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Mexico is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the Latin America and Caribbean region. The energy sector is the most significant contributor to the country’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for more than 70 percent of total emissions. The agriculture and livestock sector is an additional important source of emissions (14 percent). The forest sector in Mexico is a “net carbon sink,” removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it emits. Nearly half of Mexico is covered by forest – a total of 88 million hectares.

Mexico’s geography makes it vulnerable to extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones and floods, that threaten the country’s aging transportation, power, and water infrastructure. Mexico’s economically important coastal tourism sector is also at risk from the effects of climate change. In rural areas where small-scale producers earn a large proportion of their income from agriculture, extreme temperatures and erratic rainfall drastically affect both crops and livestock.

Over the last several years, the Government of Mexico has rolled back support and investment in renewable energy, prioritizing fossil fuel projects instead. In December 2020, the Government of Mexico submitted an updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement that retains the same targets submitted in 2015 but does include more measures for climate adaptation and natural climate solutions. Key goals under Mexico’s NDC include:

 * By 2030, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent and black carbon emissions by 51 percent over a business-as-usual scenario.

 * Reach a net-zero deforestation rate by 2030.

 * Prevent and manage the negative impacts of climate change, especially among communities facing the most significant social inequalities.

 * Promote sustainable and resilient food production systems.

 * Conserve and restore biodiversity and ecosystem services.

 * Protect strategic infrastructure from the effects of climate change. USAID.GOV


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24

desires to know if he can produce any of the diatomaceous earths, such as Tripoli and other foreign deposits, and where?

?—Blomfield affirms that it does. Is this merely a fiction of the poet, or a fact vouched for by naturalists? Satisfactory information based on personal observation is desirable.

Flowers that are normally blue become white or pink when propagated from buds or cuttings, in all cases? And do blue flowers, such as those of Campanula rotundifolia become white in seedlings. If so, under what conditions do these changes occur?

poisoning plants for the herbarium some use a solution of corrosive sublimate, and with it wash over the entire specimen with a camel-hair pencil. On the other hand, some only mount their specimens with thin glue in which some corrosive sublimate has been mixed. The latter is by far the simplest plan—has experience proved it sufficient?

.—Professor De Candolle has recently observed that in some genera of plants (as Fagus) the lateral veins terminate in some species in the marginal teeth, in other species they terminate in the sinuses between the teeth, and in others they terminate partly in the teeth and partly in the sinuses. Have any of our correspondents noticed similar instances, or if they should observe such will they communicate the result of their observations?

.—A military gentleman recommended to the Cotton Supply Reporter, in a letter recently published, "in order to produce new and beautiful species of the cotton plant, as well as to insure good annual crops, to cross the several kinds of seeds by burying them together in a large hole about nine inches deep." He adds, "I beg to observe that I firmly believe that the Gnaphalium, end-weed, or dwarf cotton, is the parent stock of all cotton."—Does not such a Solomon as this deserve a Marshal's baton?

.—During a marine excursion in search of animals for the aquarium, Mr. Hughes gives a humorous account of a colloquy which took place between himself and the boatman who was with him when the above-named was captured:—"Looking, as I dare say he did, with considerable disgust at my sport, and wondering why I did not follow his example in the more utilitarian object of mackerel-fishing, he asked, with some degree of superciliousness, 'And what might be the name of that jelly-fish, sir, that you've just took?' 'It would not interest you very much, my friend,' said I; 'but, as you seem to take an interest in the specimen, I will tell you: it is Polyxenia Alderi.' 'Well, to be sure,' replied he, 'it do look summat like a X.' He alluded to the cruciform appearance of the peduncle seen from below!—The Zoologist.

.—It is with much regret that we have learnt of the death of this veteran in science. The journal he edited, and which was known by his name all over Europe, as well as in America, expired just before him. For nearly half a century he held a high position amongst scientific men on the other side the Atlantic.

!—This cry has been heard from street-vendors of fruit in the metropolis during the last two or three weeks. The fruit itself is not commonly imported. It is about the size and shape of a goose's egg, with a large concave depression at the apex, in which one may thrust the end of a thumb. Externally it is yellow, with a reddish tint on one side; small brown warts are scattered over the surface at regular distances of about three-fourths of an inch; from each of these in its early stage sharp spines are developed, but they fall away as the fruit ripens. Internally the fruit consists of a granular pulp of a deep rose colour, in which numerous seeds, about the size of hemp-seed, are imbedded. The taste is rather insipid, and the profusion of hard seeds scattered everywhere through the pulp is a great disadvantage. It does not suit the English taste, we imagine, and will scarce become a regular article of commerce. The Prickly Pear is the produce of a species of Cactus (Opuntia vulgaris), a native of North America, and closely allied to the plant on which the cochineal insect feeds. The Cactus has been introduced into the South of Europe, whence, probably, our recent importations have been derived.

!—In the first volume of "London's Magazine of Natural History" it is stated, "The common rosewood of cabinet-makers is the root of Convolvulus scoparius, common in the Canary Islands, in Rhodes, and Cyprus." No comment is necessary.

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


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 to maintain the same number of laborers as before, would be obliged to employ a greater capital. In order to get back this greater capital, together with the ordinary profits of stock, it would be necessary that he should retain a larger portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of a larger portion, of the produce of the land, and consequently that he should pay less rent to the landlord. The final payment of this rise of wages, therefore, would in this case fall upon the landlord, together with the additional profit of the farmer who had advanced it. In all cases a direct tax upon the wages of labor must, in the long run, occasion both a greater reduction in the rent of land, and a greater rise in the price of manufactured goods, than would have followed from the proper assessment of a sum equal to the produce of the tax, partly upon the rent of land, and partly upon consumable commodities.

If direct taxes upon the wages of labor have not always occasioned a proportionable rise in those wages, it is because they have generally occasioned a considerable fall in the demand for labor. The declension of industry, the decrease of employment for the poor, the diminution of the annual produce of the land and labor of the country, have gener- ally been the effects of such taxes. In consequence of them, however, the price of labor must always be higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of the demand: and this enhancement of price, together with the profit of those who advance it, must always be finally paid by the landlords and consumers.

A tax upon the wages of country labor does not raise the price of the rude produce of land in proportion to the tax; for the same reason that a tax upon the farmer's profit does not raise that price in that proportion.


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 kept back until the beginning of September. In Fantee all the inhabitants of the towns assemble under the shade of the grove adjoining the fetish hut, and a sheep and a number of fowls are killed, part of their flesh is mixed with boiled yams and palm-oil, and a portion of this mixture is placed on the heads of the images, and the remainder is thrown about before the fetish hut as a peace-offering to the deities.

At Winnebah, on the Gold Coast, there is an interesting modification in the yam custom. The principal fetish of that place, it is believed, will not be satisfied with a sheep, but he must have a deer brought alive to his temple, and there sacrificed. Accordingly on the appointed day every year when the custom is to be celebrated, almost all the inhabitants except the aged and infirm go into the adjoining country—an open park-like country, studded with clumps of trees. The women and children look on, give good advice, and shriek when necessary, while the men beat the bush with sticks, beat tom-toms, and halloo with all their might. While thus engaged, my correspondent remarks in his staid way, "sometimes a leopard starts forth, but it is usually so frightened with the noise and confusion that it scampers off in one direction as fast as the people run from it in another. When a deer is driven out, the chase begins, the people try to run it down, flinging sticks at its legs. At last it is secured and carried exultingly to the town with shoutings and drummings. On entering the town they are met by the aged people carrying staves, and, having gone in procession round the town, they proceed to the fetish house, where the animal is sacrificed, and partly offered to the fetish, partly eaten by the priests."

These yam customs are at their fullest in the Benin

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Rh vineyard, we should not have been placed exactly in that locality, unless it were the fittest spot for our toil and advancement. We must not rebel because another seems more fortunately situated, or better prepared to bring the ground he tills to fruition; we must not complain because those who have not borne with us the heat and labor of the day, receive wages as large as ours. Unless just such work were needed for our development, it would not be placed beneath our hands; unless just such toil were required for theirs, it would not be entrusted to them. Do the work, and leave the sequel to God! When the servants who have been faithful over little, or over much, receive their rewards, the mystery of our seemingly unequal lots will assuredly be revealed to us.

