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It was the middle of October. The era was that of the American Revolution. The scene was a little farmhouse or rather cottage, situated in one of the pleasantest nooks of the valley of the Mohawk. A few acres of cleared land surrounded the tenement which was apparently buried in the very heart of the forest. In the rear of the cottage was a garden, through which brawled a brook, that after tinkling over a tiny waterfall in one of the neighboring fields, lost itself in the shadows of the dim old woods to the right of the house. Though the cottage, as we have said, was small, no language can describe its beauty. Every thing connected with the structure bore the impress of neatness and taste. It had been originally built of hewn-logs, and these had subsequently been covered with a weather-boarding, but neither could now be seen through the thick canopy of vine-leaves which covered the walls, and which all dyed in hues of purple, crimson and gold, gave the cottage a fairy-like appearance, reminding the traveller of the autumnal hills of the Rhine. Indeed so completely was the tenement buried in the foliage that the windows themselves were half shrouded from sight, while the door-way was partially concealed by the leaves that hung drooping from the arbor overhead.

The hour at which our story opens was that witching time betwixt sunset and dark, when every thing is hushed in a silence that seems to partake of Paradise. On this evening the twilight was peculiarly soothing. The sunset yet faintly reddened the western sky, and the moon just began to be seen on the eastern horizon, while the balmy wind of an autumnal evening was wakening its low symphony over earth and air. The little cascade could be heard murmuring sweetly in the distance. Occasionally a leaf would rustle to the ground, or the forest emit a low mysterious sound like the sighing of a multitude of wood-nymphs; while, now and then, the vine-leaves would rattle pleasantly in the breeze, or the whistle of a wood-pigeon would be heard down in the forest. The hour was one for melancholy yet sweet emotions—it was an hour to make one forget the earth and aspire after heaven.

In one of the rooms of the little cottage sat two beings, and both were surpassingly beautiful. The one was a dark-haired girl, with large flashing hazel eyes, and a figure that would have become a Juno. Her mien, so queenly and majestic, yet imbued with a feminine grace that rendered it bewitching—her lofty impassioned brow, softened, however, by a playfulness of expression almost infantile—and the deep dark splendor of her lustrous eyes so full of high resolve, yet beaming with womanly tenderness, all these combined to form a face and figure which reminded you one while of a Penthesalia, and another while of a Hebe. Her companion was smaller in size, and of a different order of beauty. Nothing could be more exquisitely proportioned than her slight and sylph-like figure-and yet nothing could be more full and rounded than every delicate limb. Her face was like that of a Madonna, so high and holy was its expression. It was one indeed to fall down before and worship. The eyes were of a deep blue, the hair was of a sunshiny gold, the forehead was broad and beautifully smooth, the lips were of a luscious red and delicately chiselled, and the smile that played around her mouth when she spoke had a purity and sweetness, and told of such deep affection smouldering in the virgin heart of the owner, that you could not gaze without admiration, nor admire without love. And then, as her companion spoke gaily and often teasingly on some subject which seemed to be near the heart of the maiden, the blushes would momently shoot into her face and die away, as the northern lights on a clear wintry evening flush the sky for an instant and then fade.

“Yes, coz," continued her companion, keeping up a conversation which had lasted some time, “this unnatural war will soon be at an end, and then how happy shall we all be—you in your house in the clearing below, and we in this old homestead scarcely a ten minutes walk distant. But," she added, rising, “it is nearly time for brother to be here. He said he would be absent at the fort only for two or three hours at the utmost, and it has now been at least four. But I suppose he will soon return—I must make you promise to chide Harry when he gets here—what! blushing again—but hark! was that a footstep?"

For an instant both maidens paused and listened; but not hearing a repetition of the fancied sound, they resumed their conversation.

“I did not hear any step," said Helen, “and I think I would have—" she stopped, on seeing the eyes of her cousin fixed laughingly on her, and turned away in a beautiful embarrassment.

“You would have said, or rather you thought," said her companion archly, “that you should know Harry's footstep—was it not so, sweet coz?" continued Jane, patting the fair girl's cheek as she would have caressed that of a young sister, "come, I know your every thought, and now you need not blush to own your love for Harry, when a nobler or truer heart never beat in a manly bosom," and as the warm hearted girl pronounced this eulogium on her brother, her dark eye kindled with sisterly pride.

“I do not blush to own that I love Harry," said the younger maiden, “as you know, dear Jane; and I would lay down my life," she continued with enthusiasm, “at any time, if it became necessary, for his—so wholly and VOL. I.- 2


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 dissembled to be easy, and began to converse on what we had seen and heard; however his broken accent, the faltering of his speech, and his low voice, betrayed the anxiety of his mind. The Baron and I spoke little, and when we had been sitting about an hour not one uttered a word more; all was silent around us. Nothing interrupted the death-like stillness of the night, except the violent beating of our hearts."

"At length the Lieutenant asked, if we were asleep; however, the anxiety of our minds and the dreadful apprehensions which assailed us, drove far away even the idea of sleep. We sat some hours in that dreadful situation, and it was now about five o'clock in the morning, when the Lieutenant exclaimed, "I fear we wait in vain for my servant, he cannot sleep so fast that he should not hear us! But where can he be?" Then he began again to knock violently against the massy iron door, but all was in vain. No human footsteps was heard, we remained some hours

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 the Lafayette under way, and run across first to some sandbanks, whose heads are exposed at low water—beautiful stretches of dove-coloured sand, but apparently not even a whelk as far as shells go. Up through the sand are sticking thousands of little white tubes, apparently empty; but after a few minutes,—having parted from the riot of the crew and quietness reigning—I find, when the sand is wetted by the foam, some lovely little sea anemones looking out of the tops of the tubes. After a time I rejoin the crew and find they have dug out a few olive and harp shells, but nothing remarkable; and I hurt Eveke's feelings by saying I consider Corisco, as a collecting ground for shells, a fraud. He assures me solemnly that in the wet season, which has calmer seas than the dry, when the sun comes out and shines upon the exposed sandbanks, they are covered with thousands of shells, but from his description I think they are mostly olives. We go across from the sandbank to Laval, a little rock island with a patch of bush on its summit, and from its edges—the size does not run to shores—I get some sponges. Then on to Baña, a larger island, which has a population of rats only, from whence it is sometimes called Rat Island—but I get no more shells, Before I get back to Corisco, Eveke solemnly assures me that the women with their fishing baskets will be ready to-morrow early.

Get up and hurry off early to Nassau Bay. Women not ready. Wait for two hours sitting on the steps of a native's house, which is built in the European style, and situated across the top of the village. There are two other houses like this one, I notice, between here and Alondo, each ostentatiously placed across the street. At last Eveke comes and says, "The women make trouble. They no get the baskets ready to-day; they have them ready to-morrow for sure, but not to-day." Internally blessing Eveke and the ladies, I go to see how the world is made along the southern shores of the island―along the dove-coloured sand, hedged on my right hand by the spray wall of the surf, and on the left by low-growing bushes, flowering profusely with long sprays of intensely sweet-scented, white mimosa-like flower. Behind these rises the high bush of one of the miniature forests. Every now and then I pass a path


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title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oximes


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 to some native village, which, though hidden behind the trees, has its existence betrayed by the canoes, three or four of them drawn high up out of the reach of the surf under a group of coco-palms, which, as a general rule, stand as a gateway to these paths. About a mile along, perhaps a little more, the point runs out which makes the eastern end of Nassau Bay, the largest bay on this southern side of the island, and the only reasonably safe anchorage on all Corisco's shores. This point is composed of similar rock to that which juts out and forms the western end of this bay. The rocks are exceedingly strange and picturesque. The surf play has hollowed them out underneath, until the upper part overhangs like a snow cornice; and in several places masses of rock jut out beyond the others, weathered into strange forms, looking wonderfully like the heads of great lizard and serpent monsters stretched out, gazing towards the mainland of Africa. Some of these points of rock have trees growing along the neck of them, looking like a bristling mane. The under part of the rock is eaten back into a concavity, and in this again are eaten out groups of caves, a network of them intercommunicating in places, and pillars of rock rising in them from floor to ceiling. In the floor are perfectly lovely, clear pools of sea-water; the rock in which they are hollowed out is a soft gray-green, and some zoophyte of an exquisite bright mauve or pink-violet colour grows in a broad band round the upper edge; and in the water, lambent with the light reflected from the roof, float in a tangled skein the seaweeds—the softest, sweetest commningling of golden-browns, greens, and reds imaginable. These little caves are gems of beauty, and nothing but becoming suddenly aware that the tide is rapidly coming in, makes me tear myself away and return across the bay, past where the Lafayette lies anchored, towards Alondo. After a mile over this trying track of rotten seaweed, on going round a little point, I find a lot of wild, uncivil children, who yell and dance round me half-terrified, but wholly malignant. They spit at me and shout, "Frenchy no good," "Frenchy no good," in English, such as it is, and equally broken Spanish. At first I think, Well! France is no business of mine; but I


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title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oxide


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18 unreservedly do I cherish his image in my heart—and that is a confession I have never made before, even to you. But—but—but—”

“Never mind the buts, sweet coz,” gaily said Jane, "I guess your excuse, although you cannot find words in which to express it, for i it had been about that mad- cap Charley Stanworth we had been conversing, and I had been convieted of blushing at his name, the excuse T should have given would have been that I could not help i” and the maiden actually paused from sheer want of breath as she finished the sentence,

“Oh! how you rattle on, Jane,” said her milder companion, “I am sure I never could talk as you do, about Harry.”

