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 that every rattlesnake carries at the tip of his tail, had seen and heard the danger simultaneously and only just in time. He leaped a clear four feet to the right and stood there panting, gazing wild-eyed and suddenly weak upon the doom which he had so narrowly escaped. At first he did not realize that his dog was stricken and he kept his terrified eyes fixed upon the snake until the short, sharp barks changed to shrill, long-drawn cries of pain. He watched the poor beast's death struggles in silence and without moving. Then he turned and fled like a deer.

For many minutes after the delicate nerve mechanism of his under-scales had ceased to detect the slightest tremor of the ground the rattlesnake stood on guard, his whirring rattle sounding its fearless challenge. At length, however, he seemed to realize that the enemy had retreated; and, uncoiling slowly, his beautiful body, straightened now to its full length, began again to glide mysteriously over the ground. In the waste of broom grass beyond the shallow, weed-choked ditch the busy meadow-mice still ran hither and thither along their smooth, well-trodden paths; and, now that his sluggish spirit had been stirred to fury and his body put to violent though brief, exertion, the snake was more than ever keenly conscious of his hunger and more impatient for his dinner.

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 It happened, however, that Fate had for this day decreed immunity for the timid people of the broom grass. The rattlesnake, having crossed the road, had arrived at the verge of the shallow ditch at a point where a well-beaten path led down the slope between two walls of dense thorny weeds and up the bank beyond into the field. Three feet of his thick body had entered this narrow pass when suddenly he paused. At the bottom of the ditch and full in the path, a slender serpent, whose lustrous black body was ringed with narrow stripes of white, lay stretched at full length, motionless and apparently asleep.

The rattlesnake paused only for an instant. It was surprise, not fear, which had arrested momentarily the slow forward flowing of his massive body; and almost immediately this unaccustomed emotion, impressed but faintly upon his dim intelligence, was lost in the strange senseless fury which possessed him.

He had seen but little of other serpents—except those of his own kind with whom he lived at peace and with whom at certain seasons he was accustomed to associate. His experience with other snakes had taught him only that they, like all the other forest-dwellers, owned his mastery; and, though this slim, white-ringed serpent in the path in front of him was of a sort which he had never

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 seen before, he never doubted what its conduct would be.

He glided on, therefore, sounding his battle-call, while the metallic eyes scintillated dangerously in his upraised head.

The kingsnake lay absolutely without movement, apparently unaware of the rattler's approach. It chanced that he was at that moment in an unusually peaceable and lazy mood, desiring only to be let alone. He had hunted the broom grass folk to good purpose that morning, and afterwards he had sought the soft sand at the bottom of the ditch to bask in comfort while the two furry bodies inside of him underwent the process of digestion.

Yet, for all his languor, he was not asleep. The mild black eyes set in his small, blunt-nosed head had seen the rattler at the moment when the latter appeared in the path. They had watched the intruder keenly as he glided down the slope and had noted without the slightest change of expression the huge size of that glittering armored body, three times as thick and only a little shorter than his own.

Until the angry, plated head with its gaping jaws was almost upon him, and the slim neck beneath it was bending back for a thrust, he gave no sign either of dismay or of defiance. Then, however, as if only at that moment endued with life and with a lightning-like quickness which rendered the

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 two movements almost simultaneous, half his slender, whip-like length drew back and flashed forward again, and the battle was joined.

It was a strange fight that raged amid the short weeds and crisp dead leaves at the bottom of the roadside ditch. It had scarcely begun when the ragged black boy, who, a few minutes before had escaped death by so narrow a margin, came at a rapid trot along the road, closely followed by a negro man bearing in his hand a stout hickory stick. These two, hearing a great threshing among the weeds, stood at the entrance of the path leading down into the ditch and watched the duel.

They saw a writhing, twisting yellow and black object whose shape changed and changed again swiftly and incessantly—now straightening convulsively to a length of full six feet, and lashing from side to side, now compacted into a streaked and mottled ball-like mass. It was not easy at first to follow the fortunes of the battle; but presently the man made out that a slender black spiral encircled the forward part of the rattler's thick trunk and that the rattler's head, despite the fetters wound about his neck, struck again and again against some part of this black spiral, the long curved fangs piercing each time the thin mail of the kingsnake's body. The man knew that with every stroke of those hollow fangs, each of them a full inch in length, an-

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 other gush of venom was injected, though in diminishing volume, into the kingsnake's veins. But he knew also that the kingsnake, by a strange provision of nature, is utterly unaffected by the poison, and from the first he had little doubt as to the issue of the combat.

Yet, for a while, the issue was in doubt; for, although the rattler's poison availed him nothing, the piercing and slashing power of his weapons might well have won the battle before the life was crushed out of him by the increasing constriction of his enemy's slim coils. This was the kingsnake's one weapon—the muscular force of his body. He had strangled many snakes before this—for he fought for the love of fighting as well as for food; but never before had his coils gripped so huge a serpent; and though his wire-like muscles strained and tightened to the utmost limit of their strength, his glittering armor was flecked with crimson in a score of places before the rattlesnake weakened perceptibly.

When at last the contortions of the splendid body, swollen so as almost to hide the slender black cord wound tightly around it, had slackened to a slow, mechanical writhing to and fro, the negro spat upon the ground and cursed delightedly.

"It's all over but de shoutin', Sonny," he said to the boy. "De kingsnake strangle um an' break he rib. But I don' t'ink he gwine ter eat um, 'cause

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 de rattler de bigges' er de two. Go t'row de dog een de bushes. Buzzard comin' for um now." And he pointed with his stick at three grim vultures gliding in wide, graceful circles fifty feet or so above the road where the small brindled carcass was lying.

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xliv without this final e. In this respect our poem differs from most of the Middle High German poems, as this practice of using the final e in rhyme began to die out in the twelfth century, though occasionally found throughout the period. The rhymes are, as a rule, quite exact, the few cases of impure rhymes being mainly those in which short and long vowels are rhymed together, e.g. mich : rich or man : han. Cæsural rhymes are frequently met with, and were considered by Lachmann to be the marks of interpolated strophes, a view no longer held. A further peculiarity of the Nibelungen strophe is the frequent omission of the unaccented syllable in the second half of the last line of the strophe between the second and third stresses. Examples of this will be found in the second, third, and fifth strophes of the passage given above.

The language of the Nibelungenlied is the so-called Middle High German, that is, the High German written and spoken in the period between 1100 and 1500, the language of the great romances of chivalry and of the Minnesingers. More exactly, the poem is written in the Austrian dialect of the close of the twelfth century, but contains many archaisms, which point to the fact of its having undergone a number of revisions.

In closing this brief study of the Nibelungenlied, just a word or two further with reference to the poem, its character, and its place in German literature. Its theme is the ancient Teutonic ideal of Treue (faithfulness or fidelity), which has found here its most magnificent portrayal; faithfulness unto death, the loyalty of the vassal for his lord, as depicted in Hagen, the fidelity of the wife for her husband, as shown by


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UST as the sun's first rays lit the tops of the tallest cypresses of the lagoon a whitetail buck came to the edge of Anhinga Town. There he met face to face another woods wanderer. On a great pine log lying across the buck's path crouched a large male wildcat. Early in the night an otter had eaten a fish on this log, and the big lynx, hungry as always, had been sniffing at the spot where the feast had taken place. The buck's coming interrupted him and, arching his back slightly, he gave a low growl, glaring out of his fierce, glassy eyes at the tall, antlered intruder who stood facing him in the narrow trail.

The buck halted only for a moment. After ranging the woods and broom grass fields all night he was on his way to his bed in a dense myrtle thicket bordering a black gum swamp, and the shortest route to this thicket lay along the margin of the lagoon which was the site of Anhinga Town. Long ago he had outgrown the instinctive fear of the lynx which in his young days would have sent him racing off at full speed at sight of the big cat crouching on the log. He stood for a moment, head

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 held high, returning steadily the baleful glare of the wildcat's savage eyes: then, shaking his heavy velvet-covered antlers proudly, he strode forward.

The wildcat, apparently without turning his head to see where his leap would take him, jumped six feet backward and faded like a ghost into the cover of the cane thicket clothing the slope of the bank. Leaping lightly over the log, the buck passed on along the narrow path.

