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had preserved his crew's health so well as Cook had during such prolonged voyages; and his account of the methods he had followed was read with great interest by the Admiralty and by ship-owners. Once again Cook started off, and again in the Resolution, fitted out this time to bear the buffetings of the icy regions of Kamtschatka and Behring's Straits. It was in 1776 that this third voyage commenced, and many thousands of leagues were traversed before the day of his death. Cook discovered the Sandwich Islands, went northwards to Behring's Straits, reached a latitude where a compact wall of ice forbade further advance, made numerous discoveries on the north-west coast of America and the north-east coast of Asia, and again reached the Sandwich Islands, which he was destined never again to leave. His death was (if such a term may be used) most vexing; seeing that it arose wholly from a misconstruction of intentions. While anchored off Owhyhee or Hawaii, the ship often lost articles which were pilfered by natives in their frequent visits; and one fatal day, February the 21st, 1779, Cook resolved to go on shore and compel restitution. The natives put a worse interpretation on the landing of the captain and a few men, believing that he meant a war of extermination. They gradually approached in great numbers, conferred, armed themselves with spears, clubs, and daggers, and a defensive armour of mats. Cook, uneasy at the hostile manifestion, soon returned to the beach, but before he could step into the boat, he was struck by a stone thrown by a native. Cook knocked the fellow down with a musket; and then an affray began. The boat's crew fired on the natives, but were gradually driven into the water and into the boat, leaving the captain alone on the beach. Before Cook could reach the edge of the water, a native struck him on the back of the head with a club; he staggered, fell on his hand and one knee, and dropped his musket. Another native now stabbed him in the neck with a dagger; he fell into a pool of water, and looked yearningly for some aid from the boat-party, who, unfortunately, were unable to render it. Another tremendous blow from a club put an end to his existence; after which the natives mangled and mutilated the body in a shocking manner. Some fragments of his poor remains were afterwards mournfully consigned to the deep, with such

simple ceremonial as was practicable. Thus died the brave and clever Captain James Cook. The Sandwich Islanders earned for themselves a long-enduring reputation for bloodthirsty cruelty, not in accordance with their known general habits.

The missionaries, who have so bravely borne up against hunger, exhaustion, disease, and every form of privation, in the fulfilment of the duties which they have undertaken, have their own group of narratives to tell, concerning the death of earnest-hearted men at the scene of their labours. One of the best of these was John Williams, who in 1816 entered the service of the London Missionary Society. He went out to the Society Islands, where he soon learned to talk with the natives in their own language. Then he voyaged to the Hervey Islands, where he went through the surprising work of translating the whole of the New Testament into the Raratonga language-till then quite unknown to Europeans; and he prepared books in the same language for teaching in schools which he established. He returned to England after sixteen years' absence, and was received with the warm welcome which he deserved. Williams strikingly showed, as Livingstone has shown more recently, how much the value of a missionary is increased if he be a skilful man in any of the practical arts of life. Livingstone was a piecer in a Lanarkshire cotton factory when a boy; an occupation which made him familiar with the appearance and action of machinery; while in later years he picked up some acquainance with Latin and Greek at an evening school; acquired a fair knowledge of remedies for bodily ailment by attending a course of medical lectures at Edinburgh University; and fitted himself for such surveying and astronomical operations as are necessary for fixing the geographical positions of newly discovered places. How this knowledge has increased the value of Livingstone's labours is known to those who have paid any attention to his works. But mechanical skill is also full of importance to a missionary, as Williams well showed. In early life he was apprenticed to an ironmonger, and obtained an extensive knowledge of the mechanical arts. His success at the Society Islands was greatly due to the appreciation by the natives of the practical value of his skill. Wishing, some years afterwards, to return from the island of Raratonga to that of Raiatea, and finding no vessel or boat available, he built one

with his own hands. He first made the tools, and then shaped timbers to his need; he built a vessel sixty feet long by eighteen feet wide, secured the seams with oakum of banana stumps and cocoa-nut husks, made sails of native matting, and cordage of the bark of the hibiscus. So seaworthy was this little craft, that it served him during four years' voyages between and among the various groups of islands in the vast Pacific, then more usually known as the South Seas. Poor Williams! He was one of those whose fate it was to "die in harness," to fall in the midst of his work; but it is sad that such a man should die such a death. In November, 1839, when out on a second expedition, he visited Erromanga, one of the New Hebrides; there he was murdered by the natives, and his body in greater part

eaten.

