a

ALBERT R. MANN
LIBRARY

NEw York STATE COLLEGES F
OF
AGRICULTURE AND HoME ECONOMICS

AT

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

THE GIFT OF

WILLARD A. KIGGINS

gail University Library
QH 81.847

“Luan

ook for wanderers

i

mann

Cornell University

Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu381924001119639

BY STREAM AND SEA.

BY STREAM AND SEA.

A BOOK
FOR WANDERERS AND ANGLERS.

By WILLIAM SENIOR

(“RED SPINNER”).

Lonvon;
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.

1877.
(Ali rights reserved.)

‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is Society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”

CHILpDE Harovp.

Ca

MY WELL-REMEMBERED FRIENDS

OF THE

WHITEFRIARS CLUB,

IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY HOURS.

CONTENTS,

PART I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I, A HERTFORDSHIRE VALLEY wisi aig Bes 3
II. Moprern YARMOUTH ae oe si 20
Ill. A Sprinc RAMBLE BY THE ITCHEN ae we 35
IV. CHARLES KINGSLEY IN THE SADDLE at 49
V. OVER THE MENDIPS ies ss on we 59
VI. Our or THE CHALK as ee ne 68
VII. WAttTon’s RIVER es sa a we Q2
VIII. A Moor.tanp LEGEND aide ae ses 107
IX. In THE PEAK COUNTRY ... its one we 126
X. Notes aT BRIGHTON ae sine te 139
XI. WINTER AT HAZELBARN ... 8 ves vee 153
XII. MEMORIES OF THE NEVA an sts vee 165
XIII. AvuTUMNAL RovINGs ee “th sis we 185

XIV. CuristmMAs EvE IN A PunrT ... set 7a 214

viii Contents.

PART I.
MY OCEAN LOG.

First ENTRY—FROM NEWCASTLE TO PoRT SAID
SECOND ENTRY—THE SUEZ CANAL AND RED SEA
THIRD ENTRY—FLYING FISH AND THEIR ENEMIES
FourTH ENTRY—THE STRAITS OF MALACCA
FIFTH ENTRY—AT SINGAPORE

SixTH ENTRY—STRANGE FIsH

SEVENTH ENTRY-—-THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

BY STREAM AND SEA.

PART I.

MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON ANGLING
AND RAMBLING.

BY STREAM AND SEA.

CHAPTER I.
A HERTFORDSHIRE VALLEY.

DAG MONG the many tributaries which feed old Father
Thames during his proud career through a drainage
basin estimated, I believe, at over six thousand
miles, commend me, in the double capacity of wanderer and
angler, to the Colne. It is within easy reach of town, it is
very fairly stored with fish, and it traverses interesting and,
in some portions of its course, exquisitely beautiful scenery.
How many Colnes there may happen to be in this country
I know not; my Colne is not, however, the feeder of the
Calder which receives the foul discolouration of the West
Riding cloth factories, nor the stream of that name which
runs through the north-eastern part of Essex to Colchester,
nor the little Coln (so often spelt with a final ¢) that rises in
the Cotswold Hills, and gives some occasionally worthy
trout fishing at Fairford. My-Colne is that lovable stream
which brightens a goodly section of pastoral Hertfordshire,

4 By Stream and Sea.

which for two miles and a half keeps boundary between
Herts and Middlesex, and which in the last fourteen miles
of its length mostly marks the border-line between Bucks
and Middlesex, as the Lea across the county marks the
border-line on the eastern side.

Rising near historical Hatfield, the Colne soon begins to
receive additions right and left, its infancy being by this
reason much shorter in duration than that of most streams ;
very quickly

‘¢ The struggling rill insensibly is grown
Into a brook of loud and stately march,
Cross’d ever and anon by plank and arch ;
And for like use, lo! what might seem a zone
Chosen for ornament ; stone match’d with stone
In studied symmetry, with interspace
For the clear waters to pursue their race
Without restraint.”

One of the earlier branches of the Colne, the Verlam, is
considerably larger than itself, and this is the stream which
passes by Lord Bacon’s Gorhambury and the ancient shrine
of St. Alban’s. By Watford the Colne flows through flat
marshy meadows, overlooked by the London and North-
Western Railway, and busily peopled in winter-time by
grey plovers and many passing feathered visitants, and
touches the quiet old-fashioned town of Rickmansworth,
where we may find it convenient to halt at the head-quarters
of our Hertfordshire Valley.