Meanwhile Anhinga Town was waking up. In fact, it seemed to be already wide awake, for from many of its houses issued noises of many kinds—noises which might well have given a visitor the impression that the inhabitants were quarreling violently with one another. These houses were situated in tall cypress trees standing in the water of the lagoon. They were all built mainly of sticks, but some were larger and more strongly constructed than the others and were placed much higher in the trees, and it was from these larger houses that the clamor came. These were the homes of great blue herons who had come to live in Anhinga Town and who were now as numerous there as the anhingas or snakebirds themselves.

Very early in the spring, before the snakebirds had returned from the tropical regions where they spent the winter, the herons had set about the business of getting their homes ready for the warm sea-

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 son, and as a result of this early start every heron home in the town contained young. Hence for the present the town seemed to belong to the herons rather than the anhingas. All day long the place rang with the ceaseless clamor of the heron families, while scarcely a sound of any sort came from the anhinga homes, where always, night and day, long-tailed, long-necked birds, the strangest and most fantastic of all the inhabitants of the swamp country, sat brooding over their bluish-white, chalky eggs which, some day soon, would turn into hungry nestlings as grotesque as the young herons had been when they made their entrance into the world.

In a cypress rising from the water fifty feet or so from the log where the buck had encountered the wildcat, a male anhinga sat in a nest placed in a crotch, formed by the trunk of the tree and the lowest of its straight, short limbs. Above him and all around him hung long festoons of gray Spanish moss swaying slightly in the gentle breeze and forming a sort of curtain round-about the nest, almost hiding it from view. Through gaps in this tapestry the sharp eyes of the brooding snakebird looked out upon the little world of the lagoon.

He had watched with keen interest the meeting of the buck and the wildcat on the bank nearby; and now, sitting motionless and impassive in the nest, his snakelike neck thrust well forward, his

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 long tail touching the moss curtain behind him, he was wondering what luck attended his mate who was away fishing while, like a good husband, he took his turn at the monotonous business of warming the four blue-white eggs.

It was a monotonous task in one sense only. The anhinga's tree stood close to an opening in the flooded cypress woods, and across and above this opening herons and snakebirds were constantly flying. Most of the young birds in the heron nests were well grown, and these young herons required an enormous quantity of food. They stood on the nests or on branches close by, and when they saw, or thought they saw, a parent heron returning from the fishing grounds they gaped open their bills, flapped their wings, and made an amazing clamor of squawks, croaks and quacks.

There were times when every heron family in the town seemed to join in the din, to which the adult herons often added their deeper, hoarser voices, so that the whole place rang with an extraordinary variety of noises. In these, with scarcely any effort of the imagination, one might distinguish the barking of dogs, the squealing and grunting of pigs, the squawling of cats, the piercing cries of guinea-fowls and even the roaring of wild beasts. The anhinga was entirely accustomed to this clamor and was not in the slightest degree annoyed by it, though he

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 himself was among the most silent of birds. He sat still and listened and watched.

Above the opening in the flooded woods he saw a great blue heron sweep down the wind, turn, head up into the stiff breeze, and begin to descend. The long wide wings of the great bird curved downward near their tips, his slender neck straightened, his slim legs dangled beneath him as he came down in a gradual slant to his home in the heart of the town, to be greeted instantly by a tumult of squawks and welcoming catcalls.

High in the air, much higher than the heron had been, an anhinga came into view. When he was nearly over Anhinga Town, but a little down the wind from it, he swerved from his straight course and, with wings stiffly extended and long tail spread like a fan, he planed down an invisible spiral stairway from the sky. Very like an airplane he looked, with his long neck and tail and his motionless wings, but lighter, more graceful, more buoyant than any sky-ship ever made by man; and with ease and grace which would have made the best of human air pilots envious, he came to rest upon the top of a dead cypress on the outskirts of the town.

Instantly, then, the gracefulness which had distinguished him in the air left him. Grotesque and fantastic to the last degree, his snaky neck sharply crooked, his dagger-like beak thrusting this way and

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 that as he peered about him, he seemed half bird, half reptile, a reminder of those outlandish feathered creatures of the dim past when the avian race was in its infancy. Seen in the shadows, there would have been nothing to offset this grotesqueness of form and awkwardness of attitude; but perching there in the brilliant sunlight on the summit of the naked cypress top, he was not the somber-hued creature which he seemed when he stood with wings half-open, like a gorged vulture, on some dead limb in the dim, ghostly, moss-tapestried swamp glooms. A green iridescence played upon his glossy black neck, breast and white-tipped tail; upon his back was traced a delicate lace-like pattern of shining white; short gray plumes adorned his head and neck; a rounded blue spot at the base of his bill shone brightly in the light, and the long, straight bill and small throat pouch were of a rich orange color, matching the hue of his webbed feet.

The brooding anhinga spent no time admiring his kinsman—a replica of himself—on the sunny cypress top nearby. To him a more interesting because a less familiar sight was a magnificent wild turkey gobbler who walked slowly along the bank at the lower end of the lagoon, pausing upon the big pine log where the otter had feasted and the wildcat had met the buck. The anhinga looked to see the harem that should be following this superb bronze

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 sultan of the woods; but it was nesting time for the turkey hens and they were all sitting on their eggs in secret places in the deep woods or in dense thickets in the broom grass fields.

The gobbler was still standing on the pine log when the anhinga's sharp ears detected, amid the clamor of the herons, a high thin note twice repeated, coming from amid the cypress trunks beyond the opening in the flooded forest. He knew that it was a female wood duck talking to her little ones, and after a moment or two she came swimming slowly down a winding water lane amid the trees, seven downy yellowish ducklings paddling behind her.

Other eyes saw the wood duck and her brood. One of many logs of various sizes, which lay more than half submerged amid lily-pads and duckweed in the sunlit water near the margin of the lagoon, moved ever so slightly, sinking a little deeper until only two knobs showed above the surface. Very slowly these two black knobs moved forward, cleaving the carpet of duckweed, taking a course which would intersect that of the wood duck and her children.

At that moment the big gobbler on the pine log straightened suddenly. Some sound, the meaning of which puzzled him, had come to his ears from the woods encircling the lagoon and he raised his

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 head high to look and listen. A swamp rosebush hid the gobbler from the wood duck a hundred feet away on the lagoon. Yet the duck saw something move on the bank beyond the bush, though the intervening foliage prevented her from perceiving that it was only a turkey. Since the thing that had moved was on the bank it might be a man, and the mother duck did not believe in taking chances. She turned, spoke a word to her children and headed back along the water lane that led deep into the cypress woods.

The two black knobs moving across the carpet of duckweed came to rest, and presently there rose from the water behind them a black, thing which, viewed at right angles, looked rough and jagged. Though he was not aware of it, the young five-foot alligator was a good deal of a philosopher. If he could not dine on duck just now, at any rate he could resume his interrupted sun-bath and enjoy the warmth of the sunlight on his back.

The brooding anhinga was watching the turkey, still standing erect and alert on the pine log, when another note, this time shrill and insistent, from the mother duck caused him to turn his head. The duck had turned out of the winding water lane and was leading her children away from it through the flooded cypress woods, following a tortuous course in and out amid the tree trunks. In a mo-

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 ment the anhinga understood the reason for her sudden change of direction.

Down the middle of the water lane the grim monarch of the lagoon was coming. No 'gators of the largest size lived in or visited Anhinga Town because this lagoon was not a large one and its waters were generally shallow. Hence the eight-foot saurian now approaching, his long head and four feet of his jagged back showing, lorded it over all the other denizens of the bird city who lived on or in the water under the homes of the snakebirds and herons.

The king of the lagoon either did not see or took little interest in the wood duck family who had so hastily removed themselves from his path. He came on slowly and with dignity down the water lane to the opening in the flooded woods, turned slightly to the left, forged through the lily pads and duckweed like a half-submerged submarine, and came to rest in a shallow place near the shore where the sunny water was very warm. Sinking a little deeper, he lay motionless, scarcely distinguishable from the three or four logs in the water near him.

He had been lying there, utterly still, for nearly half an hour when a crashing roar like a clap of thunder shook Anhinga Town. For a moment even the din of the young herons was hushed, only to break out again more loudly than ever as the fright-

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 ened adult birds rose from the nests with a mighty flapping of wide wings to circle about just above the tree-tops, croaking and squawking. Down from the pine log pitched the big bronze gobbler. For four or five steps he raced along the bank: then his great wings opened and with quick, powerful beats he swept out over the lagoon. Making a wide circle over the water, he nearly brushed the nest of the anhinga with a wing-tip as he shot past, heading at full speed for the big swamp a mile away to the south.