“And why not, Helen? Simply because it is not your nature so to do. But you know you were always silent and reserved, while I have been called a rattler over since we dressed our dolls together in the old parlor in Albany, before father had failed, or either of us had thought of these wild but beautiful woods.”

“Or of Captain Stanworth,” interposed Helen, with something of the archness of her companion.

“Why, my modest coz,” retorted Jane, merrily lifting up her hands in affected astonishment, a gesture which Drought the blood again into the checks of her sensitive companion, “you have really cast off your reserve a fast—the leopard has changed his spots—but” she added suddenly, seeing that the blood had left Helen’s face, and that her cheeks had assumed a hue as livid as that of death, while her eyes, distended with horror, were fixed in a stony gaze at some object across the shoulder of the speaker, “what is the matter? Are you ill? In heaven's name speak.”

Helen made an attempt to reply, for ber lips moved, hut it seemed as if some strange power had deprived he, of speech, and her only reply to the question was made by pointing with a quivering finger in the direction in which her gaze was fixed. All this passed in an instant. —the next moment Jane turned hurriedly around.

The sight that met her eyes would have driven the blood back in torrents on the stoutest heart, and well accounted for the terror which shook the frame of Helen as in an ague-fit, for in the opposite casement might be seen the dark scowling face of an Indian, in his war paint, peering through the brown embowering foliage, He had approached unseen and pushing aside the vine leaves, glared in on the cousins like a tiger on his prey, Never had a more fearful countenance met the eye of either of the maidens. His wrinkled brow was bent into a habitual frown, and from beneath his overhanging forehead gleamed forth his dark fiery eyes like livid coats glowing far down in a furnace. His tooth were slightly parted in a sardonic smile, and his nostrils were distended in eager anticipation of his prey. A slight scream burst from Isabel's lips as her eye fell on this fearful apparition, and for a moment, as she reflected on the situation of Helen and herself, her brain whirled wildly around, as if reason was reeling from its throne. And well might her heart beat quick, the color flush and go in her check, and her breath come in short quick gasps, when she reflected on her unprotected situation, It war tho year in which the Mohawks under Brandt mede those tetrible incursions into the valley which have since filled the most melancholy pages of our revolutionary history,—incursions in which villages were depopulated, whole districts laid waste, and some of the most frighful massacres committed by the savages and their more bar+ barous allies the tories, that ever have stained the re cords of the past—and although the settlements in the vicinity where our heroines resided had hitherto been con- sidered safe from the enemy, yet rumors of the atrocious decds perpetrated by the Indians had often drawn teara from the cousins’ eyes, and made the name of a Mohawk as terrible to them as that of some ellalestroying pesti- lence, aye! or of death itvelf, Jane saw, at a glance, therefore the dangers that surrounded her. She knew enough to know that the Indian before her was an enemy» and judging from his paint, engaged on a war-expedition. Besides that, the intruder was not unaccompanied, for a hasty glance revealed to her more than one dusky face in the background. Alone, unprotected, far from all suc- cor—what could tia focble women do against such foes Jane suspected moreover that either the assailants were in such force as to defy all the strength of the valley, or else that tho cottage hud been watched with the inten- tion of surprising its moro defenceless inmates when their natural protectore should be absent. A dark fear also shot across her mind lest her brother should have been waylaid and murdered. ‘he thought was agony itself; for if such bad indeed boon the case, where would bo the slightest hope of succor even if the savages should spare their life and that of Helen, and carry them off as prisoners? Suddenly the idea fashed ecrose ber mind, that perhaps she might make good a defence for a few minutes, trusting that during the delay either help might arrive, or some accident occur te rescue them in another way. With this object, with admirable presence of mind, she eprang to the door of the appartment and hastily let- ting fall a huge bar which served for a bolt in liea of a more finished fastening, cffectually excluded the assail- ants from entering in that direction, without firat destroy- ing the door. This manceuvre did not occupy an instant, during which Helon bad sunk almost fainting into chair; but when Jane returned to her cousin, the daring gitl found that the wily savage who had first arrested her attention was endeavoring to dash in the window frame, and thus gain an ingress into the apartment. ‘The spirit of Jane waa high and bold even to masculine courage, and it was now rendered even more so by the iclplessness of her coustn and the conviction that every

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 instantly receive a severe rap on my moral knuckles from my conscience, which tells me that as I chose to place myself under the protection of the French flag above Njole, and a great protection it undoubtedly was, I must, in my turn, protect it from insult when it flies on the Lafayette in foreign waters. Moreover, the blood of the Vikings that is in me gets up on its own account at such treatment, and I make up my mind to suitably correct those children forthwith, particularly a male albino about fourteen years old, who is clad in the remains of an antique salt sack, which he wears unaltered, inverted over him. Unfortunately, holes have been roughly cut in the bottom and sides of it to let out his unnecessary head and arms; but at this identical moment I catch sight of a sweet-looking nun doing needle-work as she sits on the rocks. I go up to her and pass compliments, but do not complain to her about her flock, because she must be perfectly aware how they are going on, and secondly I am sure she is too meek to deal with them, even if she disapproves. Moreover, my knowledge of Spanish consists almost entirely of expressions of thanks and greetings—expressions which you are most in need of when dealing with Spaniards, as a general rule. So, finding she knows no English, I bow myself off and go my way round the rocky point that forms the end of another shallow bay, looking ostentatiously tired and feeble. Round that rocky point after me come the yelling pack led by the albino, and there things happen to those children that cause them to prefer the nun's company to mine. I make my way on, and to my dismay find the sea flying and churning up in a roaring rock cauldron at the extremity of the next point, so that I cannot get past. There is no path up inland that I can reach without passing the place where I have left the nun sitting. I feel naturally shy about doing this because of the male albino having gone off leaving his sack with me, and I do not know the Spanish idiom for "Please, ma'am, it came off in my hand;" though doubtless this idiom exists, for there are parlour-maids and wine-glasses in Spain, and I am sure they employ this phrase every time when, in washing a wine-glass, they have gripped one end like a vice and wrung the other off. And not the albino alone has got out of repair this


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 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY

November-December 1923

THE CHANNELED SCABLANDS OF THE COLUMBIA PLATEAU

J HARLEN BRETZ

University of Chicago

OUTLINE

Deposits Made by the Glacial Streams

Depths of Snake and Columbia Valleys during the Epoch

The Glaciation

The terms "scabland" and "scabrock" are used in the Pacific Northwest to describe areas where denudation has removed or prevented the accumulation of a mantle of soil, and the underlying rock is exposed or covered largely with its own coarse, angular debris.

The largest areas of scabland are on the Columbia Plateau in Wash-


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 side of the rock, for neither that promising young lady who spat in my face, nor the one who threw sand in my eyes are what they were this morning. There is nothing for it then but the dwarf cliff; so I climb it and get into the bush and try and strike a path. I get into a plantain plantation, which means there is a village close at hand, and on the further side I come into a three-hut one, and find a most amiable old lady sunning herself in the centre of it. Unfortunately she does not know any English, but I shed a box of lucifer matches on her, wishing to show that I mean well, and knowing that one of the great charms of a white man to a black is this habit of shedding things. It is their custom to hang round one in their native wilds in the hope something will be shed, either intentionally or unintentionally. Not, I fancy, for the bald sake of the article itself, but from a sort of sporting interest in what the next thing shed will be. I know it is my chief charm to them, and they hang round wondering whether it will be matches, leaf tobacco, pocket-handkerchiefs, or fish-hooks; and when the phenomena flag they bring me various articles for sale to try to get me into working order again. My present old lady is glad of her matches and they brighten up her intelligence, and she begins to understand I want something. After experimenting on me with a bunch of plantains and a paw-paw unsuccessfully, she goes and fetches a buxom young woman who soon comprehends I want Mrs. Ibea's house, and instantly she and the old lady escort me down a grass path and through some galleries of specimens of physical geography. We are soon joined by two pretty young girls, and wind our way back to the shore again on the further side of the point that had driven me inland. The elders then take themselves off after a mutual interchange of compliments and thanks; the young women come on with me. Mighty pretty pictures they make with their soft dusky skins, lithe, rounded figures, pretty brown eyes, and surf-white teeth showing between their laughing lips as they dance before me; and I cannot help thinking what a comfort they would be to a shipwrecked mariner and how he would enjoy it all.