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 Bights, but you get a custom made for the new yam in all the districts lower down. These customs have long been credited with being stained by human sacrifices. Not altogether unjustly. You can always read human sacrifice for goats and fowls when you are considering a district inhabited by true Negroes, and the occasion is an important one, because in West Africa a human sacrifice is the most persuasive one to the fetishes. It is just with them as with chief—if you want to get some favour from him you must give him a present. A fowl or a goat or a basket of vegetables, or anything like that is quite enough for most favours, but if you want a big thing, and want it badly, you had better give him a slave, because the slave is alike more intrinsically valuable and also more useful. So far as I know, all human beings sacrificed pass into the service of the fetish they are sacrificed to. They are not merely killed that he may enjoy their blood, but that he may have their assistance. Fetishes have much to do, and an extra pair of hands is to them always acceptable. As for the importance of these harvest customs to the general system of Fetish, I think in West Africa it is small. The goings on, the licentiousness and general jollification that accompany them, upsetting law and order for days, give them a fallacious look of importance; but I think far more really near the heart of the Fetish thought-form is the lonely man who steals at night into the forest to gain from Sasabonsom a charm, and the woman who, on her way back from market, throws down before the fetish houses she passes a scrap of her purchases; compared to the cult of the law-god, well, yam customs are dirty water price, palaver, and insignificant politically.

I have dealt here with Fetish as far as the position of the

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 Absurd and destructive as such taxes are, however, they take place in many countries. In France that part of the taille which is charged upon the industry of workmen and day laborers in country villages is properly a tax of this kind. Their wages are computed according to the common rate of the district in which they reside, and that they may be as little liable as possible to any overcharge, their yearly gains are estimated at no more than two hundred working days in the year. The tax of each individual is varied from year to year according to different circumstances of which the collector or the commissary, whom the intendant appoints to assist him, are the judges. In Bohemia, in consequence of the alteration in the system of finances which was begun in 1748, a very heavy tax is imposed upon the industry of artificers. They are divided into four classes. The highest class pays a hundred florins a year; which, at two-and-twenty pence halfpenny a florin, amounts to £9 7s. 6d. The second class are taxed at seventy; the third at fifty; and the fourth, comprehending artificers in villages, and the lowest class of those in towns, at twenty-five florins.

The recompense of ingenious artists and of men of liberal professions, I have endeavored to show in the First Book, necessarily keeps a certain proportion to the emoluments of inferior trades; a tax upon this recompense, therefore, could have no other effect than to raise it somewhat higher than in proportion to the tax. If it did not rise in this manner, the ingenious arts and the liberal professions, being no longer upon a level with other trades, would be so much deserted that they would soon return to that level.


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Rh Exchange who will teach you much better than the philosophers."

The last book opens with a saying of the elder Cato's, which Cicero much admires, though he says modestly that he was never able in his own case quite to realise it—"I am never less idle than when I am idle, and never less alone than when alone." Retirement and solitude are excellent things, Cicero always declares; generally contriving at the same time to make it plain, as he does here, that his own heart is in the world of public life. But at least it gives him time for writing. He "has written more in this short time, since the fall of the Commonwealth, than in all the years during which it stood."

He here resolves the question, If honour and interest seem to clash, which is to give way? Or rather, it has been resolved already; if the right be always the expedient, the opposition is seeming, not real. He puts a great many questions of casuistry, but it all amounts to this: the good man keeps his oath, "though it were to his own hindrance." But it is never to his hindrance; for a violation of his conscience would be the greatest hindrance of all.

In this treatise, more than in any of his other philosophical works, Cicero inclines to the teaching of the Stoics. In the others, he is rather the seeker after truth than the maintainer of a system. His is the critical eclecticism of the 'New Academy'—the spirit so prevalent in our own day, which fights against the shackles of dogmatism. And with all his respect for the nobler side of Stoicism, he is fully alive to its de-

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E English people have the credit of being one of the most utilitarian nations under the sun; yet, amongst ourselves, as though we believed it not, we call the present a utilitarian age, and flatter ourselves that during this nineteenth century we have become more practical. Now-a-days we are too utilitarian to erect handsome structures or do handsome things without first inquiring, What good will come of it? If, after a long sum in compound addition and subtraction, there appears a good balance in favour of the project, "Cui bono" kicks the beam, and the thing is done. Can we be surprised, then, after having worshipped this idol all the day, at having it flung at our heads at night? Shall we bend before it in our counting-houses, make the Ledger our prayer-book, and Contracts our homilies, and go home without expecting to see the shadow of the idol there? No! by the manes of "Porter's Progress," let's be true and faithful worshippers, even though we cast ourselves beneath the wheels, so that the car of [sic]Juggernath may pass over us!

Try the experiment with our youthful population. Pick up a little weed from the wayside in their presence; gaze at it earnestly, blow back the petals of the flower, take out a pocket lens, examine yet more closely, turn over the leaves, thoughtfully, but carefully, inspect it thoroughly, minutely; place it erect within the lining of your hat; return that undignified cylinder to its place of honour on the top of your head, and move on. Think you that this operation can be brought to a conclusion before you are assailed with the inquiry, "What are you going to do with it, what good is it?" Vain hope, for should you perchance escape it there, it will be at home waiting your return, and no sooner will you take the innocent little weed from its resting-place, than you will have to give an account of all the pleasures and profits, uses and benefits that you are ever likely to derive form preserving such rubbish between clean sheets of paper. How vain is it, under such circumstances, to attempt to convey to the mind of the inquirer any conviction unassociated with money value or domestic economy! If it can be proved that your little plant of knotgrass, or pimpernel, or barebell is a certain cure for croup, or will flavour a stew like parsley or tarragon, then it would be admitted that it really is of use; or that a handful would realize a shilling in Covent Garden Market, in that case they would even turn botanists themselves; but, not to be worth a farthing in hard cash, or furnish food for a canary, is sufficient to prove them worthy of wholescale condemnation as rubbish, and the collector little better than a fool.

Mrs. Partington, with the encroaching sea at the end of her mop, could not have trundled more fruitlessly than those kind friends who by their efforts would stay the progress of inquiry and investigation in the young student of nature, by throwing a Cui Bono at his head, provided he has acquired just sufficient knowledge to direct his investigations into a right channel. If man could live by bread alone; if his sole mission were to eat, sleep, and die; if he were content to measure his happiness by twopences, and his [sic]ecstacies by biscuits, then it would be legitimate to inquire of every pursuit that did not end in twopences or biscuits, "What good is it?" But inasmuch as there is a higher aim in life,


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 human being is concerned, because this phase may make it more comprehensible to my fellow white men who regard the human being as the main thing in the created universe, but I must beg you to remember that this idea of the importance of the human race is not held by the African. The individual is supremely important to himself, and he values his friends and relations and so on, but abstract affection for humanity at large or belief in the sanctity of the lives of people with whom he is unrelated and unacquainted, the African barely possesses. He is only capable of feeling this abstract affection when under the influence of one of the great revealed religions which place the human being higher in the scale of Creation. This comes from no cruelty of mind per se, but is the result of the hardness of the fight he has to fight against the world; and possessing this view of the equal, if not greater importance of many of the things he sees round him, the African conceives these things also have their fetish—a fetish on the same ground idea, but varying from human fetish. The politics of Mungo mah Lobeh, the mountain, with the rest of nature, he believes to exist. The Alemba rapid has its affairs clearly, but the private matters of these very great people are things the human being had better keep out of; and it is advisable for him to turn his attention to making terms with them and go into their presence with his petition when their own affairs are prosperous, when their tempers are not as it were up over some private ultra-human affair of their own. I well remember the opinions expressed by my companions regarding the folly—mine, of course—of obtruding ourselves on Mungo when that noble mountain was vexed too much, and the opinion expressed by an Efik friend in a tornado that came down on us. Well, there Well, there you have

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 this difference. I instinctively say "us." She did not think we were objects of interest to the tornado or the forest it was scourging. She took it they had a sort of family row on, and we might get hit with the bits, therefore it was highly unfortunate that we were present at the meeting. Again, it is the same with the surf. The boat-boys see it's in a nasty temper, they keep out of it, it may be better to-morrow, then it will tolerate them, for it has no real palaver with them individually. Of course you can go and upset the temper of big nature spirits, but when you are not there they have their own affairs.