From this centre you may wander away into the woods
to the north, into Moor Park, once the habitation of Car-
dinal Wolsey, James Duke of Monmouth, and Lord Anson,
and now the country house of Lord Ebury ; or into Rick-
mansworth Park, where you may pass a long delightful
summer’s day under the shade of grand avenues of trees,

A Hertfordshire Valley, 5

none daring or caring to make you afraid. Or to vary your
experience you may take the canal towing-path, and trudge
over its loose’ gravel until you heave a sigh of thankfulness
in Uxbridge, of which it was once said that the only thing
to be noticed respecting it was the house in which the
Commissioners appointed to arrange the little differences
between Charles Stuart and his bristle-backed Parliament
sat fourteen days in conference, and never arrived at a
satisfactory conclusion after all.

The first sight of Rickmansworth from the window of
your railway carriage is a very pleasant one, the taper spire
of the parish church rising out of the trees as one always
likes to see it rise in country places, where ecclesiastical
rooks and episcopal jackdaws like to claim a share in the
benefits which Church and State bestow upon the land.
There is a rare colony of these garrulous belfry haunters at
Rickmansworth, and sometimes the approach of the train,
though it is the slowest railway travelling in the kingdom,
sends them wheeling over spire and trees in noisy clouds.

Very peaceable and—if I might say it without offence of
a town in which I have spent many happy hours—very
humdrum is Rickmansworth. Of course, like other old-
fashioned places with a history, it has had its excitements.
Take, as a specimen, the matter set forth on a timeworn
black-letter document in the British Museum, bearing date
1525 and beginning: “Be it knoun to all cryste people
which joyeth in theyr hartes of ye power of God shewed by
his own precyous body i fourme of brede in ye chyrche of
Rykmersworthe where wretched and cursed people cruelly
and wylfully set fyre upon all ye ymages.” This was the
head and front of the offending, and the cardinal of the
period liberally offered indulgences to whomsoever would
aid in restoring the cremated effigies. Rickmansworth

6 By Stream and Sea.

Church in these days of grace is, however, most carefully
tended ; its churchyard is a finely shaded God’s-acre, and
over the walls of the building luxuriant ivy is climbing
upwards and onwards. -

Rickmansworth possesses good inn accommodation of the
comfortable, old-fashioned kind ; but there is an unpretend-
ing little tavern down by the bridge specially dear to a
fraternity of anglers who make it their head-quarters. Their
room overlooks a back stream running swiftly from a weir
at the bottom of the cabbage garden, and day and night,
winter and summer, feast days and fast days, they are
soothed by the musical plash of the water rippling along
under the balcony which compasses the entire front of this
homely Fisherman’s Home. Fishing-gear fills the corners,
mantelpiece, and sideboard. Upon the wall of the Wal-
tonian sanctum there hangs a floridly coloured representa-
tion of the catching of a salmon. The angler is seen
struggling with a rod that by all rules of perspective should
be four hundred and fifty feet long ; and he is of the type of
sportsmen so dear to a certain class of artists—a swarthy
gentleman of the gipsy type, cigar in mouth, and hair most
ravishingly curled. But somehow the picture tells its story
admirably : it gives you an accurate idea of a fine salmon
river, and the country through which it runs and the sort of
tableau that an angler winching in an exhausted salmon, an
attendant with gaff outstretched, and an odd slain fish or so
neatly deposited among flowers and grass under a rock,
would make.

Some such pictorial furniture as this is as necessary to an
angler’s inn as the Herring prints are to the coaching and
marketing tavern. We have not, alas! many honest
angling inns left to us—I mean the inn as to which it was no
mere figure of speech to talk of snow-white sheets smelling

A Hertfordshire Valley. "

of lavender, and the like—some such inn as Shenstone, no
doubt, had in his mind when he wrote the dreadful
heresy—
‘* Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.”

From the doorway of this anglers’ tavern at Rickmans-
worth you look out upon the canal. The straight stretch of
sluggish water at eventide reflects the sunset, and catches
the parting glints of daylight. A canal is not fer se an
object of beauty, but a bridge or two, fringes of sedge and
bulrush, cattle reflected -in the water, and trees overhanging
here and there, take much from the hard and fast lines of the
artificial channel. It is not an effort of imagination, there-
fore, to represent this prosaic canal as a salient feature of
the winsome picture spread before us from our standpoint,
and the general effect is heightened by the broadening of the
water at the jutting point where the Colne runs into and
across it, under the high Chinese-looking bridge up which
the barge horses have to climb. In the meadows to the
right of this bridge there are notice-boards warning delin-
quents with angling propensities against the penalties of the
law, and offering rewards to any member of the community
who will detect and expose the poacher.

A small rustic bridge further on, under overshadowing
trees, conducts to the waterside, margined for a while with
an osier bed. Beyond the further bank the distant houses
of the town peep from beneath the greenwood, and the road
may be traced by its fringe of trees. Shorthorns feed in the
‘verdant meads ; bees hum in the air; swallows hawk over
the fields and pursue their prey to the surface of the water,
from which they can whisk it without a splash.