On we go, climbing round every rocky point until we


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. thing depended on her own energies. It was but the work of an instant therefore for her to seize a musket which depended on rough hooks from the ceiling, as was usual in every frontier house at that period, and presenting it at the head of the savage to await his entrance. It was a noble sight to gaze on the beautiful girl then, and notice how the peril of her situation had changed her demeanor in a few moments from that of gay and reckless merriment into the high resolve of a Spartan woman. Her cheek was flushed with excitement, her dark eyes beamed with a lustre like that of stars flashing through a stormy cloud, and her proud form appeared dilated to the most gigantic proportions. Yet even then —even at the breathless crisis of her fate, her woman's nature for a second prevailed over her stern resolve, she hesitated, her hands faltered, and the muzzle of her piece dropped; but, as the wily savage, eager to avail himself of her momentary vacillation, leaped up on the sill with the intention of bounding into the room with the next spring, the consciousness of her peril and that of Helen returned on her in its full force, her resolution returned, her hand no longer faltered, and raising the musket to a level with the advancing head of the savage, she pulled the trigger for the first time in her life, and fired. The Indian gave a sharp yell, quivered in every limb, and springing half way up fell dead across the sill, effectually blocking up the casement. But this providential circumstance was for the moment overlooked in the strange feeling, which, now that she had done the deed, came over the heart of the heroic girl. Perhaps also her sudden paleness was attributable in a measure to the wild yell that, on the fall of their leader, burst from the voices of a dozen savages outside the house.

"Oh! what have you done?" gasped Helen, pale as a corpse, looking fearfully at Jane when that frightful yell had ceased.

"God help me," responded Jane, "I scarcely know. But if I had not acted as I did, he would have been in the room in another instant, and a merciless death would have been our lot ere this. We are now safe for a while —at least until they force the door. Unless succor arrives before they resort to that," continued the maiden, her whole nature appearing suddenly altered by the daring deed she had done, “we shall die under their tomahawks, for we can hope for no mercy now. Hold this powder-horn," she continued, for she had already seized the ammunition hanging from the ceiling with the musket, and commenced re-loading, "but no! your hand trembles too much—poor girl!—I must do it myself. There it is finished—cheer up, sweet coz: help may even now be at hand—Harry cannot delay much longer."

"Oh! pray heaven that he may not come now," gasped Helen, "it would be certain death. Do you think he will come at this late hour Jane? Oh! say he will not. Or perhaps he is already in their hands," and the usually mild eyes of the speaker gleamed with a strange lustre as she looked imploringly into the face of Jane.

"No, no! it is impossible," quickly responded her companion-caring only to soothe her cousin "no, he is detained by something that has kept him at the fort, and he is too skilful a forester to approach even his own home, without becoming aware of the vicinity of enemies."

"Oh! thank you, thank you for those words," murmured Helen, "if I am to die let it be, but let not Harry fall, oh! heavenly father, and that too, in a vain attempt to rescue me," and the angelic being as she spoke raised her eyes to heaven. They were wet with tears.

Jane turned away; but though her heart was full, no tear stood in her large dark eye. In her mind a sense of their peril, and a consciousness that their only hope of life depended on her own unassisted energies, had consumed every other feeling—and though different emotions might meanwhile agitate her bosom, they could do so only in a secondary degree, to that one over-ruling sensation which now reigned paramount in her bosom. Her whole energies were devoted to the preservation, if possible, of their lives. While therefore gently pressing the trembling maiden to her bosom, Jane remained alive to the slightest sound which might betray a renewed attack on the part of their foes. For a few moments, however, it seemed as if the savages had withdrawn, during which, Jane strove to reassure the sensitive being in her arms, using a thousand reasons, but which were, alas! insufficient to her own mind, why help must soon arrive, and why no possible injury could fall on her brother. It was a touching scene to behold those two young beings during that pause in the attack-the one slight and timorous as the startled fawn, the other comparatively bold as the antlered stag—the one burying her face in her companion's bosom, and seeming in every thing to be the defenceless being whom we love to picture as seeking our protection, the other bolder and more composed, soothingly caressing the trembler on her bosom, whispering words of comfort and hope into the ear of her friend, and appearing in every thing to fulfil the duties of our sterner and more courageous sex. Or to alter the figure, the one seemed like a weeping seraph seeking protection on the breast of some higher yet not less beautiful intelligence, while the other was that loftier spirit-some Gabriel perhaps from beneath the great white throne-breathing words of consolation into the afflicted soul of the mourner.

But it was not long that the two maidens were allowed thus to indulge their feelings unrestrained,—for soon the silence was broken by another whoop on the part of the savages, and it soon became evident that the Indians, infuriated by the death of their companion, had determined to carry the house at all hazards. Their first will not. Or perhaps he is already in their hands," and the point of attack was the door, against which the blows of


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 find the tide too far in for any more beach at all, and strike into an inland path. These Corisco paths require understanding to get on with. They all seem to start merely with the intention of taking you round a headland because the tide happens to be in; but, like all African paths, once they are started Allah or Sheitan only knows where they will go, and their presiding spirits might quote Kipling and sing, "God knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the deuce knows what we shall see," to the wayfarer who follows them. One thing and one thing only you can safely prognosticate of the African path; and that is that it will not follow the shortest line between any two given points. A Corisco one turns up off the beach, springs inland saying to you, "Want to go round that corner, do you? Oh! well; just come and see some of our noted scenery while you are here," and takes you through a miniature forest, small swamp, and a prairie. "It's a pity," says the path, "not to call at So-and-so's village now we are so near it," and off you have to go through a patch of grass and a plantation to the village. "We must hurry up and get back to that beach again. Blessed if I hadn't nearly forgotten what I came out for!" it continues; and back on to the beach it plunges, landing you about fifty yards from the place where you left it on account of the little headland.

At last we reach Alondo, and I give my guides buttons, reels of cotton, pocket-handkerchiefs, fish-hooks, and matches, and we part friends; they to show their treasures in their village, and to give rise to the hope that I may get lost on Corisco again, soon and often, I to tea and talk with Mrs. Ibea. I tell her Eveke had said in the forenoon, when I last saw him, that he was coming home in the evening; but he does not turn up and his mother says she "expects he is courting his mother-in-law." Regarding this as probably a highly interesting piece of native custom, in the interests of Science, I prop open my sleepy eyelids and listen. After all it isn't—but only a piece of strange native morality. His lady-love, it seems, is house-keeper to a man on the mainland who is always talking of leaving the district but doesn't do so, so the marriage gets perpetually postponed. I hope that man won't try the patient


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ENGRAVED BY JSAPTAIN

PAINTED BY DRUMMOND

THE BEGGARS PETITION.


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 affection of the engaged pair too long, for I should fancy it might lead to some internal disorder.

I heard a quantity of details of Corisco family affairs—one very sad one, of how a young man who was a native trader for one of the German houses up the Cameroons River, came to his death a short time ago. The firm had decided to break factory at the place where he was stationed, a thing the natives of this country cannot bear; for having a factory that has once been established among them removed, brings them into derision and contempt among their neighbours. "You're a pretty town," say the scornful. "You can't keep a factory. Yah!" Moreover, a factory in a town is an amusement and a convenience, let alone being lucrative to the native. Well, this unfortunate young Benga man was left behind by the white men to see the last of the goods cleared out and brought down river; and while he was faithfully looking to these things, the local natives attacked him and killed him and "cut him up like a fish into small pieces and threw them into the water," says Mrs. Ibea. These native sub-traders have very risky lives of it, travelling undefended, with goods, amongst the savage tribes on this South-West Coast. They frequently get killed and robbed, and the only thing that keeps them from not being so treated still more frequently is that the commercial instinct of the bush tribes warns them that it would completely stamp out trade. In Corisco Bay the river Muni, a name given it by the Portuguese early navigators from the native word for "take care," is notoriously unsafe—all the more so because there is no settled European authority over it, France and Spain being at loggerheads about the ownership of the piece of coast from Cape Esterias to Batta. This had doubtless a good deal to do with those children's conduct this afternoon; for Corisco Island and Eloby Islands are Spanish possessions, and are under a Vice-Governor to the Governor of Fernando Po. I remember when I was out before, being led to believe that the Vice-Governorship of Eloby was a sort of pensioning-off place for Spanish officials who had gone mad, or that it was held by London County Councillors in disguise. One of the Vice-Governors was truly great at domestic legislation, and nothing