Hence it comes that we have in Fetish a religion in which its believers do not hold that devotion to religion constitutes Virtue. The ordinary citizen is held to be most virtuous who is least mixed up in religious affairs. He can attain Virtue, the love and honour of his fellow-men, by being a good husband and father, an honest man in trade, a just man in the palaver-house, and he must, for the protection of his interests, that is to say, not only his individual well-being, but the well-being of those dependent on him, go in to a certain extent for religious practices. He must associate with spirits because spirits are in all things and everywhere and over everything; and the good citizen deals with the other spirits as he deals with that class of spirits we call human beings; he does not cheat the big ones of their dues; he spills a portion of his rum to them; he gives them their white calicoes; he treats his slave spirits honourably, and he uses his slave spirits for no bad purpose, and if any great grief falls on him he calls on the great over-lord of gods, mentioning these things. But men are not all private citizens; there are men whose destiny puts them in high places—men who are not only house

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182 dence, and we must inspire them with an admiration for our abilities. The shortest and most direct road to real influence is that which Socrates recommends—"for a man to be that which he wishes men to take him for."

Then follow some maxims which show how thoroughly conservative was the policy of our philosopher. The security of property he holds to be the security of the state. There must be no playing with vested rights, no unequal taxation, no attempt to bring all things to a level, no cancelling of debts and redistribution of land (he is thinking of the baits held out by Catiline), none of those traditional devices for winning favour with the people, which tend to destroy that social concord and unity which make a commonwealth. "What reason is there," he asks, "why, when I have bought, built, repaired, and laid out much money, another shall come and enjoy the fruits of it?"

And as a man should be careful of the interests of the social body, so he should be of his own. But Cicero feels that in descending to such questions he is somewhat losing sight of his dignity as a moralist. "You will find all this thoroughly discussed," he says to his son, "in Xenophon's Œconomics—a book which, when I was just your age, I translated from the Greek into Latin." [One wonders whether young Marcus took the hint.] "And if you want instruction in money matters, there are gentlemen sitting on the

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 fathers but who are tribe fathers. They, to protect and further the interests of those under them, must venture greatly and further, and deal with more powerful spirits, as it were, their social equals in spiritdom. These good chiefs in their higher grade dealings preserve the same clean-handed conduct. And besides these there are those men, the Fetish men, who devote their lives to combating evil actions through witches and miscellaneous spirits who prey on mankind. These men have to make themselves important to important spirits. It is risky work for them, for spirits are a risky set to deal with. Up here in London, when I have to deal with a spirit as manifest in the form of an opinion, or any big mind-form incarnate in one man, or in thousands, I often think of an African friend of mine who had troubles, and I think sympathetically, for his brother explained the affair to me. He was an educated man. "You see," he said, "my brother's got a strong Ju Ju, but it's a damned rocky Ju Ju to get on with."

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 even at their worst they possess great flotage, thought their very lightness causes them to wallow knee-deep as they whirl headlong down a fall at a pace that is exhilarating, with the angry waters roaring around and over them. The more shrunken the stream, the more desperate the pace at which a bamboo raft spins down the rapids, for the height of the fall suffers no change, while in the dry season the volume of water is insufficient to break the drop and soften the descent.

Thus it befalls that, when the river is low, a raft sent charging down this big rapid of the Telom, between the sheer walls of granite, comes to eternal grief when it strikes the leaning rock which obstructs the channel near its foot. A sound like a scream—the agonized pain cry of the bamboos—is heard above the tumult of the waters as the raft strikes the boulder; another second, and the bow is fast wedged beneath the projecting ledge of rock; again the bamboos give a despairing shriek, and the tail of the raft rises swiftly to a perpendicular position. For a moment it waggles irresolutely, and then, like the sail of a windmill, it whirls round in the air, the bow held firmly in position by the rock, serving as its axle, and smites the waters beyond with a resounding flap. Every one of the bamboos is smashed in an instant into starting, shrieking slivers, which have edges that can cut as sharply as the keenest knife. If there be men on board, they are cast high into the air, are broken pitilessly upon the rocks, are wounded horribly by the matchwood that was


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 INDIA on the Eve of the BRITISH CONQUEST. A Historical Sketch. By, M.A., Reader in Indian Law and History in the University of Oxford, formerly Professor of History in the Elphinstone College, Bombay. Post 8vo. 8s.

MOGUL EMPIRE. From the Death of Aurungzeb to the Overthrow of the Mahratta Power. By B.C.S. 8vo. 10s. 6d.

This work fills up a blank between the ending of Elphinstone's and the commencement of Thornton's Histories.

HISTORY OF THE PUNJAB, and of the Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of the Sikhs. By 2 vols. Post 8vo. 8s.

INDIAN WISDOM, or, Examples of the Religious, Philosophical and Ethical Doctrines of the Hindús. With a brief History of the Chief Departments of Sanscrit Literature, and some account of the past and present condition of India, Moral and Intellectual. By M.A., Boden Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford. Third Edition. 8vo. 15s.

VAMBERY'S SKETCHES OF CENTRAL ASIA. Additional Chapters on My Travels and Adventures, and of the Ethnology of Central Asia. By. 8vo. 16s.

THE USEFUL PLANTS OF INDIA, with Notices of their chief value in Commerce, Medicine, and the Arts. By Second Edition, with Additions and Corrections. Royal 8vo. 16s.

THORNTON'S GAZETTEER OF INDIA. Compiled chiefly from the records of the India Office. By 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 1015. With Map. 21s.

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 once their raft, or are to be seen battling desperately with that raging torrent. If, however, he can reach the water without sustaining serious hurt, a stout swimmer has a good chance of life, for a strong current sets off, as well as toward, every midstream boulder, and, if use be made of this, a man may win in safety to the calmer waters down below the rapid.

Jĕram Mûsoh Kâram—the Rapid of the Drowned Enemy—this place is named in the vernacular; and native tradition tells of an invading expedition utterly destroyed in this terrible, rock-bound death-trap. But men who know the records of the river tell you that it spares friend no more than it once spared foe; and since Malays are ever wont to take their chance of danger rather than submit to the abandonment of a raft, and to the labour which constructing another in its place entails, the number of its kills waxes larger and larger as the years slip away.

The probability that its supply of victims will be fairly constant is strengthened by the fact that it is precisely at the season when the river is at its lowest that the valley of the Tělom fills with life. The black tin ore, found in the sands and shingles which form the bed of the stream, is only accessible during a drought, and the Malays come hither in little family parties to wash for it. All day long, men, women, and small children stand in the shallows. deftly manipulating their big flat wooden trays, sluicing the lighter sands over the edges, picking out and throwing away the pebbles, and storing the little pinches of almost pure tin, which in the end


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 remain, in the hollows of bamboos, which they carry slung from their waists. At night-time they camp in rude palm-leaf shelters, built on the banks of he stream; roast in the cleft of a split stick such fish as they have caught; boil their ration of rice; and when full-fed, discuss the results of the day's toil, ere they lie down to sleep, lulled by the night songs of the forest around them. The quantity of tin won by them is not large; but Malays are capable of a great deal of patient labour if it chances to take a form that they happen, for the moment, to find congenial, and these tin-washing expeditions serve to break the monotony of their days.

During the dry season, moreover, the jungles are one degree less damp and sodden than at other limes, and the searchers for gĕtah rattan, and other jungle produce, seize the opportunity to penetrate into the gloomy depths of the forest where these things are to be found. Nothing is more dreary than a sojourn in such places when the rains come in with the northeast monsoon, for then the sun is unable to force a ray through the sodden canopy of leaves and branches overhead to dry what the downpours have soaked, the drip from above never ceases, even when for a little the rain abates, and the leeches go upon the warpath in their millions during all the hours of daylight. By a merciful disposition of Providence, these rapacious and insidious blood suckers go to bed at dusk like humans. Were it otherwise, a night passed among them in a Malayan forest would mean certain death.