The anhinga, crouching close upon his nest, saw a man come running along the bank—a negro, with a single-barreled shotgun in his hand, peering eagerly across the lagoon in the direction which the turkey had taken.

The hunter saw no bronze-feathered carcass lying on the water, and presently he walked on towards the pine log and searched the ground near it. He found no feathers there either and he grinned disgustedly with a gleam of white teeth. For months he had been trying to get this gobbler, the biggest in those woods, hunting him in season and out. He had tried a long shot from far down the bank because experience had taught him the impossibility of stalking the wise old bird unless conditions were very favorable; and now he was cursing himself for not having made an effort to get closer to his quarry

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 and cursing also the cheap shells bought at the little cross-roads store.

The negro poacher lingered only a short time on the bank beside the lagoon. His shot might have been heard at the plantation house and he had no wish to fall foul of the master of that plantation.

Fully a half-hour passed before Anhinga Town resumed the even tenor of its life. Within a few minutes the redoubled clamor of the herons sank back to normal, but a longer period elapsed before the two alligators, which had vanished instantly as the shot rang out, renewed their interrupted sun-bath and a big brown banded water snake, which had been sunning itself on a little island of cypress knees, reappeared out of the wine-brown depths.

Gradually those elements of the town's population which had been dispersed or driven into temporary seclusion by the hunter's coming returned to their accustomed places. The gobbler, of course, did not come back; but after a while as many great blue herons and snakebirds as ever were passing back and forth above the tree-tops or perching on convenient limbs, while the fish crows and grackles, which were among the town's most abundant inhabitants, had resumed their comings and goings and the small bird-life of the place was active and vocal again.

Presently other visitors came from the woods

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 around the lagoon. Three gray squirrels and four big, white-eared, white-nosed fox squirrels, whose thick gray-brown fur darkened on the head and tail to black, moved about in the mixed forest of water oak, willow oak and sweet gum beyond the bank where the pine log lay. A small raccoon ambled along the bank and stopped a minute at the pine log to sniff at the spot where the otter had feasted. There was man-scent about the place also, however, and the coon passed quickly on.

He was followed after a little by a cottontail, who came slowly along the bank nearly as far as the pine log and then turned down to the water's edge to nibble the stems of some tall, flag-like aquatic plants which grew there in profusion. Once the little hare stiffened and crouched low in the reeds as a black shadow swept over him; but, glancing up, he saw only a great blue heron flying over the lagoon and above the heron a circling snakebird, and jn a moment the cottontail resumed his feeding.

The brooding anhinga saw the rabbit come down to the edge of the water. Whether by accident or as the result of some sequence of ideas in the bird's rudimentary mind, the anhinga's gaze shifted immediately to the big alligator lying nearly submerged amid the logs and lily pads fifty yards away across the lagoon. It may have been mere chance which caused the snakebird to glance at the 'gator

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 at precisely that moment; but only three days before he had looked down from his nest upon a rather interesting occurrence which took place shortly after a cottontail had hopped along the bank and turned down to the water at that very spot to nibble at those same succulent plant stems.

Possibly, therefore, the anhinga expected to see what he now saw—a gradual subsidence of the 'gator's back until it had sunk out of sight altogether and only the black knobs which were the saurian's eyes and nostrils remained above the surface.

Very slowly these knobs moved in the water. Then they, too, sank until only the hind pair were visible—two dark spots, each of them no bigger than a walnut, on the level carpet of duckweed, the surface of which was marred by many other spots and objects of various shapes—rounded tips of cypress knees, the ends of waterlogged sticks, small logs, and branches fallen from the trees, with here and there the upthrust head of a terrapin or a frog. A man would not have been likely to pick out from among all these the two dark knobs which were the 'gator's periscope; and so slowly did these knobs move across the duckweed carpet that upon a casual glance they would not have seemed to move at all.

The cottontail at the edge of the water nibbled away contentedly. The shadows which swept over

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 him from time to time no longer startled him. He had discovered that they were all made by harmless herons and snakebirds. Ordinarily, swiftly moving shadows like these scared him badly, but now he paid no further attention to them. Two Florida gallinules walked close by him, apparently without seeing him, talking volubly to each other. Wise in the ways of the water-folk of the lagoon, they may have seen the periscope of the long, armored submarine coming gradually nearer and nearer, and possibly its slow, menacing approach was the subject of their conversation. To the cottontail, however, their language was meaningless and he gave no heed to them or to their gabble.

The anhinga on his nest watched in silence, his gaze shifting back and forth between the cottontail and the two black spots out in the lagoon moving so slowly that the movement was barely discernible. Minutes passed, and presently the anhinga's attention was diverted to the three gray squirrels which, more lively and more agile than their handsomer, darker-gray, white-nosed kinsmen, were playing a game of hide-and-seek in a water oak, some of the branches of which projected far over the quiet waters of the lagoon.

They were happy little people, these squirrels, next to the otters the most playful of all the furred folk of the swamp woods. Here and there amid

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 the branches of the oak they chased one another with what seemed like reckless abandon, racing along the stout main limbs, flinging themselves in long leaps from bough to bough, swinging precariously on the smaller moss-draped branches which swayed and bent beneath their weight.

Even less than the cottontail were they concerned with those two black spots on the surface of the water almost directly beneath them and now scarcely fifteen feet distant from the place where the rabbit was feeding at the water's edge.

Away to the right, beyond the open space in the flooded woods, the brooding anhinga saw a dark shape come swinging down the water lane that wound amid the cypresses. This traveler of the water lane traveled not in the water but in the air some ten feet above the surface. His wide wings stirred the moss-pennants trailing from the trees, and he came so swiftly that almost in an instant he had reached the end of the lane and had swept out above the open water.

The anhinga crouched close on his nest. The great horned owls who lived in the deep woods near the farther edge of the lagoon had never molested him; yet he did not like them and on the rather frequent occasions when they hunted by daylight he took pains to keep out of their way. The owl was heading almost directly towards him, but he sat in

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 his moss-curtained house as still as a bird carved out of black marble.

His ordeal was only momentary. In a fraction of a second the owl had passed the anhinga's cypress and, swerving suddenly in the air, had shot upward with increased velocity along a steep incline towards the outermost limb of the wide-spreading oak.

Along this limb, heading towards the outer end, raced one of the gray squirrels. The owl's wide wings darkened over him, long needle-pointed talons were reaching for him when he leaped—wildly, aimlessly—out into the air. The horned killer's momentum carried him fifteen feet beyond the limb; and just as he checked his course and turned, he saw the squirrel hit the water with a splash, disappear for an instant, then strike out awkwardly but bravely for the shore.

The big owl circled over the lagoon, spiraling gradually down towards the surface. There was no hurry now. The squirrel was at his mercy and he would take his time, for he was not especially skillful at plucking his prey from the water. Suddenly, five feet behind the swimming squirrel, a black hideous object burst from below through the thin film of duckweed. As it lunged forward, huge jaws studded with long teeth opened and engulfed the squirrel. For a moment the whole head and two-thirds of the body of the saurian king of the lagoon

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 appeared above the surface as, with an upward toss of his head, he swallowed his victim whole. Then gradually the long body sank out of sight again until the circling owl saw only the periscope eyes.

A hundred yards from the shore of the lagoon, in a dense thicket of cassena, the cottontail came to a halt. He had seen the owl as the big bird turned in the air after stooping at the squirrel, and he had not stopped running until he had gained his cassena fortress which no owl or hawk could penetrate. The anhinga on his nest had already forgotten the tragedy he had witnessed. High above the opening in the flooded woods a female snakebird, her fawn throat and breast gleaming white in the sun, was planing down to Anhinga Town.

Somehow, even at that distance, he recognized his mate. He stirred on the nest, half-opening his wings. His turn of duty was over for a while. In a few minutes he would be circling upward above the cypresses and heading away to his favorite fishing ground—a large lagoon five miles to the northward—leaving his mate to warm the blue-white eggs in the moss-curtained nest and wile away the hours by watching the varied activities of Anhinga Town's inhabitants.

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Rh Kriemhild, carried out with unhesitating consistency to the bitter end. This is not the gallantry of medieval chivalry, which colors so largely the opening scenes of the poem, but the heroic valor, the death-despising stoicism of the ancient Germans, before which the masters of the world, the all-conquering Romans, were compelled to bow.

