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 But although there are plenty of doors, as four enter the saloon from the deck, I do not see my way to doing this performance aimlessly, and what in this world they are both after I cannot think. So I confine myself to woman's true sphere, and assist in a humble way by catching the wine and Vichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of food, which at every performance are jeopardised by the members of the nobler sex starting off with a considerable quantity of the ample table-cloth wrapped round their legs. At last I can stand it no longer, so ask the captain point-blank what is the matter. "Nothing," says he, bounding out of his chair and flying out of his doorway; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two bottles of champagne with Woermann's agent for Njole, as to who shall reach Lembarene first, and the German agent has started off some time before the Éclaireur in his little steam launch.

During the afternoon we run smoothly along; the free pulsations of the engines telling what a very different thing coming down the Ogowé is to going up against its terrific current. Every now and again we stop to pick up cargo, or discharge over-carried cargo, and the captain's mind becomes lulled by getting no news of the Woermann's launch having passed down. He communicates this to the engineer; it is impossible she could have passed the Éclaireur since they started, therefore she must be somewhere behind at a subfactory, ''"N'est-ce pas?" "Oui, oui, certainement,"'' says the engineer. The engineer is, by these considerations, also lulled, and feels he may do something else but scan the river à la sister Ann. What that something is puzzles me; it evidently requires secrecy, and he shrinks from detection. First he looks down one side of the deck, no one there; then he looks down the other, no one there; good so far. I then see he has put his head through one of the saloon port-holes; no one there; he hesitates a few seconds until I begin to wonder whether his head will suddenly appear through my port; but he regards this as an unnecessary precaution, and I hear him enter his cabin which abuts on mine and there is silence for some minutes. Writing home to his mother, think I, as I go on putting a new braid round the bottom of a worn


text: Malay Annals/Preliminary

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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 equally remarkable, and she was named Shaher-ul Beriah. After sending his head minister, Perdana Mantri, to consult with the prophet Khizei, who was the minister of Raja Secander, he married his daughter to Raja Secander, who agreed to pay as her dowry 300,000 denars of gold, and carried her with him on his visit to the rising sun, after tarrying ten days in honour of the ceremony. On his return, however, her father requested her to remain some time with him, to which Raja Secander agreed, and took his departure.

It is stated by the relater of this story, that the Princess Shaher-ul Beriah, the daughter of Raja Kida Hindi, became pregnant by Raja Secander, but Raja Secander was unacquainted with this circumstance, nor was the princess acquainted with it herself, till a month after her return to her father. She at last informed her father that a cessation of her courses had taken place for two months, at which he was greatly delighted, considering that her pregnancy was by Raja Secander, and therefore treated her with all requisite attention. At the expiration of the months, the prin-

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 cess was safely delivered of a son, whom Raja Kida Hindi named Araston Shah, and who in every respect was the perfect picture of his father Raja Secander Zulkarneini. Raja Araston Shah married the daughter of the raja of Turkestan, by whom he had a son named Raja Aftas.

After the space of forty-five years, Raja Secander returned to Makedonia, and Raja Kida Hindi died, and left as his successor on the throne, Raja Araston Shah, who reigned 350 years, and then died. He was succeeded on the throne by his son Raja Aftas, who reigned 120 years, and then died. He was succeeded by Ascayinat, who reigned three years and died. He was succeeded by Casidas, who reigned twelve years, and died. He was succeeded by Amatubusu, who reigned thirteen years. He was succeeded by Raja Zamzeyus, who reigned seven years, and died. He was succeeded by Kharus Cainat, who reigned thirty years, and died. He was succeeded by Raja Arhat Sacayinat. After his death, he was succeeded by Raja Cudarzuguhan the son of Raja Amatubusu. After him reigned Raja Nicabus, who reigned forty years, and

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 died. After him reigned Raja Ardasir Migan, who married the daughter of Raja Nashirwan Adel, sovereign of the east and west, by whom he had a son, named Raja Derma Unus. After him succeeded on the throne, his grandson Tarsi Bardaras, the son of Raja Zamrut, who was the son of Shah Tarsi Narsi, who was the son of Raja Derma Unus, who was the son of Ardasir Babegan, who was the son of Raja Cuduri Gudurz Zuguhan, who was the son of Raja Amatubusu, who was the son of Raja Sabur, who was the son of Raja Aftas, who was the son of Raja Araston Shah, who was the son of Secander Zulkarneini.

Raja Narsi Barderas married the daughter of Raja Salan, the raja of Amdan Nayara, who, it is asserted by some, was the grandson of Raja Nashirwan Adel, the son of Raja Kobad Shah Shahriar, who was raja of the east and west. This Raja Sulan was the mightiest prince of the lands of Hind and Sind, and of all the rajas under the wind (i. e. towards the west, the wind being supposed to rise with the sun). By the princess his daughter, Raja Narsi had three sons; 1. Raja Heiran, who reigned in the

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 country of Hindostan. 2. Raja Suran, whom Raja Sulan took and installed in his own place. 3. Raja Panden, who reigned in Turkestan. After a short time Raja Sulan died, and his grandson Raja Suran reigned in his place in Amdan Nagara, with still greater authority than his predecessor, and all the rajas of the east and west acknowledged his allegiance, excepting the land of China, which was not subject to him. Then Raja Suran Padshah formed the design of subjugating China, and for this purpose his men at arms, and the rajas dependent on him, assembled from every quarter with their hosts, to the number of one thousand and two lacs. With this prodigious host, he advanced against China, and in his course, the forests were converted into open plains; the earth shook, and the hills moved; the lofty grounds became level, and the rocks flew off in shivers, and the large rivers were dried up to the mud. Two months they marched on without delay, and the darkest night was illuminated by the light of their armour like the lustre of the full moon; and the noise of the thunder could not

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 be heard for the loud noise of the cham-pions and warriors, mixed with the cries of horses and elephants. Every country which Raja Suran approached, he subdued and re-duced under his subjection, till at last he approached the country of Gangga Nagara, the raja of which was named Ganggi Shah Juana, which city is situated on a hill of very steep approach in front, but of easy access in the rear. Its fort was situated on the banks of the river Dinding, in the vicinity of Perak. When Raja Ganggi Shah Juana heard of the approach of Raja Suran, he summoned all his vassals, and ordered the gates of his fortresses to be shut, and stationed his guards for their protection. He also directed his moats to be filled with water. The host of Raja Suran quickly surrounded his fortresses, and attacked them sharply, but were vigorously repulsed. On this, Raja Suran mounted his huge elephant, and approached the gate of the fortress, notwithstanding the showers of spears and arrows with which he was assailed; he smote the gate with his chacra, and it immediately tumbled down, while the raja entered the fort with all his

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 champions. When Raja Ganggi Shah Juana saw Raja Suran, he seized his bow and smote the elephant of Raja Suran on the forehead, which instantly fell down. Raja Suran quickly sprung up and drew his sword,and smote off the head of Raja Ganggi Shah Juana. After the death of the raja, all his subjects submitted to Raja Suran, who married Putri Gangga, the beautiful sister of Raja Ganggi Shah Juana. From Gangga Nagara, Raja Suran advanced to the country of Glang Kiu, which in former times was a great country, possessing a fort of black stone up the river Johor. In the Siamese language, this word signifies the place of the emerald (Khlang Khiaw) but by per-sons ignorant of this language, it is usually termed Glang Kiu. The name of the raja of this country, was Raja Chulan, who was superior to all the rajas of the countries lying under the wind.

As soon as he heard of Raja Suran's approach, he summoned all his vassals, and marched out to meet him with a host, like the sea rough with waves, and elephants and horses like the islands in the sea, and standards like a forest, and armour plated

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 in scales, and the feathering of the spears like the Bunga lalang. After having marched about four times as far as the eye can reach, they arrived at a river; when he saw the host of Raja Suran extending like a forest, on which he said, in the Siamese language, "call them," and the river still retains the name of Panggil, which in Malay has this signification. When the Siamese troops engaged with the troops of Kling, a dreadful noise arose, the elephants rushed against the elephants, and the horses bit the horses, and clouds of arrows flew across each other, and spears pierced spears, and lances encountered lances, and swordsmen encountered swordsmen, and the descent of weapons was like the rapid fall of rain, and the noise of the thunder would have passed unheard in the combat, from the shouts of the combatants, and the ringing of weapons. The dust ascended to the heavens, and the brightness of the day was darkened like an eclipse. The combatants were all so mingled and blended, that they could not be distinguished, amokas madly encountered amokas, many stabbed their own friends, and many

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 were stabbed by their own partizans, till multitudes were slain on both sides, and also many elephants and horses. Much was the blood which was shed upon the earth, till at last it allayed the clouds of dust, and the field of combat was light, and the fierce amok as became visible, none of whom on either side would fly. Then Raja Chulan advanced his elephant, and broke into the ranks of Raja Suran, which exceeded all power of calculation. Wherever he approached the corpses swelled in heaps over the ground, till great numbers of the Kling troops perished, and unable to maintain their ground, they began to give way. He was observed by Raja Suran, who hurried forward to meet him. Raja Suran was mounted on a lofty elephant eleven cubits in height, but the elephant of raja Chulan was very courageous, and they fiercely rushed together, roaring like the thunder, and the clash of their tusks was like the stroke of the thunderbolt. Neither of the elephants could conquer the other. Raja Chulan stood on his elephant, brandishing his spear which he aimed at Raja Suran; he missed him, but pierced his

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 obscurer ones too elusive to be described or even fully comprehended by any ordinary commentator. Melodrama and unsophistication there may be—we are told of one fastidious Frenchman who could not bear to read Poe except in Baudelaire’s urbane and Gallically modulated translation—but all traces of such things are wholly overshadowed by a potent and inborn sense of the spectral, the morbid, and the horrible which gushed forth from every cell of the artist’s creative mentality and stamped his macabre work with the ineffaceable mark of supreme genius. Poe’s weird tales are alive in a manner that few others can ever hope to be.