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 Meanwhile, the magnificent dûri-an groves, which grow on the banks of the upper reaches of the Tělom, are rich with a profusion of fruit, and the semi-wild tribes of Sâkai come from far and near to camp beneath the shade of the giant trees, and to gorge rapturously. They erect small shaeks just beyond. the range of the falling fruit, for a blow from a dûri-an, which is about the size of a Rugby football, and covered all over with stout, pyramidal thorns, is a by no means infrequent cause of death in the Malay Peninsula. By day and night they maintain their watch, and when, during the hours of darkness, the dulled thud of the fruit falling into the underwood is heard, a wild stampede ensues from the shelters of the jungle dwellers, in order that it may be immediately secured. This is necessary, for every denizen of the forest, including the big carnivora, delight in the dûri-an, and are attracted to it by its strange and wonderful smell; and a man must be quick in the gathering if he would avoid a fight for possession with some of the most formidable of his natural enemies.

But it is not only by human beings that the valley of the Tělom is overrun during the dry season of the year; for it is then that the great salt lick of Mîsong is crowded with game. The Mîsong is a small stream that falls into the Tělom on its left bank, some miles above the rapids. About a couple of thousand yards up the Misong, from its point of junction with the Tělom, there is a spot where its right bank, though covered with virgin forest, is


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 much trodden by the passage of game. The underwood, usually as dense as a thick-set hedge, is here so worn down that it is thin and sparse. The trees are smooth in places, and the lower branches have been trimmed evenly, just as those of the chestnuts in Bushy Park are trimmed by the fallow-deer; and here and there the trunks are marked by great belts of mnd, eight feet from the ground, showing where wild elephants have stood, rocking to and fro, gently rubbing their backs against the rough bark. Great clefts are worn in the river bank on both sides of the stream, such as the kine make near Malayan villages at the points where they are accustomed daily to go down to water; but on the Mîsong these have been trodden down by the passage of wild animals.

A bold sweep of the stream forms at this point a rounded headland, flat and level, and covering, it may be, some two acres of ground. Here and there patches of short, closely cropped grass colour the ground a brilliant green, but, for the most part, the earth underfoot has the appearance of a deeply ploughed field. This is the salt lick of Mîsong. The soil is here impregnated with saline deposits. and the beasts of the forest come hither in their multitudes to lick the salt, which to them—as to the aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula also—is "sweeter" than anything in the world. Sâkai or Sĕmang will squat around a wild-banana leaf, on to which a bag of rock salt has been emptied, and devour it gluttonously, sucking their fingers, like a pack of greedy


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 children round a box of sugar plums. It is Nature in them howling for the corrective which alone can keep scurvy at arm's length from the perpetual vegetarian; and the beasts of the forest, driven by a similar craving, risk all dangers to obey a like command. When the waters of the Mîsong are swollen with rain, the salt cannot be got at, and the lick is deserted, but in dry weather all the surrounding jungle is alive with game, and at nighttime it is transformed into a sort of Noah's Ark. In the soft and yielding earth may be seen the slot of deer of a dozen varieties; the hoofprints of the wild buffalo, the strongest of all the beasts; the long sharp scratches made by the toes of the rhinoceros; the pitted trail and the deep rootings of the wild swine; the pad track of the tiger; the tiny footprints of the kanchil, the perfectly formed little antelope, which is not quite as heavy as a rabbit; and the great round sockets punched in the clay by the ponderous feet of elephants. Here come, too, the black panther and the tapir, the packs of wild dogs, which always hunt in company, and the jungle cats of all kinds, from the brute which resembles a tiger in all save its bulk, to the slender spotted creature, built as lightly as a greyhound. Sitting in the fork of a tree, high above the heads of the game, so that your wind cannot disturb them, you may watch all the animal life of the jungle come and go within a few yards of you, and if you have the patience to keep your rifle quiet, you may see a thousand wonderful things on a clear moonlit night.


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 It was to the salt lick of Mîsong that my friend. Pandak Âris came one day, with two Sâkai companions, from his house below the rapids. When I knew him, he was an old man of seventy or thereabout, wizened and dry, with deep furrows of wrinkle on face and body. His left arm was shrivelled and powerless, and he bore many ugly scars besides. His closely cropped hair was white as hoarfrost, and from his chin there depended a long goat's beard of the same hue, which waggled to and fro with the notion of his lips. Two solitary yellow fangs were set in his gums, and his mouth was a cavern stained to a dark red colour with betel-nut juice. His words came indistinctly through his quid and the wad of coarse tobacco which he held wedged between his upper lip and his toothless gums; but he had many things to tell concerning the jungles in which he had lived so long, and of the Sâkai folk with whom he had associated, and, whenever I chanced to tie up my boat for the night at his bathing-raft, we were wont to sit talking till the dawn was reddening in the east, for age had made of him a very bad sleeper.

In his youth he had come across the Peninsula from Rĕmbau, near its western seaboard, to the interior of Pahang, on the other side of the main range of mountains, which run from north to south. He had had no special object in his journey, but had drifted aimlessly, as young men will, to the fate that awaited him, he knew not where. She proved to be a Jĕlai girl whose people lived near the limits of


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 the Sâkai country, and, after he had married her, they took up their abode a couple of days' journey up the Tělom River, where they might be completely alone, for no other Malays lived permanently in this valley. She had borne him three sons and two daughters, and he had planted cocoanuts and fruit trees, which now cast a grateful shade about his dwelling, and cultivated a patch of rice annually in a new clearing on the side of one of the neighbouring hills. Thus he had lived, quite contentedly, without once leaving the valley, for nearly fifty years before I first met him. He had remained, during all that long, long time, wrapped in a seclusion and in an untroubled peace and quiet almost unimaginable to a modern European; rarely seeing a strange face from year's end to year's end, concerned only with the microscopic incidents in which he was himself concerned, and entirely undisturbed by the hum and throb of the great world without. Think of it, ye white men! He had only one life on earth, and this is how he spent it—like the frog beneath the half cocoanut shell, as the Malay proverb has it, which dreams not that there are other worlds than his. Wars had raged within sixty miles of his home, but his peace had not been broken; immense changes had been wrought in political, social, and economic conditions from one end of the Peninsula to the other, but they had affected him not at all. The eternal forest, in which and by which he lived, had remained immutable; and the one great event of his life, which had scored its mark deeply upon both


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 his mind and his body, was that which had befallen him at the salt lick of Mîsong, a score of years and more before I chanced upon him.

He told me the tale brokenly, as a child might do, as he and I sat talking in the dim light of the dâmar torch, guttering on its clumsy wooden stand, set in the centre of the mat-strewn floor; and ever and anon he pointed to his stiff left arm, and to certain ugly scars upon his body, calling upon them to bear witness that he did not lie.

It was in the afternoon that Pandak Âris and his two Sakai followers reached the salt lick of Mîsong. They had been roaming through the forest all day long, blazing getah trees, for it was Pandak Âris's intention to prepare a large consignment of the precious gum, so that it might be in readiness when the washers for tin came up into the valley during the next dry season. The Malay and his Sâkai all knew the salt lick well, and as it was an open space near running water, and they were hungry after their tramp, they decided to halt here and cook rice. They built a fire near the base of a giant tree, which grew a hundred yards or so inland from the left bank of the stream, at a point where the furrowed earth of the lick begins to give place to heavy jungle. The dry sticks blazed up bravely, the flame showing pale and almost invisible in the strong sunlight of the afternoon, while thin vapours danced frenziedly above it. The small black metal rice pot was propped upon three stones in the centre of the crackling fuel, and while one of the Sâkai sat stirring