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20 their hatchets soon fell in terrible rapidity. Jane's heart died within her, for she knew that not the slightest hope remained for her and Helen, if their assailants should succeed. With a throbbing heart therefore she gazed on the door, grasping the musket firmly, however, as she looked, and turning momently to the alarmed being at her side to whisper words of hope and consolation. But events were now coming to a crisis. They crowded on each other in fearful rapidity. Louder and louder swelled the wild shouts of the savages outside, and fiercer and more fierce were the blows that they hailed on the door, which already began to quiver beneath the repeated strokes. And now with one long wild shout a panel fell in-another and another blow succeeded; and at each stroke the door shivered as if about to fall. At this crisis a dusky form flitted past the shattered panel on the outside, and Jane availing herself of the oversight, raised her piece, but reflecting that it would be of greater service to her in the very moment of the onset she lowered the muzzle. As she did so she heard a noise behind her, followed by a shriek from her cousin- for Helen had now sank almost fainting with terror into a chair— and turning quickly around she saw a tall brawny savage who had just leaped through the casement, and the sound of whose feet alighting on the floor had attracted her attention. The wily barbarian had availed himself of the undivided attention which Jane bestowed on the yielding door to remove the corpse of his leader from the window and thus obtain an entrance. For the first moment during that eventful hour, Jane was too paralyzed to act. The Indian seized the favorable instant, and springing like a panther on the amazed girl, wrenched the musket from her hand with the speed of thought, accompanying the action with a yell of savage delight— and then unsheathing his tomahawk, he raised it aloft and whirled it in rapid, uncertain circles around his head, as ifmomently about to strike his prey, yet delaying the blow, from instant to instant, to enjoy the agonies of his victims-and in his triumphant smile, his exulting smile, and the expression of savage pleasure imprinted on his features might be read the gratification which he felt in subjecting his victims to this fiendish torment. Meantime Jane had sank down on her knees beside Helen, and the two cousins were clasped in each others arms, awaiting the death which was now inevitable—yet even in that moment it was touching to behold the heroism with which Jane covered, as much as possible, the form of Helen with her own, seeming like a Niobe endeavoring to shroud her cousin from the destroyer's stroke. All this had passed with the rapidity of thought. The intruder's appearance, the loss of the musket, the malicious torture of the Indian, and the last convulsive embraces of the maidens, had scarcely occupied a longer period than that of a few seconds. Who can tell the thoughts that meanwhile rushed, like an army of freed and wild spectres, through the souls of the two maidens? Oh! is not a whole life crowded into the hour of death? Yet the cousins thought not, in that awful moment, wholly of themselves,-for there were wild outpourings of their hearts to those dear ones whom they should never see again. And little did the manly bosoms of their lovers reck of the peril which surrounded Jane and Helen. So young, so fair, so full of hope, so fit to make this world a heaven-and yet to die this fearful death, unsoothed, unknelled, far from their family, forever hidden from the eyes of friendship and love! But the moments of their existence were now numbered-the last grain of sand was about falling from the glass. Drawing Helen convulsively to her bosom, and lifting her dark lustrous eye upward in a wild appeal to heaven. Jane tore her thoughts from earth and breathed a final prayer to heaven. For the last time the weapon of the savage swung on high. The flash of the polished blade gleamed wildly in the shadowy twilight across the sight of Jane and she could hear the whistling of the keen weapon as it cut the air in its descent-but, at that instant, clear, sharp and ringing, the bullet of a rifle sang across the twilight, and giving a sudden leap upwards the savage fell dead at the feet of Jane, his tomahawk making a circuit and striking harmlessly in the floor as he staggered to the ground, -— while, wild and loud, rising even over the crack of the piece, swelled out the shout of a well known voice, and almost instantaneously a tall form sprang in through the casement, revealing to the astonished eyes of the maidens, the brother of Jane and the lover of Helen Devereux. On the moment too a giant's blow sent the door reeling from its hinges, and an officer in the continental uniform dashed into the room, followed by a score of soldiers.

"Jane—thank God she is safe!" exclaimed the officer as he sprang forward and caught in his arms the heroic girl, who now that the danger was past swooned away.

"And Helen—poor, poor girl!—the savage bloodhounds have almost been your death!" said her athletic lover as he bore her inanimate form toward the casement, and dashed over her face the water in a flower vase that stood on a table nigh.

It was some hours later in the evening, and in place of the tumult which had marked the twilight, a holy silence reigned around the cottage and on the surrounding forest. The moon rode high in heaven, shining from a cloudless sky with a calm and mystic light, like that shed from the countenance of a Sybil. The shadows of the old woods without lay weird and solemn on the landscape, while the little waterfall sent up a low murmuring sound as if in unison with the scene.

By the same window at which they sat when we first introduced them to the reader, again sat the cousins; but now their lovers were at their side, and their talk was less gay than before. Every vestige of the late struggle


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 but the habit of forgetting in a day or so the orders he had issued made the place habitable at all. At one time there was an ordinance that all lights on the island should be out at IO ., and as your African is a sad dog for late hours, this bored him terribly. Shortly after, there was another that all goats should be kept tied up. This fairly ran the native off his legs trying to catch them. The goats, I believe, liked it, regarding it as a kind of a game, though they made an awful ba-aaing which kept the lightless Africans awake. I do not know what the present Governor is like. Maybe he would have seen fit to regard me as a filibuster coming in flying the French flag, intent on annexing Corisco to Gaboon, and might have sent me off to prison at Fernando Po, as happened to Mr. Ibea once for some religious palaver he got into with the two Catholic priests who are on the island.

These priests, and I believe three nuns, are the only white live people on the island now. Dead white people are there in the two cemeteries in a sad quantity; for in the early fifties, when the American Presbyterian Mission opened work on this Coast, their opinion was that the fever risk for the white ministers would be less on this island, separated as it is by some twenty miles of sea from the mainland, and that they could establish a station on it and live in comparative safety, while they educated natives to go and do the work on the mainland. But Corisco Island behaved like every other West Coast "sanatorium," and demonstrated that it was no healthier than its neighbouring country; and several ministers having died and most of the remainder suffering severely from fever, they decided to move on to the continent, where they could carry on their work directly and could not be much worse off than they were on the island.

Dr. Nassau, of whom I have already spoken, and Mrs. Hogden, whose husband lies buried on Corisco, are the surviving members of the early days of the American Presbyterian Mission; and on the Mission moving to the continent, the Doctor, more suo, made some wonderful journeys hundreds of miles into the interior, where no white man had been before, and where in many places no white man has been since. I am quite aware that Dr. Nassau was the first white man to send home


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Rh had been removed from the apartment, and no one would have thought that in the now quiet room had, only a few hours before, raged the sound of mortal strife.

"And you will have us again to explain how we arrived so opportunely to your rescue," said the brother of Jane in his frank voice, "well-they say the curiosity of your sex is never satisfied-but I should not be so gay, you would say by that glance of your eye, Helen-was it not so? Well, though I cannot help being glad, very glad, yet I will sober down my expressions for once.

“You know that I left you to go to the fort, intending to return a couple of hours before nightfall, -but when I got half way to the place I struck an Indian trail, and following it up with astonishment, I saw that it led back of the fort and down the valley. I was beyond measure surprised, for the savages had never penetrated to our vicinity. I reflected a moment, hesitating whether to return home and get you to a place of safety or to hurry on to the fort and give the alarm. As the trail did not appear to run in this direction, I fancied there would be no danger in leaving you an hour or two longer, especially when I knew that hastening instantly to the fort I might be the means of saving many lives. Accordingly I hurried forward and reached my journey's end a few minutes before the arrival of Captain Stanworth, who had been despatched to protect the valley, information having reached head-quarters, through intercepted letters, of an intention, on the part of the savages, to make a descent in this vicinity. Almost at the same instant a scout came in who had struck the Indian trail below the fort, and who communicated the alarming intelligence that the trail had turned off towards our section of the valley. We felt that not a moment was to be lost, but with most of the captain's company and such of the neighbors who chose to volunteer, hurried hither. Some delay, however, had by this time occurred, and though we proceeded forwards at a most rapid pace, we arrived barely in time to rescue you. Nor could we have saved you had the savages maintained as keen a watch for foes as usual; but managing to surprise the assailants they fell an easy prey. The noise made by them in hewing at the door prevented you and them from hearing our approach. Providentially catching sight of a savage springing in at the casement, I dashed to the open window, and—you know the rest. We have no doubt extirpated the whole of the band, but tomorrow we will, to ensure your safety, conduct you to the fort, and scour the country for the barbarians."

Our story is done. We will, however, add that the valley was never again disturbed by an irruption of Indians, and that the following summer beheld the realization of the picture described by Jane- for Stanworth retiring from the service was united to the heroic girl, while, on the same day, Helen gave her hand to the choice of her heart. The two families took up their residence within a few minutes walk of each other, and to this day their descendants inhabit the old homesteads.

They say your hair is brown, love, I never thought to look, Your face entranced my soul, love, As some romantic book,— I never scanned its features, They all uncertain seem, Yet lovely as an angel's, An angel's in a dream.

Thy brow is ever holy, And calm as midnight skies Within whose lofty portals Full many a wonder lies, Its purity and brightness I silent sit and trace, As worshippers up-looking Into the Virgin's face.

Thou speakest in thy blushes, So innocent thou art— And ev'ry gentle feeling That flits across the heart, And all the wild emotions That o'er its surface pass, Thy roseate cheek revealeth, As through a clouded glass.

