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{| style="margin:auto;" ! English. ! Hokkien. ! Cantonese. ! Character.
 * Corea
 * Kau-li-kok
 * Ko-lai kwok
 * 高麗國
 * Ko-le kok
 * Cuba
 * Ko-pa
 * Ku-pa
 * 古吧
 * Deli
 * Jit-li
 * Yat-lei
 * 日裡
 * Jin-li
 * Dindings
 * Pang-kok
 * Pong-kok
 * 邦咯
 * Edie
 * I-li
 * Yi-lei
 * 怡里
 * England
 * Eng-kok
 * Ying-kwok
 * 英國
 * Foochow
 * Hok-chiu
 * Fuk-chau
 * 福州
 * Formosa
 * Tai-wan
 * Thoi-wan
 * 台灣
 * France
 * Ho-lan-se
 * Fat-lan-sai
 * 法蘭西
 * Huap kok
 * Fat-kwok
 * 法國
 * Germany
 * Tek-kok
 * Tak-kwok
 * 德國
 * Haiphong
 * Hai-pong
 * Hoi-fong
 * 海防
 * Hoihow
 * Hai-khau
 * Hoi-hau
 * 海口
 * }
 * 法蘭西
 * Huap kok
 * Fat-kwok
 * 法國
 * Germany
 * Tek-kok
 * Tak-kwok
 * 德國
 * Haiphong
 * Hai-pong
 * Hoi-fong
 * 海防
 * Hoihow
 * Hai-khau
 * Hoi-hau
 * 海口
 * }
 * Hoihow
 * Hai-khau
 * Hoi-hau
 * 海口
 * }

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xviii historical inquiry and argument concerning the date and local habitation of those Traditions; reserving what little is to be said on that matter till the Traditions themselves have become better known to us. Let the reader, on trust for the present, transport himself into the twelfth or thirteenth century; and therefrom looking back into the sixth or fifth, see what presents itself.

Of the “Heldenbuch,” tried on its own merits, and except as illustrating that other far worthier Poem, or at most as an old national, and still in some measure popular book, we should have felt strongly inclined to say, as the Curate in “Don Quixote” so often did, Al corral con ello, Out of the window with it! Doubtless there are touches of beauty in the work, and even a sort of heartiness and antique quaintness in its wildest follies; but on the whole that George-and-Dragon species of composition has long ceased to find favour with anyone; and except for its groundwork, more or less discernible, of old Northern Fiction, this “Heldenbuch” has little to distinguish it from these. Nevertheless, what is worth remark, it seems to have been a far higher favourite than the “Nibelungen” with ancient readers; it was printed soon after the invention of printing; some think in 1472, for there is no place or date on the first edition; at all events, in 1491, in 1509, and repeatedly since; whereas the “Nibelungen,” though written earlier, and in worth immeasurably superior, had to remain in manuscript three centuries longer. From which, for the thousandth time, inferences might be drawn as to the infallibility of popular taste, and its value as a criterion for poetry. However, it is probably in virtue of this neglect, that the “Nibelungen” boasts of its actual purity; that it now comes before us, clear and graceful as it issued from the old Singer's head and heart; not overloaded with Ass-eared Giants, Fiery Dragons, Dwarfs and Hairy Women, as the “Heidenbuch” is, many of which, as charity would hope, may be the produce of a later age than that famed Swabian Era, to which these poems, as we now see them, are commonly referred. Indeed, one Casper


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the fall of 1889 we felt that the Lord was calling us to California. We obeyed the voice, made ready and started at once, not, knowing one person in that part of the country. I will give a condensed description of our journey to California and of the country. As we traveled along, the cars rolling through one State after another, we noticed the difference in the climate. Some States were given wholly to vegetation, everything green and beautiful; some were mining districts, vast wealth in minerals of different kinds; many stone quarries of beautiful, stone, which many of the finest mansions of New York and Chicago are built beautiful valleys. On either side were the high mountains reaching, as it seemed, almost to the clouds. In a little while we found ourselves passing along over the tops of these mountains. Again we found ourselves sweeping over the plains and deserts. Sometimes for hundreds of miles there was not a shrub or tree to be seen, nothing but yellow sand at times was visible; then again nothing but black sand for miles and miles. As far as the eye could see, the ground was as level as a floor—no vegetation on it. As we came on further into California we saw a great change The plains were cultivated, covered with grass, trees and shrubs and vegetation of all kinds, As we looked upon all these grand and wonderful works of creation, our hearts were filled with love and tenderness, and we could look up and say: “My Father, the God of heaven, hath made all these.”

At last we. arrived safely in the great city of San Francisco, and stopped; at a hotel for a few days. Being very tired from our long journey and summer’s work, we felt we must seek a quiet place to rest both mind and body, so we took a journey of sixty miles to Pascadero, a small town in the valley surrounded by mountains.

We commenced meeting in Oakland, California, October 28, 1889. The wet weather had set in. We pitched our tents during a rain, such as was never known in Oakland before. People

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{| style="margin:auto;" ! English. ! Hokkien. ! Cantonese. ! Character.
 * Calcutta
 * Beng-ka-la
 * Mang-ka-la
 * 孟加朥
 * Ka-lei-kat-ta
 * 加剌吉打
 * Canton
 * Kng-tang
 * Kwong-tung
 * 廣東
 * Seⁿ-siaⁿ (Tiechiu)
 * Shang-sheng
 * 省城
 * Cheribon
 * Cheⁿ-li-bun
 * Cheng-lei-man
 * 井里汶
 * Chifu (or Chefoo)
 * Ian-tai
 * Yin-thoi
 * 烟台
 * China
 * Tong-kok
 * Chung-kwok
 * 中國
 * Tng-suaⁿ
 * Thong-shan
 * 唐山
 * Christmas Island
 * Ka-su ma-su
 * 嘉士嗎嶼
 * Shek-tsai-fau
 * 石仔埠
 * Cocob
 * Ku-kok
 * Ku-kok
 * 龜咯
 * Colombo
 * Ko-long-bo
 * Ko-long-mo
 * 高浪霧
 * }
 * Ka-su ma-su
 * 嘉士嗎嶼
 * Shek-tsai-fau
 * 石仔埠
 * Cocob
 * Ku-kok
 * Ku-kok
 * 龜咯
 * Colombo
 * Ko-long-bo
 * Ko-long-mo
 * 高浪霧
 * }
 * Colombo
 * Ko-long-bo
 * Ko-long-mo
 * 高浪霧
 * }
 * }


text: Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar/The Witch and the Sister of the Sun


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Lord was calling us to St. Louis, Missouri, April, 1890, but we wanted to stay in California through the summer, and we had quite a struggle to know what to do. We placed our goods on the cars and were going to Los Angeles, California. That night I received a letter calling me to St. Louis. We sold our household goods and started next morning for St. Louis. No person knew we were coming until our meeting was announced. Surely God leads me in a mysterious way. I cannot have any choice, or say I will go here or there, but I must know the voice of God, and where He leads I will follow. Two years prior to this time the way had been opened in St. Louis. Many of the best citizens invited us to go and hold meetings. They would have taken much of the burden off us, but our dear Lord does not permit us to lean on or trust to the arm of flesh, for the battle is not ours, but the Lord’s.

We held meetings in a hall for two months. The first night there were eighteen present. God was there in power. Two were converted. The crowds grew larger every day, and souls were converted at every meeting. A number of remarkable cases of divine healing were wrought by the Lord. We felt we could not afford to board; that we must save our money to pay the expenses of the meeting. We rented rooms in the third story of a private house and did our own cooking. This was very hard on us, but it was the best we could do.

We were invited one Sabbath afternoon to hold a meeting in the Union Market. We felt the Lord was leading in this, and accepted, the invitation. We had a large, attentive congregation. The street-cars were passing by loaded, to see the new bridge that had just been built across the Mississippi river.

One old man, a Catholic, heard me preaching. He got off the cars, came to the meeting and listened attentively; at the close of the service he was saved. He said he wanted the kind of religion we had. He had a hard battle to fight with his family, who were all Catholics; but he stood firm, and said he was determined to make heaven his home. God set his seal on this meeting.

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Rh von Roen is understood to have passed the whole “Heldenbuch” through his limbec, in the fifteenth century; but like other rectifiers, instead of purifying it, to have only drugged it with still fiercer ingredients to suit the sick appetite of the time.

Of this drugged and adulterated “Hero-book” (the only one we yet have, though there is talk of a better) we shall quote the long Title-page of Lessing’s Copy, the edition of 1560; from which, with a few intercalated observations, the reader’s curiosity may probably obtain what little satisfaction it wants:

Das Heldenbuch, welchs auffs new corrigirt und gebessert ist, mit shönen Figuren geziert. Gedrückt zu Frankfurt am Mayn, durch Weygand Han und Sygmund Feyerabend, etc. That is to say:

“The ‘Hero-book,’ which is of new corrected and improved, adorned with beautiful Figures. Printed at Frankfurt on the Mayn, through Weygand Han and Sygmund Feyerabend.