In so far as the Nibelungenlied has forgotten most of the history of the youthful Siegfried, and knows nothing of his love for Brunhild, it is a torso, but so grand withal, that one hardly regrets the loss of these integral elements of the old saga. As it is a working over of originally separate lays, it is not entirely homogeneous, and contains not a few contradictions. In spite of these faults, however, which a close study reveals, it is nevertheless the grandest product of Middle High German epic poetry, and deservedly the most popular poem of older German literature. It lacks, to be sure, the grace of diction found in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan und Isolde, the detailed and often magnificent descriptions of armor and dress to be met with in the epics of Hartman von Ouwe; it is wanting in the lofty philosophy of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, and does not, as this latter, lead the reader into the realms of religious doubts and struggles. It is imposing through its very simplicity, through the grandeur of the story, which it does not seek to adorn and decorate. It nowhere pauses to analyze motives nor to give us a picture of inner conflict as modern authors are fond of doing. Its characters are impulsive and prompt in action, and when they have once acted, waste no time in useless regret or remorse.


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title: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)


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xlvi It resembles the older Spielmannsdichtung, or minstrel poetry, in the terseness and vigor of its language and in the lack of poetic imagery, but it is free from the coarseness and vulgar and grotesque humor of the latter. It approaches the courtly epic in its introduction of the pomp of courtly ceremonial, but this veneer of chivalry is very thin, and beneath the outward polish of form the heart beats as passionately and wildly as in the days of Herman, the Cheruscan chief. There are perhaps greater poems in literature than the Nibelungenlied, but few so majestic in conception, so sublime in their tragedy, so simple in their execution, and so national in their character, as this great popular epic of German literature.


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Gray Eagle

title: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Gray Eagle


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/The Elk of the Overhills


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Eyes

title: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Eyes


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Justice of the Wild


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/The Cat of God


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A complete bibliography of English works dealing with the Nibelungenlied will be found in F. E. Sandbach, The Nibelungenlied and Gudrun in England and America, London, 1904, pp. 82-117. For the convenience of the reader a short list of some of the best English accounts is given here.

G. T. Dippold.— The Great Epics of Medieval Germany. (Boston, 1882.)

F. H. Hedge. — Hours with German Classics. (Boston, 1886.)

Jessie L. Weston, Legends of the Wagner Drama. (London, 1896.)

Gustay Gruener.— The Nibelungenlied and Saga in Modern Poetry, in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America,, 220-257. (Baltimore, 1896.)

C. H. Genung. — The Nibelungenlied, in Warner’s “Library of the World’s Best Literature,”, 10,627 ff. (New York, 1897.)

Camillo von Klenze. — The Sigfrid Stories, in the Nibelungenlied and Elsewhere, in Poet Lore,, 543 ff. (Boston, 1898.)

John Clarke, M. A.— A History of Epic Poetry. (Edinburgh, 1900.)

J. G. Robertson.— A History of German Literature, pp. 59-71. (Edinburgh and London, 1902.)

Winifred Faraday. — The Edda. (Nutt’s Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance and Folklore. London, 1902.)

The best translations into English verse are those by W. N. Lettson, The Fall of the Nibelungers, London, 1874, and by Alice Horton, The Lay of the Nibelungs, London, 1898.


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Peregrine

title: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Peregrine


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/The Golden Wanderer


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text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Thanks to Ringtail


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/The Way of a Serpent


text: Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Anhinga Town


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 Sigmund had answered him scornfully, but whereas he was a wary man and a double-dealing, he made as if he heeded this matter in nowise, yet that same evening he thought how he might reward it, as was well seen afterwards.

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Rh Perhaps the best effect of all will be felt in literature. To that capital bore of letters, the scribbling physiognomist, the nose is almost as necessary as to the caricaturist. He is never done finding strength of mind and spirit in large noses, though the small ones of Gibbon and Gortschakoff shrieked against his creed, and intellectual feebleness in " pugs," though Kosciusko's was the puggest of its time. When there are no noses the physiognomist can base no theories on them. It would be worth something to live long enough to be rid of even a part of his gabble.

The conditions under which we live may so alter that the sense of smell may be again advantageous in the struggle for existence, and by the survival of those in whom it is keenest regain its pristine place in our meager equipment of powers and capacities. But philosophers to whom millstones are transparent will deem it significant that the sense in question and the facial feature devoted to its service have fallen into something of the disrepute that foretokens deposal. It is now hardly polite to speak of smells and smelling, without the use of softened language; and the nose is frequently subjected to contumelious and jocose remark unwarranted by anything in its


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23 personal appearance or the nature of its pursuits. It is as if man had withdrawn his lip-service from the nasal setting sun.

It is, then, well understood, even outside of "scientific circles," that the incompossibility of civilization and the human nose is more than a golden dream of the optimist. Indubitably that once indispensable organ is falling into the sere and yellow leaf of disuse, and in the course of a few thousand generations will have been wiped off the face of the earth. Its utility as an organ of sense decreases year by year — except as a support for the kind of eyeglasses bearing its name in French; not a sufficiently important service to warrant nature in preserving it. The final effacement has been foreseen from the earliest dawn of art. The ancient Grecian sculptors, for example, who were great trimmers and were ever eager to know which way the physiognomical cat would jump, tried to represent the human face of the future rather than that of their period ; and it is noticeable that most of their statues and busts are distinguished by a striking lack of nose, as above intimated. That is justly regarded as a most significant circumstance — a prophecy of the conclusion now reached by modern science


text: Ethnography and Condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505/Chapter 2


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one of the ancient palaeolithic cave dwellers of Europe could make his appearance there again in flesh and blood, what an interest would be taken in him! He would be regarded as being able to throw a flood of light upon the early existence of man on the earth, and from all sides students and members of scientific societies would gather round him to learn all that he could teach. In point of fact he could tell them nothing, even if they could understand his speech. He could not explain the dim religious thoughts, or rather apprehensions of fear from something vague outside himself, that passed through his brain, nor give reliable information of any kind upon the past of his race, where they came from or when or how they had their origin. Of such subjects he knew nothing, and accepted the fact of his own existence and that of his associates without bothering himself about any inquiry into the matter. His conversation would be limited to narratives of the game he had killed, or the girl he had won by sending an arrow through a rival's heart as he lay sleeping, or how his brother had been bewitched by an enemy and had died, or how somebody had been turned into a wild animal and was still spell-bound and only to be seen in his proper form by those whose eyes had been cleansed by charms.

Only in the evening when he was surfeited with the flesh of some animal he had slain, and when weary of the dance he reclined by the fire and admired the patterns made with ochre and soot and grease on his otherwise naked body, he would tell some story of insects or birds or beasts that he had heard from Rh


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Nibelungenlied, the lay of the Nibelungs. The ordinary etymology of this name is ‘children of the mist’ (Nebelkinder, O. N. Niflungar), and it is thought to have belonged originally to the dwarfs. Piper, I, 50, interprets it as ‘the sons of Nibul’; Boer, II, 198, considers Hniflungar to be the correct Norse form and interprets it as ‘the descendants of Hnaef’ (O. E. Hnaef, O. H. G. Hnabi), whose death is related in the Finnsaga.

Adventure (M. H. G. aventiure, from O. F. aventure, Lat. adventura). The word meant originally a happening, especially some great event, then the report of such an event. Here it is used in the sense of the different cantos or fitts of the poem, as in the Gudrun and other M. H. G. epies. Among the courtly poets it also frequently denotes the source, or is the personification of the muse of poetry.

Kriemhild is the Upper German form of the Frankish Grimhild. In the MSS. the name generally appears with a further shifting as Chriemhilt, as if the initial consonant were Germanic k. On the various forms of the name, whieh have never yet been satisfactorily explained, see Müllenhoff, Zsfda. , 299, 413;, 313; and Bolinenberger, PB. Beit. , 221- 231.

Gunther is the historieal Gundahari, king of the Burgundians in the fifth century. See the introduction, p. xxxiv.

Gernot was probably introduced by some minstrel in place of the historical Godomar, who appears in the Norse version as Gutthormr, though the names are not etymologically the same, as Godomar would be Guðmarr in Old Norse.

Giselher is the historical Gislaharius. Although mentioned by the Lex Burgundionum as one of the Burgundian kings, he does not appear in the early Norse version, or in other poems dealing with these persons, such as the Waltharius, the Rabenschlacht, the Rosengarten, etc., and was probably introduced at a late date into the saga. Originally no rôle was ascribed to him, and not even his death is told. He probably came from some independent source.


