Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

66

and allowed W. to see that there were only three or four brigands near the coach, and that they had not yet knock ed the position off the horses. W. took his measures accordingly, with great presence of mind and boldness. As the foremost, ruffian came to the side of the carriage, within reach, bawling and cursing for those within to come out and be robbed, he caught hold of the ruffian by the breasts of his jacket, and called out to the postilion to gallop off for Capua, where he should be well rewarded. The postilion, who had known him before on the road, took W. at his word, and, with a boldness rarely found in his class, whipped his horses, that went off (as Neapolitan horses generally will do) an end." As the postilion s whip touched the withers of his steeds, a bullet whizzed past his head, but missed its aim. Away then went the carriage and the merchants and the robber as swift as the old witches in Goethe's Faustus, W., who was a robust man, keeping a firm hold of the robber, who dangled-his head and shoulders in, and the rest of his body outside of the vehicle -like a lamb or a calf over a butcher's cart. W.'s companion occasionally assisted him. After numerous but vain struggles to extricate himself from their grasp, the capjured brigand, whose legs were bruised in the cruelest manner against the rapid carriage-wheels, and his breath almost bumped out of his body, protested it was all a mistake, and begged inost piteously to be released. The merchants, however, kept the prize they had made in so curious a manner, and soon arrived at Capua. This being a fortitied town, most awkwardly for travellers, placed on the high roads, they had to wait some time, until a letter was sent to the commandant, and permission obtained to admit them. When the drawbridge was lowered, they rolled over it with the robber still dangling at the coach side, and delivered him at the guard-house.

Mac Farlane's Lives of Banditti. LAKE OF VITRIOL-There is in the island of Java a volcano called Mount Indienne, from which the Dutch East India Company have been often supplied with sulphur for the manufacture of gunpowder. At the foot of this volcano is a vast natural manufactory of that acid commonly called oil of vitriol, although it is there largely diluted with water. It is a lake about 1,200 French feet long; the water is warm, and of a greenish white colour, and charged

with acid. The taste of this liquid is sour, pungent, and caustic; it kills all the fish of a river into which it flows, gives violent cholics to those who drink it, and destroys all the vegetation on its banks.-Lardner's Cab. Cyclopædia.

ANIMAL WEATHER-GLASS.-In Germany there will be found, in many country-houses, an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two frogs are kept in a glass jar about 18 inches in height, and 6 inches in diameter, with the depth of 3 or 4 inches of water at the bottom, and a 'small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of the dry weather the frogs mount the ladder; but when wet weather is expected, they descend into the water. These animals are of a bright green.

AN INTERESTING GERMAN VILLAGE. -There is near Halberstadt, in the kingdom of Prussia, a village named Strobeck, where all the inhabitants, boys and girls, are chess-players. They were converted to the game some centuries since by a dignitary of the Cathedral of Halberstadt, who allowed them exemption from imposts as long as they should be winners in this game, and every year a person was sent down to try them. Since the secularisation of the bishopric of Halberstadt, and its union with the kingdom of Prussia, they lost a game, and since that time their immunity ceased, but their predilection for this useful amusement continues.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN AN EAGLE AND A SALMON. That eagles are extremely destructive to fish, and particularly so to salmon, many circumstances would prove. Eagles are constantly discovered watching the fords in the spawning season, and are seen to seize and carry off the fish. Some years since, a herdsman, on a very sultry day in July, while looking for a missing sheep, observed an eagle posted on a bank that overhung a pool. Presently the bird stooped and seized a salmon, and a violent struggle ensued: when the herdsman reached the spot, he found the eagle pulled under water by the strength of the fish, and the calmness of the day, joined to drenched plumage, rendered him unable to extricate himself. With a stone the peasant broke the eagle's pinion, and actually secured the spoiler and his victim, for he found the salmon dying in his grasp. When shooting on Lord Sligo's mountains, near the Killeries, I heard many particulars of the

eagle's habits and history from a greyheaded peasant who had passed a long life in these wilds. The scarcity of hares, which here were once abundant, he attributed to the rapacity of those birds; and he affirmed, that when in pursuit of these animals, the eagles evinced a degree of intelligence that appeated extraordinary. They coursed the hares, he said, with great judgment and certain success; one bird was the active follower, while the other remained in reserve, at the distance of forty or fifty yards. If the hare, by a sudden turn, freed himself from his most pressing enemy, the second bird instantly took up the chase, and thus prevented the victim from having a moment's respite. He had remarked the eagles also while they were engaged in fishing. They chose a small ford upon the rivulet which connects Glendullagh, and, posted on either side, waited patiently for the salmon to pass over. Their watch was never fruitless, and many a salmon, in its transit from the sea to the lake, was transferred from its native element to the wild ærie in the Alpine cliff that beetles over the romantic waters of Glencullen.