“Part First saith of Kaiser Ottnit and the little King Elberich, how they with great peril, over sea, in Heathendom, won from a king his daughter (and how he in lawful marriage took her to wife).”

From which announcement the reader already guesses the contents: how this little King Elberich was a Dwarf or Elf, some half-span long, yet full of cunning practices, and the most helpful activity; nay, stranger still, had been Kaiser Ottnit of Lampartei or Lombardy’s father,—having had his own ulterior views in that indiscretion. How they sailed with Messina ships, into Paynim land; fought with that unspeakable Turk, King Machabol, in and about his fortress and metropolis of Montebur, which was all stuck round with christian heads; slew from seventy to a hundred thousand of the Infidels at one heat; saw the lady on the battlements; and at length, chiefly by Dwarf Elberich’s help, carried her off in triumph; wedded her in Messina; and without difficulty, rooting out the Mahometan prejudice, converted her to the creed of Mother Church. The fair runaway seems to have been of a gentle tractable disposition, very different


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE II.


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE III.


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE IV.


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE V.


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 ally get involved in similar affairs. And I must here acknowledge the great subsequent service Mr. Fothergill's wonderfully accurate descriptions of the peculiar characteristics of the Ogowé forests were to me when I subsequently came to deal with these forests on my own account, as every district of forest has peculiar characteristics of its own which you require to know. I should like here to speak of West Coast dangers because I fear you may think that I am careless of, or do not believe in them, neither of which is the case. The more you know of the West Coast of Africa, the more you realise its dangers. For example, on your first voyage out you hardly believe the stories of fever told by the old Coasters. That is because you do not then understand the type of man who is telling them, a man who goes to his death with a joke in his teeth. But a short experience of your own, particularly if you happen on a place having one of its periodic epidemics, soon demonstrates that the underlying horror of the thing is there, a rotting corpse which the old Coaster has dusted over with jokes to cover it so that it hardly shows at a distance, but which, when you come yourself to live alongside, you soon become cognisant of. Many men, when they have got ashore and settled, realise this, and let the horror get a grip on them; a state briefly and locally described as funk, and a state that usually ends fatally; and you can hardly blame them. Why, I know of a case myself. A young man who had never been outside an English country town before in his life, from family reverses had to take a situation as book-keeper down in the Bights. The factory he was going to was in an isolated out-of-the-way place and not in a settlement, and when the ship called off it, he was put ashore in one of the ship's boats with his belongings, and a case or so of goods. There were only the firm's beach-boys down at the surf, and as the steamer was in a hurry the officer from the ship did not go up to the factory with him, but said good-bye and left him alone with a set of naked savages as he thought, but really of good kindly Kru boys on the beach. He could not understand what they said, nor they what he said, and so he walked up to the house and on to the verandah and tried to find the Agent he had come out to


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE VI.


text: Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar/Princess Vera the Wise


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 Plate VII


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 Plate VIII


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Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.25.

UNDER DEWEY AT MANILA; Or, The War Fortunes of a Castaway.A YOUNG VOLUNTEER IN CUBA; Or, Fighting for the Single Star.FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS; Or, Under Schley on the Brooklyn.UNDER OTIS IN THE PHILIPPINES; Or, A Young Officer in the Tropics.THE CAMPAIGN OF THE JUNGLE; Or, Under Lawton through Luzon.UNDER MacARTHUR IN LUZON; or, Last Battles in the Philippines.

Three volumes.Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.00.

RICHARD DARE'S VENTURE. OLIVER BRIGHT'S SEARCH. TO ALASKA FOR GOLD.

Three volumes.Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.00.

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE SPITFIRE. TRUE TO HIMSELF. REUBEN STONE'S DISCOVERY.

Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.25. ON TO PEKIN. BETWEEN BOER AND BRITON.

Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.25.

WITH WASHINGTON IN THE WEST; Or, A Soldier Boy's Battles in the Wilderness.MARCHING ON NIAGARA; Or, The Soldier Boy of the Old Frontier. (In press.)

Cloth.Illustrated.Price per volume $1.25. AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF WILLIAM McKINLEY.

Another volume in preparation.


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 JOURNAL 40, PLATE I.


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 serve under. He looked into the open-ended dining-room and shyly round the verandah, and then sat down and waited for some one to turn up. Sundry natives turned up, and said a good deal, but no one white or comprehensible, so in desperation he made another and a bolder tour completely round the verandah and noticed a most peculiar noise in one of the rooms and an infinity of flies going into the venetian shuttered window. Plucking up courage he went in and found what was left of the white Agent, a considerable quantity of rats, and most of the flies in West Africa. He then presumably had fever, and he was taken off, a fortnight afterwards, by a French boat, to whom the natives signalled, and he is not coming down the Coast again. Some men would have died right out from a shock like this.

But most of the new-comers do not get a shock of this order. They either die themselves or get more gradually accustomed to this sort of thing, when they come to regard death and fever as soldiers, who on a battle-field sit down, and laugh and talk round a camp fire after a day's hard battle, in which they have seen their friends and companions falling round them; all the time knowing that to-morrow the battle comes again and that to-morrow night they themselves may never see. It is not hard-hearted callousness, it is only their way. Michael Scott put this well in Tom Cringle's Log, in his account of the yellow fever during the war in the West Indies. Fever, though the chief danger, particularly to people who go out to settlements, is not the only one; but as the other dangers, except perhaps domestic poisoning, are incidental to pottering about in the forests, or on the rivers, among the unsophisticated tribes, I will not dwell on them. They can all be avoided by any one with common sense, by keeping well out of the districts in which they occur; and so I warn the general reader that if he goes out to West Africa, it is not because I said the place was safe, or its dangers overrated. The cemeteries of the West Coast are full of the victims of those people who have said that Coast fever is "Cork fever," and a man's own fault, which it is not; and that natives will never attack you unless you attack them; which they will—on occasions.


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RV 283 (Rh)


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xx from old Machabol; concerning whom it is here chiefly to be noted that Dwarf Elberich, rendering himself invisible on their first interview, plucks out a handful of hair from his chin; thereby increasing to a tenfold pitch the royal choler; and, what is still more remarkable, furnishing the poet Wieland, six centuries afterwards, with the critical incident in his “Oberon.” As for the young lady herself, we cannot but admit that she was well worth sailing to Heathendom for; and shall here, as our sole specimen of that old German doggerel, give the description of her, as she first appeared on the battlements during the fight; subjoining a version as verbal and literal as the plainest prose can make it. Considered as a detached passage, it is perhaps the finest we have met with in the “Heldenbuch.”


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 My main aim in going to Congo Français was to get up above the tide line of the Ogowé River and there collect fishes; for my object on this voyage was to collect fish from a river north of the Congo. I had hoped this river would have been the Niger, for Sir George Goldie had placed at my disposal great facilities for carrying on work there in comfort; but for certain private reasons I was disinclined to go from the Royal Niger Protectorate into the Royal Niger Company's territory; and the Calabar, where Sir Claude MacDonald did everything he possibly could to assist me, I did not find a good river for me to collect fishes in. These two rivers failing me, from no fault of either of their own presiding genii, my only hope of doing anything now lay on the South West Coast river, the Ogowé, and everything there depended on Mr. Hudson's attitude towards scientific research in the domain of ichthyology. Fortunately for me that gentleman elected to take a favourable view of this affair, and in every way in his power assisted me during my entire stay in Congo Français. But before I enter into a detailed description of this wonderful bit of West Africa, I must give you a brief notice of the manners, habits and customs of West Coast rivers in general, to make the thing more intellegible.

There is an uniformity in the habits of West Coast rivers, from the Volta to the Coanza, which is, when you get used to it, very taking. Excepting the Congo, the really great river comes out to sea with as much mystery as possible; lounging lazily along among its mangrove swamps in a what's-it-matter when-one-comes-out and where's-the-hurry style, through quantities of channels inter-communicating with each other. Each channel, at first sight as like the other as peas in a pod, is bordered on either side by green-black walls of mangroves, which Captain Lugard graphically described as seeming "as if they had lost all count of the vegetable proprieties, and were standing on stilts with their branches tucked up out of the wet, leaving their gaunt roots exposed in mid-air." High-tide or low-tide, there is little difference in the water; the river, be it broad or narrow, deep or shallow, looks like a pathway of polished metal; for it is as heavy weighted with stinking mud as water ceer can be, ebb or flow, year out and


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RV 284 (Rh)


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RV 285 (Rh)


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 year in. But the difference in the banks, though an unending alternation between two appearances, is weird.

At high-water you do not see the mangroves displaying their ankles in the way that shocked Captain Lugard. They look most respectable, their foliage rising densely in a wall irregularly striped here and there by the white line of an aërial root, coming straight down into the water from some upper branch as straight as a plummet, in the strange, knowing way an aërial root of a mangrove does, keeping the hard straight line until it gets some two feet above water-level, and then spreading out into blunt fingers with which to dip into the water and grasp the mud. Banks indeed at high water can hardly be said to exist, the water stretching away into the mangrove swamps for miles and miles, and you can then go, in a suitable small canoe, away among these swamps as far as you please.