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 and the pain left him, the swelling went down, and the callous parts disappeared ; he leaped to his feet, shouting, “Glory to God, I am healed.” “The lame man shall leap as an hart.” He threw his crutch away. It is now about nine years since he was healed; he has testified before thousands; many have visited him, others have written him. He is well now, “These signs shall follow them that believe.”

Dr. Daggett was the first we ever laid on hands for healing.

In our meeting last August, 1915, in Topeka, Kansas, I was led of the Spirit to tell of this first healing. After I was through a man came forward, and said he was Dr. Daggett’s son, and that thirty years ago he was converted, by reading one of my books, a few months before his father was so wonderfully healed, but had never seen me until the meeting in which his father was healed, after suffering from lameness, for many years. His father had a new lease of life and lived many years after.

Surely “God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

And He is always ready to smile on our work in Jesus’ Name and to confirm His word.

On Sabbath morning we commenced praise service at nine o'clock, with a large crowd which continued to increase until the grove was a moving mass of living souls. The songs of praise, shouts of joy, and the ringing testimonies, came from the old and young, from the white-haired fathers and mothers down to the little boys. When I asked for all those who had been blessed and knew they were saved, to raise their hands, not less than five hundred hands were raised, and all shouted, “Praise the Lord.” The power came like a cyclone. The multitude was swayed to and fro. Sinners were converted on their feet. God’s servants were so filled with the glory of God, they could not administer, as the priests of old. Some of their faces shone like Stephen’s when he was brought before false witnesses.

My next meeting, after leaving Perkinsville, was at Summitville, Indiana. We pitched our tents, and commenced battle. The enemy thought he had this place, and indeed it had that appearance; but the soldiers of the Lord came in companies from all points. Many ministers, and converts by the score, who had been converted at my meetings two years previous, came.

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 the other evangelists I had sent there slipped off without telling me she was going.

I had no thought of running. In the strength of God I arose; was helped to the pulpit. I stood trembling, and began to sing. The power came upon me. I prayed and preached, and then called sinners to the altar. To the surprise of all, many came. Soon the shouts of new-born sons and daughters of the Lord were heard over the camp. The altar was crowded, day and night, for ten days with seekers. It seemed almost impossible to close with such an interest, but I had promised to go back to Anderson in ten days. The whole community was stirred, and hundreds under deep conviction, but I had to close.

In ten days I went back to Anderson, and commenced a meeting in a beautiful grove the brethren had secured.

There were twenty-eight conversions the first night of my return. I continued, this meeting for three weeks, holding three services each day; sometimes one service would continue on into the next. There were from twenty to fifty conversions each day. Men and women were converted at this meeting from nearly every State in the Union, and went to their homes to carry the tidings of a Saviour’s love.

There were thousands on the camp-ground every day. The power of the Holy Ghost came as a cyclone, and many times the multitude were swayed as the growing grain in the wind storm. There would be shouts going up all over the congregation. Men and women would be stricken down in every direction, and carried to the large platform; it would not hold the slain of the Lord. The scene was beyond description; more than two-thirds of the large congregation stood through the entire service; many of them old fathers and mothers, whose locks were whitening for the grave. Many of this class were brightly converted.

Lawyers, doctors and infidels were brought to Christ, from the “Tallest cedars” down to the weakest. Many poor drunkards were lifted up by this meeting, who, to-day are bright citizens. Oh, praise the Lord for the wonderful work done at Anderson. There were thousands of conversions.

Two very old ladies were brought to the meetings, who were too feeble to get out of their buggy, and at their request the horse was taken from the buggy and they were left sitting in it. The buggy was drawn up near the stand, and both old ladies were

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many a wonder is told us in stories old, of heroes worthy of praise, of hardships dire, of joy and feasting, of the fighting of bold warriors, of weeping and of wailing; now ye may hear wonders told.

In Burgundy there grew so noble a maid that in all the lands none fairer might there be. Kriemhild was she called; a comely woman she became, for whose sake many a knight must needs lose his life. Well worth the loving was this winsome maid. Bold knights strove for her, none bare her hate. Her peerless body was beautiful beyond degree; the courtly virtues of this maid of noble birth would have adorned many another woman too.

Three kings, noble and puissant, did nurture her, Gunther and Gernot, warriors worthy of praise, and Giselher, the youth, a chosen knight. This lady was their sister, the princes had her in their care. The lordings were free in giving, of race high-born, passing bold of strength were they, these chosen knights. Their realm hight Burgundy. Great marvels they wrought hereafter in Etzel's land. At Worms upon the Rhine they dwelt with all their power. Proud knights from out their lands served them with honor, until their end was come. Thereafter they died grievously, through the hate of two noble dames.

Their mother, a mighty queen, was called the Lady


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Rh his mother when he was a child, and though he did not know this, had really been as it were stereotyped long centuries before, and was even in those ancient days told in almost identically the same words by people living far away towards the morning dawn and others as far away towards the setting sun. The students and savants would listen, and wonder how a full-grown man, though a pygmy, with a fairly well shaped head but for the great prognathism of the jaws, could delight in such absurd stories and really believe in the truth of many of them. They would soon realise that he could tell them nothing of what they wanted to know, that though he was not an idiot, his reasoning power and his credulity were those of a little child. They would observe that his passions were those of an adult, that his physical strength was great, that he could distinguish objects clearly at a distance that they could only see with a good field-glass, that he could outrun with ease the fleetest of their athletes, and yet that his thoughts were no more lofty than those of the dullest peasant's infant boy.

But the palaeolithic savage restored to life, though he could tell nothing of importance concerning the history or origin or religion of his race, would still be an object of exceeding interest. He could be studied as a workman engaged in the manufacture of timepieces studies the mechanism of a clock, and a very great deal relating to the history of man could be learned in this manner from him. He could not explain the structure of his language, but his words, or the uncouth sounds that issued from his throat and teeth and lips which correspond to words among civilised men, could be taken down and analysed, their meaning could be gradually gathered, the grammatical form in which they were put together to represent ideas could be solved, and a link in the chain of language from its origin to that of the most cultured individual of the present day would be obtained. For this painted savage, disgusting in his habits, almost hideous in his appearance, represented a stage of human existence through which our own ancestors must at one time have passed. That time may have been exceedingly remote, but we cannot get rid of the fact that this repulsive being, who ate and enjoyed the taste of carrion,


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Rh of non-Christian teachers, the school has fallen away fully one-half, there being at the date of the last report only forty girls on the list. Almost all attend in the morning, but there is always a considerable deficiency in the afternoon. Reading, writing, cyphering, sewing, and Christian instruction are the exercises of the school.


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28 and never cleansed even the intestine of an animal before devouring it, was a blood relative of our own, and that we ought to take more interest in him than in any of the brute creation.

The Europeans who settled in South Africa after the middle of the seventeenth century had the palæolithic man, just as he roamed over Europe in times long preceding the dawn of history, living in flesh and blood before their eyes. They were indeed far more familiar with his presence than they desired to be, for he was not at all a respectable neighbour. He belonged to an unimprovable race, incapable of adopting the habits of other people much higher in culture than itself, though, as now known, it could amalgamate with those only slightly in advance. Before the arrival of the Hottentots and Bantu in parts of South Africa, it was not in contact with any other branches of the human species, and hence it remained at its own low level, the level of palæolithic man in Europe, without making much advance of any kind during the long long time it occupied the secluded extremity of the continent. When the Europeans arrived therefore, an opportunity was afforded of becoming intimately acquainted with the condition and language of one of the lowest, if not the very lowest, of all the races on the face of the earth, and of making the information gained known to the civilised part of mankind.

That opportunity was not taken advantage of. The white settlers were entirely occupied with making a living, and regarded the Bushmen simply as robbers, just as the Hottentots and Bantu did. Then down to our own times the savage wanderers were generally considered to be outcast Hottentots, even Dr. Bleek himself when he began his researches believing that they had separated from a common ancestral stock only a few centuries back. There were exceptions to this statement, notably Dr. Henry Lichtenstein, but they were few in number. Further,


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 converted during the meeting: An old gentleman living in the southern suburbs of the city attended one of the meetings and purchased a song book, and after he got home, sat down and read it; while reading he was converted and broke forth in song and praise, which drew the neighbors to his house. These joined in and were also converted. The singing and shouting of these converts were heard throughout the neighborhood.