Like most fantaisistes, Poe excels in incidents and broad narrative effects rather than in character drawing. His typical protagonist is generally a dark, handsome, proud, melancholy, intellectual, highly sensitive, capricious, introspective, isolated, and sometimes slightly mad gentleman of ancient family and opulent circumstances; usually deeply learned in strange lore, and darkly ambitious of penetrating to forbidden secrets of the universe. Aside from a high-sounding name, this character obviously derives little from the early Gothic novel; for he is clearly neither the wooden hero nor the diabolical villain of Radcliffian or Ludovician romance. Indirectly, however, he does possess a sort of genealogical connexion; since his gloomy, ambitious and anti-social qualities savour strongly of the typical Byronic hero, who in turn is definitely an offspring of the Gothic Manfreds, Montonis, and Ambrosios. More particular qualities appear to be derived from the psychology of Poe himself, who certainly possessed much of the depression, sensitiveness, mad aspiration, loneliness, and extravagant freakishness which he attributes to his haughty and solitary victims of Fate.

The public for whom Poe wrote, though grossly unappreciative of his art, was by no means unaccustomed to the horrors with which he dealt. America, besides inheriting the usual dark folklore of Europe, had an additional fund of weird associations to draw upon; so that spectral legends had already been recognised as fruitful subject-matter for literature. Charles Brockden Brown had achieved phenomenal fame with his Radcliffian romances, and Washington Irving’s lighter treatment of eerie themes had quickly become classic. This additional fund proceeded, as Paul Elmer More has pointed out, from the keen spiritual and theological interests of the first colonists, plus the strange and forbidding nature of the scene into which they were plunged.; [sic] the vast and gloomy virgin forests in whose perpetual twilight all terrors might well lurk; the hordes of coppery Indians whose strange, saturnine visages and violent customs hinted strongly at traces of infernal origin; the free reinreign [sic] given under the influence of Puritan theocracy to all manner of notions respecting man’s relation to the stern and vengeful Cod of the Calvinists, and to the sulphureous Adversary of that God, about whom so much was thundered in the pulpits each Sunday; and the morbid introspection developed by an isolated backwoods life devoid of normal amusements and of the recreational mood, harassed by commands for theological self-examination, keyed to unnatural emotional repression, and forming above all a mere grim struggle for survival—all these things conspired to produce an environment in which the black whisperings of sinister grandams were heard far beyond the chimney corner, and in which tales of witchcraft and unbelievable secret monstrosities lingered long after the dread days of the Salem nightmare.

Poe represents the newer, more disillusioned, and more technically finished of the weird schools that rose out of this propitious milieu. Another school—the tradition of moral values, gentle restraint, and mild, leisurely phantasy tinged more or less with the whimsical—was represented by another famous, misunderstood, and lonely figure in American letters—the shy and sensitive Nathaniel Hawthorne, scion of antique Salem and great-grandson of one of the bloodiest of the old witchcraft judges. In Hawthorne we have none of the violence, the daring, the high colouring, the intense dramatic sense, the cosmic malignity, and the

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 elephant in the fore flank, from side to side ; Raja Suran rapidly discharged an arrow at Raja Chilian, which struck him on the breast, and pierced him to the back, and Raja Chulan fell down dead on his elephant. When the host of Raja Chulan saw their master dead, they quickly took to flight, and were hotly pursued by the Kling forces, who entered with them into the fortress of Glang-kiu. Raja Chulan left a daughter of great beauty named Putri Onang-kiu, whom Raja Suran took to wife, and carrying her with him, advanced to Tamsak. Then, it was reported in the land of China, that Raja Suran was advancing against them with an innumerable army, and had arrived at the country of Tamsak. The raja of China was alarmed at hearing this intelligence, and said to his mantris and chieftains, " If Kling Raja approach, the country will be inevitably ruined; what method do you advise to prevent his approach ?" Then, a sagacious mantri of China said, " Lord of the world, your slave will fall on a device. "The raja of China desired him to do so. Then this mantri ordered a vessel (pilu, i. e. the Chinese mode of pronoun-

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Rh alighting from my carriage, amongst you, to draw out a list of the important things I would have attended to; and publish them by way of proclamation, commanding all the government officers, clerks, country gentlemen, soldiers, and poor people, as one body, to yield implicit obedience thereto. Oppose not! A Special (Edict, or) Proclamation."

1. A supply of water is fundamental to the existence of the people. In agriculture, water to irrigate the fields is, to the husbandman, as the arteries and veins of the life-giving fluid. Canton is near to hills and mountains, and the land is dry; so that ten days want of rain raises the complaint of drought. (The Foo-yuen then states what efforts he employed, when he was a magistrate at Nan-keung district, to promote a supply of water).

2. Plant trees: of all nature's gifts there is none more important, than the growth of trees, which neither require to be clothed with your garments, nor to eat your rice.

3. Breed domestic animals.

4. Encourage charity and compassion: nature cannot, eqaulise benefits, and give a complete competence to all, but relies on those, who have the ability to compassionate the poor; and they shall be abundantly rewarded, in their children and grand-children.

5. Honor economy: Canton is a luxurious extravagant province; and of all the districts, Kwang-chow and Chaou-chow are the most so. The vice begins with the retired literati, and passes to the country gentlemen; from them to the rich merchants; and down to the common people, and petty writers and lictors. They desire to have gay shining dwellings; their wives and children adorned with gold and jewels; their food and drink from the seas, and the mountains; their garments to be silks and crapes; their ancestors' halls must, in violation of their proper sphere, have vermillion beams, and doors and pillars—forgetting that Heaven's curse will come on those who affect an enjoyment which does not belong to their place; whereas, in the affluent, charity to the poor, and rescuing the distressed, bring a blessing on posterity for hundreds of years. Besides, the Emperor, who is supreme, and whose riches embrace all the world, encompassed by the four seas, himself sets you an example, &c.


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 cing prow) to beprepared, filled full of fine needles, but covered with rust; and planted in it trees of the Casamak and Bidara (Bér) plants; and he selected a party of old and toothless people, and ordered them on board, and directed them to sail to Tamsak. The prow set sail, and arrived at Tamsak in the course of a short time. The news was brought to Raja Suran, that a prow had arrived from China, who sent persons to enquire of the mariners how far it was to China. These persons accordingly went, and enquired of the Chinese, who replied, "When we set sail from the land of China, we were all young, about twelve years of age, or so, and we planted the seeds of these trees; but now, we have grown old and lost our teeth, and the seeds that we planted have become trees, which bore fruit before our arrival here." Then, they took out some of the rusty needles, and showed them, saying, "When we left the land of China, these bars of iron were thick as your arm; but now they have grown thus small by the corrosion of rust. We know not the number of years we have been on our journey; but, you may judge

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 of them from the circumstances we mention. "When the Klings heard this account, they quickly returned, and informed Raja Suran. " If the account of these Chinese be true," said Raja Suran, "the land of China must be at an immense distance; when shall we ever arrive at it?—If this is the case, we had better return." All the champions assented to this idea.

Then Raja Suran, considering that he had now become acquainted with the contents of the land, wished to acquire information concerning the nature of the sea. For this purpose, he ordered a chest of glass, with a lock in the inside, and fixed it to a chain of gold. Then, shutting himself up in this chest, he caused himself to be let down into the sea, to see the wonders of God Almighty's crea-tion. At last, the chest reached a land, denominated Zeya, when Raja Suran came forth from the chest, and walked about to see the wonders of the place. He saw a country of great extent, into which he entered, and saw a people named Barsam, so numerous, that God alone could know their numbers. This people were the one half infidels, and the other true believers. When