This is a fascinating pursuit. For people who like that sort of thing it is just the sort of thing they like, as the art critic of a provincial town wisely observed anent an impressionist picture recently acquired for the municipal gallery. But it is a pleasure to be indulged in with caution; for one thing, you are certain to come across crocodiles. Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small dug-out canoe, and that crocodile and his relations are awake—a thing he makes a point of being at flood tide because of fish coming along—and when he has got his foot upon his native heath—that is to say, his tail within holding reach of his native mud—he is highly interesting, and you may not be able to write home about him—and you get frightened on your own behalf. For crocodiles can, and often do, in such places, grab at people in small canoes. I have known of several natives losing their lives in this way; some native villages are approachable from the main river by a short cut, as it were, through the mangrove swamps, and the inhabitants of such villages will now and then go across this way with small canoes instead of


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RV 286 (Rh)


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 Table of Contents.


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 Though made by the natives of Simalur it is possible that they are of Achinese origin, of which nation there are a number of settlers on the Island, while the Simalurese have only passed out of a wooden and shell stage within the last two or three generations.

C. BODEN KLOSS,

 Chinese Names of Streets.

The following notes, by an old resident, on Mr. Firmstone's valuable list in Journal No. 42 may prove of some interest.

Armenian Street.—Tan Seng Po was, I believe, a brother- in-law of Mr. Seah Liang Leah. His house was the one in Hill-street occupied till recently by St. Mary's College.

Beach Road (VII.)—"Twenty buildings," possibly this refers to the large houses in compounds which formerly fronted the whole of this road between Bras Basah Road and Clyde Terrace, and were in old times occupied by leading European residents.

Selegie Road.—"Tek-kha, foot of the bamboos." I remember when the road from near what is now the entrance to Sophia Road to Mackenzie Road was bordered by luxuriant lofty bamboos the most beautiful, I think, that I have seen. I mourned when they were removed to make room for houses.

Stamford Road.—The shop ceased to be a "shoe shop" a couple of years ago.

Tanglin.—"No 'little Tanglin.'" The part of Orchard-road between Tank-road and Grange-road, where there have been shop-houses for very many years, was formerly known as "Tanglin Kĕchil," and may be so still.

Keppel Harbour—"Jardine's Wharf."—Jardine's and the Borneo Company's Wharves were separate but adjoining the former the nearer to town.


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 Malacca.—Riverside.—"Foot of the Dutch trees,"—The Fort Road, the ascent to the Stadt House, and the road to Tanjong Kling were adorned with magnificent avenues of angsana (sometimes called "sena") trees—the same as we have on the Singapore Esplanade. These avenues all decayed in the course of two years—some five-and-twenty years ago, I should say.

A. K.


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RV 287 (Rh)


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 Some Notes on Malay Card Games.

In preparing these notes, I have used as a ground-work the chapter on card games in Mr. Skeat's Malay Magic, but in addition to supplementing that account in some details, I have collated local variations in the rules of the games and collected. some terms which I have not seen recorded elsewhere.

I. Main chabut. This game, says Mr. Skeat, "is a species of vingt-et-un and is played with either twenty-one or thirty- one points" or pips or mata as the Malay idiom is. If the game is thirty-one points, not more than nine people can play: if twenty-one not more than seven. The "ten" cards are not used: according to Mr. Skeat, court cards also are thrown out in the twenty-one game, but I have seen court cards used in both games and counted as ten pips each. The ace (sat) is used and is worth one, ten, or eleven pips as is convenient to the player; except that, if you have two aces in one hand while playing the twenty-one game or three in one hand while playing thirty-one, the ace must be reckoned as worth only one pip. The dealer (perdi) distributes two lunas or 'keel' cards, 'poundation' cards as we might say, to each player. The nicknames for the various combinations in these 'keel' cards given by Mr. Skeat—lunas nikah, a court card and an ace; lunas dua jalor, two threes; kachang di-rendang di-tugalkan, two aces—I have found to be familiar even to the younger generation in Perak. After the 'keel' cards have been dealt, each player in turn draws (chabut) fresh cards from the bottom of the remaining cards of the pack. Whoever gets thirty-one or twenty-one pips exactly, according as to which game is being played, is said to "masok mata." In a game of thirty-one, no player can chabut more than seven cards or more than five in a twenty-one game, and if he has drawn seven or five cards


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 by the constant channel to the village, which is almost always winding. In addition to this unpleasantness you are liable—until you realise the danger from experience, or have native advice on the point—to get tide-trapped away in the swamps, the water falling round you when you are away in some deep pool or lagoon, and you find you cannot get back to the main river. For you cannot get out and drag your canoe across the stretches of mud that separate you from it, because the mud is of too unstable a nature and too deep, and sinking into it means staying in it, at any rate until some geologist of the remote future may come across you, in a fossilised state, when that mangrove swamp shall have become dry land. Of course if you really want a truly safe investment in Fame, and really care about Posterity, and Posterity's Science, you will jump over into the black batter-like, stinking slime, cheered by the thought of the terrific sensation you will produce 20,000 years hence, and the care you will be taken of then by your fellow-creatures, in a museum. But if you are a mere ordinary person of a retiring nature, like me, you stop in your lagoon until the tide rises again; most of your attention is directed to dealing with an "at home" to crocodiles and mangrove flies, and with the fearful stench of the slime round you. What little time you have over you will employ in wondering why you came to West Africa, and why, after having reached this point of absurdity, you need have gone and painted the lily and adorned the rose, by being such a colossal ass as to come fooling about in mangrove swamps. Twice this chatty little incident, as Lady MacDonald would call it, has happened to me, but never again if I can help it. On one occasion, the last, a mighty Silurian, as The Daily Telegraph would call him, chose to get his front paws over the stern of my canoe, and endeavoured to improve our acquaintance. I had to retire to the bows, to keep the balance right, and fetch him a clip on the snout with a paddle, when he withdrew, and I paddled into the very middle of the lagoon, hoping the water there was too deep for him or any of his friends to repeat the performance. Presumably it was, for no


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 and not yet got nor exceeded thirty-one (or twenty-one) pips, be is said to masok daun and wins even over a player who has masok mata. Of those who masok daun, the one with the smaller number of pips would win: but for two players to hold such a hand hardly ever occurs. The player who gets more than thirty-one (or twenty-one) points is said to be "dead" mati, or "blind" bola, or "to go to pot" masok pering, literally enter the plate,' alluding to the plate in the centre of the players into which he will fling his hand. When a player has drawn cards, till he has a total of twenty-six, twenty-seven or twenty-eight (or sixteen, seventeen, eighteen) points in his hand and is afraid to draw another card for fear of exceeding thirty-one (or twenty-one), he is said to be "in a small coil," blit kechil, and "passes," if this happens, when he has twenty nine or thirty pips, it is blit besar.

"When two players have the same number of pips. e.g., nine and nine or eight and eight—," writes Mr. Skeat, "the coincidence is described in the words, Jumpa di-jalan, diadu kalah, dichabut mati." This is not very intelligible. I believe, it should be explained as follows. If I have passed with twenty- nine or twenty-eight pips in my hand and another player after me does the same, it is a rule of the game that I (who first had twenty-nine pips in my hand) win before him. So, the phrase applies to the loser. If he had drawn another card, he would probably have become mati, holding more than thirty-one points: reluctant to draw another, he cannot adu or compete with the man who was blit first with the same number of pips as he.

Kena runjau, translated by Mr. Skeat "to be bluffed," I take to be the same as kena das. (Singapore) and to apply to a player who inadvertently or foolishly shows his hand, buka daun, before the rest of the players are all blit or mati or masok mata, and so has to pay up all round by way of penalty.

II. Daun tiga lei or pakau. Three cards are dealt to each player. The best hands are called daun trus. In Perak and Selangor, the very best hand is three aces; the next best in Perak is three court cards, in Selangor three threes. Then


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 follow in Perak, hands of nine and eight pips; in Selangor, says Mr. Skeat, hands of three tens, and three court-cards in that order and then hands of nine, eight, seven pips and so on in descending order of value. "The highest hand counting by pips," Sir William Maxwell puts it clearly, "is that which contains the greatest number of pips after the tens are deduct- ed." In Perak, "a hand of three threes is really a good hand, being nine, but it is considered a propitiation of good luck to throw it down (without exposing it) and announce that one is bota in hopes of getting good luck afterwards."

Apparently, Singapore players recognize a different list of daun trus. The best hand is three court-cards, tiga kuda: the next best is three threes or a nine and two court cards. And then follow hands of nine, eight pips and so on in descending scale. The tens are not used at all. Court cards are valued at zero, except when you have three in one hand and so hold the best possible of daun trus. Three aces are reckoned as three pips only: so, a hand of three aces is absolutely worth- less, and a hand of two aces and a court card, for instance, makes you only two pips. If you hold one court card, one ace and one nine, the ace is counted as zero like a court-card and you score nine: so, this hand is one of the daun trus, equivalent to two court cards and a nine,

Then there are the phrases, handak kaki tiga, minta penoh, minta isi, minta kosong, used in the process, mengurut daun. "A player does not hastily, look at his three cards and learn his fate at once," says Sir William Maxwell, but he prolongs the excitement by holding his cards tight together, and looking alternately at the outside ones, and last of all at the middle one, sliding out the latter between the two others little by little. Thus it is left uncertain for some time whether a card is an eight or a seven, a nine or a ten" Handak kaki tiga is a player for a six, seven or eight cards having pips in rows of three. If after seeing my top and bottom cards I want the remaining card to have no pip in the centre; if, for example, I want a six and not a seven or eight, I am said to minta kosong: if, on the contrary, I want a pip or pips in the middle of the


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 one did it again. I should think that crocodile was eight feet long; but don't go and say I measured him, or that this is my outside measurement for crocodiles. I have measured them when they have been killed by other people, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-one feet odd. This was only a pushing young creature who had not learnt manners.

