objects in nature, I determined to honor it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen, and deplored by every Englishman, I called this great lake the Albert N'Yanza.' The

Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of the Nile !"

I may not attempt to follow Baker further, though I can understand the joy he felt when he looked down upon the great lake, which had cost him so much toil, travel and trouble to find. Those who wish to follow him during his voyage of sixty miles on the Lake Albert N'Yanza, and his safe return home by the Nile, and across the desert, and to know further of his wonderful adventures, had better purchase his book. I have already exceeded the limits of my space, but I cannot close my remarks upon the character and explorations of the great African travellers, without expressing my regret that Baker did not deem it worth his while to circumnavigate the Lake Albert N'Yanza, and so settle forever the problem that now puzzles the minds of the learned Society of English Geographers, viz.: "Has the Albert N'Yanza any large influent from the south?" Baker had the opportunity, and he ought to have availed himself of it. Livingstone-patient, persistent, heroic Livingstone !-would have done it. But I am charitable, and I forgive Baker for the sake of the good service he has done, for the sufferings he bore with such good humor, and for the interesting record he

has given to the world of his travels and researches in Central Africa; and conclude with the hope that now that he is back there

again he will not return until he has settled the vexed question forever.

HOWEVER proverbially philosophic it may be to compare "" 'a babe in the house to a "wellspring,' our own and only experiment would require, for the full justification of the similitude, that said "wellspring" be first raised to boiling-point.

This granted, I am fain to admit that our Fanny has been a geyser incarnate from her first gurgle unto these presents.

Indeed, her very advent threw our theretofore placid household into hot water of seemingly perennial flow.

One morning, as I was going into town as usual to my office, Bertha asked me to telegraph to my old classmate, Dr. Abernethy, that she would like to see him that day.

I happened to have been retained by Smyth at that time, in the famous suit of Smyth vs. Smith, and nothing is needed to rebut my daughter's allegations against me in the pages of this Magazine, further than the bare statement of the fact that, in spite of the mental pre-occupation incident to such a case, I not only dispatched the Doctor's telegram, but of my own motion went to market,

ordered a game dinner, and invited two or three friends to meet him.

Treacherous as my memory has been proclaimed here upon these house-tops to be, yet there is one thing which I can never forget, and that is the utter swamping of this agreeable little re-union by the ill-advised irruption of our particular "wellspring."

But, "that way madness lies."

It was not to chronicle family cataclysms that I have taken up the unfamiliar pen of the magazinist, but simply to furnish a true copy of a recent epistle from your correspondent Fanny Winthrop, which will, I flatter myself and you, put a final period to her undutiful romancings.

I regret the necessity of explaining how this letter came into my possession, since personal details are inevitably wearisome, and the long-suffering public has borne its fill long ago of Winthropiana.

But it happened on this wise. About a month since, I received an urgent invitation from Mrs. Coates to join them, with my family, in a brief European tour, made necessary by Judge Coates' impaired state of health.

State-rooms were already secured on board The City of, to sail only four days from date of reading.

In spite of the inconsiderate briefness of notice (the family-conspiracy which accused me of three weeks' pocket-carriage of Mrs. Coates' letter is too offensively preposterous for more than mere mention) and the pressure of business, yet what with my readiness in emergencies and promptness of action (seconded by my wife), we were on the wharf at the appointed hour, bag and baggage. When I say

66

we," I speak officially as the head of the family. Bertha, Fanny, little "Moses" and her mother (which treasure-trove of mine had proved too invaluable to the family to be left behind) were there, and sailed with Mr. and Mrs. Coates, but I must confess that in person I was elsewhere.

The truth is that Bertha lost her head that morning, thanks to Fanny's absurd tears and twitterings of anxiety lest I should miss the

steamer in some unaccountable way, and actually charged me with such pathetic solemnity not to fail her at the appointed time and place, that I myself lost something of my usual steadiness of nerve.

Unluckily my wife had made me promise to repeat audibly the steamer's name and hour of sailing, as I ran about New York securing a few letters of introduction and doing various last things, and, as the natural consequence, I became somewhat confused.

Still I have never distinctly understood how it came to pass that I should find myself at 2 o'clock that Saturday afternoon on board a railway train, with a long ticket whose last coupon bore the name of a city identical with that of the steamer now, alas! departed.

My purpose was to follow my family by the next steamer, but absorbing professional duties have prevented until now.

On the eve of sailing, I submit to you the following letter written to Miss Teazie; but that young lady being absent from town, her mother has kindly allowed me to open it, in compassion for my anxiety in behalf of my family, deprived of the watch and ward of their natural protector.

The letter is post-marked Chester, but is of course destitute of dates.