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Author:Leo Markun

Works

 * Max Stirner and the Philosophy of the Individual (1925)
 * Hints on Writing Book-Reviews (1925)
 * (ed.) Conventional Lies of our Civilization (1925)
 * (ed.) A Hindu Book of Love (1926)
 * How to Think Logically (1926)
 * Memory: What It Is and How to Use It (1926)
 * Prostitution in the Ancient World (1926)
 * Prostitution in the Medieval World (1926)
 * Prostitution in the Modern World (1927)
 * A Short History of the Civil War (1927)
 * A Short History of the American Revolution (1927)
 * A Dictionary of Geographical Names (1927)
 * A Dictionary of Scientific Terms (1927)
 * A United States Commercial Geography (1927)
 * What You Should Know About Phrenology (1927)
 * How to Write Love Letters (1927)
 * The Mental Differences Between Men and Women (1927)
 * Prostitution in the United States (1928)
 * A Dictionary of the Social Sciences (1929)
 * Mrs. Grundy (1930)
 * The White Slave Traffic (1931)
 * Facts You Should Know About Masturbation (1931)
 * How to Think Creatively (1932)

title: Author:Leo Markun


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 they saw Raja Suran, they were greatly astonished and surprised at his dress, and carried him before their raja, who was named Aktab-al-Arz, who enquired of those who brought him, "Whence is this man?" And they replied, "He is a new comer."—"Whence is he come ?" said the raja. " That," said they, "none of us know." Then Raja Aktab-al-Arz asked Raja Suran, "Whence are you, and whence have you come?"—"I come from the world," said Raja Suran; "and your servant is raja of the whole race of mankind; and my name is Raja Suran." The raja was greatly as-tonished at this account, and asked if there was any other world than his own. "Yes, there is," said Raja Suran; "and a very great one, full of various forms." The raja was still more astonished, saying, "Al-mighty God, can this be possible?" He then seated Raja Suran on his own throne. This Raja Aktab-al-Arz had a daughter named Putri Mahtab-al-Bahri. This lady was extremely handsome, and her father gave her in marriage to Raja Suran, to whom she bore three sons. The raja was for some time much delighted with this

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 adventure; but at last he began to reflect what advantage it was for him to stay so long below the earth, and how he should be able to carry his three sons with him. He begged, however, his father-in-law to think of some method of conveying him to the upper world, as it would be of great disadvantage to cut off the line of Secander Zulkarneini. His father-in-law assented to the propriety of this observation and furnished him with a sea-horse named Sambrani, which could fly through the air as well as swim in the water. Raja Suran mounted this steed amid the lamentations of his spouse, the Princess; the flying steed quickly cleared the nether atmosphere, and having reached the upper ocean, it rapidly traversed it; and the subjects of Raja Suran quickly perceived him. The mantri of Raja Suran perceiving on what sort of animal his master was mounted, quickly caused a mare to be brought to the shore of the sea. On per-ceiving the mare, the steed Sambrani quickly came to the shore, and as quickly did Raja Suran dismount from him, on which he immediately returned to the sea. Raja Suran then called a man of science and an

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 artificer, and ordered the account of his de-scent into the sea to be recorded, and a monument to be formed which might serve for the information of posterity, to the day of judgment. The history of this adventure was accordingly composed, and inscribed on a stone in the Hindostani language. This stone being adorned by gold and silver, was left as a monument, and the raja said that this would be found by one of his descendants who should reduce all the rajas of the countries under the wind. Then Raja Suran re-turned to the land of Kling, and after his arrival he founded a city of great size, with a fort of black stone, with a wall of seven fathoms in both height and thickness, and so skilfully joined that no interstices re-mained between the stones, but seemed all of molten metal. Its gates were of steel adorned with gold and gems. Within its circumference are contained seven hills, and in the centre a lake like a sea, and so large that if an elephant be standing on the one shore he will not be visible on the other; and this lake contained every species of fish, and in the middle was an island of considerable height, on which the mists continually

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 rested. The island was planted with trees, flowers, and all kinds of fruits, and whenever Raja Suran wished to divert himself, he used to frequent it. On the shore of this lake was a large forest, stocked with all sorts of wild beasts, and whenever Raja Suran wished to hunt, he mounted his elephant and proceeded to this forest. The name of this city was Bijnagar, which at the present time is a city in the land of Kling. Such is the account of Raja Suran, but if all his adventures were to be related, they would rival those of Hamdah.

In process of time Raja Suran had, by the lady Putri Onang-kiu, the daughter of Raja Chulan, a daughter of exquisite and unrivalled beauty, named Chanduwani Wasias. By the lady Putri Gangga he had three sons, one of them was named Bichitram Shah, another Palidutani, and the third, Niluma-nam. His daughter, Chanduwani Wasias, was asked in marriage by Raja Hiran, for his son Raja Chulan; Raja Suran placed his son, Palidutani, in the government of Amdan Nagara; and his son, Nilumanam, in the country of Chandukani. On his eldest son, Bichitram Shah, he only conferred a terri-

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 tory of small extent; and the young prince being displeased at this measure, resolved to abandon his country. Bichitram Shah accordingly embarked, with twenty vessels fitted out with all the apparatus of war, determining to conquer all the maritime districts. After conquering several scores of countries, he at last reached the sea denominated Silbou, where, being caught in a dreadful hurricane, his fleet was dispersed, and the half of them returned to the country of Chandukani, but the fate of the other half is unknown. The adventures of this prince were very numerous, but here they are only alluded to briefly.

is a country in the land of Andalas named Paralembang, which is at present denominated Palembang, the raja of which was denominated Damang Lebar Dawn, (Chieftain Broad-leaf,) who derived his origin from Raja Sulan, (Chulan?) whose great-grandson he was. The name of its river was Muartatang, into which falls another river named Sungey Malayu, near the source

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 and impersonal artistry of Poe. Here, instead, is a gentle soul cramped by the Puritanism of early New England; shadowed and wistful, and grieved at an unmoral universe which everywhere transcends the conventional patterns thought by our forefathers to represent divine and immutable law. Evil, a very real force to Hawthorne, appears on every hand as a lurking and conquering adversary; and the visible world becomes in his fancy a theatre of infinite tragedy and woe, with unseen half-existent influences hovering over it and through it, battling for supremacy and moulding the destinies of the hapless mortals who form its vain and self-deluded population. The heritage of American weirdness was his to a most intense degree, and he saw a dismal throng of vague spectres behind the common phenomena of life; but he was not disinterested enough to value impressions, sensations, and beauties of narration for their own sake. He must needs weave his phantasy into some quietly melancholy fabric of didactic or allegorical cast, in which his meekly resigned cynicism may display with naive moral appraisal the perfidy of a human race which he cannot cease to cherish and mourn despite his insight into its hypocrisy. Supernatural horror, then, is never a primary object with Hawthorne; though its impulses were so deeply woven into his personality that he cannot help suggesting it with the force of genius when he calls upon the unreal world to illustrate the pensive sermon he wishes to preach.

Hawthorne’s intimations of the weird, always gentle, elusive, and restrained, may be traced throughout his work. The mood that produced them found one delightful vent in the Teutonised retelling of classic myths for children contained in A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, and at other times exercised itself in casting a certain strangeness and intangible witchery or malevolence over events not meant to be actually supernatural; as in the macabre posthumous novel Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, which invests with a peculiar sort of repulsion a house existing to this day in Salem, and abutting on the ancient Charter Street Burying Ground. In The Marble Faun, whose design was sketched out in an Italian villa reputed to be haunted, a tremendous background of genuine phantasy and mystery palpitates just beyond the common reader’s sight; and glimpses of fabulous blood in mortal veins are hinted at during the course of a romance which cannot help being interesting despite the persistent incubus of moral allegory, anti-Popery propaganda, and a Puritan prudery which has caused the modern writer D. H. Lawrence to express a longing to treat the author in a highly undignified manner. Septimius Felton, a posthumous novel whose idea was to have been elaborated and incorporated into the unfinished Dolliver Romance, touches on the Elixir of Life in a more or less capable fashion; whilst the notes for a never-written tale to be called The Ancestral Footstep shows what Hawthorne would have done with an intensive treatment of an old English superstition—that of an ancient and accursed line whose members left footprints of blood as they walked—which appears incidentally in both Septimius Felton and Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret.

Many of Hawthorne’s shorter tales exhibit weirdness, either of atmosphere or of incident, to a remarkable degree. Edward Randolph’s Portrait, in Legends Of The Province House, has its diabolic moments. The Minister’s Black Veil (founded on an actual incident) and The Ambitious Guest imply much more than they state, whilst Ethan Brand—a fragment of a longer work never completed—rises to genuine heights of cosmic fear with its vignette of the wild hill country and the blazing, desolate lime-kilns, and its delineation of the Byronic “unpardonable sinner”, whose troubled life ends with a peal of fearful laughter in the night as he seeks rest amidst the flames of the furnace. Some of Hawthorne’s notes tell of weird tales he would have written had he lived longer—an especially vivid plot being that concerning a baffling stranger who appeared now and then in public assemblies, and who was at last followed and found to come and go from a very ancient grave.

But foremost as a finished, artistic unit among all our author’s weird material is the famous and exquisitely wrought novel, The House Of The Seven Gables, in which the relentless working out of an ancestral curse is developed with astonishing power

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 against the sinister background of a very ancient Salem house—one of those peaked Gothic affairs which formed the first regular building-up of our New England coast towns, but which gave way after the seventeenth century to the more familiar gambrel-roofed or classic Georgian types now known as “Colonial”. Of these old gabled Gothic houses scarcely a dozen are to be seen today in their original condition throughout the United States, but one well known to Hawthorne still stands in Turner Street, Salem, and is pointed out with doubtful authority as the scene and inspiration of the romance. Such an edifice, with its spectral peaks, its clustered chimneys, its overhanging second story, its grotesque corner-brackets, and its diamond-paned lattice windows, is indeed an object well calculated to evoke sombre reflections; typifying as it does the dark Puritan age of concealed horror and witch-whispers which preceded the beauty, rationality, and spaciousness of the eighteenth century. Hawthorne saw many in his youth, and knew the black tales connected with some of them. He heard, too, many rumours of a curse upon his own line as the result of his great-grandfather‘’ [sic]s severity as a witchcraft judge in 1692.