Still, even if your own peculiar tastes and avocations do not take you in small dug-out canoes into the heart of the swamps, you can observe the difference in the local scenery made by the flowing of the tide when you are on a vessel stuck on a sand-bank, in the Rio del Rey for example. Moreover, as you will have little else to attend to, save mosquitoes and mangrove flies, when in such a situation, you may as well pursue the study. At the ebb gradually the foliage of the lower branches of the mangroves grows wet and muddy, until there is a great black band about three feet deep above the surface of the water in all directions; gradually a network of gray-white roots rises up, and below this again, gradually, a slope of smooth and lead-brown slime. The effect is not in the least as if the water had fallen, but as if the mangroves had, with one accord, risen up out of it, and into it again they seem silently to sink when the flood comes. But by this more safe, if still unpleasant, method of observing mangrove-swamps, you miss seeing in full the make of them, for away in their fastnesses the mangroves raise their branches far above the reach of tide line, and the great gray roots of the older trees are always sticking up in mid-air. But, fringing the rivers, there is always a hedge of younger mangroves whose lower branches get immersed.

At corners here and there from the river face you can see the land being made from the waters. A mud-bank forms off it, a mangrove seed lights on it, and the thing's done. Well! not done, perhaps, but begun; for if the bank is high enough to get exposed at low water, this pioneer mangrove grows. He has a wretched existence though. You have only got to look at his dwarfed attenuated form to see this. He gets joined by a few more bold spirits and they struggle on together, their network of roots stopping abundance of mud, and by good chance now and then a consignment of


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 It has become customary to accuse the new Government of indifference toward the cultural values of the past, and, particularly, of disrupting the schools. Such an accusation is obviously wrong. In so far as the school stands for wrong principles, breeding privileges and a spirit of utilitarianism, and is a servant of the ruling classes, it has been destroyed. Such a school system was an instrument to befog the consciousness of the masses and crippled the children physically and spiritually. The destruction of the old school system, as an integral part of the whole social structure of the past was brought about not by a group of individuals, but by the elemental force of life itself. History had paved the way for such a destruction, and it had become a pressing necessity of the present revolutionary period.

It is, however, not sufficient to take notice of this spontaneous destruction alone. The revolutionary classes of society, particularly their more advanced upper strata, their leading elements, must introduce into these elemental processes a maximum of intelligence and system. First, a surgical application is needed to remove all useless remnants of the past; yet, creative activity is also needed, although it perhaps will, of necessity, be slow and cautious to begin with. The school has ceased to be an instrument in the hands of the exploiting classes; with the people's victory it has in reality become a people's school. And now the Commissariat of Education is busily engaged in transferring it into the hands of the people's government—the Soviet organs.

The school no longer needs teachers who simply are office holders, teachers appointed from above, teachers detached from the people. Our Commissariat emphasizes this circumstance and suggests the principle of electing teachers by local organs created by the population itself.

The school has ceased to be a source of privileges based on other values than intellect and knowledge. The Commissariat, therefore, is taking prompt action to abolish diplomas and certificates conferring all sorts of privileges on persons graduated from various branches of academic training.

The old school system was not a channel of education but an instrument for obscuring the mind of the people. The revolution has swept away this school system. Governmental


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 third card, want a seven or an eight, I am said to minta isi, or minta penoh. Many players make a clicking sound like one encouraging a horse, if they want a kuda or court card.

Main trop. The following are some terms in connection with this game which I have failed to find either in Skeat or in Wilkinson's Dictionary.

In main trup, when a player leads a trump card, his action is described by the words sudi or jaru. Diamonds are sometimes called batu Malacca or dobin (or jubin: Jav.=square flag-stones) spades, payong. Bibi is used of the Queen. If I and my partner have already got seven tricks between us, I ask him kiler-kah atau kot-kah should he hold no more cards of value in his hand, he says kiler and the game is over; should he hold high cards and thinks we can take all the tricks, he says kot and we play on in the hope that our opponents may kena kot, not score a single trick; but, if any of our tricks are lost, the tables are turned and we ourselves kena kot balik. Mita sus is to ask for special cards from one's partner. Tbere are numerous masonic signs accounted by Malay gamblers proper and elever, but which we should call cheating. Thus, to open one's hand of cards fanshape like opening an umbrella is to call for payong, spades: brush the edge of your cards along the table and you ask for diamonds, because thus the batu Malacca is cut: lift your cards quickly and you ask for the card with the flying animal, klawer: want hearts and you describe on the table a circular movement with your band of cards. Of course, you and your partner must be accomplices and your sleights pat and deft.

Main daun cheki. The following is a complete list of the names of these cards as given me:—iyu merah besar, iyu merah sa'krat, iyu kuching, iyu kosut, iyu budak, iyu panjang: kau merah, kau jalan, kau kurop: sah waji, sah burong, sah halus: si lebai, si trubu, si pinggung: chek bier, chek burong, chek halus; lah tali, lah krong, lah halus: peh pichak kapala, peh krang, peh pinggang (or tali): go babi, go tongkang, go pending: ji gendang, ji pentil, ji bengkok or burong. Cho it and chochot are names of two species of main cheki.


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 activity has brought new problems before the school. Our Commissariat, as an educational center, is engaged, as a first step, in freeing the school from church influences and encroachments—the separation of the school from the church.

These first steps are only the beginnings of the task. Before us is still a long path of a tremendous and prolonged creative work of organization which shall ultimately give to the people the school they need in this period of reconstructing life on a new basis—in the period of the international struggle of the proletariat for Socialism.

Having this task in mind the Commissariat sounded a call inviting learned and practical individuals, people of extensive pedagogic training, to participate in this task. The Commissariat of People's Education has opened wide the doors to all who would and could help. Something has already been done in this direction. Recently we created at the Commissariat of People's Education an educators' advisory board which in turn was subdivided into a number of sub-committees, these latter conducting a preliminary campaign in favor of school reform and gradually formulating concrete problems, the solution of which should determine the substance of our activity of school-organization.

Our conception of a school is one from which religious services and teachings are absolutely barred. Secondly, a people's general education school must be compulsory and accessible to all, regardless of sex and social distinctions; it must be a school where tuition, books, etc., are free; and, lastly, we conceive of the new school as a labor unit. The school must be homogeneous in the sense that it is of uniform type, with a definite minimum amount of instruction—in the sense of uniformity of aims and problems grouped between two chief centers of gravitation—and in the producing of an harmonious individual with regard to his social development; and, finally, in the sense of establishing an organized connection between the various school grades and unimpeded promotion of students from lower grades to higher.

The principles underlying the development of the school, as a labor unit, can be summarized thus:

1. An early fusion of productive labor with academic


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 instruction is the mightiest weapon in the task of reconstructing modern society.

2. The technology of the present mode of production demands an all-round development of the individual, who must possess the ability to work and be equipped with polytechnic knowledge for various industrial fields. Therefore, a school of general science must assume the character of a polytechnic (vocational) school, while specialization and professionalism are outside the scope of the general science school and are the problems of the higher schools, or of educational training outside academic walls.

3. Manual labor must form an integral element of school life; all school children must participate in productive labor. The useful results of such labor should be made obvious to the students, having for its object either the direct creation of useful articles of consumption (chiefly for the needs of the particular school), or the performance of productive labor which only ultimately creates material blessings, as for example, caring for cleanliness, hygienic conditions of life in schools, etc.

4. The school becomes a productive commune, i. e., both a producing and consuming body based on the following principles, guiding the social education of children:

a) the principle of school autonomy and collective self-determination in the process of mental and manual labor;

b) the principle of satisfying all the children's needs by the children themselves;

c) the organization of social, mental endeavor (scientific bodies, magazines, collective work, etc.).

5. The school must offer the widest possible opportunities for the full play and development of the creative forces of the child. To accomplish this, the child must be reared amidst surroundings favorable to its mental and physical capacity, the presence of which should favor the greatest possible harmonious development of the child's body and soul. Essential prerequisites hereof are:

a) Self-activity of children in various fields of school-life, their independence and initiative while at work and a spirit of self-reliance in matters of everyday routine;


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 miscellaneous débris of palm leaves, or a floating tree-trunk, but they always die before they attain any considerable height. Still even in death they collect. Their bare white sticks remaining like a net gripped in the mud, so that these pioneer mangrove heroes may be said to have laid down their lives to make that mud-bank fit for colonisation, for the time gradually comes when other mangroves can and do colonise on it, and flourish, extending their territory steadily; and the mud-bank joins up with, and becomes a part of, Africa.