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 The emoluments of offices are not, like those of trades and professions, regulated by the free competition of the market, and do not, therefore, always bear a just proportion to what the nature of the employment requires. They are, perhaps, in most countries, higher than it requires; the persons who have the administration of government being generally disposed to reward both themselves and their immediate dependants rather more than enough. The emoluments of offices, therefore, can in most cases very well bear to be taxed. The persons, besides, who enjoy public offices, especially the more lucrative, are in all countries the objects of general envy; and a tax upon their emoluments, even though it should be somewhat higher than upon any other sort of revenue, is always a very popular tax. In England, for example, when by the land tax every other sort of revenue was supposed to be assessed at four shillings in the pound, it was very popular to lay a real tax of five shillings and sixpence in the pound upon the salaries of offices which exceeded a hundred pounds a year; the pensions of the younger branches of the royal family, the pay of the officers of the army and navy, and a few others less obnoxious to envy, excepted. There are in England no other direct taxes upon the wages of labor.

taxes which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon every different species of revenue, are capitation taxes, and taxes upon consumable commodities. These must be paid indifferently from whatever revenue the contributors


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 the rice, with a spoon improvised from a piece of wood, and the other plucked leeches from his bleeding legs, and cut them thoughtfully into pieces with his pârang, Pandak Âris began to prepare a quid of betel nut from the ingredients, which he carried in a set of little brass boxes, wrapped in a cotton handkerchief. The gentle murmur of bird and insect, which precedes the wild clamour of the sunset hour, was beginning to purr through the forest, and the Mîsong sang drowsily as it pattered over its pebbles. Pandak Âris's eyes began to blink sleepily, and the Sâkai who had dismembered his last leech, stretched. himself in ungainly wise, and then, rolling over on his face, was asleep before his nose touched the grass. This is the manner of the Sâkai, and of some of the other lower animals.

Suddenly a wild tumult of noise shattered the stillness. The Sâkai, who was minding the rice, screamed a shrill cry of warning to his companions, but it was drowned by the sound of a ferocious trumpeting, not unlike the sound of a steam siren, the explosive crashing of boughs and branches, the rending of underwood, and a heavy, rapid tramping that seemed to shake the ground. The cooking Sâkai had swung himself into a tree, and was now swarming up it, like a monkey, never pausing to look below until the topmost fork was reached. His sleeping fellow had awakened, at the first alarm, with a leap that carried him some yards from the spot where he had been lying—for the Sâkai, who can fall asleep like an animal, can wake into


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 alertness as abruptly as any other forest creature. A second later, he, too, was sitting in the highest fork of a friendly tree; and from their perches both he and his companion were scolding and chattering like a couple of terrified apes. And all this had happened before Pandak Âris, who had only been dozing, had fully realized that danger was at hand. Then he also bounded to his feet, and as he lid so, two long white tusks, and a massive trunk held menacingly aloft, two fierce little red eyes, and an enormous bulk of dingy crinkled hide came into view within a yard of him.

Pandak Âris dodged behind the trunk of the big tree with amazing rapidity, thus saving himself from the onslaught of the squealing elephant, and a moment later he, too, had swung himself into safety among the branches overhead; for a jungle-bred Malay is quick enough on occasion, though he cannot rival the extraordinary activity of the Sâkai, which is that of a startled stag.

The elephant charged the fire savagely, scattering the burning brands far and wide, trampling upon the rice pot, till it was flattened to the likeness of a piece of tin, kneading the brass betel boxes deep into the earth, keeping up all the while a torrent of ferocious squealings. The whole scene only lasted a moment or two, and then the brute whirled clumsily about, and still trumpeting its war-cry, disappeared into the forest as suddenly as it had emerged from it.

Pandak Âris and the two Sâkai sat in the trees,


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 and listened to the crashing of the elephant through the underwood growing fainter and fainter in the distance, until at last it died away.

"How can one name such ferocity as this?" murmured Pandak Âris, with the aggrieved, half wondering patience of the Oriental, in whose long-enduring soul calamity never awakens more than a certain mild disgust. He looked down very sadly upon the flattened metal which had once been his rice pot, and upon the shapeless lumps of brass deeply embedded in the soil, which had so lately contained the ingredients for his quids.

The two Sâkai, gibbering in the upper branches, shook the boughs on which they were seated, with the agony of the terror which still held them.

"The Old Father was filled with wrath," whispered the elder of the two. He was anxious to speak of the brute that had assailed them with the greatest respect, and above all things to avoid proper names. Both he and his fellow were convinced that the rogue was an incarnation of their former friend and tribesman Pa' Pâtin—the Spike Fish—who had come by his death on the salt lick two years earlier; but they were much too prudent to express this opinion openly, or at such a time. In life, Pa' Pâtin had been a mild enough individual, but he seemed to have developed a temper during his sojourn in the land of shades, and the two Sâkai were not going to outrage his feelings by making any direct allusion to him.

Presently, Pandak Âris climbed down from his


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 tree, and began somewhat ruefully to gather together his damaged property. He cried to the two Sâkai to come down and aid him, but they sat shuddering in their lofty perches and declined to move. Pandak Âris quickly lost his temper.

"Come down!" he yelled at them. "Descend out of the branches, ye children of sin! May you die violent deaths! Come down! Are your ears deaf that you obey me not?"

But the terrified Sâkai would not budge, and maintained an obstinate silence.

Pandak Âris, capering in his impotent rage, miscalled them with all that amplitude of vocabulary which, upon occasion, the Malays know how to use. He threatened them with all manner of grievous punishments; he tried to bribe the trembling wretches with promises of food and tobacco; he flung stones and sticks at them, which they evaded without the least difficulty; at last he even condescended to entreat them to come down. But all was in vain. The Sâkai are still, to some extent, arboureal in their habits, and when once fear has driven them to seek safety in the trees, some time must elapse before sufficient confidence is restored to them to embolden them again to face the dangers of life upon the ground. Pandak Âris would willingly have wrung their necks, could he but have got within reach of them; but he knew the hopelessness of attempting to chase these creatures through the branches, for Sâkai can move among the treetops with the instinctive dexterity of monkeys. At length,


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AM afraid to undertake it; the responsibility is too great. I never incur a responsibility that can be avoided!" Such was the hesitating reply of one whom the popular voice pronounced kind of heart and blameless of life, when a friend suggested to her a charitable action not easy of accomplishment. The deed was one which necessarily would have entailed some trouble, demanded some exertion, and have been attended with some annoyance if its result proved unfortunate. But if a happy fruition crowned her efforts, her whole existence must have been pervaded with a sense of internal and lasting satisfaction, as the chosen instrument for such a noble work; one record would have been written upon her book of life, which could have conjured up consoling thoughts in her hour of bitterest sorrow; one memory would have been hers, that might have shed celestial light even upon her death-bed. And yet the dread of responsibility could make her shrink and turn aside, and try to forget that she might have lifted the burden from

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, very much out of temper, he abandoned the idea of persuading his companions to rejoin him that night.

Meanwhile, much time had been wasted, and already the waters of the Mîsong were running red beneath the ruddy glow overhead that marked the setting of the sun. The tocsin of the insect world was ringing through the forest, and the birds' chorus was slowly dying into silence. High above the topmost branches of the trees, the moon, not yet at the full, was showing pale and faint, though each moment the power of its gentle light was gaining strength. Pandak Âris glanced at these things, and drew from them a number of conclusions. It was too late for him to push on to the mouth of the Mîsong, near which his camp had been pitched that morning; for no Malay willingly threads the jungle unaccompanied, and least of all after darkness has fallen. It was too late, also, to erect a camp on the salt lick, for after the shock which his nerves had sustained from the attack of the rogue elephant. he had no fancy for penetrating into the forest to cut the materials for a hut, unless at least one of the Sâkai would go with him. Therefore, he decided to camp on the bare earth at the foot of the monster tree near which he stood. It would be fairly light, he told himself, until some three hours before the dawn, and though his rice pot had been smashed, and he would have to go supperless to bed, he would light a big fire and sleep beside its protecting blaze. But here an unexpected difficulty presented itself.


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 The flint and steel, with which the fire, was to be kindled, was nowhere to be found. With the rest of Pandak Âris's gear, it had been tossed into the undergrowth by the rogue elephant, and the fading light refused to reveal where it had fallen. Pandak Âris searched with increasing anxiety and a feverish diligence for half an hour, but without result, and at the end of that time the darkness forced him to abandon all hope of finding it. If he could have lighted upon a seasoned piece of rattan, a really dry log, and a tough stick, he could have ignited a fire by friction; but rattan grows green in the jungle, and no suitable log or piece of stick were at the moment available.