Wild Sports of the West.

OPINIONS OF JEREMY COLLIER.God in every dispensation is at work for our good. In more prosperous circumstances, he tries our gratitude; in mediocrity, our contentment; in misfortunes, our submission. Faith takes God at his word, and depends upon him for the whole of salvation, God is good, and therefore he will not he is true and faithful, therefore he cannot, deceive me. I believe he speaks as he means, and will do what he says. -The true estimate of being is not to be taken from age but

action.

Varieties.

HOW TO FLOG A RASCAL.-In some

parts of the United States the high she riffs perform the same duties as our parish beadles, and whip the criminals themselves. The sheriff of Hartford county, in Connecticut, a gentleman of good family and fortune, informed me that he always attended the trials of prisoners, and formed his own opinion as to their degrees of guilt. "For other wise," said he, "how am I to know how hard to hit him? I can make one cut, tell like twenty if I choose; so I never trust to the sentences of those old fools on the bench, but always give it the rascals just as hard as in my own private judgment I think they ought to have it."

IRISH WIT.-A gentleman travelling to Brighton, the other day, was accosted by an Irishman on the road, who begged to be allowed to put his greatcoat into the carriage, as he found it very heavy; when the former asked him how he would get it again if they were not travelling to the same place. "Sure now," said Pat, "I shall be inside of it !""

BURNS THE POET-One Sunday morning, some time before Burns commenced author, when he and his brother Gilbert were going to the parish church of Tarbolton, they got into company with an old man a Moravian travelling to Ayr. It was at that time when the dispute between the Old and New Light Burghers was making a great noise in the country, and Burns and the old man, entering into conversation on the subject, differed in their opinions about it, the old man defending the principles of the Old Light, and Burns those of the New Light. The disputants at length grew very warm in the debate, and Burns, finding that with all his eloquence he could make nothing of his antagonist, became a little acrimonious, and tauntingly exclaimed, "Oh! I suppose I have met with the Apostle Paul this morning." "No," replied the old Moravian coolly, you have not met the Apostle Paul: but I think I have met one of those wild beasts which he says he fought with when at Ephesus."

66

AMERICAN RECIPE FOR RHEUMATISM.-Take of garlic two cloves; of gum ammoniac one drachm; blend them by bruising together, make them into two or three bolusses with water, 'and swallow them, one at night and one in the morning; drink, while taking this recipe, sassafras tea, made very strong, so as to have the tea-pot filled with chips. This is generally found to banish the rheumatism and cure contractions of the joints, in a few times taking. It is very famous in America, and a large sum has been giving for the recipe.

CATS.-The first couple of cats which were carried to Cuyaba sold for a pound of gold. There was a plague of rats in the settlement, and they were purchased as a speculation which proved an excellent one. Their first kittens produced thirty oitavas each; the next generation were worth twenty; and the price gradually fell, as the inhabitants were stocked with these beauitful and useful creatures. Montenegro presented to the elder Almagro the first cat which was brought to South America, and was rewarded for it with six hundred pesos.,

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

THERE is a small village on the coast of Cornwall, which was noted in. times long gone by as a rendezvous for smugglers, but the name of which is withheld for reasons which will be given in the sequel. Sixty years ago, though a place of some importance in the estimation of the daring men who lived by the infraction of the revenuelaws, it was nevertheless scarcely known beyond the limits of the county. Its name even yet has not found a line to honour it in any gazetteer; the beautiful river that glides past it, and the bright blue estuary which it overlooks, being known only to those who have drawn their first breath beyond the Dartmoor, or whom chance, or curiosity, or avarice, or duty, or love, have tempted so far out of the world."Beyond the immediate environs of the village (for town it should not be called) *From Fraser's Mag. for Dec. VOL. X.