Adolph Schlagintweit was one of those who have lost their lives in Asiatic exploration. Three hardy brothers, Adolph, Hermann, and Robert Schlagintweit, left their homes in Bavaria in 1854, to explore almost unknown regions north of the Himalayas. Taking Egypt by the way, they visited many parts of India; worked their way northward; explored Sikhim, Bhotan, and Assam; penetrated into Ladakh, Cashmere, and Baltistan; and reached the Kuenluen Mountains. Adolph, hoping to do what no one else had up to that time effected, started off to cross the mountain barrier between the Indian, Chinese, and Russian dominions. He was never again seen by a white man. The truth was afterwards known that he had been murdered in August, 1857, at Kashgar, by a ruthless chieftain named Waller Khan.

Captain Clapperton, Major Laing, and Richard Lander perished while endeavouring to solve the mystery of the Niger. Clapperton, accompanied by Major Denham and Doctor Oudeney, started in 1822 from Tripoli, crossed the Great Desert of Sahara, entered the kingdom of Bornou, and discovered the finest sheet of water in Africa, Lake Tchad; but they failed to hit the Niger by this route. Clapperton and Denham returned safely after three years' wanderings; Oudeney perished through disease and privation. Clapperton, not many months afterwards, resolved to attack the problem from the west coast, starting from the Gulf of Guinea. The party comprised many explorers, all of whom gradually perished, except Clapperton and his servant Richard Lander.

These two intrepid men reached, by an entirely new route, one point of the Niger. The privations were so varied and incessant that Clapperton, sinking under them, died in the arms of his faithful servant on the 13th of April, 1827. Richard Lander made his way back alone to the coast, with a firmness, endurance, and intelligence that gained for him well-earned renown. Meanwhile, Major Laing, another explorer, crossed the desert from Tripoli; but on his way he was attacked by a band of wild Tuaricks, and prostrated by no less than twenty-four wounds. Wonderful to relate, he recovered, although many portions of broken bone had to be removed from his head. He reached Timbuctoo, but was murdered soon after quitting it; and no papers came to light to show how far or how much he had contributed to the discovery of new regions. Richard Lander and his brother John were aided in an expedition to finish the work which Clapperton had begun. They started from the Guinea Coast in 1830, followed Clapperton's route to the Niger, and, to their infinite credit, they persevered against all obstacles until they traced the great river down to its ! real outlet in the Gulf of Guinea. Richard Lander was destined to die, as his former master had died, in the wilds of unhealthy Africa. He joined a trading expedition, fitted out from Liverpool in 1832, in two small steamers; but malaria destroyed four-fifths of the crews, and Lander was killed by hostile natives.

Captain Allen Gardiner was one of those who are lost for a time and then come to light only too late for the saving of life. A pious man, he combined missionary enterprise with the duties of captain of a merchant ship. At length he determined to become a missionary altogether, and to go among the Patagonians and Terra del Fuegians of South America. With six companions, two large launches, and two dingies or luggage-boats, he landed on the frigid and inhospitable shores of Terra del Fuego, on the 5th of December, 1850. No civilized man ever again saw those hapless adventurers alive. Thirteen months afterwards, Her Majesty's ship Dido landed a boat's crew at that same spot; and there they found-first, a direction rudely written on a rock; then a boat lying on the beach at the mouth of a small river; then the unburied bodies of Captain Gardiner and Mr. Maidment, a missionary who had accompanied him; then a packet of papers and books; then the shattered remains of