From this setting came the immortal tale—New England’sEngland ’s [sic] greatest contribution to weird literature—and we can feel in an instant the authenticity of the atmosphere presented to us. Stealthy horror and disease lurk within the weather-blackened, moss-crusted, and elm-shadowed walls of the archaic dwelling so vividly displayed, and we grasp the brooding malignity of the place when we read that its builder—old Colonel Pyncheon—snatched the land with peculiar ruthlessness from its original settler, Matthew Maule, whom he condemned to the gallows as a wizard in the year of the panic. Maule died cursing old Pyncheon—“God will give him blood to drink”—and the waters of the old well on the seized land turned bitter. Maule’s carpenter son consented to build the great gabled house for his father’s triumphant enemy, but the old Colonel died strangely on the day of its dedication. Then followed generations of odd vicissitudes, with queer whispers about the dark powers of the Maules, and peculiar and sometimes terrible ends befalling the Pyncheons.

The overshadowing malevolence of the ancient house—almost as alive as Poe’s House of Usher, though in a subtler way—pervades the tale as a recurrent motif pervades an operatic tragedy; and when the main story is reached, we behold the modern PyrcheonsPyncheons [sic] in a pitiable state of decay. Poor old Hepzibah, the eccentric reduced gentlewoman; childlike, unfortunate Clifford, just released from undeserved imprisonment; sly and treacherous Judge Pyncheon, who is the old Colonel all over again—all these figures are tremendous symbols, and are well matched by the stunted vegetation and anæmic fowls in the garden. It was almost a pity to supply a fairly happy ending, with a union of sprightly Phœbe, cousin and last scion of the Pyncheons, to the prepossessing young man who turns out to be the last of the Maules. This union, presumably, ends the curse. Hawthorne avoids all violence of diction or movement, and keeps his implications of terror well in the background; but occasional glimpses amply serve to sustain the mood and redeem the work from pure allegorical aridity. Incidents like the bewitching of Alice Pyncheon in the early eighteenth century, and the spectral music of her harpsichord which precedes a death in the family—the latter a variant of an immemorial type of Aryan myth—link the action directly with the supernatural; whilst the dead nocturnal vigil of old Judge Pyncheon in the ancient parlour, with his frightfully ticking watch, is stark horror of the most poignant and genuine sort. The way in which the Judge’s death is first adumbrated by the motions and sniffing of a strange cat outside the window, long before the fact is suspected either by the reader or by any of the characters, is a stroke of genius which Poe could not have surpassed. Later the strange cat watches intently outside that same window in the night and on the next day, forsomething. It is clearly the psychopomp of primeval myth, fitted and adapted with infinite deftness to its latter-day setting.

But Hawthorne left no well-defined literary posterity. His mood and attitude belonged to the age which closed with him,

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 and it is to the spirit of Poe—who so clearly and realistically understood the natural basis of the horror-appeal and the correct mechanics of its achievement—which survived and blossomed. Among the earliest of Poe’s disciples may be reckoned the brilliant young Irishman Fitz-James O’Brien, (1828-1862) who became naturalised as an American and perished honourably in the Civil War. It is he who gave us What Was It?, the first well-shaped short story of a tangible but invisible being, and the prototype of de Maupassant’s Horla; he also who created the inimitable Diamond Lens, in which a young microscopist falls in love with a maiden of an infinitesimal world which he has discovered in a drop of water. O’Brien’s early death undoubtedly deprived us of some masterful tales of strangeness and terror, though his genius was not, properly speaking, of the same titan quality which characterised Poe and Hawthorne.

Closer to real greatness was the eccentric and saturnine journalist Ambrose Bierce, born in 1842; who likewise entered the Civil War, but survived to write some immortal tales and to disappear in 1913 in as great a cloud of mystery as any he ever evoked from his nightmare fancy. Bierce was a satirist and pamphleteer of note, but the bulk of his artistic reputation must rest upon his grim and savage short stories; a large number of which deal with the Civil War and form the most vivid and realistic expression which that conflict has yet received in fiction. Virtually all of Bierce’s tales are tales of horror; and whilst many of them treat only of the physical and psychological horrors within Nature, a substantial proportion admit the malignly supernatural and form a leading element in America’s fund of weird literature. Mr. Samuel Loveman, a living poet and critic who was personally acquainted with Bierce, thus sums up the genius of the great “shadow-maker” in the preface to some of his letters:

The “inhumanity” mentioned by Mr. Loveman finds vent in a rare strain of sardonic comedy and graveyard humour, and a kind of delight in images of cruelty and tantalising disappointment. The former quality is well illustrated by some of the subtitles in the darker narratives; such as “One does not always eat what is on the table”, describing a body laid out for a coroner’s inquest, and “A man though naked may be in rags”, referring to a frightfully mangled corpse.

Bierce’s work is in general somewhat uneven. Many of the stories are obviously mechanical, and marred by a jaunty and commonplacely artificial style derived from journalistic models; but the grim malevolence stalking through all of them is unmistakable, and several stand out as permanent mountain-peaks of American weird writing. The Death of Halpin Frayser, called by Frederic Taber Cooper the most fiendishly ghastly tale in the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race, tells of a body skulking by night without a soul in a weird and horribly ensanguined wood, and of a man beset by ancestral memories who met death at the claws of that which had been his fervently loved mother. The Damned Thing, frequently copied in popular anthologies, chronicles the hideous devastations of an invisible entity that waddles and flounders on the hills and in the wheatfields by night and day. The Suitable Surroundings evokes with singular subtlety yet apparent simplicity a piercing sense of the terror which may reside in the written word. In the story the weird author Colston says to his friend Marsh, “You are brave enough to read me in a street-car, but—in a deserted house—alone—in the forest—at night! Bah! I have a

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 .—A London correspondent writes to us as follows:—"At a meeting held at the house of, on the 30th January. Dr. Cobbold F.R.S., communicated a notice of an interesting discovery made by Dr. Manson, at Amoy, China, It appears that the mosquito (Culex} forms the intermediate host of the , or microscopic filarie living in human blood (hæmatozoa.) In the course of the evening it was stated that most of the worms found in insects were imperfectly developed entozoa. Filariæ from three to five inches in length had frequently been noticed in dermaptera and coleoptera; especially in Forficula, Phosphaga, and Feronia. Dr. Cobbold exhibited adult human Filariæ, (F. Bancrofti,) from Australia, and also a beetle, (Passalus cornutus,) known to be infested with a species of Ascaris in the mature state (A. infecta.) Many of the entomologists of the Metropolis were present at the meeting (Messrs. Pascoe, Dallas, Smith, Sheppard,, and Stevens.) Other well known naturalists, including Drs. Murie and Ord, took part in the discussion, Dr. Vinen (whose fernery proved a great attraction to the botanists present} remarked, in the course of his observations, that notwithstanding the great age of the Club it exhibited no signs of decay.”

.—A warn interest in these lovely plants has been created in my mind, from having had my attention recently awakened to their variety and great beauty by the sight of a collection made by a local botanist many years ago. I am quite amazed at their numbers and their individual beauty. I must confess an almost entire ignorance about them; but I am really most anxious to have my ignorance displaced by knowledge. Will one of the bryological readers of the "Midland Naturalist" do me and others, who may desire the information—I am sure there must lie many such—a great Kindness by writing a paper pointing out what steps we should take. and what books consult, in order to be able to discriminate the various English mosses. The instructions, to be really useful to myself, should commence at the very beginning. I sincerely hope some qualified botanist will undertake this labour of love, and that reom for such paper inay be provided by the Editors—M. B. L., Coventry. [Our correspondent will see that big desires have been anticipated, and that our present number contains the first of a series of elementary papers on the study of the mosses.—. M. N.]

—Last November I was fishing in one of the pools on the border of Sutton Park, and caught a small pike weighing between two and three pounds. On getting it into the punt I noticed a singular lump on the back just in front of the dorsal fin, took him home, and my doctor looking in next morning I asked him to enquire into the cause. On laying bare the back hone we found that at some time or other, but not very recently, the bone had been absolutely severed, probably by a bite from another fish, and that a new formation of bone had taken place, thus slightly lengthening the spine, and forming a slight hump. Of course the spinal cord was not broken when the injury was inflicted, or the fish could not have survived. I am aware this is not an isolated case, as one if not two previous instances of a similar kind have occurred, but as it is certainly very rare it seems worth recording, The fish appeared to have been in no degree affected by the bump as to liveliness or strength. I had the portion of bone showing the abnormal growth cleaned, and presented it to Mr. Montagu Browne, Naturalist, Broad Street, Birmingham, who will, no doubt, be willing to show it to anyone interested.-, Edgbaston.

.—A description of the best methods of preserving fish in a natural state for the cabinet, particularly fresh-water kinds, is much desired by an amateur collector.—T., Nottingham.