Right away on the inland fringe of the swamp—you may go some hundreds of miles before you get there—you can see the rest of the process. The mangroves there have risen up, and dried the mud to an extent that is more than good for themselves, have over civilised that mud in fact, and so the brackish waters of the tide—which, although their enemy when too deep or too strong in salt, is essential to their existence—cannot get to their roots. They have done this gradually, as a mangrove does all things, but they have done it, and down on to that mud come a whole set of palms from the old mainland, who in their early colonisation days go through similarly trying experiences. First the screw-pines come and live among them; then the wine-palm and various creepers, and then the oil-palm; and the débris of these plants being greater and making better soil than dead mangroves, they work quicker and the mangrove is doomed. Soon the salt waters are shut right out, the mangrove dies, and that bit of Africa is made. It is very interesting to get into these regions; you see along the river-bank a rich, thick, lovely wall of soft-wooded plants, and behind this you find great stretches of death;—miles and miles sometimes of gaunt white mangrove skeletons standing on gray stuff that is not yet earth and is no longer slime, and through the crust of which you can sink into rotting putrefaction. Yet, long after you are dead, buried, and forgotten, this will become a forest of soft-wooded plants and palms; and finally of hard-wooded trees. Districts of this description you will find in great sweeps of Kama country for example, and in the rich low regions up to the base of the Sierra del Cristal and the Rumby range.

You often hear the utter lifelessness of mangrove-swamps


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 b) introduction of an educational system stimulating the creative forces of the child;

c) artistic activity, as the chief element in the child's esthetic development, guiding the passive emotional processes of its spiritual life.

6. The methods in the child's bringing-up and in the educational training of children are to change their former character in accordance with the new problems of the school. Attention in the matter of children's education should chiefly aim to bring up a human being, as a social creature, and to produce an understanding of social labor: first, at the present time; then—labor in past human history; and, last, labor's problems in the near future. There ought to exist a direct organic connection between the educational mental work in the school and the element of productive labor. Educational training is to be conducted in full conformity with the latest discoveries in psychology, physiology and pedagogy, and in particular—in the direction from the known to the unknown, from the concrete to the abstract.

It seems to me that the people should receive a graded knowledge, and this can be made possible only when the child will be attached to the school for a considerable length of time. It is urgent to create conditions whereby the majority of children of school age should be forced to pass a long course of instruction. Compulsory schools exist in many countries, why not here in Russia?

We ought not be afraid that there will be a lack of schools, and of teachers: we will gradually introduce an extensive educational course and accelerate the formation of a teaching force.

All persons favorably disposed towards this cause should be recruited; we must also widely propagate our ideas, and, with this object in view, are beginning to publish our information bulletins on school reform work. These bulletins we shall freely circulate throughout Russia. However, what is most needed is not merely world-propaganda, but deeds. With this object the Commissariat of Education is organizing experimental schools. It would be an error to assume that here, in the capitals, there is a tendency to introduce bureaucratic methods in the management of the schools. We wish


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 to impose nothing on the people, and when we draw up certain plans, it is chiefly because the population itself, in the person of its organs of local social administrative units, requires from us a general outline and suggestions.

The next Document, No. 4, shows a serious desire on the part of the Soviet Government to provide teachers with ample and more or less uniform compensation. It is only in the light of such authentic documents that prejudiced utterances like those of Dr. Alessandro H. Carasso, in the Sunday Times Magazine Section of March 2, 1919, can be appraised at their true worth.

The Soviet of People's Commissaires decrees:

1. To establish a monthly remuneration for teachers, taking as a standard length of a working day four school hours a day (24 hours or lessons a week).

2. Pending the establishment of a united school system, to preserve remuneration on the basis of yearly hours in secondary schools and wherever such remuneration has hitherto been in practice. In primary and higher schools, seminaries, etc., where monthly payment has been in force, such payments shall continue to be in force for teachers occupied with four hours of school work a day (24 hours a week).

3. Classification of teachers into "regularly appointed," "unattached," "substitutes," etc., is abolished.

4. All teachers (regardless of the particular subject taught, including instructors of music, singing, domestic arts, manual labor and physical exercises) shall receive a remuneration for their school labor on the basis of common standard pay and have equal pension rights.

5. Up to July 1, 1918, the same basis of remuneration shall be applied to lessons given above the prescribed 24 hours' standard.

Note.—An increase of the number of lessons above the standard for individual teachers shall be made in each single case in accordance with a special regulation of the Department of Public Education attached to the local Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

6. Remuneration of the labor of chairmen of pedagogic councils, up to July 1, 1918, shall be adjusted to a remuneration on the basis of 12 yearly hours; vice-ch2irmen and members of administrative


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 Malacca Lace.

Fifty years ago really fine cotton pillow lace was made in Malacca. The lace was worn by the Chiefs and Hajis on their coats and trousers, and it may still be seen occasionally at weddings, but with the use of European clothing the lace has more or less disappeared. The present generation are content to use nine to nineteen bobbins, while their grandmothers and great aunts before them used fifty to one hundred, or even more. Moreover, they have lost all their patterns, all their fine bobbins and even their pillows. The white ants have consumed them all. Occasionally; one may come across a few relics of this past art in beautiful ivory bobbins and faded trouser borders. I myself obtained a very fine specimen of the latter from an old Malay, and have no doubt others can be picked up in the Kampongs (see plate No 3). All that remains of this old industry is the present "biku" making, chiefly found in the district of Pringgit, where quite fifty women use pillows—also at Bukit Tempurong and Bukit China, but here in much fewer numbers—at the outside twenty workers. "Biku" or edging is made of coloured silk for native use to border handkerchiefs and veils, and is sold very cheaply for that purpose to Malays and Chinese. It is sold in lengths of 2 1/2 yards or one "bimpul." The silk is bought. by the woman in skeins from "kelontong kain" the travelling draper, or pedlar, and he also sells the "biku" itself with his other wares. The pillow used, as depicted in the photograph, (see plate 1) is of the simplest description—a rough wooden sloping stool padded with cloth and stuffed with sawdust. The cost is fifty or sixty cents at the present date. It is called "bantal" by the Malays, and I have noticed the little girls


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 commented on; why I do not know, for they are fairly heavily stocked with fauna, though the species are comparatively few. There are the crocodiles, more of them than any one wants; there are quantities of flies, particularly the big silent mangrove-fly which lays an egg in you under the skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until it feels fit to enter into external life. Then there are "slimy things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water various kinds of cat-fish. Birdless they are save for the flocks of gray parrots that pass over them at evening, hoarsely squarking; and save for this squarking of the parrots the swamps are silent all the day, at least during the dry season; in the wet season there is no silence night or day in West Africa, but that roar of the descending deluge of rain that is more monotonous and more gloomy than any silence can be. In the morning you do not hear the long, low, mellow whistle of the plantain-eaters calling up the dawn, nor in the evening the clock-bird nor the Handel-Festival-sized choruses of frogs, or the crickets, that carry on their vesper controversy of "she did"—"she didn't" so fiercely on hard land.

But the mangrove-swamp follows the general rule for West Africa, and night in it is noisier than the day. After dark it is full of noises; grunts from I know not what, splashes from jumping fish, the peculiar whirr of rushing crabs, and quaint creaking and groaning sounds from the trees; and—above all in eeriness—the strange whine and sighing cough of crocodiles. I shall never forget one moonlight night I spent in a mangrove-swamp. I was not lost, but we had gone away into the swamp from the main river, so that the natives of a village with an evil reputation should not come across us when they were out fishing. We got well in, on to a long pool or lagoon; and dozed off and woke, and saw the same scene around us twenty times in the night, which thereby grew into an æon, until I dreamily felt that I had somehow got into a world that was all like this, and always had been, and was always going to be so. Now and again the strong musky smell came that meant a crocodile close by, and one


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 sitting astride their pillows when just commencing a new piece. It is perhaps to this reason that the pillow owes its shape—it no doubt suits the Malay who always works sitting on the floor,—but it is very back-breaking to the European. Formerly the pillows always had a drawer for holding extra bobbins, It is now omitted. The bobbins are either made of wood, horn, or ivory, and are called "buah." They are very similar in shape to the Ceylon bobbins, but rather more delicate in make and size. At the present time, there is considerable difficulty in getting bobbins made at all and the old bobbins made in ebony and ivory for three or five cents, cannot now be obtained in plain wood for less than eight or ton cents. There are five patterns now in common use, the greatest number of bobbins used being nineteen. Four of these pat- terns are depicted in plate 2, requiring nine, eleven, fifteen, and nineteen bobbins respectively beginning at the foot of the plate. There is one other pattern not shown requiring thirteen bobbins. The two insertions shown at the top of plate 2 are old patterns not now made. Fifty and thirty bobbins were used respectively in their composition. The patterns are prieked out in paper and called "Sepesel" and "achuwan." The Malays have names for their patterns such as:—

(1) "Prut Lintah" or leech's stomach. This in "torchon" would be called "bar" stitch—In the insertions shewn in Plate 2, these bars are combined to form 6-pointed stars, which are known as "Bunga Tanjong":—

(2) "Anyam Krosi" or chair-plait which in "torchon" would be called cloth stitch, is also shown in the same inser- tions alternating with the "Bunga Tanjong."