Pandak Âris lay down upon the warm earth between the buttress roots of the big tree, and swore softly, but with fluency, under his breath. He cursed the Sâkai, the mothers that bore them, and all their male and female relatives to the fifth and sixth generation, and said many biting things of fate and destiny. Then he rolled over on his side, and fell asleep. The roots of the tree, between which he lay, had their junction with the trunk at a height of some two or three feet above the surface. of the ground. Thence they sloped downward, at a sharp angle, and meandered away through the grass and the underwood, in all manner of knotty curves and undulations. Pandak Âris, occupying the space between two of these roots, was protected by a low wall of very tough wood on either side of him, extending from his head to his hips, just beyond


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 the reach of his fingertips as he lay, but gradually dwindling away to nothing.

The placid light of the moon flooded the jungle. with its soft radiance, lending a ghostly and mysterious air to this little clearing in the forest, and peopling it with fantastic shadows. It shone upon the face of the sleeping Malay, and upon the two Sâkai hunched up, with their heads between their knees, snoring uneasily in the treetops. The ants ran hither and thither over Pandak Âris's body, and the jungle hummed with the myriad night noises of nocturnal birds and insects, but the rhythm of this gentle murmur did not disturb the sleepers.

Suddenly the two Sâkai awoke with a start. They said never a word, but they listened intently. Very far away, across the Mîsong, a dry branch had snapped, with a faint but crisp sound. The ear of an European would hardly have detected the noise, even if its owner had been listening for it, but it had sufficed to arouse the sleeping Sâkai into an alert wakefulness. It was repeated again and again. Now several twigs and branches seemed to snap simultaneously; now there came a swishing sound, as of green leaves ripped from their boughs by a giant's hand; and then for a space silence would ensue. These sounds grew gradually louder and more distinct, and for nearly an hour the Sâkai sat listening to them while Pandak Âris still slept. At the end of that time a soft squelching noise was suddenly heard, followed presently by a pop, like the drawing of a big cork; and this was repeated many times, and


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 was succeeded by the splashing of water sluiced over hot, rough hides. Even a white man would at once have interpreted the meaning of this; but again the Sâkai would have outdistanced him, for their ears had told them, not only that a herd of elephants, which had been browsing through the forest, had come down to water in the Mîsong, but also the number of the beasts, and that one of them was a calf of tender age.

The wind was blowing from the jungle across the river to the trees where the men were camped, so the elephants took their bath with much leisure, undisturbed by their proximity, splashing and wallowing mightily in the shallows and in such pools as they could find. Then they floundered singly ashore, and later began working slowly round, under cover of the jungle, so as to get below the wind before venturing out upon the open space of the salt lick. The Sâkai, high up in the trees, could watch the surging of the underwood, as the great beasts rolled through it, but the footfall of the elephants made no noise, and except when one or another of the animals cracked a bough or stripped it of its leaves, the progress of the herd was wonderfully unmarked by sound. The wind of the Sâkai passed over their heads. though from time to time they held their moistened trunk tips aloft, searching the air with them, but they presently scented Pandak Âris. Instantly a perfect tumult of trumpetings and squealings broke the stillness of the night, and was followed by a wild stampede. Pandak Âris, awake at


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 last, listened to the crashing and tearing noise caused by the herd flinging itself through the underwood, and fancied that they were charging down upon him full tilt. It is often well-nigh impossible in the jungle to tell the direction in which big game are moving when they are on the run, but this time the elephants had been seized with panic and were in desperate flight.

Over and over again, while the light of the moon still held, game of all kinds made its way to a point below the wind, whence to approach the salt lick, and each time the tainted wind told them that men were in possession. The savage blowing and snorting of the wild kine, the grunting protests of a herd of swine, the abrupt, startled bark of a stag, and many other jungle sounds all were heard in turn, and each was succeeded by the snapping of dry twigs or the crashing of rent underwood, which told of a hasty retreat.

At first Pandak Âris sought safety in the branches of the tree, but very soon the agony of discomfort caused by his uneasy seat and by the red ants which swarmed over him, biting like dogs, drove him once more to brave the perils of the earth.

At about 2:30 the moon sank to rest, and a black darkness, such as is only to be found at nighttime in a Malayan forest, shut down upon the land. Though Pandak Âris squatted or lay at the edge of the open, he could not distinguish the branches against the sky, nor see his own hand, when he waggled it before his eyes; and the impenetrable


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MONG social nuisances, defend us from those pitiable beings who, through some deficiency in their mental conformation, some lack of vital heat, of acute sensibility, of quick perception, are totally deprived of the faculty to appreciate and the power to admire! Show them a fine statue, and it is stone and marble, chiselled curiously, but conveying no idea, awakening no emotion. Exhibit an exquisite painting, the chef-d'œuvre of some grand old master; it is to them merely color upon canvas, and a great surplus of darkish paint. Cull them a fragrant exotic; it is "a nice enough smelling thing;" but the poor flower, withered by contact with that uncongenial touch, is quickly flung aside. Point out a living landscape, replete with the highest forms of pastoral beauty, verdant wood and flashing stream, gently swelling hill and dimpling valley, with the background of a gorgeous sunset, painting the horizon with purple, and crimson, and gold; the landscape is to them but trees, and water, and the sun going down red enough to augur

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 gloom that enveloped him wrought his already overstrained nerves to a pitch of agonized intensity.

And now a fresh horror was lent to his situation, for the larger game no longer troubled themselves to approach the salt lick from below the wind. From time to time Pandak Âris could hear some unknown beast floundering through the waters of the Mîsong, or treading softly upon the kneaded earth within a few feet of him. He was devoured by sand-flics, which he knew came to him from the beasts that now were crowding the salt lick, and they fastened on his bare skin, and nestled in his hair, driving him almost frantic by the fierce itching which they occasioned.

Now and again some brute would pass so near to him that Pandak Âris could hear the crisp sound of its grazing, the noise it made in licking the salt, or the rhythm of its heavy breath. Occasionally one or other of them would wind him, as the sudden striking of hoofs against the ground, or an angry snorting or blowing, would make plain. But all this time Pandak Âris could see nothing.

Many times he clambered into the tree, but his weary bones could find no rest there, and the ferocity of the red ants quickly drove him to earth again.

Shortly before the dawn Pandak Âris was startled out of an uneasy, fitful doze by the sound of some huge animal passing very close to him. He could hear the sound of its movements more distinctly than he had yet heard those of any of the other beasts which had peopled his waking nightmare; and as he still lay listening, there came suddenly a


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 mighty blowing, then a ferocious snort, and some monster—he knew not what—charged him viciously.

Pandak Âris was lying flat upon the ground, with the sloping buttress roots of the tree on each side of him, and the beast passed over him, doing him no hurt, save that a portion of the fleshy part of his thigh was pinched by a hoof that cut cleanly, for Pandak Âris could feel the warm blood trickling down his leg. He was not conscious of any pain, however, and continued to lie flat upon the earth, too terrified to move, and almost choked by the wild leaping of his heart.

But his invisible assailant had not yet done with him. The reck of a hot, pungent breath upon his face, which well-nigh deprived him of his reason, told him that some animal was standing over him. Instinctively, he felt for his pârang—the long, keen-edged knife from which the jungle-bred Malay is never, for an instant, separated—drew it gently from its clumsy wooden scabbard at his girdle, and grasped the hilt firmly in his right hand.

Presently, to an accompaniment of much snorting and blowing, some hard object was insinuated beneath his body. Pandak Âris moved quickly, to avoid this new horror, and clung convulsively to the ground. Again and again, first on one side and then on the other, this hard, prodding substance sought to force itself below him. It bruised him terribly, driving the wind from his lungs, sending dull pangs through his whole body at each fresh prod, and


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 may possess; from the rent of their land, from the profits of their stock, or from the wages of their labor.

Capitation taxes, if it is attempted to proportion them to the fortune or revenue of each contributor, become altogether arbitrary. The state of a man's fortune varies from day to day, and without an inquisition more intolerable than any tax, and renewed at least once every year, can only be guessed at. His assessment, therefore, must in most cases depend upon the good or bad humor of his assessors, and must, therefore, be altogether arbitrary and uncertain.