another boat, with part of her gear and stores, and various articles of clothing; then two more dead bodies; and lastly, the graves of the remaining three members of the party. From the documents found, it at once appeared that the enterprise had been marked by a series of mishaps throughout. Both luggage-boats were lost in a storm, with all their contents; the anchors, spars, and timbers were lost in another storm; they had left all their gunpowder behind them, and had not wherewithal to kill birds for food; one of their boats, called the Pioneer, was wholly lost in a third storm; and now they had only the Speedwell left. So far from converting to Christianity the barbarous Terra del Fuegians (who pelted and robbed them wherever they appeared), their whole time was spent in a struggle for very life. Scurvy, scanty food, and the rigours of winter told upon them slowly but surely. They were all put upon short allowance in May; in June one of the crew died of scurvy; in July a dead fox, a halfdevoured fish thrown up on the beach, and six mice, were enumerated among the articles of food in store; in August two other of the crew died, and their companions went nearly mad at losing them; early in September Maidment died; about the 6th Gardiner sank under the accumulated effects of illness and starvation, after scrawling a few lines on a piece of paper; and the remaining two, Mr. Williams, a surgeon, and Pearce, a boatman, are supposed to have succumbed about the same time. Captain Moorshead of the Dido, who had called there at the earnest solicitation of Gardiner's friends in England, paid such tribute of respect as he could to the remains of the seven members of this ill-planned and ill-starred expedition.

Never did gallant men bear up more bravely against accumulated sufferings than Burke and Wills, in their journey across Australia. They were lost, but their bodies were found under very affecting circumstances. In 1860, Mr. Robert O'Hara Burke was placed in command of an expedition, to start for Melbourne, plunge into the heart of the continent, and, if possible, reach the northern coast, thereby giving additional completeness to the previous discoveries of Leichhardt, Sturt, Eyre, Mitchell, and Oxley. He had with him Mr. William John Wills, about a dozen other persons, and a good store of camels, horses, instruments, provisions, and camp baggage.

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Mishaps befel them from the beginning. A quarrel arose; most of the men returned to Melbourne, taking many of the stores with them. The remaining four, Burke, Wills, King, and Grey, pushed onward, with one horse, six camels, and three months' provisions. They missed two or three supply parties, which were to have. been ready at certain spots reached from the east coast at Sydney, and were thus driven to obtain food as best they could after their store was exhausted. Grey died of privation on the way; but the other three succeeded in reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the north coast. They worked their toilsome way back to a spot called Cooper's Creek-horse and camels. dead, clothes ragged, provisions exhausted, strength gone. Two of them did not live to see their homes again. The authorities at Melbourne, uneasy at the long silence, and apprehensive of disaster, sent off an exploring party, in September, 1861, headed by Mr. A. W. Howitt (son of William and Mary Howitt). The explorer, having some idea that Cooper's Creek was the important locality, searched closely, and found King living with some friendly natives. The tale he had to tell was a sad one. the preceding April, the three men had been living most precariously, being too utterly exhausted in strength to push on from Cooper's Creek to any of the settlements. Sometimes they obtained a little coarse food from the natives; sometimes they gathered seeds of a plant called nardoo, pounded them, and baked them into cakes. One day, having seen none of the friendly natives for some time, Burke and King tried their strength in a walk to find them. They took two pounds of nardoo with them, and left a small store of it with Wills, who was too weak to accompany them. Poor Burke weakened every hour; on the second day he threw away everything he was carrying. They supped that night on some nardoo, with the welcome addition of a small bird which King shot. It was Burke's last night. The following morning he was speechless, or nearly so, and about eight he expired. King, desolate and sorrowful, gave up any further attempt to search for the natives; he looked out for nardoo and birds, husbanded his strength, and returned to the place where Wills had been left. Here another sorrow awaited him. "I found him," he says in his narrative, "lying dead in his gunyah (a rude sort of hut), and the natives had been there and taken away