(3) "Siku Kěluwang" or bat's wing, which is a vandyke pattern depicted in the wide insertions of the old trouser border in plate 3. And I daresay many others which are now forgotten with the art. The various stitches are also named, and one "hiku" of thirteen bobbins was thus described to me, beginning at thefoot of the edging right across to the top:—

 * "Puchok" or "Kipas" taking one bobbin.
 * "Buah Sirih" taking two bobbins


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 : "Ikatan kipas " taking two bobbins.
 * "Penyambut" taking two bobbins.
 * "Prut Lintah " taking two bobbins.
 * "Tali Ayer" taking two bobbins."
 * "Kaki" taking two bobbins.

The most common stitch in all their laces is the "Ikatan," or fastening stitch. It does not resemble the torchon "half stitch" or "whole stitch" but seems to be original. A more elaborate form of it is called "Mata Punai," and is the only stitch which has the same name as in the Palembang patterns sent to me. The Malacca Malays use the word "renda" for all lace except the narrow edgings which they call "biku." They themselves never seem to have made wide edgings; all their wide laces being insertions joined together for trouser borders. They throw their bobbins across with incredible rapidity using their second and third fingers to flick the bobbin across more especially in making the "bars" or "prut lintah." It is an art which cannot be acquired by everyone. As to the origin and history of the industry I have been unable to find out anything. Through the kindness and courtesy of Mr. Spakler, Consul General for the Netherlands in Singa- pore, I have obtained a pillow from Palembang, Sumatra, where lace is also made by the Malays. This pillow is identical with the Malacca one in structure and design only with a drawer and more elaborately ornamented. The industry is a flourishing one in Palembang where the Dutch ladies buy the lace in quantities for their Kěbayas (jackets) and it is sold in lengths of 4 yards for this purpose. The bobbins are also identical, though slightly longer and up to one hundred are employed. What is more interesting the common terms are the same "Bantal," "Buah," Sepesel"—but in addition they have the word "Papan" for insertion, and "renda " is confined to wide (2), edgings which in Palembang are also made by the natives. "Renda" is I believe, a Portuguese word and is also used in Ceylon for lace, were I am told the lace industry was undoubtedly founded by the Portuguese. But again it may be native. If is impossible now to say. A very curious pillow was shown to me by Mr.


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Happy man was Kaiser Ottnit, blessed with such a wife, after all his travail;—had not the Turk Machabol cunningly sent him, in revenge, a box of young Dragons, or Dragon-eggs, by the hands of a caitiff Infidel, contriver of the mischief; by whom in due course of time they were hatched and nursed, to the infinite woe of all Lampartei, and ultimately to the death of Kaiser Ottnit himself, whom they swallowed and attempted to digest, once without effect, but the next time too fatally, crown and all!

“Part Second announceth (meldet) of Herr Hugdietrich and his son Wolfdietrich; how they, for justice-sake, oft by their doughty acts succoured distressed persons, with other bold heroes that stood by them in extremity.”

Concerning which Hugdietrich, Emperor of Greece, and his son Wolfdietrich, one day the renowned Dietrich of Bern, we can here say little more than that the former trained himself to sempstress-work; and for many weeks plied his needle, before he could get wedded and produce Wolfdietrich; who coming into the world in this clandestine manner, was let down into the castle-ditch, and like Romulus and Remus nursed by a Wolf, whence his name. However, after never-imagined adventures,


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 R. Shelford, Curator of the Sarawak Museum at Kuching, on which edgings are made by the Malays principally in gold thread for veils and coats worn by the Dyak women. This edging is there called "puntas," the pillow "guling puntas," the bobbins "pelulak," and the pattern which is pricked out on a strip of palm leaf is called "kabat puntas." The pillow is very primitive, a cylindrical cushion, placed on an earthenware bowl, and the bobbins which vary in number from four to sixteen are like ninepins and extremely clumsy. Good specimens of all the three pillows here des- cribed may now be seen in the Singapore Museum. I have learnt myself to make the Malacca "biku" and have append- ed to these notes the common words used by my teacher during our lessons. A tentative attempt is now being made to revive the industry at the Girls School at Pringgit. It is an industry specially adapted to Malay women. I owe my grateful thanks to the Bible Society Ladies for introducing me to this local industry, also to Mr. Howell, who has so kindly assisted me with his camera, and for some very careful and detailed information received from the Resident in Palembang through Mr. Spakler.

Terms.


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 JOURNAL 46, PLATE I.


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 JOURNAL 46, PLATE II.


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 had to rouse up and see if all the crews' legs were on board, for Africans are reckless, and regardless of their legs during sleep. On one examination I found the leg of one of my most precious men ostentatiously sticking out over the side of the canoe. I woke him with a paddle, and said a few words regarding the inadvisability of wearing his leg like this in our situation; and he agreed with me, saying he had lost a valued uncle, who had been taken out of a canoe in this same swamp by a crocodile. His uncle's ghost had become, he said, a sort of devil which had been a trial to the family ever since; and he thought it must have pulled his leg out in the way I complained of, in order to get him to join him by means of another crocodile. I thanked him for the information and said it quite explained the affair, and I should do my best to prevent another member of the family from entering the state of devildom by aiming blows in the direction of any leg or arm I saw that uncle devil pulling out to place within reach of the crocodiles.

Great regions of mangrove-swamps are a characteristic feature of the West African Coast. The first of these lies north of Sierra Leone; then they occur, but of smaller dimensions—just fringes of river-outfalls—until you get to Lagos, when you strike the greatest of them all: the swamps of the Niger outfalls (about twenty-three rivers in all) and of the Sombreiro, New Calabar, Bonny, San Antonio, Opobo (false and true), Kwoibo, Old Calabar (with the Cross Akwayafe Qwa Rivers) and Rio del Rey Rivers. The whole of this great stretch of coast is a mangrove-swamp, each river silently rolling down its great mass of mud-laden waters and constituting each in itself a very pretty problem to the navigator by its network of intercommunicating creeks, and the sand and mud bar which it forms off its entrance by dropping its heaviest mud; its lighter mud is carried out beyond its bar and makes the nasty-smelling brown soup of the South Atlantic Ocean, with froth floating in lines and patches on it, for miles to seaward.

In this great region of swamps every mile appears like every other mile until you get well used to it, and are able to distinguish the little local peculiarities at the entrance of the


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 rivers and in the winding of the creeks, a thing difficult even for the most experienced navigator to do during those thick wool-like mists called smokes, which hang about the whole Bight from November till May (the dry season), sometimes lasting all day, sometimes clearing off three hours after sunrise.

The upper or north-westerly part of the swamp is round the mouths of the Niger, and it successfully concealed this fact from geographers down to 1830, when the series of heroic journeys made by Mungo Park, Clapperton, and the two Landers finally solved the problem—a problem that was as great and which cost more men's lives than even the discovery of the sources of the Nile.

That this should have been so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth century, but they were not recognised as belonging to the Niger. Some geographers held that the Senegal or the Gambia was its outfall; others that it was the Zaire (Congo); others that it did not come out on the West Coast at all, but got mixed up with the Nile in the middle of the continent, and so on. Yet when you come to know the swamps this is not so strange. You find on going up what looks like a big river—say Forcados, two and a half miles wide at the entrance and a real bit of the Niger. Before you are up it far great, broad, business-like-looking river entrances open on either side, showing wide rivers, mangrove-walled, but two-thirds of them are utter frauds which will ground you within half an hour of your entering them. Some few of them do communicate with other main channels to the great upper river, and others are main channels themselves; but most of them intercommunicate with each other and lead nowhere in particular, and you can't even get there because of their shallowness. It is small wonder that the earlier navigators did not get far up them in sailing ships, and that the problem had to be solved by men descending the main stream of the Niger before it commences


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RV 289 (Rh)


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1. is when it first comes into being that a tree puts forth the shoots that are later on to be its principal branches, and it is in this first school that we must plant in a man the seeds of all the knowledge with which we wish him to be equipped in his journey through life. A brief survey of the whole of knowledge will show the possibility of this, and this survey can easily be made if we bring everything under twenty headings.

2. (i) Metaphysic (as it is called) should certainly be our starting-point, since the first conceptions that children have are general and confused. They see, hear, taste, and touch, but are ignorant of the exact object of their sensations. They commence, therefore, by learning the general concepts: something, nothing, it is, it is not, thus, otherwise, where, when, like, unlike, etc., and these are nothing but the prime concepts of metaphysic.

3. (ii) In physics, a boy, during the first six years of his life, can be brought to know what are water, earth, air, fire, rain, snow, frost, stone, iron, trees, grass, birds, fishes, oxen, etc. He may also learn the names and uses of the members of his body, or at any rate of the external ones. At this age these things are easily learned, and pave the way for natural science.