The soul from out thine eyes, love, Unceasingly doth shine, A softened light they shed, love, As from an inner shrine Behind whose shadowy curtain We only dimly see, Yet rapt with mystic beauty We bow, a devotee!

Thine eyes are full of gladness, My own Euphrosyne! And sparkle in their laughter, With overflowing glee,— So bright seems life before thee, So guileless all thou art, That mirth, as from a fountain, Is gushing at thy heart.

And thou alas! art absent Yet still thy blue-eyes seem To smile upon me sweetly In many a waking dream; And oft in midnight slumbers Thy wavy form I see, And hear a trembling whisper They tell me, love, of thee! BETA


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 gorillas' brains; still I deeply regret he has not done more for science and geography. Had he but had Livingstone's conscientious devotion to taking notes and publishing them, we should know far more than we do at present about the hinterland from Cameroons to the Ogowé, and should have, for ethnological purposes, an immense mass of thoroughly reliable information about the manners and religions of the tribes therein, and Dr. Nassau's fame would be among the greatest of the few great African explorers—not that he would care a row of pins for that. I beg to state I am not grumbling at him, however, as I know he would say I was, because of his disparaging remarks on my pronunciation of M'pongwe names, but entirely from the justifiable irritation a student of fetish feels at knowing there is but one copy of this collection of materials, and that that copy is in the form of a human being and will disappear with him before it is half learnt by us, who cannot do the things he has done.

Get up very early, make a hasty breakfast, and walk to Nassau Bay, full of pleasant anticipations of a day's good fishing in those lakes. When I arrive at the village find I need not have hurried, so sit down for my usual wait.

At last Eveke, who has been making demonstrations of great activity in getting the ladies under way, succeeds in so doing—or, I fancy, more properly speaking, those ladies who are ready, and disposed to start on their own account, do so. Several men accompany the party and we leave the village by a path that goes round to the right of the plank-built house, plunges forthwith into a little ravine, goes across a dried swamp, up a hill and out on to an open prairie, all in about twenty minutes. The prairie has recently been burnt, and is a stretch of blackened green with the ruins of a few singed, or burnt up, trees rising from it.

These burnt lands are interesting, though they make one in a horrid mess. I now understand the rationale of the statement the natives have often made to me; namely, that if you fire the grass too soon, or when there is no wind, you kill it for good. If you wait until it is "dry too much" it is all right and you don't kill it. This is because the grass grows in a lot of bulb-like bottom tufts; when the outer and upper parts


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 Look at the succesful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except of course in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A Bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and consequently he always looks absolutley delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never Thinks. I feel quite sure of That. He is a brainless, beautiful thing, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligences. Don't flatter yourself, basil. You are not in the least like him." "You don't understand me Harry. Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed I shall be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders! I'm telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different than ones


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 are quite dry it catches fire and, fanned by the wind, the fire licks this up and sweeps on with great rapidity, leaving the moist heart of the tuft comparatively uninjured; and this sends out fresh green leaves when the wet season's tornado rain comes down on it. Whereas if you burn it too soon, and without wind, the outer stuff, being insufficiently dry to burn with this rapidity, smoulders, and the heat of it lasting longer, kills the inside.

Some of the low-growing, bamboo-like palms act in the same way; but should there happen to be a lot of dry grass, or their own dry cast-off leaves round them, close up to the stem, their vital part just above the root gets injured, and they die or make very bad convalescences. I do not know whether it is so in Corisco, but at other places where I have been there is always a fire-doctor, who by means of ju-ju, backed as ju-ju often is by sound common sense and local knowledge, decides which is the proper day to set the grass on fire.

We go across this prairie into a little wood mainly made up of beautiful wild fig-trees, with their muscles showing through the skin like our own beech-trees' muscles do, only the wild fig stem is whitish-grey and most picturesquely twisted and branching. Then out of this on to another prairie, larger and unburnt. During the whole of our walk from the village we have been yelling in prolonged, intoned howls for ladies, whose presence is necessary to the legitimate carrying on of our fishing—lady representatives of each village being expected to attend and see the fish are properly divided. I cannot find there is any fetish at the bottom of this custom, and think its being restricted to the women is originally founded on the male African's aversion to work; and in the representation of the villages, on the Africans' distrust of each other.

Notably, and grievously, we howl for En-gou-ta-a-a and Engouta comes not; so we throw ourselves down on the deliciously soft, fine, golden brown grass, in the sun, and wait for the tardy, absent ones, smoking, and laughing, and sleeping, and when any of the avocations palls on any of us we rise up and howl "Engouta." After about two mortal hours of this, and


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 when my companions have for some time settled down, quite reconciled, to sleep peacefully, I hear a crackle-crackle-like fusillade of miniature guns. Looking towards the place whence the sound comes I notice a cloud of bright blue smoke surmounting a rapidly advancing wall of crimson fire. I get up and mention this fact briefly to my drowsy companions, adding in the case of the more profound sleepers an enlightening kick, and make an exemplary bee-line to the bush in front of us. The others follow my example with a rapidity I should not have expected in their tribe, but, in spite of some very creditable and spirited sprint performances, three members of the party get scorched and spent the balance of the afternoon sittin in mud-holes, comforting themselves with the balmy black slime.

The fire swept across our bit of the prairie in the line of the breeze, and died out when it came to the green wood in a very short time; and shortly afterwards the absent ones, including Engouta, turn up. These ladies explained "some fool man been done burn" a patch on the other side to plant manioc. The whole island is busy planting now before the rains come on. Some days ago he thought the fire was out, and safe, but it wasn't, and the stiff breeze fanned it up. "People should be careful with fire," I say sententiously and they all agree with me, the scorched ones enthusiastically.

A little clamber down into the wood we are in brings us to the lakes. There is a little chain of them—they are just basins in the rock strata of varying sizes, and each has a thick lining of black mud. The water is at its lowest now, as it is the end of the dry season, and the water they contain is, I think, the accumulation of rain water from wet seasons.

As far as I can see there are no streams running into or out of them. In the wet season probably there may be both. One of them the ladies refuse to fish in, saying it was too deep possibly being a deep crack in the rock like the one you see as you pass the enclosed grounds of the Catholic Mission at Evangelanda; and I think they are prevented from evaporating, as that one does in the dry season, by being surrounded with the dense bush of this tangled little wood, which occupies the hollow of the interior of the island in which they are situated.


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 Even with this I believe they would dry, were the dry season the hot season, as it is on the Gold Coast. Most of these lakes have an encircling rim of rock, from which, if you are a fisher, you jump down into unmitigated black slime to your knees you then waddle, and squatter, and grunt, and skylark generally, to the shallow remnant of water. If it is one of the larger lakes, you and your companions drive in two rows of stakes, cutting each other at right angles, more or less,in the centre of the lake.

This being done, the women, with the specially made baskets—affairs shaped like bed-pillows with one side open—form a line with their backs towards the banks, their faces to the water, in the enclosure; the other women go into the water by the stakes, and splash with hands and feet and sticks as hard as they can, needless to say shouting hard the while. The terrified fish fly from them into the baskets, and are scooped up by the peck. In little basins of water the stakes are not required, but the rest of the proceedings are the same, some women standing with their backs to the bank, holding their baskets' mouths just under water, and scooping up the fish flying from the beaters in the middle.

From twelve to fourteen bushels is the usual result of the day's fishing, and the fish are divided between the representatives and distributed among the villages. A tremendous fish dinner ensues in the evening, and what fish are left are smoked and kept as relishes and dainties until next fishing time comes round.

I was told on the island that this fishing takes place every year in August, that is after the farm planting and just before the tornado rains come on. On the mainland the tradition is that it takes place here every two years, in August. I dare say this was the case in old days; although, by the way, I heard that this regular institution of fishing with its representatives, &c., was of comparatively recent introduction, and arose from the fear that the fish, by irregular and constant fishing, would be exterminated. Corisco would not accept this view at all, and insisted that the fashion had come down from the old times, meaning it had an unlimited antiquity. But with all this formality, after all I had gone through, and all my


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make a better world we want better men and women. No reform of laws and institutions and economic systems will bring it unless it produces them. Institutions and systems that turn men and women into machines working under the control of officials or of monopolies will not make them better even if, as is very far from likely, they make them better off. It is only through facing life's problems for ourselves, making our own mistakes and scoring our own hits, that we can train and hammer ourselves into something better. Individual freedom, initiative and enterprise, have been the life-blood of the Anglo-Saxon race and have made it what it is, pre-eminent among the races of the world because its men and women can think and act for themselves. If we throw away this heritage because we think that regulation and regimentation will serve us better, we shall do a bad day's work for ourselves and for human progress. And yet this seems to be the object


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22

I never witnessed a man submitting to circumstances with good humor and good sense, so remarkably as in my friend Alexander Willemott. When I first met him, since our school days, it was at the close of the war: he had been a large contractor with government for army clothing and accoutrements, and was said to have realized an immense fortune, although his accounts were not yet settled. Indeed, it was said that they were so vast, that it would employ the time of six clerks, for two years, to examine them, previous to the balance-sheet being struck. As I observed, he had been at school with me, and on my return from the East Indies, I called upon him to renew our old acquaintance, and congratulate him upon his success.