9

See page 291

the country is wild and mountainous bleak and sterile: the rugged rock sheltering the furze and fern from the sunbeam as well as from the blast; exhibiting few habitable spots, and these chiefly the sanctuaries of creatures who, like poets, move in higher regions, and on less beaten tracts than ordinary mortals. Seldom do you see either rider or pedestrian; never a mail-coach, or other similar proof of artificial life. All is as still at summer eve and winter, noon-the sea-mew as proud, the curlew as wild, at this instant as it was a thousand years ago. Over these soli-., tudes it is not likely that the traveller would desire to pass at midnight... But should anyforlorn or antiquarian tourist, or any other stray person, from any of the motives before enumerated, find himself at the lone hour amid these moors, when perchance there is but a single star in the sky-a sort of Tom-of-Coventry planet watching his motions when the wind sings to the falling mist, and the clouds kiss the high tors as they are chased by the scarcely perceptible glimpses of the moon-when the way,

273

before him is dim, and the road he has
come dimmer-let him not take un-
Courteously our telling him that he is
likely to see a sight, and hear a voice,
which he will not forget to his dying
day. At these solitary hours, on these
lonely wilds, an old inan, near ninety
years of age, whose gray locks stream
from under a low-crowned and round
broad-brimmed hat, and who is dressed
in the fashion of fifty years ago, with a
stick in one hand, and a small twinkling
lantern in the other, may be seen wan-
dering over untrodden paths like a spirit
from the grave. The dew may be upon
him, the gossamer may have added ring-
lets to his hair, the hoar frost may have
covered him with a robe white as one
one from Heaven, as he walks out of
the mist and meets your eye-for on him
the dews and frosts and rains of night
fall harmless but start not, passenger!
accost him not-disturb him not
but mark him well-for he is a man
"more sinned against than sinning."
Check your horse, or stay your step,
that the wanderer may not have reason
to surmise the approach or the presence
of any human being. Be silent, but
look and listen. He slowly ascends
the eminence to your right-he winds
round the spongy ground before you
his step tottering, his lamp glimmering
on the stunted grass, his eye apparently
asleep, his gait that of one only half
conscious of his own locomotion-he
passes the highway a few yards in ad-
vance of you-he climbs the rocky
ground to your left, towards the base of
that tremendous tor which looks like a
giant of the early world-his light
gleams on its dark sides, rendering its
crest more sublime he kneels-he
prays his voice first feeble, but still
solemn, then more clear, more animated,
more impassioned, it now rings on the
deep solitude, as it pours out the accents
of a bereaved and desolate heart. He
calls, in a tone that thrills your blood,
that swells on the wind, in sounds such
as ear never heard-he calls on HIM
who created the stars that look down
on him, the wind that waves his silver
locks, the crags that tower above him
the wave in the far-distant sea-to that
almighty and incomprehensible BEING
who rules innumerable and immeasur-
able worlds, who rages in the storm,
who rides on the sunbeam, who descends
with the dew, who "tempers the wind
to the shorn lamb," to absolve the sins,
and assuage the lingering agonies, of
his past life. His feeble knees are on
the cold earth, his wringing hands are

stretched towards heaven, the tear of the disconsolate father wets his cheek, washing away the chill dew of the night; and he invokes the unseen GOD of his ancestors to measure his sincerity by his sorrow, to compassionate his declining age, and take him to the arms of those beloved objects-that wife, that child-who live in his memory with an ardour of affection that neither years, nor sin, nor misery, can either weaken or obliterate. Passenger! for mercy's sake!-if you be a father-if you be a Christian if you have a child--pass on-the pulsations of your heart only louder than your step--and we will tell you the history of his life and his misfortunes.

Walter Vivian was the younger of three brothers, of a respectable and comparatively affluent family in the middle rank of society; but who had for many years been engaged in that precarious and afterwards illicit traffic which the excise-laws of the period were enacted to suppress. He was a well-educated young man, of excellent address, brave, spirited, reckless, generous, but, unfor tunately, the dupe and the instrument of his elder brothers. The latter had been actively and entensively engaged in the contraband trade; but as their wealth increased, and as the laws were more rigorously inforced, they retired from the more hazardous part of the trade, and became merely the agents of the smugglers, and the purchasers and disposers of the illicit commodities. They were the part owners of a large and beautiful lugger, called the Belle Amy, that flew over the channel like a bird, dashed over the breakers and bars where no king's ship dared to follow, and that landed more cargoes on the coast that any six of the fleet of his Majesty's "honest rogues" the free traders of Cornwall. The three brothers, John, Thomas, and Walter Vivian, were partners in the profits of this trade. Walter commanded the lugger. His generous habits, his daring and enterprising disposition, won him the affections of his crew, who, young as he was, loved him as if he had been their father. His speculations were so eminently successful, that his very, success excited the jealousy of his less fortunate competitors. All were active and fearless enough, but none were so fortunate as Walter Vivian and the Belle Amy. The king's cruisers were numerous and vigilant, and many a severe conflict took place, and many a smuggler was taken, and not a few burned in the