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 in my pocket that would kill you!” Marsh reads the manuscript in “the suitable surroundings”—and it does kill him. The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot is clumsily developed, but has a powerful climax. A man named Manton has horribly killed his two children and his wife, the latter of whom lacked the middle toe of the right foot. Ten years later he returns much altered to the neighbourhood; and, being secretly recognised, is provoked into a bowie-knife duel in the dark, to be held in the now abandoned house where his crime was committed. When the moment of the duel arrives a trick is played upon him; and he is left without an antagonist, shut in a night-black ground floor room of the reputedly haunted edifice, with the thick dust of a decade on every hand. No knife is drawn against him, for only a thorough scare is intended; but on the next day he is found crouched in a corner with distorted face, dead of sheer fright at something he has seen. The only clue visible to the discoverers is one having terrible implications: “In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor—leading from the door by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of Manton’s crouching corpse—were three parallel lines of footprints—light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of small children, the inner a woman’s. From the point at which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way.” And, of course, the woman’s prints showed a lack of the middle toe of the right foot. The Spook House, told with a severely homely air of journalistic verisimilitude, conveys terrible hints of shocking mystery. In 1858 an entire family of seven persons disappears suddenly and unaccountably from a plantation house in eastern Kentucky, leaving all its possession untouched—furniture, clothing, food supplies, horses, cattle, and slaves. About a year later two men of high standing are forced by a storm to take shelter in the deserted dwelling, and in so doing stumble into a strange subterranean room lit by an unaccountable greenish light and having an iron door which cannot be opened from within. In this room lie the decayed corpses of all the missing family; and as one of the disoverers rushes forward to embrace a body he seems to recognise, the other is so overpowered by a strange fœtor that he accidentally shuts his companion in the vault and loses consciousness. Recovering his senses six weeks later, the survivor is unable to find the hidden room; and the house is burned during the Civil War. The imprisoned discoverer is never seen or heard of again.

Bierce seldom realises the atmospheric possibilities of his themes as vividly as Poe; and much of his work contains a certain touch of naivete, prosaic angularity, or early-American provincialism which contrasts somewhat with the efforts of later horror-masters. Nevertheless the genuineness and artistry of his dark intimations are always unmistakable, so that his greatness is in no danger of eclipse. As arranged in his definitively collected works, Bierce’s weird tales occur mainly in two volumes, Can Such Things Be? and In The Midst Of Life. The former, indeed, is almost wholly given over to the supernatural.

Much of the best in American horror-literature has come from pens not mainly devoted to that medium. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s historic Elsie Venner suggests with admirable restraint an unnatural ophidian element in a young woman pre-natally influenced, and sustains the atmosphere with finely discriminating landscape touches. In The Turn Of The Screw Henry James triumphs over his inevitable pomposity and prolixity sufficiently well to create a truly potent air of sinister menace; depicting the hideous influence of two dead and evil servants, Peter Quint and the governess Miss Jessel over a small boy and girl who had been under their care. James is perhaps too diffuse, too unctuously urbane, and too much addicted to subtleties of speech to realise fully all the wild and devastating horror in his situations; but for all that there is a rare and mounting tide of fright, culminating in the death of the little boy, which gives the novelette a permanent place in its special class.

F. Marion Crawford produced several weird tales of varying quality, now collected in a volume entitled Wandering Ghosts. For The Blood Is The Life touches powerfully on a case of moon-cursed vampirism near an ancient tower on the rocks of the lonely South Italian seacoast. The Dead

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 Smile treats of family horrors in an old house and an ancestral vault in Ireland, and introduces the banshee with considerable force. The Upper Berth, however, is Crawford’s weird masterpiece; and is one of the most tremendous horror-stories i nallin all [sic] literature. In this tale of a suicide-haunted stateroom such things as the spectral salt-water dampness, the strangely open porthole, and the nightmare struggle with the nameless object are handled with incomparable dexterity.

Very genuine, though not without the typical mannered extravagance of the eighteen-nineties, is the strain of horror in the early work of Robert W. Chambers, since renowned for products of a very different quality. The King In Yellow, a series of vaguely connected short stories having as a background a monstrous and suppressed book whose perusal brings fright, madness, and spectral tragedy, really achieves notable heights of cosmic fear in spite of uneven interest and a somewhat trivial and affected cultivation of the Gallic studio atmosphere made popular by Du Maurier’s Trilby. The most powerful of its tales, perhaps, is The Yellow Sign, in which is introduced a silent and terrible churchyard watchman with a face like a puffy grave-worm’s. A boy, describing a tussle he has had with this creature, shivers and sickens as he relates a certain detail. “Well, sir, it’s Gawd’s truth that when I ’it ’im ’e grabbed me wrists, sir, and when I twisted ’is soft, mushy fist one of ’is fingers come off in me ’and.” An artist, who after seeing him has shared with another a strange dream of a nocturnal hearse, is shocked by the voice with which the watchman accosts him. The fellow emits a muttering sound that fills the head “like thick oily smoke from a fat-rendering vat or an odour of noisome decay.” What he mumbles is merely this: “Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

A weirdly hieroglyphed onyx talisman, picked up in the street by the sharer of his dream, is shortly given the artist; and after stumbling queerly upon the hellish and forbidden book of horrors the two learn, among other hideous things which no sane mortal should know, that this talisman is indeed the nameless Yellow Sign handed down from the accursed cult of Hastur—from primordial Carcosa, whereof the volume treats, and some nightmare memory of which seems to lurk latent and ominous at the back of all men’s minds. Soon they hear the rumbling of the black-plumed hearse driven by the flabby and corpse-faced watchman. He enters the night-shrouded house in quest of the Yellow Sign, all bolts and bars rotting at his touch. And when the people rush in, drawn by a scream that no human throat could utter, they find three forms on the floor—two dead and one dying. One of the dead shapes is far gone in decay. It is the churchyard watchman, and the doctor exclaims, “That man must have been dead for months.” It is worth observing that the author derives most of the names and allusions connected with his eldritch land of primal memory from the tales of Ambrose Bierce. Other early works of Mr. Chambers displaying the outre and macabre element are The Maker of Moons and In Search Of The Unknown. One cannot help regretting that he did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognised master.

Horror material of authentic force may be found in the work of the New England realist Mary E. Wilkins; whose volume of short tales, The Wind In the Rosebush, contains a number of noteworthy achievements. In The Shadows On The Wall we are shown with consummate skill the response of a staid New England household to uncanny tragedy; and the sourceless shadow of the poisoned brother well prepares us for the climactic moment when the shadow of the secret murderer, who has killed himself in a neighbouring city, suddenly appears beside it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in The Yellow Wall Paper, rises to a classic level in subtly delineating the madness which crawls over a woman dwelling in the hideously papered room where a madwoman was once confined.

Still further carrying on our spectral tradition is the gifted and versatile humourist Irvin S. Cobb, whose work both early and recent contains some finely weird specimens. Fishhead, an early achievement, is banefully effective in its portrayal of unnatural affinities between a hybrid idiot and the strange fish of an isolated lake, which at the last avenge their biped kinsman’s murder.

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 the earth, sun, moon and stars; habits of neatness and politeness. What has our Kindergarten in the next street to offer more than these? The elementary school included instruction in morals, elements of civics, government and economics; geography, especially of one’s own country; history of noted men of past and present, and a knowledge of art. All these were to be learned in the tongue of the country. The Latin, or high school, continued these subjects, with the addition of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc.

The University was meant to give instruction in general, or universal knowledge, languages, literature, science and art. Here we also have the most modern conception of vocational schools, as each individual was supposed to choose the course of instruction at the university for which he or she was peculiarly adapted. At the university pupils of exceptional ability were urged to pursue all branches of knowledge, in order that each country should have a rich reserve of teachers of encyclopaedic knowledge to whom the multitudes might come for mental refreshment and instruction.

The education which we are offering to all men and women to-day without regard to race, creed or colour, is but a 20th century attempt to follow in the footsteps of the wise and modest Czech reformer of the 16th century, whose life was given to teaching his fellow men the way to live in order to make their own lives, and consequently their own country, fuller and richer in that wisdom which is more precious than rubies.

That Comenius was abreast of his own times and far ahead of them is shown again and again throughout his writings. It may well make our American women smile, if not blush, to read that “some women would rather be seen carrying a dog or a squirrel in their arms than their own baby”, and again we have a most up-to-date remonstrance against the use of “maddening drink of wine and brandy to ruin the race.” Can Fashion and Prohibition demand a more enthusiastic priest! Even our most approved methods of neurology can go no further than to quote Comenius in saying that “A joyful mind is half-health.”

The latest Nature books can find rich “copy” in his precepts and it is of interest to remember that his Orbis Pictus was the first child’s picture-book. If all American citizens, whatever their native land, would respond to the appeal of Comenius for the need of an universal education, the much longed for peace among nations might perhaps be reached more quickly, through mutual understanding, and he would be alive in his teachings to-day, although he died in 1670 and cannot “come over here to lecture!”

Fm. Ackerman, lately The Times correspondent in Siberia, says that the Czechoslovaks want to go home. They were revolutionists fighting for the freedom of their own country, and the events which led to their war against the Bolsheviki were only an episode in the great war of which the Czechoslovak revolution was another episode. They were not sent to Siberia by the Allies, they were there by accident; but by their presence and their hard fighting they undoubtedly kept the Bolsheviki and the German influence within bounds, and destroyed German activity of the Urals.