"My dear Reynolds, I am delighted to see you. You must come down to Belem Castle; Mrs. Willemott will receive you with pleasure, I'm sure. You shall see my two girls."

I consented. The chaise stopped at a splendid mansion, and I was ushered in by a crowd of liveried servants, Every thing was on the most sumptuous and magnificent scale. Having paid my respects to the lady of the house, I retired to dress, as dinner was nearly ready, it being then half-past seven o'clock. It was eight before we sat down. To an observation that I made, expressing a hope that I had not occasioned the dinner being put off, Willemott replied, "on the contrary, my dear Reynolds, we never sit down until about this hour. How people can dine at four or five o'clock, I cannot conceive. I could not touch a mouthful."

The dinner was excellent, and I paid it the encomiums which were its due.

"Do not be afraid, my dear fellow-my cook is an artiste extraordinaire—a regular Cordon Bleu. You may eat any thing without fear of indigestion How people can live upon the English cookery of the present day, I cannot conceive. I seldom dine out for fear of being poisoned. Depend upon it, a good cook lengthens your days, and no price is to great to ensure one."

When the ladies retired, being alone, we entered into friendly conversation. I expressed my admiration of his daughters, who certainly were very handsome and elegant girls.

"Very true; they are more than passable," replied he. "We have had many offers, but not such as to come up to my expectations. Baronets are cheap now-a-days, and Irish lords are nothing; I hope to settle them comfortably. We shall see. Try this claret; you'll find it excellent, not a headache in a hogshead of it. How people can drink port, I cannot imagine."

The next morning he proposed that I should rattle round the park with him. I acceded, and we set off in a handsome open carriage, with four grays, ridden by postillions at a rapid pace. As we were whirling along, he observed, "In town we must of course drive but a pair, but in the country I never go out without four horses. There is a spring in four horses which is delightful; it makes your spirits elastic, and you feel that the poor animals are not at hard labor. Rather than not drive four I would prefer to stay at home."

Our ride was very pleasant, and, in such amusements, passed away one of the most pleasant weeks that I ever remembered. Willemott was not the least altered—he was as friendly, as sincere, as open-hearted, as when a boy at school. I left him, pleased with his prosperity, and acknowledging that he was well deserving of it, although his ideas had assumed such a scale of magnificence.

I went to India when my leave expired, and was absent about four years. On my return, I inquired after my friend Willemott, and was told that his circumstances and expectations had been greatly altered. From many causes, such as a change in the government, a demand for economy, and the wording of his contracts, having been differently rendered from what Willemott had supposed their meaning to be, large items had been struck out of his balance-sheet, and, instead of being a millionaire, he was only a gentleman with a handsome property. Belem Castle had been sold, and he now lived at Richmond, as hospitable as ever, and was considered a great addition to the neighborhood. I took the earliest opportunity of going down to see him. "Oh, my dear Reynolds, this is really kind of you to come without invitation. Your room is ready, and bed well aired, for it was slept in three nights ago. Come—Mrs. Willemott will be delighted to see you."

I found the girls still unmarried, but they were yet young. The whole family appeared as contented, and happy, and as friendly, as before. We sat down to dinner at six o'clock; the footman and the coachman attended. The dinner was good, but not by the artiste extraordinaire. I praised every thing.

"Yes," replied he, "she is a very good cook; she unites the solidity of the English, with the delicacy of the French fare, and, altogether, I think it a decided improvement. Jane is quite a treasure." After dinner he observed, "Of course you know I have sold Belem Castle, and reduced my establishment? Government have not treated me fairly, but I am at the mercy of commissioners; and a body of men will do that, which, as individuals, they would be ashamed of. The fact is, the odium is borne by no one in particular, and it is only the sense of shame which keeps us honest, I'm afraid. However, here you see me, with a comfortable fortune, and always happy to see my friends, especially my old schoolfellow. Will you take port or claret. The port is very fine, and so is the claret. By-the-by, do you know—I'll let you into a family secret; Louisa is to be married to


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 to which many earnest and sincere reformers are now trying to lead us, when they ask us to accept nationalization of industry or its organization under Guild monopolies, as a remedy for the evils which are evident in our economic system. If they succeed life will cease to be an adventure and become a drill; the tendency to variation which, as science teaches us, is the secret of development, will be killed or checked, and we shall be standardized, like Government boots.

This book is written to show that the greater output of goods and services on which material progress depends cannot be expected with certainty under any form of Socialism that has yet been proposed; that Capitalism, though a certain amount of robbery goes on in its backyard, does not itself rob anybody, but has wrought great benefits for all classes; and that, if improved and expanded as it may be without any sudden change in human nature such as other systems demand, it may earn for us the great material advance that is needed to provide us with a better, nobler, and more beautiful world.


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is easy in these times to put the case against any existing institution. Most of us are in a highly critical mood, because we feel that during the last few years things have happened which ought never to have happened, and that these earth-shaking events were not well met and handled, especially on their economic side. We have seen the whole fabric of civilization in danger and a desperate battle raging to save it, and we have felt that, if civilization had been better, and the governors of the nations had been more worthy of their charge, it could never have contained the seeds of such danger, or the seeds ought never to have been allowed to sprout and blossom. During the contest we have seen the best men in all the countries concerned—the best in strength of body, courage and devotion—suffering untold hardships, wounds and death, while the next best and the worst have stayed at home and have in many cases made large


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 fortunes, or greatly increased their wealth. A world crisis which ends in enormous destruction of life and property, and at the same time in the enriching of many of those who were not good enough, in mind and body, to risk their lives to meet it, seems to be a piece of sheer stupidity and injustice. It is no wonder that many impatient minds are driven to the conclusion that every institution which existed at the time when these crimes and absurdities were perpetrated should be cut down, rooted out and cast upon the dust heap.

Is this state of mind a good one in which to set out on the task of mending the breaches that have been made in the walls of the building in which we have lived? Is it wise, because the building has been found not to be proof against the weather, to pull it down in disgust and start making a new one to a new plan and on a new system of mechanics which has never been tested and may turn out a home that will not even stand up? Might it not be better to improve the old one? The need for amendment is now admitted by the great majority. The only question to be decided is whether the changes made are to be on lines that have produced a working result; or to be based on imaginative dreams which tell us how much


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 better everything might be if we worked under a new system, which has only been sketched in hazy outline, about which its advocates have shown much unanimity in disagreeing. They want to see a world in which every one will have a fair chance of a real life; so do most of us. They want to turn everything upside down in order to get it; and they may be right. But, if they are wrong, their experiment will work disaster. If we can get the same result along lines that have been tried, is it not safer to work along them and avoid this risk?

The present system under which we work and exchange our work for that of others is that commonly described as Capitalism. Under it each one, male or female, can choose what work he will try to do and what employer he will try to serve; if he does not like his job or his employer, he can leave it or him and try to get another. He cannot earn unless he can do work that somebody wants to buy, and so he competes with all other workers in producing goods or services that others want and will pay for. His reward depends on the success with which he can satisfy the wants of others. Whatever money he earns in return for his labour he can spend as he chooses on the purchase of goods and services for his own use or


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 for that of his dependents, or he can invest it in opening up a business or industry on his own-account, or in shares and debts of public companies, and debts of Governments or public bodies; these securities will pay him a rate of profit or interest if the companies or debtors prosper and are solvent. Whatever money he earns by labour or by investment he can, after paying such taxes on it as the State demands, hand on to any heirs whom he may name.

The system is thus based on private property, competition, individual effort, individual responsibility and individual choice. Under it, all men and women are more or less often faced by problems which they have to decide, and, according as their decision is right or wrong, their welfare and that of their dependents will wax or wane. It is thus very stimulating and bracing, and might be expected to bring out the best effort of the individual to do good work that will be well paid so that he and his may prosper and multiply. If only every one had a fair start and began life with an equal chance of turning his industry and powers to good account, it would be difficult to devise a scheme of economic life more likely to produce great results from human nature as it now is; by stimulating its instincts for gain and rivalry


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 to a great output of goods and services and by sharpening its faculties, not only for exercise in this purely material use, but also for solving the bigger problems of life and human intercourse that lie behind it.

In fact, however, this system of Capitalism is at present perhaps more widely criticized and abused than any other human institution. And with some reason, for many of its results have been bad, and there is room for great improvement which criticism can help. But criticism that is bad-tempered and unreasonable will do more harm than good. The people who are working on this great business of producing, distributing and consuming the world's wealth are, in the mass, ordinary human beings, with the good and bad qualities of ordinary folk. The ordinary man and woman is an honest, good-natured person who, though not too eager to work very hard, does not want to rob anybody else. If this were not so, society could not exist, and progress would have been impossible. If it be true—as some advocates of Socialism maintain—that Capitalists live by robbing workers of goods which they have produced, it is also true that the average Capitalist does not know that he is doing any such thing, and that if once this crime can be


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 brought home to him, and he can be not only convicted but convinced, he will be quite ready to give up methods by which he has been preying on society.