some of his clothes. I buried the corpse in sand, and remained there some days; but finding that my stock of nardoo was running short, and being unable to gather it, I tracked the natives who had been to the camp by their footprints, and went some distance down the creek, shooting crows and rooks on the road. The natives, hearing the report of the gun, came to meet me, and took me with them to their camp, giving me nardoo and fish. They took the birds I had shot, cooked them for me, and afterwards showed me a gunyah where I was to sleep with three of the single men. The following morning they began talking to me; putting one finger on the ground and covering it with sand, at the same time pointing up the creek, saying, 'White fellow!' which I understood to mean, one white man was dead. They then asked me where the third white man was, and I made the sign of putting two fingers on the ground and covering them with sand." And so King remained with these kindly aborigines (savages we sometimes call them!) till Howitt's party

arrived.

These are some of the best known cases of lost explorers whose fate was not long in doubt. The long-lost, those whose deaths were not known for a long series of years, or are even still unknown, form a group which must be treated separately.

CUBAN BEGGARS.

THAT apparently hapless mendicant shuffling along the white, heated road of a narrow street, is a blind negro, with the imposing nickname of Cara Catambungo. He is attired in a clean suit of brown holland, and he wears a broad-brimmed panama. His flat, splay feet are bare, exhibiting where one of his toes has been consumed by a nigua, a troublesome insect which introduces itself into the foot, and, if not eradicated in time, remains there to vegetate. Across his shoulders is slung a huge canvas bag for depositing comestible alms, and in his hand is a long rustic staff. Charity with a Cuban is a leading principle of his religion, and to relieve the indigent -no matter whether the object for relief be worthy or not-is next in importance to disburdening the mind to a father-confessor. Mindful of the native weakness in this respect, Cara Catambungo bears his sorrows from door to door, confident that his affliction and his damaged foot will

command pity whithersoever he wanders. But he is impudent, and a boisterous, swaggering fellow. Hear him as he demands compassion, with his swarthy, fat face upturned to the blazing sun, and with a long cigar between his bulging lips.

"Ave Maria! here's the poor blind man; poor fellow! Give him a medio (a threepenny-piece) somebody. Does nobody hear him, el pobrecito? Come, make haste! Don't keep the poor fellow waiting. Poor Cara Catambungo! He is stone blind, poor fellow, and his feet are blistered and sore. Misericordia, señores. Barajo! why don't somebody answer? Which is mi s'ñora Mercedes' house? Will somebody lead me to it? Mi s'ñora Mercedes!”

Catambungo knows most of his patrons by name. Doña Mercedes appears at her iron-grated window, through the bars of which the benevolent lady offers a silver coin and a small loaf.

"Gracias mi s'ñora; Dios se la pague su merced! (May Heaven reward your worship.) Who's got a light for the poor ciego?"

Somebody favours the ciego with a light, and Cara Catumbungo goes on his way smoking and humming a tune, and presently harangues in another street.

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Will it be believed that this wanderer has a farm in the country, with slaves in his employ, and hundreds of dollars in his exchequer? When not on beggarbeat, Catambungo retires to his possessions, where he lives luxuriously. some of his begging fraternity, the negro occasionally varies his mendicant trade by offering for sale lottery-tickets bearing what he calls "lucky numbers." The Havannah lottery is a great institution in Cuba, and has an extraordinary fascination for rich as well as poor. Each ticket costs seventeen dollars, and is printed in such a form as to be susceptible of division into seventeen parts, so as to suit all pockets. The prizes vary from one hundred to one hundred thousand dollars, and there are two "sorteos," or draws, monthly. Our friend Catambungo often invests in fragments of unsold tickets, and on one occasion he drew a prize to the value of seven hundred dollars, which good luck, together with his beggar savings, enabled him to purchase a farm and to hire a few labourers to work it with. Whether from habit or from love of gain, Catambungo never forsook his favourite vocation, but continued to bear his sorrows from door to door, as if they still belonged to him.