These meetings were participated in by as good men and women as there were in that county, or as can be found in any county.

While hundreds were stepping into the lifeboat, and starting for glory, many bright men and women were almost persuaded, yet they would not surrender. I was very much concerned about them. I felt it was now, or never with them. The Lord impressed me to say it was the last call, and to ask all who believed in prayer to fall on their knees, and raise faces and hands to God, and to ask him to shake the earth; to send an earthquake, if necessary. The people, five hundred or more, knelt in prayer with their hands raised to heaven, and what a wonderful sight it was! All expecting the Lord to come near in some wonderful way. The power of God fell in the congregation, and all at once the earth began to shake. There was an earthquake, and it was felt all over the city. It was the time that Charleston, South. Carolina, was destroyed, and it reached to Anderson, Indiana. The prayer of faith will be answered, if the Lord has to bring heaven, down.

The earth has been shaken at many places so that the multitude swayed and fell.

A lawyer got up one day in the meeting and said he must say a word about the good work that eternity alone would reveal. He held in his hand a letter he had received from his brother, who had been a noted infidel, saying, he had never seen me, nor attended any of my meetings, but what he had seen and heard of them from a distance and by reading my book he was converted and was going into the ministry. He said he had several, hundred dollars worth of infidel books, and he had made a fire and burned them. The lawyer who told this about his brother said he was an infidel when I came to-the city, but his infidelity was all swept away.

I organized a church in the grove. Two hundred and ninety-

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isi. I.] CHANDRAGUPTA NA ASOKA. 21

Iwu ahụ adigidewo n'oge dịpụrụ adịpụ; na n'ime puku afọ abụọ nke gara nke ọma, ụmụ mmadụ achọpụtala ọ dịghị okpukpe dị mma karịa ịkwalite na nke a ụwa " ebere na ebere, eziokwu na ịdị ọcha, obiọma na ịdị mma. "


text: Advice to the Indian Aristocracy/Chapter 2


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68

Dewottur lands are lands given by wealthy Hindoos to Brahmans for the maintenance of religion, in honor of the gods, and for the acquisitions of religious merit. The nature and extent of the obligation imposed by the endowment can be correctly understood only by a reference in each case to the terms in which it is expressed; but, in general, grantees are not much restricted in the application of the property, and they sometimes employ part of it in charity and in promoting learning.

Nazr lands are such as are devoted by wealthy Musalmans to the use of those who give themselves up to the service of God; sometimes the land is retained in the hands of the owner, and the revenue derived from it is distributed with his own hands to the devout and needy.

Chiraghi lands are those the produce of which is devoted by Musalmans to defray the expenses attending the performance of certain religious services in honor of a pirr or deceased spiritual guide to whom the religious merit is transferred.

Pirottur are those which are applied to the same purposes with this difference that the merit is transferred to any deceased saint whom it may be desired to honor.

Population.—In 1801 the number of inhabitants was estimated in round numbers at 1,500,000 in the proportion of two


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Rh there were no men of sufficient education and inclination wealthy enough to afford the time requisite to conduct the necessary researches. When at length, under the auspices of the late Sir Bartle Frere, a philosophical association came into existence, its pecuniary resources were too limited to render any aid, and it was obliged to confine its attention to other subjects. These are the reasons why long and close research regarding the inner life of the Bushmen was not commenced until the nineteenth century was far advanced.

Scattered about in the early records of the Cape Colony there are many references to the Bushmen besides those relating to war with them, and though these are of considerable value, none of them give all the particulars that a student would like to know. Thus in the journal of Commander Simon van der Stel's expedition to Namaqualand in 1685 it is related that on a certain occasion five Bushmen were met, to whom a sheep was presented, which they killed and ate, rejecting nothing but the gall and four little pieces from the thighs. Beyond stating that they gave as a reason for not eating these little pieces that it was their custom to reject them, no information is given, or probably was obtained, concerning the matter. Recent research by Dr. Bleek and Miss Lloyd fills in this gap, however. The wild people believed that animals and men could change their forms, and that these particular pieces remained part of the human body.

Many travellers and missionaries have also given accounts of the habits and mode of life of the Bushmen, but none of them remained in contact with the savages long enough to learn their language or penetrate into their innermost minds.

The reverend J. J. Kicherer, a missionary of the London Society, was the first to attempt to establish a station purely for the benefit of Bushmen. With a party of assistants, including


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 misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

We made a very short day of it to La Fère; but the dusk was falling, and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. La Fère is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart. Between the first and the second, extends a region of waste land and cultivated patches. Here and there along the wayside were posters forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering. At last, a second gateway admitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was full of the military reserve, out for the French Autumn manœuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable greatcoats. It was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows.


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 The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fère. Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep in!—and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the poplared country-side! It made our mouths water. The inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat.

Into this, the inmost shrine, and physiological heart, of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands,


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30 a half-breed Hottentot and his wife, who were born in the territory near the southern bank of the Orange river, and who spoke both the Dutch and the Bushman languages, so that they were useful as interpreters, on the 6th of July 1799 he took up his residence at a place which he named Blijde Vooruitzigt, or Joyful Prospect, on the bank of the Zak river. Being provided with a good stock of tobacco and a considerable number of oxen and sheep, presented to the mission by religious farmers, he was able to induce a large party of the wild people to listen to his teaching, and they remained with him as long as his stores lasted. In 1800, after he had been with them several months, he wrote of them as follows:

“Although they are not idolaters, the doctrine of a Supreme Being was to them entirely unknown. … Their manner of living is very horrible. Their dwelling and resting place is between the rocks, where they dig a round den of about three feet deep, in which they lie, with their whole family. This den is sometimes covered with a few reeds, to shelter them from the wind and rain, which, however, seldom answers the design, as they are generally soaked through by the first shower. They mostly lie down and sleep, except when hunger greatly torments them; then they go a-hunting; but they live many days without any food. When they find no wild beast, then they make shift with a sort of small wild onions and wild potatoes, which the women seek, but never the men. They are content to eat snakes and mice.

“Their language is so very difficult to learn that no one can spell or write the same. It consists mostly of a clicking with the tongue.

“They are total strangers to domestic happiness. The men have several wives, but conjugal affection is little known. They take no great care of their children, and never correct them except in a fit of rage, when they almost kill them by severe usage. In a quarrel between father and mother, or the several wives of a husband, the defeated party wreaks his or her revenge on the child of the conqueror, which in general loses its life. Tame Hottentots


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 you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, however: there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely—too politely, thinks the Cigarette—if we could have beds: she surveying us coldly from head to foot.

"You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. "We are too busy for the like of you."

If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: "If we


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76 Although some of the Mahomedan priests can read the portions of the koran that are appropriated for certain ceremonies, yet Dr. Buchanan heard a general complaint from the kazis that few understood a single word of that language, and that the greater part had mearly learned the passages by rote so as to enable them to perform the ceremonies.

Native Female Education.—The education of native females would appear to be viewed in the same light in this district as in Rangpur. Women are not only not educated, but the idea of educating them even in the most elementary knowledge is treated with contempt and even reprobation.


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 cannot sleep, we may at least dine,"—and was for depositing my bag.

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the landlady's face! She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.

"Out with you—out of the door!" she screeched. "Sortez! sortez! sortez par la porte!"

I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the Judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny? Black, black was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the blackness in our heart? This was not the first time that I have been refused a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I should do if such a misadventure happened to me again. And


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 out, one time, and the nearest way. It's to be hoped the practice we have acquired in mangrove roots in coming, will enable us to get up sufficient pace to get out on to dry land before we are all drowned." The boys took the hint. Fortunately one of the Ajumbas had been down in Ogowé, it was Gray Shirt, who "sabed them tide palaver." The rest of them, and the Fans, did not know what tide meant, but Gray Shirt hustled them along and I followed, deeply regretting that my ancestors had parted prematurely with prehensile tails for four limbs, particularly when two of them are done up in boots and are not sufficient to enable one to get through a mangrove swamp network of slimy roots rising out of the water, and swinging lines of aerial ones coming down to the water à la mangrove, with anything approaching safety. Added to these joys were any quantity of mangrove flies, a broiling hot sun, and an atmosphere three quarters solid stench from the putrifying ooze all round us. For an hour and a half thought I, Why did I come to Africa, or why, having come, did I not know when I was well off and stay in Glass? Before these problems were settled in my mind we were close to the true land again, with the water under us licking lazily among the roots and over our feet.