Now the great war is over and the Czechoslovak revolution has ended in glorious triumph. Nevertheless, these men are still dying every day for their country. Not that the Czechoslovak Republic has any direct interest in the events in Siberia; but the boundaries of that republic are yet to be determined by the Peace Conference. Its Government has asked the Allies to let the army come home to a country where it is badly needed before it wastes away on the Siberian front; but it dares not ask very persistently for fear that the annoyance of the Powers who are letting the Czechoslovaks do their work in Russia may express itself in curtailment of the territories of the new State. Czechs and Slovaks are being killed on the Siberian front because their Government is afraid to offend the Allies.

The five great Powers who could not trust one another sufficiently to send their own troops to Russia in any adequate numbers, but whose work there has been done, so far as it has been done at all, by these Czechoslovaks who were there by chance, might at least manifest their gratitude by letting the Czechs go home. They have done their work and we have already told them we shall send none of our own men to their relief. It is grossly unfair to ask the Czechoslovaks to stay in Siberia after the Allies have abandoned Russia to her fate. N. Y. Times, Feb. 27.

According to the Washington Star Congressman Sabath was told by President Wilson that the minister to Czechoslovakia would be some American now in the diplomatic service in a nearby country.


text: The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/The Ideal of Universal Education


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 died away, and the good people began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the world. If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more freely and with a better grace.

They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen how they sympathised. They seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow us. But these canaletti are only gipsies semi-domesticated. The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow darkened. "Cependant," she began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me if I were single?

"Yes," said I.


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 "And your friend who went by just now?"

He also was unmarried.

O then—all was well. She could not have wives left alone at home; but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the best we could.

"To see about one in the world," said the husband, "il n'y a que ça—there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear," he went on, "—very well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he has seen nothing."

Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal in a steamer.

"Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene," I suggested.

"That's it," assented the husband. "He had his wife and family with him, and servants. He came ashore at all the locks and asked the


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 name of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. O he wrote enormously! I suppose it was a wager."

A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it seemed an original reason for taking notes.


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 skirt. Almost immediately after follows the sound of a little click from the next cabin, and then apparently one of the denizens of the internal regions has got its tail smashed in a door and the heavy hot afternoon air is reft by an inchoate howl of agony. I drop my needlework and take to the deck; but it is after all only that shy retiring young man practising secretly on his clarionet.

The captain is drowsily looking down the river. But repose is not long allowed to that active spirit; he sees something in the water—what? "Hippopotame," he ejaculates. Now both he and the engineer frequently do this thing, and then fly off to their guns—bang, bang, finish; but this time he does not dash for his gun, nor does the engineer, who flies out of his cabin at the sound of the war shout "Hippopotame." In vain I look across the broad river with its stretches of yellow sandbanks, where the "hippopotame" should be, but I can see nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water away to the right. Meanwhile the captain and the engineer are flying about getting off a crew of blacks into the canoe we are towing alongside. This being done the captain explains to me that on the voyage up "the engineer had fired at, and hit a hippopotamus, and without doubt this was its body floating." We are now close enough even for me to recognise the four stumps as the deceased's legs, and soon the canoe is alongside them and makes fast to one, and then starts to paddle back, hippo and all, to the Éclaireur. But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like, the hippo's weight simply anchers them. The Éclaireur by now has dropped down the river past them, and has to sweep round and run back. Recognising promptly what the trouble is, the energetic captain grabs up a broom, ties a light cord belonging to the leadline to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle, swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current, well out of reach of the canoe. The captain seeing this gross dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Réunis broom, hauls it in hand over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its


text: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 10

title: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 10


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 age of 55, is $$\frac{4073}{4727} \times 0{\cdot}613913$$; therefore, by No. 55, the required value is $$\frac{4073 \times 0{\cdot}613913 \times 10{\cdot}347}{4727} = 5{\cdot}473$$ years purchase; so that if the annuity were L. 200, its present value would be L. 1094, 12s.

70. Ex. 5. Required the present value of an annuity to be received for the next ten years, provided that a person now 45 years of age, shall so long live.

Solution.

The present value of an annuity on a life of 45, to

is the required number of years purchase. And, if the annuity were L. 200, its present value would be L. 1435.

71. Ex. 6. An annuity on a life of 45, deferred 10 years, was shown in No. 69, to be worth 5·473 years purchase in present money; let it be required to determine the equivalent annual payment for the same, to be made at the end of each of the next 10 years, but subject to failure upon the life failing in the term.

Solution.

The present value of L. 1 per annum on the proposed life for the next 10 years, has just been shown to be L. 7·175, and this, multiplied by the required annual payment, must produce L. 5·473; that payment must, therefore, be $$\frac{5{\cdot}473}{7{\cdot}175} = 0{\cdot}76279$$. And, since the annual payment for the deferred annuity of L. 1 per annum would be L. 0·76279, that for an annuity of L. 200 must be L. 152, 11s. 2d.

72. Ex. 7. Let the present value be required of an annuity on a life now 40 years of age, to be payable only while that life survives another now of the age of 50 years.

years purchase is the required value (60).

Therefore, if the annuity were L. 100, it would be worth L. 340, 12s. in present money.

73. If the annuity in the last example were to be paid for by a constant annual premium at the end of each year while both the lives survived; by reasoning as in No. 71, it will be found, that such annual premium for an annuity of L. 1 should be $$\frac{3{\cdot}406}{9{\cdot}984} = \text{L. } 0{\cdot}341146$$; for an annuity of L. 100 it should therefore be L. 34, 2s. 3½d.

74. But if one of the equal premiums for this annuity is to be paid down now, and another at the end of each year while both the lives survive; the number of years purchase the whole of these premiums are worth, will evidently be increased by unity, on account of the payment made now, it will, therefore, be 10·984; and each premium for an annuity of L. 1 must, in this case, be $$\frac{3{\cdot}406}{10{\cdot}984} = \text{L. } 0{\cdot}310087$$; for an annuity of L. 100 it should, therefore, be L. 31, 0s, 2d.

75. Ex. 8. Let it be required to determine the present value of the reversion of a perpetual annuity after the failure of a life now 50 years of age.

Solution.

The value of the perpetuity is 20 years purchase (8.)

purchase, the required value of the reversion (63.)

So that if the annuity were L. 300, its present value would be L. 2502.

76. In the same manner it will be found, by the 68th number and those referred to in the last example, that the reversion of a perpetuity, after the failure of the last survivor of three lives, now aged 50, 55, and 60 years respectively, is worth 5·999 years purchase in present money; therefore, if it were L. 100 per annum, its present value would be L. 599, 18s.

III. OF ASSURANCES ON LIVES.

77. An assurance upon a life, or lives, is a contract by which the Office or Underwriter, in consideration of a stipulated premium, engages to pay a certain sum upon such life or lives failing within the term for which the assurance is effected.

78. If the term of the assurance be the whole duration of the life or lives assured, the sum must necessarily be paid whenever the failure happens; and, in what follows, that payment is always supposed to be made at the end of the year in which the event assured against takes place. The anniversary of the assurance, or the day of the date of the policy, being accounted the beginning of each year.

79. At the end of the year in which any proposed life or lives may fail, the proprietor of the reversion of a perpetual annuity of L. 1 after their failure, will receive the pound then due, and will, at the same time, enter upon the perpetuity; therefore, the present value of the reversion is the same as that of L. 1 added to the money a perpetual annuity of L. 1 would cost, supposing this sum not to be receivable until the expiration of the year in which the failure of the life or lives might happen.

80. Hence we have this proportion. As the value of a perpetuity increased by unity is to L. 1, so is the present value of the reversion of a perpetual annuity of L. 1, after the failure of any life or lives, to the present value of L. 1, receivable at the end of the year in which such failure shall take place.

81. Therefore, if the value of an annuity of one pound on any life or lives, be subtracted from that of the perpetuity, and the remainder be divided by the value of the perpetuity increased by unity; the


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 line to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards it. Breathless excitement! surely they will get it now. Alas, no! Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a fearful shudder runs through the broom. It throws up its head and sinks beneath the tide. A sensation of stun comes over all of us. The crew of the canoe, ready and eager to grasp the approaching aid, gaze blankly at the circling ripples round where it sank. In a second the captain knows what has happened.That heavy hawser which has been paid out after it has dragged it down, so he hauls it on board again.

The Éclaireur goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored canoe for a rope to be flung to the man in her bows; he catches it and freezes on gallantly. Saved! No! Oh horror! The lower deck hums with fear that after all it will not taste that toothsome hippo chop, for the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked flying out of the canoe when the strain of the Éclaireur contending with the hippo's inertia flies along it, but his companion behind him grips him by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft with their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus, who is shortly hauled on board by the winners in triumph.