The test of an economic system is its success in providing us with a good world to live in. In what sort of a world would it be really pleasant to live? To begin with, there would have to be plenty of good things and nice people. Upto a point, the good things come first, because we cannot live without them. But after our needs have been met in the matter of necessaries and comforts, up to a very moderate extent, the necessity of pleasant people in order to lead a pleasant life among them becomes overwhelming. And people are pleasant to live with who are kindly, generous, honest, unselfish, healthy, keen and fully developed in mind and body. To get such people we evidently need a great increase in the output of material goods, It is, of course, very easy to find many examples of bad-tempered people who are well off, and of others who, leading lives of straitened penury, set an example of saintly behaviour. But it is a safe working rule that if the average human being can have a better supply of commodities and comforts, he is more likely


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 to be pleasant to live with and to help us to get the world that we are looking for than if he is living under conditions of scarcity and discomfort, and for real development we must have leisure and opportunity for education. Moreover, we want not only good things, but beautiful things. Beautiful things and beautiful houses and beautiful cities require more time and better materials in their making than the shoddy goods, sordid houses and dirty and insanitary towns which are so evil a blot on our so-called civilization. If we want a world in which every article we use is well and beautifully made, every house that we live in is well and beautifully built, and every town in which we gather is as beautiful as Oxford or Canterbury, and more so—because modern ugliness has put some foul blots upon these once beautiful centres—if we want all these things we must spare the time to make things well. We must not only be ready to maintain in comfort a large number of people who will give no thought to anything else but the production of beauty in some line or other of industry, we must also light in everybody's mind the fire of desire for beauty.

In old days a tyrant or a wealthy class or a church was able to produce buildings and


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 works of art full of a beauty or a grandeur which still astonishes us, by means of slave labour or by the devotion of members of a church who built, for example, the mediaeval cathedrals to the glory of God and for the sheer pleasure of building Him a noble house. In these days, economic power is much more widely spread and will be spread still more widely as wealth is better distributed; and we cannot expect to have a really beautiful country unless the greater number of the people know what beauty is and try to arrive at it. It is an open question whether this desire for beauty is a thing that can be taught, but we may be quite sure that we are not likely to get it as long as most of us are concerned only with the narrow problems of making a living, and have no chance of full development of our minds and perceptions. In other words, we want education and facilities for travel on a scale that we have not yet dreamt of. We want everybody with whom we come in contact to be really well taught and really well informed, not necessarily in the way of schooling and book-learning. Many of the most interesting people whom we come across are very deficient in both, but they have been able to have had wide and varied experience, to have


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 seen "many men and cities," and to have exchanged ideas with dwellers in many distant lands.

Here again it is easy to counter the argument with examples of homely folk who have never been ten miles from their native village and yet, owing to their powers of observation and sympathy, have made themselves masters of all that life means within a small compass. But these examples of genius working under circumstances of great difficulty do not make it any the less true that it is good for the average human being to roam about the world and submit to the process by which men knock sparks out of one another by personal impact. For all this—education in a much wider sense than has yet been attempted and improvements in human intercourse of which we can hardly yet dream—a great increase is needed in the output of good and services that mankind enjoys.

It will not be enough, of course, unless those to whom these advantages are given make the right use of them. Travel, as it is at present granted to a comparatively small class, often seems to fail lamentably in widening their outlook. The young English Philistine who goes to Switzerland only for skung and tobogganing,


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The Latest & Newest Fashions. Cet: 1842 Engraved for the Lady's World of Fashion


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 and regards the natural beauties of his own country chiefly from the point of view of their adaptability to the purposes of golf links, is not a good example of mental development stimulated by travel. All this has to be granted; but even those who, when travelling, confine themselves most carefully to the hotels and resorts in which they will meet no one but the most aggressively national spirits of their own nation, do get something from change of air and scene. Plenty of arguments can be brought forward against any attempt at trying to get at a better world in which everybody will be pleasanter and more sensible, but there is no need to despair. In spite of all that has happened in the last few years, there are most encouraging signs of an improvement in the outlook of mankind upon its duties to itself.

Little more than two hundred years ago a Te Deum was sung in St. Paul's, specially composed by Handel for the occasion, to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht which gave England a practical monopoly in the slave trade from West Africa to America. About a hundred years ago, at the end of a war which had shaken and strained England almost as much as the one which we have just gone through, the Income Tax, on the declaration of peace,


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 walks and waitings, those wretched fish were nothing and nobody else but an African mud-fish, a brute I cordially hate, for whenever I ask native fishermen for fish, they bring me him; if I start catching fish for myself, nine times in ten it's him I catch. It was a bitter disappointment, for I had looked forward to getting some strange fish, or strongly modified form, in the middle of this little sea island, in fresh-water, some twenty miles from the mainland shore. But there! it's Africa all over; presenting one with familiar objects when one least requires them, like that razor in the heart of Gorilla-land; and unfamiliar, such as elephants and buffaloes when you are out for a quiet stroll armed with a butterfly net, to say nothing of snakes in one's bed and scorpions in one's boots and sponge. One's view of life gets quite distorted; I don't believe I should be in the least surprised to see a herd of hippo stroll on to the line out of one of the railway tunnels of Notting Hill Gate station. West Africa is undoubtedly bad for one's mind.

I did not go completely round all the lakes, having to watch the fishing, and at last, finding there was only this one kind of fish to be had, and that it was getting late, I set off on my weary, long walk back to Alondo, where I found on arriving that Mrs. Ibea had got tea waiting for me, and that Mr. Ibea was back from his evangelising mission to Cape St. John and Eloby. He is a splendidly built, square-shouldered man, a pure Renga, of the finest type, full of energy and enthusiasm. I found some difficulty in accepting his statement regarding the age of Mrs. Ibea and himself, and I still think he stuck a good ten years on.

His views on native social questions I had less difficulty in accepting, more particularly those which coincide with my own. We talked about the Fan—the backbone of native, and a good big factor in white conversation, all along here.

In this part of the world the descent of this great tribe is ousting the older inhabitants of the land. Mr. Ibea says that one of the first white members of the American Presbyterian Mission that came to this Coast some thirty years ago, made a journey into the interior behind Batanga. At the further end of this journey he heard of the coming Fan, even then in a state of migration westwards; and, from what he heard,


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 was immediately abolished, and the whole burden of a heavy debt-charge was thrown on to indirect taxation of articles of consumption, which pressed most wickedly upon the poorer classes. Our ancestors who committed this economic crime were at least as good, according to their lights, as the statesmen of to-day, but they did not understand what they were doing. Probably there are many to-day who would like to repeat the proceeding now; but they could not even suggest it, because public opinion would not hear of it, quite apart from the fact that the widened suffrage would make it politically impossible. On all sides we see evidence of great improvement in what is thought about the manner in which one set of men should be treated by another. Great strides have been made under the Capitalistic era in the direction of making the world a pleasanter place to live in, and though some of them have involved the development of new forms of suffering and disgrace, we can still maintain that the movement has been forward on the whole.

It need hardly be said that this progress that we seek must not be confined to a small class. A really good world to live in implies, not only that we live there pleasantly among


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 a set of pleasant people, but that there is no horrible suffering and destitution in the next street or anywhere else, which we have to forget before we can be happy. Wealth in the sense of ordinary welfare and comfort must be not only abundant but well distributed before the world can be a pleasant place to live in for those who have any sympathy with human suffering.

Thus we see that material output, though it is very far from being the end of all things, is of very great assistance in helping to produce the sort of world at which we want to arrive. A certain amaqunt of it is essential to existence, and a great increase in it will help very much, as human nature is at present, to make everybody pleasant to live with in the truest sense of the word, to make the world and all the conditions under which we live beautiful and noble, and to enable all to be educated in the truest and widest sense of the word. It follows, therefore, that in order to get at the world that we want, an increase in material output and a great improvement in its diffusion among all classes, are essential. When we consider the economic system under which we live and alternatives to it which are suggested by its critics, the first question that we have to ask


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 is, How far it and these alternatives are likely to be efficient in this matter of material output. We cannot get a really good world, full of good and noble people, unless we can greatly increase man's power to produce.


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the many drawbacks that mar the system of private ownership of capital, as it has been hitherto developed, an obvious blot has already been noted, when it was observed, some pages ago, that if only every one had a fair start it would be difficult to devise a more stimulating arrangement for human nature as it is with its instinct for acquisition and rivalry. Under private ownership of capital this fair start has not been given. Capitalism, as now understood, is usually regarded as dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century, when what is called the Industrial Revolution began. Before then, the tools of industry were primitive and cheap, and it was comparatively easy for the worker to own his own capital, in the shape of tools and raw material. When machinery came and brought with it production on a great scale in large factories, a great capital was necessary to success, and so the worker and his capital were divorced from


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 one another. Some individual or body had to be found, prepared to provide the necessary equipment, and to hire those who had strength and skill to work it.