We did not make any fuss about it, but we meant to stick to dry land for some time, and so now took to the side of a hill that seemed like a great bubble coming out of the swamp, and bore steadily E. until we found a path. This path, according to the nature of paths in this country, promptly took us into another swamp, but of a different kind to our last—a knee-deep affair, full of beautiful palms and strange water plants, the names whereof I know not. There was just one part where that abomination, pandanus, had to be got through, but, as swamps go, it was not at all bad. I ought to mention that there were leeches in it, lest I may be thought too enthusiastic over its charms, But the great point was that the mountains we got to on the other side of it, were a good solid ridge, running, it is true, E. and W., while we wanted to go N.; still on we went waiting for developments, and watching the great line of mangrove-swamp spreading along below us to the left hand, seeing many of


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 nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; try it only once; and tell me what you did.

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal rejection from an inn door, change your views upon the subject like a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil. I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire, if it had been handy. There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of human


text: Advice to the Indian Aristocracy/Chapter 3


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 institutions. As for the Cigarette, I never knew a man so altered. "We have been taken for pedlars again," said he. "Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!" He particularised a complaint for every joint in the landlady's body. Timon was a philanthropist alongside of him. And then, when he was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to commiserate the poor. "I hope to God," he said,—and I trust the prayer was answered,—"that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the imperturbable Cigarette? This, this was he. O change beyond report, thought, or belief!

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. We trudged in and out of La Fère streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of


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 the lines in its dark face, which betokened more of those awesome slime lagoons that we had seen enough of at close quarters.

About four o'clock we struck some more plantations, and passing through these, came to a path running north-east, down which we went. I must say the forest scenery here was superbly lovely. Along this mountain side cliff to the mangrove-swamp the sun could reach the soil, owing to the steepness and abruptness and the changes of curves of the ground; while the soft steamy air which came up off the swamp swathed everything, and although unpleasantly strong in smell to us, was yet evidently highly agreeable to the vegetation. Lovely wine palms and rafia palms, looking as if they had been grown under glass, so deliciously green and profuse was their feather-like foliage, intermingled with giant red woods, and lovely dark glossy green lianes, blooming in wreaths and festoons of white and mauve flowers, which gave a glorious wealth of beauty and colour to the scene. Even the monotony of the mangrove-belt alongside gave an additional charm to it, like the frame round a picture.

As we passed on, the ridge turned N. and the mangrove line narrowed between the hills. Our path now ran east and more in the middle of the forest, and the cool shade was charming after the heat we had had earlier in the day. We crossed a lovely little stream coming down the hillside in a cascade; and then our path plunged into a beautiful valley. We had glimpses through the trees of an amphitheatre of blue mist-veiled mountains coming down in a crescent before us, and on all sides, save due west where the mangrove-swamp came in. Never shall I forget the exceeding beauty of that valley, the foliage of the trees round us, the delicate wreaths and festoons of climbing plants, the graceful delicate plumes of the palm trees, interlacing among each other, and showing through all a background of soft, pale, purple-blue mountains and forest, not really far away, as the practised eye knew, but only made to look so by the mist, which has this trick of giving suggestion of immense space without destroying the beauty of detail. Those African misty forests have the same marvellous distinctive quality that Turner gives one in his


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 fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country homes; but had they not each man his place in La Fère barracks? And we, what had we?

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People gave us directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace. We were very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La Fère; and the Cigarette had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But right at the other end, the house next the towngate was full of light and bustle. "Bazin, aubergiste, loge à pied," was the sign. "À la Croix de Malte." There were we received.

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking


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 and smoking; and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks.

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: softspoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if anyone has read Zola's description of the workman's marriage party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his youth. "One sees there little miracles of work," he said; "that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark." We


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 asked him, how he managed in La Fère. "I am married," he said, "and I have my pretty children. But frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night, I pledge a pack of good enough fellows who know nothing."

It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guardhouse opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon his breast. He had his arm about her and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people can the same be said!

Little did the Bazins know how much they


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 served us. We were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world.

How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses continually in our hand the better part of service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps, they also, were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner?


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 five names were enrolled. Hundreds came and took them by the hand in Christian fellowship. It was a sight perhaps no one on the camp-ground had ever witnessed before.

By an earnest request from a number of business men of the city, we held the closing meeting on the court-house steps. As we looked down over the court-house yard and street, we could see a crowded mass of up-turned faces, and from all the stores and windows, eager to see and hear. I praise God for standing by me in that trying hour. It took grace and courage for me to stand on those high steps. There were ministers, lawyers, doctors and reporters all around me. After so many months of constant labor, I was very weak and nervous, but God gave me voice clear and strong. I could be heard blocks away.

While holding meeting at Anderson the ministers of the different churches at Farmland formed a committee, and came to Anderson to try to persuade me to go back. They said they had all seen the good results of the ten days’ meeting I had held there, that there was a great change in the community for good, and the churches were wonderfully revived and strengthened, and those who stood back before were now ready to come to the front and do all they could to help me. I felt it was the Lord’s will for me to go. When I closed the meeting at Anderson. I went and commenced a camp-meeting in a better grove than the one we held the first meeting in, the good results of which eternity alone can tell. Nearly all the ministers of the village came to the front and fought the battle side by side with me.

Hundreds were converted, many. aged ones. I don’t think there were a dozen converted that were not over eighteen years of age. I think half of all that were saved were forty years of age.

“Signs and wonders” truly followed. The Holy Ghost came in slaying melting, anointing and healing power.

Praise the Lord for his wonderful works and the create harvest of souls gathered at Farmland.

The ministers and old people said there never had been such a revival in that part of the country; that there had never been such an outpouring of the Holy Ghost; never such signs and wonders followed; never such an ingathering of souls.

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 greatest pictures. I am no artist, so I do not know exactly what it is, but I see it is there. I luxuriated in the exquisite beauty of that valley, little thinking or knowing what there was in it besides beauty, as Allah "in mercy hid the book of fate." On we went among the ferns and flowers until we met a swamp, a different kind of swamp to those we had heretofore met, save the little one last mentioned. This one was much larger, and a gem of beauty; but we had to cross it. It was completely furnished with characteristic flora. Fortunately when we got to its edge we saw a woman crossing before us, but unfortunately she did not take a fancy to our appearance, and instead of staying and having a chat about the state of the roads, and the shortest way to N'dorko, she bolted away across the swamp. I noticed she carefully took a course, not the shortest, although that course immersed her to her arm-pits. In we went after her, and when things were getting unpleasantly deep, and feeling highly uncertain under foot, we found there was a great log of a tree under the water which, as we had seen the lady's care at this point, we deemed it advisable to walk on. All of us save one, need I say that one was myself, effected this with safety. As for me, when I was at the beginning of the submerged bridge, and busily laying about in my mind for a definite opinion as to whether it was better to walk on a slippy tree trunk bridge you could see, or on one you could not, I was hurled off by that inexorable fate that demands of me a personal acquaintance with fluvial and paludial ground deposits; whereupon I took a header, and am thereby able to inform the world, that there is between fifteen and twenty feet of water each side of that log. I conscientiously went in on one side, and came up on the other. The log, I conjecture, is dum or ebony, and it is some fifty feet long; anyhow it is some sort of wood that won't float. I really cannot be expected, by the most exigent of scientific friends, to go botanising under water without a proper outfit. Gray Shirt says it is a bridge across an under-swamp river. Having survived this and reached the opposite bank, we shortly fell in with a party of men and women, who were taking, they said, a parcel of rubber to Holty's. They told us


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 they could see and hear. There were no seats, young and old had to stand, but they seemed glad to get a place to stand. Scores of these were very old; they wept and shouted and praised God that they were permitted to live to see a real Pentecost revival. Day after day the power of the Lord swept over the congregation till many times they were shaken like grain in a storm. These meetings as in all other places, looked like a battle-field; the slain of the Lord could be seen lying all around, and sinners weeping their way to Calvary, amid the shouts of victory, the howling and growling of the enemy that was driven from the field.

Having long felt impressed that it was my duty to commence a work for the Master at the Capital of Indiana, we went from Muncie to that city and inaugurated what proved to be the hardest contested battle I ever fought for King Jesus.