4. (iii) A boy learns the elements of optics when he begins to distinguish and to call by their names light, dark-


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 to what we in Devonshire should call "squander itself about" in all these channels. And in addition it must be remembered that the natives with whom these trading vessels dealt, first for slaves, afterwards for palm-oil, were not, and are not now, members of the Lo family of savages. Far from it: they do not go in for "gentle smiles," but for murdering any unprotected boat's crew they happen to come across, not only for a love of sport but to keep white traders from penetrating to the trade-producing interior, and spoiling prices. And the region is practically foodless. But I need not here go into further particulars regarding the discovery of the connection between the Niger and its delta. It is just the usual bad ju-ju of all big African rivers. If you first find the mouth, as in the case of the Nile, you have awful times finding the source. If you find the upper waters, you have awful times in discovering the mouth. If you find a bit of its middle, like the Congo, you have awful times in both directions, but fortunately the Congo does play fair and does not go and split itself up and dive into a mass of mangrove-swamps like the Niger; so that bit of river work at least was easier.

The rivers of the great mangrove-swamp from the Sombreiro to the Rio del Rey are now known pretty surely not to be branches of the Niger, but the upper regions of this part of the Bight are much neglected by English explorers. I believe the great swamp region of the Bight of Biafra is the greatest in the world, and that in its immensity and gloom it has a grandeur equal to that of the Himalayas. I am not saying a beauty; I own I see a great beauty in it sometimes, but it is evidently not of a popular type, for I can never persuade my companions down in the Rivers to recognise it; still it produces an emotion in the stoutest-hearted among them; yea, even in those who have sailed the world round; who have cruised for years in the Southern seas, know their West Indies by heart, have run regularly for years to Rio de Janeiro, and have times and again been to where "thy towers, they say, gleam fair, Bombay, across the deep blue sea."

Take any such a man, educated or not, and place him on Bonny or Forcados River in the wet season on a Sunday—Bonny for choice. Forcados is good. You'll keep Forcados


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 ness, and shade, and to know the difference between the principal colours, white, black, red, etc.

5. (iv) The rudiments of astronomy will consist in knowing what is meant by the heavens, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and in watching their rising and their setting daily.

6. (v) We know the elements of geography when we learn the nature of mountains, valleys, plains, rivers, villages, citadels, or states, according to the situation of the place in which we are brought up.

7. (vi) The basis of chronology is laid, if the boy understand what is meant by an hour, a day, a week, or a year; or what summer and winter are; or the signification of the terms “yesterday,” “the day before yesterday,” “to-morrow,” “the day after to-morrow,” etc.

8. (vii) The commencement of history consists in recollecting and reporting what has recently happened, or how this or that person has carried out this or that matter; though this exercise should only relate to some incident in the child’s life.

9. (viii) The seeds of arithmetic will be planted if the child understand what is meant by “much” and “little,” can count up to ten, can see that three are more than two, and that one added to three makes four.

10. (ix) He will possess the elements of geometry if he know what we mean by “large” and “small,” “long” and “short,” “broad” and “narrow,” “thick” and “thin”; what we signify by a line, a cross, or a circle, and how we measure objects in feet and yards.

11. (x) The elements of statics will have been learned if the children see objects weighed in scales, or acquire the power of telling the approximate weight of objects by weighing them in their hands.

12. (xi) They will receive a training in mechanics if they are permitted or are actually taught to employ their hands continually; for instance, to move something from one place to another, to arrange something else in one way or another, to construct something, or to pull something to


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"The hounds which we call Saint Hubert's hounds, are commonly all blacke, yet neuertheless, their race is so mingled at these days, that we find them of all colours. These are the hounds which the abbots of St Hubert haue always kept some of their race or kind, in honour or remembrance of the saint, which was a hunter with S. Eustace. Whereupon we may conceaue that (by the grace of God) all good huntsmen shall follow them into paradise. To returne vnto my former purpose, this kind of dogges hath beene dispersed thorough the countries of Henault, Lorayne, Flaunders, and Burgoyne. They are mighty of body, neuerthelesse their legges are low and short, likewise they are not swift, although they be very good of sent, hunting chaces which are farre straggled, fearing neither water nor cold, and doe more couet the chaces that smell, as foxes, bore, and such like, than other, because they find themselues neither of swiftnes nor courage to hunt and kill the chases that are lighter and swifter. The bloudhounds of this colour prooue good, especially those that are coleblacke, but I make no great account to breede on them, or to keepe the kind, and yet I found a booke which a hunter did dedicate to a prince of Lorayne, which seemed to loue hunting much, wherein was a blason which the same hunter gaue to his bloodhound, called Souyllard, which was white:


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 pieces, to make knots or to undo them, and so forth; the very things that children of this age love to do. As these actions are nothing but the efforts of an active mind to realise itself in mechanical production, they should not be hindered, but rather encouraged and skilfully guided.

13. (xii) The elements of the process of reasoning, namely dialectic, are learned when the child observes that conversations are carried on by means of question and answer, and himself acquires the habit of asking and answering questions. He should, however, be taught to ask sensible questions and to give direct answers, and also not to wander from the point at issue.

14. (xiii) The grammar of childhood consists in learning to speak the mother-tongue correctly, that is to say, in pronouncing with distinctness the letters, syllables, and words.

15. (xiv) The beginnings of rhetoric consist in imitating the figures of speech that occur in family conversation, but more especially in the appropriate use of gesture, and in inflecting the voice so as to suit the words; that is to say, the voice should be raised on the last syllables of words, in asking questions, and lowered in answering them. This and similar points are acquired naturally, but a little instruction is of great assistance if any mistakes are made.

16. (xv) Children may get some notion of poetry by learning a number of verses off by heart, for preference those that contain some moral sentiment.

17. (xvi) They will take their first steps in music by learning easy hymns and psalms. This exercise should form part of their daily devotions.

18. (xvii) The rudiments of economics are acquired when the child learns the names of the various members of a family, that is to say, what is meant by the terms father, mother, maid-servant, man-servant, etc.; or the various parts of a house, as hall, kitchen, bedroom, stable; or the names of domestic utensils, as table, plate, knife, broom, etc.


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 19. (xviii) It is not so easy to give a foretaste of politics, as at this age the understanding is only sufficiently developed to take in household affairs. Some attempt, however, may be made. It may be pointed out, for instance, that, in a state, some men meet together in a council-chamber and are called councillors, and that of these some are called members, others ministers, others lawyers, and so forth.

20. (xix) But it is of morals (ethics), in particular, that the foundations should be solidly laid, for to a well-educated youth we wish the practice of virtue to be second nature. For instance,

(1) Temperance should be practised by never overfilling the stomach, and by never taking more food than is necessary to appease hunger and thirst.

(2) Cleanliness should be practised at meals, and in the treatment of clothes, dolls, and toys.

(3) Reverence should be shown by the child to his superiors.

(4) Obedience to both commands and prohibitions should always be willing and prompt.

(5) Truth should always be religiously observed. Falsehood and deceit should never be permitted, whether in jest or in earnest (for jests of this kind may degenerate into a serious evil).

(6) They will learn justice if they never touch, take, keep, or hide anything that belongs to any one else, if they annoy no one, and envy no one.

(7) It is of greater importance that they learn to practise charity, so that they may be ready to give alms to those whom need compels to ask for them. For love is the especial virtue of Christians. Christ bids us practise it; and, now that the world is growing aged and cold, it is greatly to the interest of the Church to kindle in men’s hearts the flame of love.

(8) Children should also be taught to occupy themselves continually, either with work or with play, so that idleness may become intolerable to them.


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 (9) They should be taught to speak but little and to refrain from saying all that rises to their lips, nay, even to maintain absolute silence when the occasion demands it; that is to say, when others are speaking, when any distinguished person is present, and when the circumstances demand silence.

(10) It is also important that they learn patience in infancy, since this will be of use to them throughout their whole lives. In this way the passions may be subdued before they acquire strength, while reason, and not impulse, will gain the upper hand.

(11) Politeness and readiness to help others is a great ornament of youth, and, indeed, of every age. This also should be learned in the first six years, that our youths may lose no opportunity of rendering services to those whom they meet.

(12) Nor must we omit to train them in good manners, that they may do nothing stupidly or boorishly. To this end they should learn the manners of polite society; such as how to shake hands, how to make a modest request when they want anything, and how to bend the knee and kiss the hand gracefully when returning thanks for a kindness.

21. (xx) Finally, by the time they are six years old, boys should have made considerable progress in religion and piety; that is to say, they should have learned the heads of the Catechism and the principles of Christianity, and should understand these and live up to them as far as their age permits. Thus, by realising that the Deity is ever present, by seeing God around them, and by fearing Him as the just avenger of the wicked, they will be prevented from committing any sinful act; while by loving, reverencing, and praising in Him the just recompenser of the righteous, and by seeking for His compassion in life and in death, they will be led to omit no righteous act that they think may please Him, will acquire the habit of living as if they were in God’s presence, and (as the Scripture saith) will walk with God.


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Whereupon we may presume that some of the kind prooue white sometimes, but they are not of the kind of the Greffiers or Bouxes, which we hauc at these dayes."—The noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, translated and collected for the use of all Noblemen and Gentlemen. Lond. 1611. 4. p. 15.