A True Copy.

"DEARLY BELOVED TEAZIE: As you probably know, that dear absurd papa of mine distinguished himself as usual on the occasion of our departure from our native land, and was steaming frantically in precisely the opposite direction from his afflicted family when they went laboring out to sea. Poor mamma was of course wretchedly

frightened, but afflictions sore long time she bore' from this same cause; so in consequence she keeps a store of consolation on hand, in the assurance that the blessed man always has come out of his eclipses serene and shining; and then sea-sickness mercifully intervened to temper her wifely anxieties. It ought to be forever set down to papa's credit, that he he was actually thoughtful enough to meet us at Queenstown with a dispatch explaining his non-appearance, and we are waiting here for his (highly improbable) arrival by any steamer.

I have so much to tell you that I don't know where to begin. Perhaps I may as well let you have the 'midst of things' at once, so, hold your breath and listen:

Although my unnatural parent did not sail with us-Charley Coates did!

I needn't tell you, who were part of it and saw it all, how sweet and beautiful I had made life to that young man for the three months before we left home!

Demoniacal possession seems now to me the most plausible explanation of my behavior, as you were polite enough to suggest at the time; but I will confess to you now that I was afraid of myself, and, moved by the instinct of self-preservation, had sworn a sizable oath (for a little woman) never to let him come within love-making distance of me again.

Of course, I should not have consented to travel with his family, had not Mrs. Coates said in her letter of invitation that Charley was to remain at home.

But when that dutiful child came down to the wharf with his parents, and discovered father's defection, he suddenly determined

that Judge Coates was too feeble for the Greathearting of such a swarm of frightened pilgrimesses, and actually sailed with us to my utter discomfiture.

There was a glaring absurdity in the idea that father's absence had in the least increased anybody's burden, since to those that know him best, his bodily presence is about the greatest responsibility one can well sustain. However, it was as a martyr to piety in particular and philanthropy in general that Charley chose to embark, and to do him justice his faithfulness to that rôle made all precautionary defenses on my part superfluous. I don't mind confessing to you how much this disturbed me, since I know you will never betray the admission to Charley, and also that the way I flirted with your old friend Harry Livingstone, who was our fellow-passenger, is something sickening to remember.

Indeed, my only relief is in regarding it as merely a preliminary stage of that unspeakable sea-sickness which mastered me at last, although I managed to keep on deck two days later than any other lady.

Oh! those dreadful days which followed! It was a comfort to hear later that veterans who had made dozens of voyages had succumbed as abjectly as we. Everything was contrary--the winds and the waves, and the machinery of our old ark, which ground and bored and gnashed and grated its horrid screw till its iron entered our souls and minced our very senses.

Our bags, maps, brushes, etc., etc., took to themselves wings and gyrated through the upper air (if air there was in that stifling state-room), while lower down the doom of China thou art, and unto China shalt thou return, seemed likely to be visited upon everything breakable.

Even little 'Moses,' who with her mother shared my state-room, usually presented herself to my aching vision as a flying cherub pursued by venomous table and toilet-ware, or as a jolly little caryatid mowing and grinning at us from under tumbling bedding and baggage.

It was a regular 'lark' to the little minx, for she was never in the least sick through it all.

Nothing came amiss to her, not even one specially spiteful lurch of the vessel which sent Reynolds right out of her berth (the upper) on top of her as she sat on the floor dosing her doll for the measles, and with the next turn of the satanic screw artistically added me to the pile.

Nobody was able to come near us except the stewardess, who brought in two or three times a day a tray full of horrible smells,—no taste nor even substance did the things seem to have,-only awfully ponderable smell.

However, after many sickening efforts and ignominious defeats, I at last sat up long enough for good little Reynolds to brush out my wig, and, thanks perhaps to the champagne Mr. Livingstone sent me, mustered sufficient of my native depravity to decline Charley Coates's gravely paternal suggestion that I should permit him to take me on deck, and before his very face accepted Mr. Livingstone's subsequent offer, and marched off with the airs and graces of a boiled owl, my dear.

Ugh! how I loathe that Frances Winthrop. Although I had been the last among the ladypassengers to give way to mal de mer, yet I was first to rally, and abused my privileges. I shall not catalogue my absurdities for you, my mother-confessor. Only poor Reynolds, who sat decorously by with her sewing, on deck or in saloon as I happened to prefer, could the whole tale unfold, and she has promised to keep it 'a profound nuisance' -as one of papa's clients begged him to do with a confidential communication.

But there is one crowning achievement that you are to hear, and you alone. If that malicious papa of mine were not beyond your reach, I would not for the world trust even you with it. Don't you dare tell him even in your hundredth year, or he will make my life