In Cuba, at least, beggars may be said to be choosers. Saturday is the day which they prefer for transacting their business, because it precedes Sunday, when the faithful attend high mass in the church, and go to confess. Except on Saturday, and on some festive occasions, it is a rare event for a beggar to be seen asking alms in the public streets.

Every Saturday morning I pay my respects to Don Benigno and his amiable señora, Mercedes, who, like most of their hospitable neighbours, keep open house in more than one way: the huge doors of their habitation being ajar at all hours. As I sit chatting with my worthy hostess, the street door-which has direct communication with the reception room-is boldly thrown open, and a white lady, attired in well-starched muslin, and adorned with jewels, enters. I rise, in accordance with the polite custom of the country, while Don Benigno offers the visitor a rocking-chair. The conversation proceeds on subjects of general interest, in which the visitor joins. Curiously, I am never introduced to the lady in muslin; but the unusual behaviour of my host is soon accounted for. After a few minutes the stranger señora rises, and approaching Doña Mercedes, offers her hand. Doña Mercedes does not take the proffered palm, but simply places upon it a piece of silver coin of the value of a franc.

"May Heaven reward you," says the lady-beggar, and takes her gift and her leave without another word.

Something like a Beggars' Opera may be realised whilst sitting before Don Benigno's huge window on Saturday morning, and watching the thriftless performers as they pass. The entertainment "opens" at the early hour of six A.M.; from that time till the Cuban breakfast-hour of eleven, we are treated with begging solos only: mendicants who stand and deliver monologues like Cara Catambungo or Muñekon-an equally popular beggar. Sometimes the applicant for charity announces himself with a bold bang on the door, followed by the pious ejaculation, "Ave Maria !" The lame, or otherwise afflicted, are content with simply directing attention to their misfortune, while the less "favoured" attract public regard by humming a wild air, to which a gibberish libretto is attached, or by descanting upon social and political matters. The ill-paved condition of the Cuban streets, the inefficient supply of water, the bad lighting of

the town at night, the total absence of anything like proper drainage, are favourite topics with these open-air orators.

Our Beggars' Opera concludes with a brilliant chorus of mendicants, who, at twelve o'clock, visit their patrons in large companies. At that hour, one of Don Benigno's slaves enters with a large flat basket containing a quantity of small twopenny loaves, which the negro places upon the marble floor in front of the open door. Soon a crowd of beggars of all shades and castes, who, during the last half-hour, have been squatting in a row under the broad shade of the opposite houses, approach, and, without bidding, help to empty the capacious bread-basket. Further up the street they go picking up more crumbs at rich mansions, whose owners occasionally vary their entertainment by providing for their vagrant visitors a little ajiaco, or native soup.

Cuban people are not fond of bestowing their charity through the medium of a public institution. The only place of the kind in that part of Cuba which I am describing is called the Beneficencia, or almshouse, which is under the superintendence of the Sisters of Charity. Wealthy ladies contribute largely towards the support of this establishment, but, in order to provide funds, public raffles are indispensable. Nothing succeeds in Cuba so well as something in which chance or luck, combined with amusement, is the inducement of the venture, and a raffle in aid of funds for the famished is always popular.

Doña Mercedes, the most benevolent of ladies, tells me that she and the prosperous señoras already referred to have in project a grand bazaar for the benefit of the poor, to which everybody is expected to contribute. The articles received for the purposes of the bazaar are to be exhibited in one of the big saloons of the governor's house, which overlooks the Plaza de Armas, and they will be raffled for during three special evenings. For weeks Doña Mercedes and her charitable sisters are busy collecting and numbering the contributions as they arrive, or twisting the paper chances into the form of cigar-lights.

The military square presents an animated scene on the evenings of the raffle. Twelve tables, bearing rich cloths and silver candelabra, are distributed about the broad promenade of the plaza. Around each table are seated a score of the fairest of Cuba's daughters, elegantly attired in evening costume, without any head-covering, and

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