When the stag turned to bay, the ancient hunter had the perilous task of going in upon, and killing or disabling the desperate animal. At certain times of the year this was held particularly dangerous, a wound received from a stag's horns being then deemed poisonous, and more dangerous than one from the tusks of a boar, as the old rhyme testifies:

At all times, however, the task was dangerous, and to be adventured upon wisely and warily, either by getting behind the stag while he was gazing on the hounds, or by watching an opportunity to gallop roundly in upon him, and kill him with the sword. See many directions to this purpose in the Booke


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 of Hunting, chap. 41. Wilson the historian has recorded a providential escape which befel him in this hazardous sport, while a youth and follower of the Earl of Essex.

"Sir Peter Lee, of Lime, in Cheshire, invited my lord one summer, to hunt the stagg. And having a great stagg in chace, and many gentlemen in the pursuit, the stagg took soyle. And divers, whereof I was one, alighted, and stood with swords drawne, to have a cut at him, at his coming out of the water. The staggs there being wonderfully fierce and dangerous, made us youths more eager to be at him. But he escaped us all. And it was my misfortune to be hindered of my coming nere him, the way being sliperie, by a fall; which gave occasion to some, who did not know mee, to speak as if I had falne for feare. Which being told me, I left the stagg, and followed the gentleman who [first] spake it. But I found him of that cold temper, that it seems his words made an escape from him; as by his denial and repentance it appeared. But this made mee more violent in pursuite of the stagg, to recover my reputation. And I happened to be the only horseman in, when the dogs sett him up at bay; and approaching nere him on horsebacke, hee broke through the dogs, and run at mee, and tore my horse's side with his hornes, close by my thigh. Then I quitted my horse, and grew more cunning (for the dogs had sette him up againe), stealing behind him with my sword, and cut his ham-strings; and then got upon his back, and cut his throate; which, as I was doing, the company came in, and bla-


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 scenery "indelibly limned on the tablets of your mind when a yesterday has faded from its page," after you have spent even a week waiting for the Lagos branch-boat on its inky waters. But Bonny! Well, come inside the bar and anchor off the factories: seaward there is the foam of the bar gleaming and wicked-white against a leaden sky and what there is left of Breaker Island. In every other direction you will see the apparently endless walls of mangrove, unvarying in colour, unvarying in form, unvarying in height, save from perspective. Beneath and between you and them lie the rotting mud waters of Bonny River, and away up and down river, miles of rotting mud waters fringed with walls of rotting mud mangrove-swamp. The only break in them—one can hardly call it a relief to the scenery—are the gaunt black ribs of the old hulks, once used as trading stations, which lie exposed at low water near the shore, protruding like the skeletons of great unclean beasts who have died because Bonny water was too strong even for them.

Raised on piles from the mud shore you will see the white-painted factories and their great store-houses for oil; each factory likely enough with its flag at half-mast, which does not enliven the scenery either, for you know it is because somebody is "dead again." Throughout and over all is the torrential downpour of the wet-season rain, coming down night and day with its dull roar. I have known it rain six mortal weeks in Bonny River, just for all the world as if it were done by machinery, and the interval that came then was only a few wet days, whereafter it settled itself down to work again in the good West Coast waterspout pour for more weeks. I fancy junior clerks of the weather-department must be entrusted with the Bight of Biafra's weather, on account of its extreme simplicity; their duty is just to turn on so many months' wet, and then a tornado season—one tornado administered every forty-eight hours; then stop all water supply and turn on sun; then a tornado season as before, and back again to the water tap. But I cannot say I think the weather does them any credit. Tornados frequently come twice a day, and they frequently leave the water tap running a month more than they ought to. The senior clerks should


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 22. We shall thus be able to apply to Christian children the words that the Evangelist uses of Christ Himself: “He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men” (Luke ii. 52).

23. We have now described the limits and the tasks of the Mother-School. It is impossible to give a more detailed account, or a time-table stating how much work should be done in each year, month, and day (as is both possible and desirable in the Vernacular-School and in the Latin-School), for two reasons: firstly, because it is not possible for parents, who have their household duties to occupy them, to proceed as methodically as a schoolmaster can, whose sole occupation is to instruct youth; secondly, because, in respect of intellect and teachableness, some children develope much sooner than others. Some children of two years old can speak with ease, and display great intelligence, while others are scarcely equal to them when five years old. With this early education, therefore, all detail must be left to the prudence of the parent.

24. Assistance, however, may be given in two ways. In the first place, a hand-book should be written for parents and nurses, that they may have their duties in black and white before their eyes. This hand-book should contain a brief description of the various subjects in which the children should be educated, and should state the occasions that are most suitable for each, and with what words and what gestures it is best to instil them. Such a book with the title, “Informatory of the Mother-School,” has still to be written by me.

25. The other aid to study in the Mother-School is a picture-book which should be put straight into the child’s hands. At this age instruction should mainly be carried on through the medium of sense-perception, and, as sight is the chiefest of the senses, our object will be attained if we give the children pictures of the most important objects in physics, optics, astronomy, geometry, etc., and these may be arranged in the order of the subjects of knowledge that we have just sketched. In this book should be depicted


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 mountains, valleys, trees, birds, fishes, horses, oxen, sheep, and men of varied age and height. Light and darkness also should be represented, as well as the heavens with the sun, moon, stars, and clouds, while to these the principal colours should be added. Articles connected with the house and the workshop, such as pots, plates, hammers, pincers, etc., should not be omitted. State functionaries should be represented; the king with his sceptre and crown, the soldier with his arms, the husbandman with his plough, the waggoner with his waggon, and the post-cart going at full speed; while over each picture should be written the name of the object that it represents, as “house,” “ox,” “dog,” “tree,” etc.

26. This picture-book will be of use in three ways: (1) It will assist objects to make an impression on the mind, as we have already pointed out. (2) It will accustom the little ones to the idea that pleasure is to be derived from books. (3) It will aid them in learning to read. For, since the name of each object is written above the picture that represents it, the first steps in reading may thus be made.


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1.  I demonstrated that all the young of both sexes should be sent to the public schools, I now add that they should first be sent to the Vernacular-School. Some writers hold the contrary opinion. Zepper (Pol. bk. i. ch. 7) and Alsted (Scholastic, ch. 6) would persuade us that only those boys and girls who are destined for manual labour should be sent to the Vernacular-School, while boys whose parents wish them to receive a higher education should be sent straight to the Latin-School. Moreover, Alsted adds: “Some will doubtless disagree with me, but the system that I propose is the one which I would wish adopted by those whose educational interests I have most at heart.” From this view my whole didactic system forces me to dissent.

2. (i) The education that I propose includes all that is proper for a man, and is one in which all men who are born into this world should share. All therefore, as far as is possible, should be educated together, that they may stimulate and urge on one another.

(ii) We wish all men to be trained in all the virtues, especially in modesty, sociability, and politeness, and it is therefore undesirable to create class distinctions at such an early age, or to give some children the opportunity of considering their own lot with satisfaction and that of others with scorn.


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 med my rashness for running such a hazard."— Desiderata Curiosa, II. 464.

Until the present road was made through the romantic pass which I have presumptuously attempted to describe in the preceding stanzas, there was no mode of issuing out of the defile, called the Trosachs, excepting by a sort of ladder, composed of the branches and roots of the trees.

The clans who inhabited the romantic regions in the neighbourhood of Loch Katrine, were, even until a late period, much addicted to predatory excursions upon their lowland neighbours.

"In former times, those parts of this district, which are situated beyond the Grampian range, were rendered almost inaccessible, by strong barriers of rocks, and mountains, and lakes. It was a border country, and though on the very verge of the low country, it was almost totally sequestered from the world, and, as it were, insulated with respect to society.


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 latter, together with the marbles from the Parthenon, and the Phigalian marbles, must be reserved for a future notice.

It only remains to speak of the, and the last. The principal object contained in this room was, I believe, generally considered as the chief boast of this collection before the acquisition of the Elgin Gallery. I allude to the celebrated Discobolus. It is, undoubtedly, a noble production, full of the true air of antiquity in every part of it; and the anatomical details are made out with infinite truth, skill, and knowledge. But I cannot think that it quite deserves the great comparative fame which it enjoys. The general attitude of the figure is not only deficient in a graceful and natural arrangement, but it is scarcely answerable to the action in which it is engaged; and the left foot, with the toes bent under it, would certainly not contribute its due degree of support to the body under its present action. I repeat, however, the details are peculiarly fine, and true.

The other most remarkable objects in this department of the gallery are No. 5—an exquisitely beautiful torso of a female statue; No. 18—an admirably spirited head of a laughing faun; and finally, a bust of a youthful female, which rises out of, and is terminated by the leaves of the lotus flower. This bust is one of the most charming works in the whole collection, Nothing can surpass the natural grace, sweetness, and intellectual beauty of its expression; and it has the rare advantage of being as perfect as when it came from the sculptor's hand, or rather it is more so, since it has received those softening and heightening touches which no hand but that of Time can give.