Capitation taxes, if they are proportioned not to the supposed fortune, but to the rank of each contributor, become altogether unequal; the degrees of fortune being frequently unequal in the same degree of rank.

Such taxes, therefore, if it is attempted to render them equal, become altogether arbitrary and uncertain; and if it is attempted to render them certain and not arbitrary, become altogether unequal. Let the tax be light or heavy, uncertainty is always a great grievance. In a light tax a considerable degree of inequality may be supported; in a heavy one it is altogether intolerable.

In the different poll-taxes which took place in England during the reign of William III., the contributors were, the greater part of them, assessed according to the degree of their rank; as dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons, esquires, gentlemen, the eldest and youngest sons of peers, etc. All shopkeepers and tradesmen worth more than three hundred pounds, that is, the better sort of them, were subject to the same assessment, how great soever might be the difference in their fortunes. Their rank was more con-


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 him faint and gasping. It seemed to him that it was pounding him into a jelly.

How long this ordeal lasted Pandak Âris never knew. For an eternity, it seemed to him, every energy of his mind and body was concentrated in the effort to prevent his enemy from securing a hold on him, and he was dimly aware that he was partially protected, and that his assailant was greatly hampered by the buttress roots by which his body was flanked. It was a desperate struggle, and Pandak Âris felt as though it would never end, and the situation was unchanged when day began slowly to break.

Dawn comes rapidly in Malaya up to a certain point, though the sun takes time to arise from under its bedclothes of white mist. One moment all is dark as the bottomless pit; another, and a new sense is given to the watcher—the sense of form. A minute or two more, and the ability to distinguish colour comes to one with a shock of surprise—a dim green manifests itself in the grass, the yellow of a pebble, the brown of a faded leaf, the grayness of a tree trunk, each is revealed as a new and unexpected quality in a familiar object. So it was with Pandak Âris. All in a moment he began to see; and what he saw did not help to reassure him. He looked up at a vast and overwhelming bulk standing over him—a thing of heavy, heaving shoulders and ferocious, lowered head, still seen only in outline—and knew his assailant for a sĕlâdang, the wild buffalo of eastern Asia, which is the largest of all the beasts, save only


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Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/122

 the elephant, and is reputed to outmatch even him in strength. Then, as the light increased, Pandak Âris could see the black hairy hide, the gray belly, the long fringe of shaggy hair at the monster's throat, the smoking nostrils, wide open and of a dim red, and the cruel little eyes glaring savagely at him.

Almost before he knew what he had done, Pandak Âris had grasped his pârang in both hands, and with the strength of desperation had drawn its long, keen edge across the brute's throat. A torrent of blood gushed into the man's face, blinding him, and the sĕlâdang, snorting loudly, stamped with its off forefoot. The heavy hoof alighted upon Pandak Âris's left arm, crushing it to a jelly, but the wounded limb telegraphed no signal of pain to the brain, which was working too absorbedly on its own account to be able to take heed of aught else.

Furious with pain and rage, the sĕlâdang tried again and again to gore the man with its horns, but the buttress roots baffled its efforts, and all the while the pârang worked by Pandak Âris's still uninjured hand sawed relentlessly at the brute's throat. Very soon the bull began to feel the deadly sickness which comes before death, and it fell heavily to its knees. It floundered to its feet again, bruising Pandak Âris once more as it did so. Then it reeled away, sinking to its knees again and again, while the blood pumped from the widening gap in its throat. Presently it sank to the ground, and after repeated attempts to rise, and tearing up the earth in its death-agony, it lay still forever.


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Page:Lesianawai v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.pdf/9

Beech-Jones J

BEECH-JONES J. In Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs v Thornton, the Court held that ss 85ZR(2) and 85ZS(1)(d)(ii) of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) precluded consideration of offences committed in Queensland by the respondent to that case when he was a child in the determination of whether to revoke the cancellation of his visa under s 501CA(4) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). Pursuant to ss 183(2) and 184(2) of the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld) respectively, no conviction was recorded for those offences and they were "not taken to be a conviction for any purpose".

This application, brought in the Court's original jurisdiction, seeks certiorari in respect of a decision by a delegate of the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs to cancel the plaintiff's visa under s 501(2) of the Migration Act. It raises the same issue as Thornton except that, in this case, the delegate took into account offences for which the plaintiff was sentenced by the Children's Court of New South Wales when he was under 16 years of age. A "National Police Certificate" that was provided to the delegate described the plaintiff as having been "convicted" of most of those offences ("the police certificate"). However, s 14(1)(a) of the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 (NSW) ("the Children Proceedings Act") precluded the Children's Court from proceeding to, or recording, any conviction for those offences.

For the reasons that follow, the relevant provisions of the Children Proceedings Act are not materially different to the provisions of the Youth Justice Act considered in Thornton, and the plaintiff's circumstances are not otherwise materially different to those of the respondent in Thornton. Consequently, the delegate was precluded by ss 85ZR and 85ZS of the Crimes Act from taking into account the offences for which the plaintiff was sentenced by the Children's Court when he was under the age of 16 years. As it was accepted by the Minister that those offences were material to the delegate's decision, it follows that the decision was affected by jurisdictional error and certiorari quashing the decision to cancel the plaintiff's visa should issue.

Background

The plaintiff was born in July 1983. He is a citizen of Fiji. He arrived in Australia with his parents and siblings in January 1988. In November 1999, he was granted a Class BF 154 Transitional (Permanent) visa permitting him to remain in Australia permanently.


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Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/281

The responsibilities assumed will oppress and grieve you sometimes, that is inevitable; they will not less surely gladden your heart in its hour of heaviness by the remembrance that you have gladdened others, that you have achieved something in your day, that you have fulfilled your part in the great scheme divine, which allots to every created being a separate share of labor, of responsibility, of rest, of reward.

title: Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/281


text:
Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/123

 "Yonder lies much meat," grunted one of the Sâkai to his fellow. That was their only comment upon the struggle, the end of which they had witnessed.

Now that danger was past and the daylight come again, they climbed down out of the treetops. They bent over the insensible body of Pandak Âris, aud when they found that he was still alive, they bandaged his wounds, not unskilfully, with strips torn from his sârong, and stanched the bleeding with the pith which they ripped out of the heart of a trap tree. Then they built a makeshift raft, and placed the wounded man upon it, together with as much sĕlâdang beef as it would carry. Wading downstream, one at the bow and one at the stern of the raft, they reached the camp at the month of the Mîsong, which they had quitted the preceding morning, and there they lighted a fire and indulged in a surfeit of the good red meat.

Pandak Âris was as tough as are most jungle-bred Malays, and he was blessed with a mighty constitution; wherefore, when he regained consciousness, he also feasted upon the body of his enemy.

"I cut his throat, Tûan," he said to me in after days. "I cut his throat, and I mind me that while doing so, I murmured the word Bishmillah—in the name of Allah. Therefore it was lawful for me to eat of the meat, for the beast had been slaughtered according to the rites of the Muhammadans."

For my part, I was less surprised at the ease with which he had salved his conscience than at his


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Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/124

 ability to touch meat at all in his then shattered condition. However, the Sâkai got him back to his house, rafting him carefully downstream, and Mînah, his wife, who was a knowledgeable soul, tended him devotedly, till nought save scars and a useless left arm remained to tell of his encounter with the sĕlâdang.

This was the one notable incident that had served to break the dead monotony of Pandak Âris's many days of life; but perhaps he was right in thinking that that single night on the salt lick of Mîsong had held enough excitement and adventure to last any reasonable man for a lifetime.


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Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/295

 sidered than their fortune. Several of those who in the first poll-tax were rated according to their supposed fortune, were afterward rated according to their rank. Sergeants, attorneys, and proctors at law, who in the first poll-tax were assessed at three shillings in the pound of their supposed income, were afterward assessed as gentlemen. In the assessment of a tax which was not very heavy, a considerable degree of inequality had been found less insupportable than any degree of uncertainty.