In the past the position of the owner of capital has been strong, because capital has been generally, if not always, scarce as compared with labour, and, until labour organized itself, the bargaining power of the owner of capital was greater than that of those who had little or no resources behind them. This advantage in the hands of the capitalist, however, is not a necessary part of a capitalistic system. Capital without labour and labour without capital are under modern conditions equally powerless, and in these days labour, with its growing political influence and the sympathy of public opinion whenever it can show a real grievance, is fully able to take care of itself. Moreover there is no reason why the sharp division between the owners of capital and those who work its machinery should be maintained. Under an ideal capitalistic system every worker would be a capitalist and every capitalist would be a worker. And this is an ideal that is quite within the bounds of possibility.

But this is not the only inequality that made


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 the race for material success an unfair contest. The owning class not only controls the equipment of industry, but also, by its greater individual wealth, can give its sons, daughters and dependents a better and longer education and bring them up under conditions—in the matter of food, clothing and access to good air—that give them a long start in life's race. Convention and custom increase the inequality. Certain jobs and positions are actually reserved for those who have had an education that can usually be afforded only by the children of the well-to-do. For instance, only a boy of exceptional cleverness can rise from a primary school to the university degree that is necessary for entry into the learned professions. And many other positions, though there is no such definite bar, are practically reserved by custom and prejudice to those who speak acertain kind of English, wear a certain kind of clothes, and behave with a certain kind of assurance and confidence; all which gifts are only to be acquired at a certain kind of school, or in a certain kind of home surroundings. Luck or ability sometimes enables exceptional persons to overcome these bars. Fleet Street tradition whispers of an unsuccessful plumber who made a great mark as a journalist and a great fortune


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 as a newspaper proprietor, but the story of his failure as a plumber was probably a slander prompted by envy. There is, however, no need to be libellous in order to find scores of men who have risen from the bottom to the top of the ladder of wealth, beginning life with nothing behind them but their wits and their good luck and ending it great owners of capital.

Nevertheless there the handicap is. The well-to-do, under the private ownership of capital, can live, if they have enough of it, on the toll that it takes from production without doing any work at all, and if they want to work have everything made easy for them in the shape of specially reserved posts, and the connections and influence that are so great a help in making a start. It must be a very great temptation to those who are rich enough to be able to idle through life, to do so; and the fact that very few succumb to it shows that some sort of activity is a natural want of a healthy and normal human being. There has been a noticeable change in this respect even within the memory of the middle-aged. The graceful idleness which used to be thought so gentlemanly is now much less popular than it was, and young men of the class that used to


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 go to the university as to a social, sporting and athletic club were approaching life from a much more serious point of view even before the war. It is curious to note that in America the tendency seemed to be in the other direction. There opinion was apparently growing in favour of the creation of a leisured class which would do something in life besides pursuing dollars. A leisured class that uses its leisure to do public work that is otherwise done ill or left undone is certainly a national asset, but it cannot be denied that under the capitalistic system there has existed a class of most unamiable folk who lived narrow, selfish lives on wealth that they had inherited, grumbled at paying taxes, forgetting that if the Government did not protect them and their property they would be quite unable to earn a living, and seemed to expect the whole world to be managed for their convenience and comfort. Most of us have suffered from such people, who are apt to gather at such resorts as residential hotels. They were generally quite unable to amuse themselves, and lived lives of unprofitable boredom, a nuisance to themselves and to most people whom they met.

This handicap of inequality was thus in many cases bad for those who enjoyed it. For


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 those who started with it against them it must have often been a daunting influence if it affected them seriously. But how far did it do so? The average man surely aims at being moderately successful in the conditions under which he starts. One can, in these matters, only judge from one's own experience. To myself, born into the circumstances of an ordinary middle-class family, it never occurred that I was handicapped by the fact that many people were born with much easier chances of much greater success. There was a road clearly marked out for me. Somehow I had to make a living, and the fact that some people were not under that necessity was not a thing that influenced me one way or the other in approaching the problem. But this may only have been because I was thoughtless or unimaginative, and I remember when I was at Oxford hearing a very brilliant man of my year remark that it made him "feel Socialistic" when he was starting off to an early morning lecture and saw other men setting out for a day's hunting. In this case at any rate the early recognition of what seemed to be economic injustice had no practical effect in checking effort. My old friend may have felt Socialistic, but he went off to his lecture and did his day's


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 work, and is now a shining ornament of the Indian Civil Service.

But we of the middle class, of course, have no right to talk as if we had any real grievance under the capitalist system. We had quite as much as was good for us, and got an education and tradition that generally stimulated us to make fairly good use of the powers with which we were born. The question must look very different to those who view it when born under conditions of destitution, and have imagination enough to see how great are the disadvantages which this accident brings with it. In this case it must often happen that despairing apathy is a very real clog to effort, and there is small reason to wonder if many of those so born not only feel Socialistic, but put much energy and bitterness into working for schemes to reconstruct society on a new basis. If a new basis of society were really going to produce a better life for the community as a whole, most of us would sympathize strongly with this ambition; but doubt on this point is the reason why this book is being written.

It seems, however, that the inequality only has to be lessened in order to modify very greatly its adverse effect on those who suffer from it most. In America Capitalism has grown


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 with a vigorous and perhaps ruthless strength, unchecked by the many feudal and social restrictions which have in this country turned the edge of its power. But owing to the circumstances there ruling—the wealth of the country and the unlimited power of expansion that its undeveloped resources have placed in the hands of its citizens—the way from the bottom to the top has been more open. The traveller there seemed to find himself in a country in which there were no bars between class and class. Those at the bottom looked on those farther up as people who had gone ahead but might be caught up and would be. There was no sense of a heavy handicap. I came in contact in a curious way with this cheerful sentiment when in a hotel in Denver in 1911. A Swedish chambermaid when I was leaving was good enough to say that she was sorry I was going because I was "nice and clean in my room." I asked her if she would like to come and be a maid in my home in England. She declined on inquiring into the possibilities of the position, but added: "I tell you what; I won't come and be a maid in your home, but I'll marry some fellow who'll make a pile, and then I'll come and stay with you." I gave her my card, and I hope and fully


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 expect that some day she will arrive, with the husband and the pile in her train.

It thus seems that the drawbacks of inequality are bad for a limited number, both of those who are apparently benefited by them, and of those to whom they are a handicap, but that their adverse effect on the latter can be greatly reduced, if the inequalities of birth and fortune are not allowed to be a serious bar to success in life. When we have granted all this, we have next to consider what are the advantages that the capitalistic system carries with it. In the first place, there is the moral advantage involved by individual choice and responsibility which make men and women of us, while grandmotherly regulations under State or Guild monopoly would make us into machines. In the second, it is clear that the ordinary man will work harder and better if he knows that the result of his work is going to be an improvement in his economic position and in that of his dependents. For every man to work for all the rest just as hard as he will now work for his own hand is an ideal to which human nature may some day attain; but we have not yet arrived there, and if we try to make things better by assuming that we have, we may put back the clock of progress by a century or two.


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 The incentive to effort that is given by the power of acquisition is at present the great driving-force that constantly improves man's control over nature. If we took it away we might find not only that the improvement ceased, but that there was a very serious decline in the output of any country that tried the experiment; and we always have to remember that a country's output is all that it has to live on, apart from the accumulations out of past output, which would very soon be exhausted.

From a purely economic point of view the advantage of a reward for effort in proportion to its success seems to be overwhelming. It is true that, as things are, success in production or organization often comes from forcing very questionable goods or services on a stupid and ignorant public. But that is the public's fault for being stupid and ignorant, and what is the alternative? Either an equal reward for everybody whatever the effort made and whatever the work produced—a system that would, as things are, simply mean that an ever-increasing body of sluggards would live on an ever-dwindling and more disgusted body of workers; or else some new device for a reward in proportion to what is called the "social value" of


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 the work done. What this social value really means it is hard to say. What is the social value of Mr. Charlie Chaplin as compared with a coal-hewer? And who is to decide the question? If, as seems most likely, it is to be a popularly elected body, their election would be a pretty picture of glib promise-makers competing for the suffrages of those whose power to help themselves out of the general store of wealth they were going to decide. If the deciding body is to be composed of Government officials the results, though less obviously disgusting, would probably be still more unsatisfactory in the end.

This question of the reward of effort is the most difficult problem that one hits one's head against when one tries to grope a practical path through economic theory. If the reward is to be in proportion to the market value of the work done, inequalities that will have bad effects will certainly arise. These bad effects seem on the whole to be preferable to the worse effects on the general output, out of which we all have to live, that are likely to follow from rewarding everybody not for the work that they do but for merely having taken the trouble to be born, like the Marquis in the French farce. The present system can at