My esteemed friends, the captain and the engineer, who of course have been below during this hauling, now rush on to the upper deck, each coatless, and carrying an enormous butcher's knife. They dash into the saloon, where a terrific sharpening of these instruments takes place on the steel belonging to the saloon carving-knife, and down stairs again. By looking down the ladder, I can see the pink, pig-like hippo, whose colour has been soaked out by the water, lying on the lower deck and the captain and engineer slitting down the skin intent on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic soul induces me to leave the top of the ladder and go forward—"run to win'ard," as Captain Murray would say—for within two minutes the captain and engineer are up the ladder as if they had been blown up by the boilers bursting, and go as


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The story of Lincoln, revealing how one American, by his own honest efforts, rose from the most humble beginning to the most high station of honor and worth, has inspired millions and will inspire millions more. The log cabin in which he was born, the ax with which he split the rails, the few books with which he got the rudiments of an education, the light of pine knots by which he studied, the flatboat on which he made the long trip to New Orleans, the slave mart at sight of which his sympathetic soul revolted against the institution of human slavery—these are all fraught with intense interest as the rude forces by which he slowly builded his great character.

Great suffering taught him great sympathy. His great sympathy for men gave him great influence over men. As a lonely motherless little boy living in the pitiless poverty of the backwoods he learned both humility and appreciation. Then from a gentle step-mother he learned the beauty of kindness.

As a clerk in a small store that failed, as a defeated candidate for the legislature, as Captain in the Black Hawk War, as student of Law in his leisure moments, as partner in a small store that failed, as Postmaster at


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 one man for the brandy bottle; and they wanted it if ever man did; for remember that hippo had been dead and in the warm river-water for more than a week.

The captain had had enough of it, he said, but the engineer stuck to the job with a courage I profoundly admire, and he saw it through and then retired to his cabin; sand-and-canvassed himself first, and then soaked and saturated himself in Florida water. The flesh gladdened the hearts of the crew and lower-deck passengers and also of the inhabitants of Lembarene, who got dashes of it on our arrival there. Hippo flesh is not to be despised by black man or white; I have enjoyed it far more than the stringy beef or vapid goat's flesh one gets down here.

I stayed on board the Éclaireur all night; for it was dark when we reached Lembarene, too dark to go round to Kangwe; and next morning, after taking a farewell of her—I hope not a final one, for she is a most luxurious little vessel for the Coast, as the feeding on board is excellent and the society varied and charming—I went round to Kangwe. M. and Mme. Jacot received me back most kindly, and they both looked all the better for my having been away. M. Haug and a young missionary from Baraka, who had come up to Lembarene for a change after fever, were busy starting to go up to Talagouga in a canoe, which I was very glad of, because M. Haug, at any rate, would be of immense help to Mme. and M. Forget, while they were in such bad health; only during his absence M. Jacot had enough work for any five men.

I remained some time in the Lembarene district and saw and learnt many things; I owe most of what I learnt to M. and Mme. Jacot who knew a great deal about both the natives and the district, and I owe much of what I saw to having acquired the art of managing by myself a native canoe. This "recklessness" of mine I am sure did not merit the severe criticism it has been subjected to, for my performances gave immense amusement to others (I can hear Lembarene's shrieks of laughter now) and to myself they gave great pleasure.

My first attempt was made at Talagouga one very hot


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The woods and the fields, the marshes and the waters are a vast theater where many dramas are enacted. Yet, for the most part, these are hidden from human eyes. Only now and then do we get a glimpse of a tragic climax; only rarely can we read in the sand the details of some perilous encounter. We have made the wild folk fear us. Hence, though they may be all around us, they hold themselves aloof and do not willingly permit us to follow from beginning to end the record of their lives.

Yet all who go into the woods know how dramatic those lives often are, how full of thrilling adventure. The careful naturalist, setting down only what he has actually seen of some wild animal, realizes at the end how inadequate, how incomplete his record is. It contains much of great value. It is all true. But it is a fragment or series of fragments. It omits much that undoubtedly happens, much of interest and importance. It is not a picture of that animal's life.

That is why the naturalist or student of wild nature may, without apology, make use of the form

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 known as the animal story. He employs the animal story for precisely the same reason which induces the conscientious student of human nature to employ the human story—because, in many ways and upon many occasions, it is the best means of presenting the truth.

Thus, the animal story, properly conceived, has a legitimate and important place in the literature of nature. There is, moreover, one great practical consideration in its favor: namely, the fact that it has proved its power to awaken in thousands of men and women a keen and sympathetic interest in the wild folk who are our neighbors out-of-doors. If there were nothing else to be said for it, this alone would suffice.

This book is a book of animal stories. If there are errors in it, as doubtless there must be, the same thing is true of nearly all the books that man has written.

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4 the little village of New Salem, as Deputy Surveyor of Sangamon County, as successful candidate for the legislature, as member of the legislature and as country lawyer, he was learning to love his fellow men and to get along well with them, while keeping his own conscience and building a reputation for honesty. When as a member of Congress and as a successful lawyer his proved ability brings him a measure of security and comfort he is not elated. And when his fellow men, reciprocating his great love for them, and manifesting their confidence in his integrity, make him President of the Republic he still remains the humble brother of the common people.

But fate did not decree that he should enjoy the honors he had so richly deserved. The White House was not a resting place for him. In the hour of his election the Nation for which he prayed was divided and the men that he loved as brothers were rushing headlong toward fratricidal war. He who loved peace was to see no more peace except just a few hopeful days before his own tragic end. He who hated war must captain his dear people through their long and mighty struggle and share in his gentle heart their great sacrifices. As the kindly harmonizer of jealous rivals, as the unifier of a distracted people, as the sagacious leader of discordant factions, he proved his true greatness in the hours of the nation's peril. In many a grave crisis when it seemed that the Confederacy would win and the Union be lost the almost superhuman wisdom of Lincoln would see the


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LL evening thick gray mists had drifted low above the island woods before a brisk northeast breeze; but toward midnight the wind had lulled, and now the moon hung high and round in a sky where no shred of cloud floated. The air had been swept dry and clean. Very faint and far, yet singularly clear, seemed the voices of the September night; voices of many different kinds, dropping softly down through the still moonlit spaces.

Mat Norman, his back against the trunk of a laurel oak at the edge of a small meadow of rushes, listened eagerly. The muffled thunder of surf breaking along a barrier beach a half mile away made a sort of background for the voices falling from the upper air and seemed somehow to enhance their distinctness.

Norman recognized many of them—the metallic chirps of ricebirds, the guttural "quok-quok-quok" of night herons or Indian pullets, the mellow calls of plover and curlew, the high-pitched cries of green

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 herons. A long time he listened, marveling at the vast numbers of the migrating birds streaming southward through the night along high invisible air roads, guided by the boom of the surf on the lonely beaches of the coast. Then, suddenly, another sound fixed his attention.

It was no more than the cracking of a twig. Yet Norman, accustomed to nocturnal vigils in the haunts of wild things, knew that it was significant. He hoped for a buck of the sea-island race of deer; but the wayfarer that presently appeared at the opening of the narrow trail through the rushes was a raccoon, a very small raccoon, having only the stump of a tail. In the white moonlight Norman could see plainly, could distinguish nearly every detail.

"Lotor the Lucky," he muttered, smiling; "Lotor the Wily One, the Tailless One. Lotor the Little, roaming a long way from home. Now I wonder"

He broke off suddenly. A small dark shape darted along the path through the rushes straight toward the spot where the little raccoon waited motionless; and above it and behind it another dark shape planed swiftly, soundlessly downward. Scarcely two feet in front of the raccoon, the horned owl dropped upon his victim, and in the same instant Lotor the Lucky leaped forward. A squeal, a growl, a brief violent

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 fluttering of strong wings beating the ground and the grass; then, as silently as he had fallen on his prey, the big owl floated upward, empty-clawed. An instant he hovered ten feet above the spot where the raccoon crouched, growling, on the quivering body of a young marsh rabbit. Next moment the owl was gone.

Mat Norman, invisible against the black trunk of his oak, grinned delightedly.

"Quick work, Lotor the Lucky," he exclaimed under his breath; "quick work and your usual luck. It's a smart coon that can make a horned owl catch his supper for him. . . . Hello! What now?"

Behind and just above the raccoon the impalpable air had suddenly taken form. A ghostly, big-headed shape hung there momentarily, then dropped apparently upon the raccoon's back. Wide, powerful wings buffeted Lotor the Lucky; long, needle-pointed claws ripped and raked his hide; a piercing, strangling scream stabbed his ears. Taken utterly by surprise, the little coon leaped sideways out of the path and into the rushes. When, a moment or two later, his quick wits had taken stock of the situation and he bounced out into the path again to reclaim his booty, the big ow] had already lifted the rabbit fifteen feet into the air.

Mat Norman laughed softly as his imagination

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 pictured the expression of Lotor's whiskered countenance.

"By thunder!" he said to himself. "That's an owl worth knowing. I'll get acquainted with the old pirate and keep tab on him. And to start with, I'll name him Eyes o' Flame, the Harrier of the Night."

He smiled and repeated the imposing title. Norman was a young man then and he had a young man's fancy for resounding names. Moreover, for an instant he had seen two great round orbs which glowed in the moonlight like live coals. The name that he had chosen pleased him.

Three afternoons later, an hour before sunset, Eyes o' Flame sat in a low dense cedar at the edge of a wide sea marsh and looked out over the level green expanse. Unless something especially alluring tempted him, the horned owl would not begin his hunting for two hours or more. But he was wide awake and fully alert; and his big yellow black-centered eyes, glaring fixedly under the two tall feather tufts on top of his head, kept grim and ceaseless watch upon the wild peoples of the lonely salt flats.