In the capitation which has been levied in France without any interruption since the beginning of the present century, the highest orders of people are rated according to their rank by an invariable tariff; the lower orders of people, according to what is supposed to be their fortune, by an assessment which varies from year to year. The officers of the king's court, the judges and other officers in the superior courts of justice, the officers of the troops, etc., are assessed in the first manner. The inferior ranks of people in the provinces are assessed in the second. In France the great easily submit to a considerable degree of inequality in a tax which, so far as it affects them, is not a very heavy one; but could not brook the arbitrary assessment of an intendant. The inferior ranks of people must, in that country, suffer patiently the usage which their superiors think proper to give them.

In England the different poll-taxes never produced the sum which had been expected from them, or which, it was supposed, they might have produced, had they been exactly levied. In France the capitation always produces the sum expected from it. The mild government of England, when it assessed the different ranks of people to the poll-tax, contented itself with what that assessment happened to pro-


text: The Further Side of Silence/In the Valley of the Tĕlom


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Page:Lesianawai v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.pdf/10

Beech-Jones J

From 1996 until 2001, the plaintiff either pleaded guilty to, or was found guilty by the Children's Court of, numerous offences including multiple counts of robbery in company. In August 2003, he was convicted of three counts of robbery while armed with a dangerous or offensive weapon. He was sentenced by the District Court of New South Wales to substantial terms of imprisonment for each offence ("the 2003 offences").

In May 2010, the plaintiff was convicted and sentenced by the District Court to terms of imprisonment for two offences of robbery while armed with a dangerous weapon and two attempts to commit such offences. These offences were committed against financial institutions and other businesses between October and November 2007 ("the 2007 offences"). Similar offences were taken into account at the time of sentencing. On 28 October 2010, the plaintiff was resentenced on appeal by the Court of Criminal Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The longest sentence he received was imprisonment for ten years with a non-parole period of six years.

On 9 October 2013, the delegate cancelled the plaintiff's visa. On 30 October 2018, the plaintiff applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ("the AAT") for review of the delegate's decision. On 8 November 2018, the AAT dismissed the application on the basis that the delegate's decision was not reviewable.

The plaintiff sought judicial review of the AAT's decision in the Federal Court of Australia. On 4 August 2021, his application was dismissed on the basis that the Court did not have jurisdiction to review a decision of a delegate of the Minister to cancel a visa under s 501(2) of the Migration Act, and the plaintiff's circumstances did not justify the grant of an extension of time to seek judicial


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Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/296

 duce; and required no compensation for the loss which the State might sustain either by those who could not pay, or by those who would not pay (for there were many such), and who, by the indulgent execution of the law, were not forced to pay. The more severe government of France assesses upon each generality a certain sum, which the intendant must find as he can. If any province complains of being assessed too high, it may, in the assessment of next year, obtain an abatement proportioned to the overcharge of the year before. But it must pay in the meantime. The intendant, in order to be sure of finding the sum assessed upon his generality, was empowered to assess it in a larger sum, that the failure or inability of some of the contributors might be compensated by the overcharge of the rest; and till 1765, the fixation of this surplus assessment was left altogether to his discretion. In that year indeed the council assumed this power to itself. In the capitation of the provinces, it is observed by the perfectly well-informed author of the "Memoirs" upon the impositions in France, the proportion which falls upon the nobility, and upon those whose privileges exempt them from the taille, is the least considerable. The largest falls upon those subject to the taille, who are assessed to the capitation at so much a pound of what they pay to that other tax.

Capitation taxes, so far as they are levied upon the lower ranks of people, are direct taxes upon the wages of labor, and are attended with all the inconveniences of such taxes.

Capitation taxes are levied at little expense; and, where they are rigorously exacted, afford a very sure revenue to the State. It is upon this account that in countries where the ease, comfort, and security of the inferior ranks of people are little attended to, capitation taxes are very common.


text:
Wikisource:News/2024-04

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title: Wikisource:News/2024-04


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Page:West African Studies.djvu/236

is, as is in all things West African, a great deal of fetish ceremonial mixed up with West African medical methods. Underlying them throughout there is the fetish form of thought; but it is erroneous to believe that all West African native doctors are witch doctors, because they are not. One of my Efik friends, for example, would no more think of calling in a witch doctor for a simple case of rheumatism than you would think of calling in a curate or a barrister; he would just call in the equivalent to our general practitioner, the abiabok. If he grew worse instead of better, he would then call in his equivalent to our consulting physician, the witch doctor, the abiadiong. But if he started being ill with something exhibiting cerebral symptoms he would have in the witch doctor at once.

This arises from the ground principle of all West African physic. Everything works by spirit on spirit, therefore the spirit of the medicine works on the spirit of the disease. Certain diseases are combatable by certain spirits in certain

title: Page:West African Studies.djvu/236


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Page:Lesianawai v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.pdf/11

Beech-Jones J

review of the AAT's decision. On 26 April 2022, an appeal from that decision was dismissed as incompetent.

On 10 February 2023, the plaintiff commenced these proceedings. On 14 February 2023, Gleeson J restrained the Minister from removing the plaintiff from Australia, granted the plaintiff an extension of time to file his application and, on 14 July 2023, referred the application to the Full Court.

In circumstances where the AAT did not address the merits of the delegate's decision and the Federal Court did not have jurisdiction to address the validity of that decision, it was not suggested that any of those proceedings, or the judgments they yielded, affected the challenge in this Court to the validity of the delegate's decision or the relief that should be granted.

The issues paper and the delegate's decision

As at October 2013, s 501(2) of the Migration Act provided that the Minister may cancel a visa that has been granted to a person if the Minister reasonably suspects the person does not pass the "character test" and the person does not satisfy the Minister that they pass that test. This power could be, and was, delegated. A person did not pass the character test if, inter alia, they had a "substantial criminal record", which included being sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 12 months or more. The sentences imposed for the 2003 and 2007 offences satisfied the definition of a substantial criminal record.

Placed before the delegate was a memorandum prepared by a departmental officer entitled "Issues for consideration of possible visa cancellation under subsection 501(2) of the Migration Act 1958" ("the issues paper"). The issues paper addressed the plaintiff's circumstances by reference to a direction made under s 499 of the Migration Act in relation to visa refusals and cancellations under


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Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/381

 ashamed to waste strength or stratagem upon defenceless infancy.

True, these trusting natures suffer much in life's combat. Disappointment deals them crushing blows; they find many of their idols made of clay; many a seeming oak, against which they lean, proves a broken reed; many a flower, cherished in their bosoms, exhales poison. They shrink, appalled, from the harsh lessons of Experience, who teaches them how few in the world resemble themselves; yet their very trustfulness is its own compensation.

It is the province of poets to condense truths in music that haunts the mind with its ringing changes. Among these haunting truths, wedded. to melodious verse, are Fanny Kemble's lines:

title: Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/381


text:
Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/297

 It is in general, however, but a small part of the public revenue, which, in a great empire, has ever been drawn from such taxes; and the greatest sum which they have ever afforded, might always have been found in some other way much more convenient to the people.

impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion to their revenue, by any capitation, seems to have given occasion to the invention of taxes upon consumable commodities. The State not knowing how to tax, directly and proportionably, the revenue of its subjects, endeavors to tax it indirectly by taxing their expense, which, it is supposed, will in most cases be nearly in proportion to their revenue. Their expense is taxed by taxing the consumable commodities upon which it is laid out.

Consumable commodities are either necessaries or luxuries.

By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day laborer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest


text:
Page:Sea spray and smoke drift (IA seaspraysmokedri00gord).pdf/20

2


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Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/298

 creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France, they are necessaries neither to men nor to women; the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries; without meaning by this appellation, to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life; and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.

As the wages of labor are everywhere regulated, partly by the demand for it, and partly by the average price of the necessary articles of subsistence; whatever raises this average price must necessarily raise those wages, so that the laborer may still be able to purchase that quantity of those necessary articles which the state of the demand for labor, whether increasing, stationary, or declining, requires that he should have. A tax upon those articles necessarily raises their price somewhat higher than the amount of the tax, because the dealer, who advances the tax, must gener-


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Page:Emma Goldman - Anarchism and Other Essays (2nd Rev. ed.) - 1911.djvu/286

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