offing, in sight of the owners; but the Belle Amy had hitherto escaped. She had been chased, but never taken-fired upon, but never injured-and sometimes attacked by cruisers that suffered seriously for their temerity. Vessels had been wrecked that had lain in wait for her; and many an armed flotilla, too adventurous by far, which threatened to board her, has she either blown out of the water with her guns, or cut down, man by man, as they scaled her sides. The revenue board, however, were determined to spare no exertions in order to capture her. A sloop-of-war was sent to hover off that part of the coast where she generally landed her cargoes; and it is said that secret information had been given to its commander as to the time when he might expect the arrival of Vivian.

[ocr errors]

was under their quarter. The boats were commanded by Captain Stanmer himself, and a conflict ensued which baffles description. For nearly an hour was the fight maintained-arm to arm, pike to pike, cutlass to cutlass so close, that after the first discharge no re-loading of fire-arms took place. The pistol was fired, and flung at the head of the assailant; while the eternal clash of steel, the groans, the imprecations, the heavy plunge of the slain in the water, proved that the strife was bloody and desperate. From some unknown cause or other, the vessel at length caught fire. The flames burst out from the forecastle, amid the still-continued clang of swords. The spectacle was awful. The men were seen engaged at every part of the lugger-each struggling for his life, or bent upon termiIt was a breezy night, in the end of nating that of his antagonist-their September, two hours after sunset, the faces lurid and distorted-wild, frantic, young moon in the sky partly obscured and horrible, in the glare of the burstby light clouds, when a firing was heard ing flames. How the conflict might in the bay, a light blazed on H- have ended, it is hard to conjecture head, and anon the Belle Amy, under the smugglers apparently had the worst every inch of canvass she could bear, of it-they seemed to be overpoweredcame dashing into H harbour. In their comrades and abettors on shore stantly not fewer than 300 persons- could lend them no assistance, and at men and women, old and young-were this instant, too, another king's boat on the beach, some preparing to run was seen coming to the aid of the former. the goods. Joy, impatience, and the -But at the same important moment, mingling sensations of hope and fear, also, Walter Vivian was observed among were in the countenances of all. For the few men who still struggled for the about half an hour before the sinuggler mastery of the Belle Amy's deck, enentered, the firing had ceased. She was gaged hand to hand with Captain Stanscarcely at her mooring, when the cliff- mer. The flames were spreading with a light, already alluded to was quenched, rapidity which left but small space to and another, considerably to the west fight upon; and a doubly awful interest ward, and on a peak which overhung a was excited in the breasts of the spectremendous ridge of rocks, bare at low tators by the fear-by the almost cerwater, glared upon the heavens and tainty-that the lugger would blow up. threw its murrey light far over the foam Captain Stanmer was at length seen to and billows of the sea. But Captain fall-whether accidentally or not, could Stanmer was not to be lured to destruc- not be ascertained-and almost at the tion by an artifice so palpable. Just as same moment Walter Vivian sprang the broadside ot the Belle Amy was from the gunwale into the sea, and turned to the beach, and the order given swam towards the beach, where he was to undo the hatches, four boats, well received, amid mingled screams and manned and armed, pulled into the har- cheers, by many hundreds of persons, by bour with as much precision as if they some of whom he was instantly conhad come in the wake of the smuggler. veyed to a place of safety. The fifth The moment these boats were discovered boat had little to do The flames had from the shore, a yell proceeded from nearly finished the Belle Amy before it the women so wild-so shrill-so came alongside. To attempt to save the piercing, that, it made the hearts of the cargo was vain-to land and attack destoutest quake. Not a moment was to fenceless women, at the hazard of being be lost. The men on the beach stood cut to pieces by the infuriated partisans in ghastly silence, while their friends of the Vivians, would have been fruitaboard the Belle Amy-taken by sur- less-the boat consequently put to sea; prise, and awed by the boldness of the and next morning scarcely a trace of the measure had scarcely time to run to wreck was to be seen. their arms, before the boarding party

When the intelligence of this fatal

« AnteriorContinua »