The flood tide, pouring in through narrow inlets between the barrier islands and sweeping silently

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 along the deep meandering marsh creeks, brought with it incalculable hordes of shrimp and mullet. Twenty feet in front of the owl's cedar the marsh grass fell away, enclosing a bare space of sandy mud pitted with shallow holes and traversed by crooked, irregular gullies. Already the rising waters had converted this open space into a marsh-bordered pond from two inches to a foot in depth—a small tidal lagoon packed and crammed with life.

The horned owl waited and watched, his luminous eyes scanning the muddy margins where the water lapped amid the close-growing marsh blades. A flock of fifty-two snowy egrets, winging slowly toward their roosting place, dropped down to the teeming shallows, too tempting to be passed by, despite the lateness of the hour. With languid interest the big owl watched them at their fishing—slim, graceful, immaculate, striding swiftly here and there through water that covered their golden feet and four inches of their clean black legs. To right and left the long, straight javelin bills flashed downward, lifted again, jerked spasmodically in the air as the mandibles manipulated the shrimp to loosen the horny head parts, snapped shut once more, poised, aimed, flashed down upon another victim.

To Eyes o' Flame all this was of no importance; but he observed with some quickening of interest that now and then an egret leaped suddenly upward

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 and did a little dance in the water as a passing crab struck with clashing claws at the tall bird's slender legs. Egrets and shrimp were of no consequence in the horned owl's scheme of things, but crabs sometimes played a certain part in his hunting, and this evidence of their abundance was worth noting. More closely than ever, the round yellow orbs searched the marsh-bordered margins of the pool; but minute after minute passed uneventfully, and Eyes o' Flame's gaze strayed hither and yonder, taking in many things, yet finding nothing to stir him to action.

Presently, low above the marsh, swept an army of black-and-white skimmers, flying side by side in a long double rank several hundred yards across its front, their taper wings rhythmically fanning the air, their bills gleaming red in the soft light. Eyes o' Flame watched them curiously as they passed. So large an array of skimmers was a rare sight on the marshes, though not so rare on the barrier beach a half mile away, where, in late summer and fall, the scissors-bills might sometimes be seen in hosts of many hundreds as they passed up or down the strand, journeying from one inlet sand bar to another.

The big owl's head was turned to watch the departing skimmer army. He could no longer see the pool or its denizens. Yet suddenly, with such swift-

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 ness that a man's eye could not have followed the motion, his head pivoted on his shoulders so that it faced the other way. The yellow eyes glowed with a fiercer light; the tall, hornlike ear tufts rose stiffly erect; the whole burly, rather fluffy body of the owl seemed to tighten and grow tense and hard. It must have been a sound that had warned him; yet this sound, if sound there was, could not have been heard at that distance by the keenest human ear.

The egrets fishing in the pool did not hear it. A clapper rail, walking along the margin close to the encircling wall of marsh grass, continued her walk undisturbed. The big blue crabs, moving about in the shallows, failed to take alarm. But Eyes o' Flame's marvelous ears had made no mistake.

Out of the marsh, precisely at the spot upon which the owl's eyes were fixed, bounded a slim, long, dark brown shape. Its first leap carried it with a splash into water which all but covered its short legs. Its second leap carried it still deeper, to a place where an instant before the claws of a crab had appeared momentarily, striking at something on the surface. Its third leap bore it shoreward again, snarling with anger; for the crab, warned by that first splash, had dodged and darted away in a cloud of muddy water.

Another half second and the mink would have regained the shelter of the tall marsh grass; but in that half second silent wings lowered over him, long

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Nov. 25, 1869] the North Atlantic sea-bed, which for years, if not all but overlooked, certainly do not appear to have received from zoölogists the full credit which they undoubtedly deserved: geologists and palæontologists were evidently loth to abandon an hypothesis which in many respects suited their requirements.

However long truth may remain dormant, it must eventually assert itself in science as in all other matters, and the advancing strides of Biology and Geology soon demanded that such problems should be definitely and conclusively solved, and that the depths of the sea also should be carefully searched for the missing links of evidence requisite to complete their respective chains of reasoning. This was not felt to be the case in England alone; already in Scandinavia we find the savants of Norway and Sweden working with their slender means in the right direction, and assisted by their Governments with a hearty good-will and determination which could not fail to ensure valuable results, such as have already been brought forward by Sars, Nordenschjold, Torrell, and others.

In England, men of science, equally impressed with the importance of this inquiry, wished, with an honourable pride, to see that the country which had so long claimed the empire of the sea, should, in a question of so purely marine investigation, do something worthy of herself; and, being fully alive to the impossibility of doing so without the aid of the Government, applied themselves first to the task of procuring such assistance. Since it is an acknowledged but melancholy fact, that science does not in England either obtain the high position in society, or the influence with the ruling powers of the country which is accorded to it on the Continent in general, it is a subject for congratulation that the urgent appeals made to the Government should have in this instance proved so successful; and after the Government had provided the ships and equipment necessary for the expeditions of last year and this, it is a further subject for congratulation that the direction of these scientific explorations should have been entrusted to such able men as Dr. Carpenter, Prof. Wyville Thomson, and Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, who constitute the present committee.

The expedition of last year being the first of its kind, had, as might be anticipated, many difficulties to contend with; the ship itself, besides starting at a late season of the year, was ill suited to the undertaking, was provided with but extremely inefficient winding machinery, imperfect appliances and instruments, and moreover, the observers and their assistants had, as it were, to serve an apprenticeship in the management of such operations.

This year, besides being fortunate in securing unusually favourable weather during the major part of the operations, all the above-mentioned difficulties had been provided against whilst, at the same time, the experience gained during the last year's cruise contributed very greatly to the complete success of the expedition as a whole.

As yet, it would be premature to attempt any description of the results of these explorations, for the Report which was commenced at the meeting of the Royal Society last Thursday is not yet concluded, but is to be continued at its next meeting; sufficient, however, has been already brought forward to prove satisfactorily the great importance of the data obtained to science in general. Besides corroborating, and in some respects correcting the conclusions deduced from the operations of the last year's expedition, many new facts and observations have been collected, whilst the supply of specimens and materials for examination which have been brought home will no doubt give full occupation to the members of the committee for some time to come, besides obliging them to bring to their assistance the services of the physicist, chemist, and mineralogist, each in their several departments.

The practicability of exploring even the deepest portions of the ocean bed may now be considered to be fully established; the conclusive proofs brought forward showing the existence of warm and cold areas of the deep-sea bottom, in close proximity to one another, each inhabited by its distinct and characteristic fauna, is as surprising as it is important in its scientific bearings, and particularly in its relations to geology and palæontology; whilst the investigations into the temperature of the different ocean zones, and the nature of the gases contained in the seawater at various depths, are intensely interesting and suggestive.

The question as to the existence of an azoic ocean zone at any depth, must now be regarded as finally settled in the negative. The hypothesis which appeared to Edward Forbes to be warranted by all the data which the science of his day could supply, must now be abandoned; it is certain, however, that all who knew him will do his memory the justice of believing that, were he now alive, so far from regretting the necessity of withdrawing a suggestion which appeared to explain several important points in science now once more involved in obscurity, he would have been the first of the converts to the views now proved to be more correct, and the first to congratulate the members of the deep-sea dredging committee upon so successful and brilliant a termination of their labours.

T is a well-known remark of the historian of science that our progress in astronomy has been made in exact accordance with certain laws which regulate the advancement of knowledge. Neither the march of the sun by day, nor that of the moon by night, is more rigidly surrounded and circumscribed by law than the march of that intellect which has successfully interpreted celestial motions.

We had first of all an observing age. Thousands of years ago in the plains of the East we had astronomers who, albeit with imperfect instruments, lacked neither zeal nor intelligence in their nightly study of the stars. Many of their theoretical ideas were untenable, nay, even absurd, but yet they served to bind together into a formal law the mass of observations which their nightly industry collected.

And so step by step our knowledge of celestial motions progressed, until it culminated in the discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler; and we were presented at last with a bird's-eye view of the solar system, taken, as it were, from without, in which that which appears to be, finally gave place to that which is. Thus the first stage was passed, and astronomers had now another question to put to the universe: it was no longer What are the real motions of

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 claws as sharp as needles and almost as hard as steel clutched his nape and drove deep into his furry throat. With hardly a movement of his pinions, Eyes o' Flame sailed onward and upward. Long before the big owl had reached the ancient live oak which was his favorite feeding station, the lithe brown form trailing from his talons had ceased its struggles.

The old oak stood in the heart of dense junglelike woods and thickets covering a small island in the marshes midway between a much larger island, which was almost a part of the mainland, and a low, narrow barrier isle along the edge of the sea. The small densely wooded island in the midst of the green marsh flats had been Eyes o' Flames headquarters for months. Its almost impenetrable thickets rendered it a safe refuge so far as human enemies were concerned, while on it and all around it the great horned owl found abundance of game.

Almost in its center was a small fresh-water pool in the middle of a wet meadow covered thickly with tall olive-green rushes, growing in dense clumps and standing as high as a man's head; and everywhere through these rushes wound the trails and runways of the short-eared brown marsh rabbits which were Eyes o' Flame's staple prey. The woods and thickets swarmed with field rats; in the belt of reeds and other water growths around the island's rim

title: Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/24