On a cold December night we threw our banner to the breeze in the Meridian Rink, at Indianapolis. I think I am safe in saying no one ever commenced a revival meeting in that place with as little sympathy and as much opposition as we did. The powers of darkness were all in battle array against us, but in the midst of all the trying circumstances and fiery darts thrust at us on all sides by the enemy, we continually looked to Jesus, and, though the battle was long and hard, we had a grand victory.

It was just two weeks before Christmas and the churches were all having one social after another, preparing to have a big time the holidays; and most of them were thinking of everything else but a revival of Holy Ghost religion. Nearly all the people had their minds on Christmas, and their time was taken up in some way. I could see multitudes of souls all around, rushing down to an awful hell; could see the funeral passing every day, many of them taking a leap in the dark. Instead of looking at the dark side of all these things and getting discouraged, I felt my responsibility that much heavier, and said, in the strength of our God, we will go forward. About three days before we went to the city the United Brethren church house burned down. The minister and his members came up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The salt of the city, as they heard of the battle,

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title: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 15


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La Fère the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, and little humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come down in troops to the river side to drink. They make a strange feature in the landscape; above all when startled, and you see them galloping to and fro, with their incongruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. There were hills in the


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 N'dorko was quite close, and that the plantations we saw before us were its outermost ones, but spoke of a swamp, a bad swamp. We knew it, we said, in the foolishness of our hearts thinking they meant the one we had just forded, and leaving them resting, passed on our way; half-a-mile further on we were wiser and sadder, for then we stood on the rim of one of the biggest swamps I have ever seen south of the Rivers. It stretched away in all directions, a great sheet of filthy water, out of which sprang gorgeous marsh plants, in islands, great banks of screw pine, and coppices of wine palm, with their lovely fronds reflected back by the still, mirror-like water, so that the reflection was as vivid as the reality, and above all remarkable was a plant, new and strange to me, whose pale-green stem came up out of the water and then spread out in a flattened surface, thin, and in a peculiarly graceful curve. This flattened surface had growing out from it leaves, the size, shape and colour of lily of the valley leaves; until I saw this thing I had held the wine palm to be the queen of grace in the vegetable kingdom, but this new beauty quite surpassed her.

Our path went straight into this swamp over the black rocks forming its rim, in an imperative, no alternative, "Come-along-this-way" style. Singlet, who was leading, carrying a good load of bottled fish and a gorilla specimen, went at it like a man, and disappeared before the eyes of us close following him, then and there down through the water. He came up, thanks be, but his load is down there now, worse luck. Then I said we must get the rubber carriers who were coming this way to show us the ford; and so we sat down on the bank a tired, disconsolate, dilapidated-looking row, until they arrived. When they came up they did not plunge in forthwith; but leisurely set about making a most nerve-shaking set of preparations, taking off their clothes, and forming them into bundles, which, to my horror, they put on the tops of their heads. The women carried the rubber on their backs still, but rubber is none the worse for being under water. The men went in first, each holding his gun high above his head. They skirted the bank before they struck out into the swamp, and


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 distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain.

The artillery were practising at La Fère; and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frighted in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing battle piece, performed for our amusement.


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 At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace. There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. Only, here and there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner. I daresay we continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after.

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by their variety. When the showers were heavy I could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should


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82 district, and they are held in very low estimation. There is also a class of persons who profess to treat sores, but they are totally illiterate and destitute of science, nor do they perform any operation. They deal chiefly in oils. The only practitioner in surgery was an old woman, who had become reputed for extracting the stone from the bladder, which she performed after the manner of the ancients.

According to Dr. Buchanan the science of the Arabs has been exceedingly neglected in this district, so that very few even of the kazis are supposed to understand the koran or any Arabic work on grammar, law or metaphysics. He did not hear of one man who attempted to teach any of these branches of learning, and he expresses a doubt whether even one man employed in administering the Mahomedan law and born in the district was tolerably well-versed in the subject, or so well informed or liberally educated as the common attornies in a country town or England.


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 came. Many ministers stood by and worked nobly in the battle. They were never absent if they could get there. We had three services a day. Souls were saved in every meeting. We remained in the rink four weeks; then went to the Masonic hall.

The house was filled day and night. Hundreds came from the country and other cities. Hundreds of old people were saved, from forty to seventy-five years of age. Some were eighty-five. One old lady was brought twenty-five miles. She was one hundred and three years old. She had fallen and had been badly injured. Her sufferings were so great she could be heard screaming day and night. When she heard of the people being healed she told her son if he would bring her to the meeting God would relieve her suffering and heal her. It was a big undertaking in her condition, but he was very proud of his aged mother and anxious to do anything to relieve her. She was carried in. We prayed for her, and she was healed and filled with the power of God. She shouted over the house, and praised God, and magnified his name in a wonderful manner. When her son rose and told the people his mother was one hundred and three years old, they said: “We have seen strange things to-day.” She was the oldest person I had ever met. A minister who stood very high in the Methodist church and who had, helped us in the meeting, said he had been laboring for lost souls for forty years, had been in many wonderful revivals, but had never seen so many aged men and women at the altar; never saw so many gray heads bowed in sorrow weeping their way to Calvary.

The closing day (Sunday) of our meeting at Indianapolis was without a parallel as a day of rejoicing among those children of God. The house was crowded all day with those who had been saved during the meetings, and many were unable to gain admittance. A general praise meeting commenced in the morning and continued nearly all day.

At night the building was filled to overflowing, at an early hour. Hundreds were unable to gain admittance. I spoke for over an hour, my subject being, “The General Resurrection.” At the close of the service we stood for nearly an hour saying farewell and shaking the hands of those we had learned to love during our stay in Indianapolis.

We next went to Greensburg, Indiana, where previous arrangements had been made for us. We commenced our meeting

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 buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time, made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to look at, besides clay banks and willows.

All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded and were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance. What a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart!


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 on the following Saturday night at the opera house. Here, as at other places, we found true Christianity at a discount, and, dear reader, do not be surprised when I tell you that on the first night when I asked those who were on the Lord’s side to stand up, no one in the large crowd acknowledged that he belonged to Jesus. This was the start at Greensburg, but before many days scores were on their feet at once, only too glad of an opportunity to tell that they were on the Lord’s side.

We continued our meetings for four weeks and had a grand victory for our Master. Several hundred were brightly converted. Many were entranced at the different services, some of them seeing wonderful visions. A merchant’s wife who was converted was entranced at one of the services while sitting in a chair. While in that condition she was the very picture of loveliness. The scene was awe-inspiring and caused the stoutest-hearted to weep. She came out shouting, having, as she said, seen her daughter in heaven.

Judge W. came to the meeting from Anderson. He told the congregation he felt it a duty he owed to God and the people to come there and tell what the Lord had done for him a hundred miles away in answer to our prayer. He said he was very low with consumption; had given up all hope of getting well; expected to die soon; and that I had appointed a time for prayer and told him to go to the Lord at that time and expect God to heal and baptize him with the Holy Ghost, and we would pray for him at the same time and it would be done. He said while all alone with God at the time appointed he was healed. The people saw he was well and strong. He stayed several days at the meeting.

Brother H., a Methodist minister of Indianapolis, was very sick, and was instantly healed while we prayed for him. He came to Greensburg and told what Jesus had done for him. While he was talking the power of God fell upon him. He began to shout, Hallelujah! The words rolled out with such power and sweetness that they seemed to come from behind the Throne.

At the close of the meeting at Decatur we packed our tents for the season and returned to Indiana and held a few days meeting. While there we met many of those who had been healed of bodily diseases at the meetings a year previous, and in every instance they were strong and well, just as we expected, for God’s work is not like man’s. It is thorough and lasting.

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Rh


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 "Now we rambled through several apartments on the other side of the hall, and meeting with nothing worthy of our notice except the traces of desolation, we returned by the way we had entered that gloomy mansion."

"We descended into the court-yard and made there likewise our observations: Spurred on by curiosity, we entered, through a ruinous side building, a garden, which still bore some marks of former grandeur; statues of marble, half destroyed by the voracious tooth of time and the inclemency of the weather, were here and there lying on the ground. We cleared with our cutlasses a way, through brambles and nettles, to a grove of beech trees; it likewise was hardly penetrable."

"Having worked our way for more than half an hour, with much toil and difficulty through a thicket of thistles and brambles, we arrived at length wearied and fatigued at an