8 By Stream and Sea.

It is a common expression that you can look upon a scene
like this without tiring; but not more common than true.
The poor women, married and single, who toil in the rag-
mill up the road, the labourers returning with the expiring
day from fallow and fen, the country folk, driving back-
wards and forwards, generally slacken speed or stop on the
crest of the bridge that they may once more take in the
panorama with which they have been for many years
familiar; and every night the angler, as he steps out to
smoke his pipe of peace, will be sure to find groups of
natives looking over the coping into the water below,
looking at nothing particular, but hugely comforted neverthe-
less by the occupation.

The barge life of this Hertfordshire valley cannot long
escape the notice of the frequent visitor. It is a phase
of life not at all creditable to a Christian land and a
missionary-loving people. The bargees are sottishly ignor-
ant, and treat their womenfolk as if they were savages.
Being continually on the water, and continually on the
move, in our midst but ever passing, on shore yet on
water, no one seems to think of them. They belong to
no parish, and have no responsibilities; neither does any
teacher or guide feel responsibility towards them. True
it is that there are exceptions to the rule; some of the
barges are well-regulated cottages, whose little aft cabin
is clean, painted with some idea of artistic adornment, and
the abode of a family literally born and bred within its
Shadowy recesses. But these are rare exceptions indeed.
To the anglers’ inn there is a lower region where the
barge men and barge women call for refreshments when
passing through the lock hard by, and he who would prefer
not to see the face of womankind disfigured by every kind
of bruise, or to hear horrible blasphemies rolling from a

A Hertfordshive Valley. 9

woman’s tongue, had better give that lower region a very
wide berth.

Ask the landlord of the inn how many drunken persons
he has rescued from a watery grave close to his stable door ;
ask the coroner what a tale of dead is yielded every year
by the canal. And if you would learn further of the.
morality, and ignorance, and habits of the barge people,
start straightway to the Paddington basin and make full in-
quiries. The condition of these hardworking men, women,
and children, for whom we should feel much pity, has been
improved, no doubt; but they are still deplorably benighted.

Whatever man may be, every prospect pleases. Follow
the Colne through the meadows, fight your way through the
myriads of gnats and midges that rise from the osier leaves :
mark the merry water-rat plunge from his niche in the
muddy bank, the water-wagtail rise from the island of weeds
in the middle of the stream, the reed-sparrow scared away
in momentary alarm, the dabchicks down the water which
will have disappeared long before you reach them, the deep

“swims where the lazy roach keep company, the gravelly
scours and sandy shallows upon which the dace and chub
wait for the drifting insect, the bubbling weirs streaked with
effervescing water’ and flecked with spotless foam, the ford
leading to the village, the anglers’ huts, the villagers’ kitchen
gardens, the creeper-covered houses, the clean shaven lawns
of the gentry and the humble tenements of the poor, the
village on one side and on the other copses and rising
woods in which game find cover and romping children
gather flowers, blackberries, nuts, hips and haws, in their
respective seasons—mark these as the surroundings of the
Colne as it winds through rich meadow-land to the Roaring
Ford, a little beyond which it once more finds an outlet into
the canal,

10 By Stream and Sea.

The remainder of the Colne valley may be not less pic-
turesque than that we have left behind, and to which we
must presently return, and it possesses historic interest.
The mansion of Harefield—we are now in Middlesex with
Buckinghamshire across the river—was visited by Queen
Elizabeth, who halted there as the guest of Lord Keeper
Egerton, and the new play of “Othello” was performed
there by Shakespeare’s own company, with Shakespeare
himself, in all probability, in the cast.

This was in 1602, and thirty years later the Countess
Dowager of Derby had for her guest a man who was in
other ways associated with the locality—the poet Milton.
For her he wrote his “Arcades,” which was represented
at Harefield by some noble persons of her own family.
Milton was a frequent visitor at Harefield while he lived at
Horton, and lower down there still, I believe, is to be seen
the cottage (at Chalfont St. Giles) hired for the blind poet
by Quaker Ellwood when the inhabitants of London were
driven afield by the Plague. It is pretty well authenticated
that the greater portion, if not the whole, of “Paradise
Regained” was written in this retreat. Before this time,
however, the famous mansion at Harefield had fallen victim
to its own hospitality, for the gay Sir Charles Sedley being
one of the guests, and reading in bed, set fire to his bed-
furniture, and thus burnt the house down. |

Historical, too, to anglers is the Colne through the use
made of it by Sir Humphrey Davy in “Salmonia.” The
worthy inventor of what is still ##e Safety Lamp has been
often laughed at by scientific naturalists, but for all that we
ought to be thankful for the illness which, rendering him, to
use his own words, “ wholly incapable of attending to more
useful studies, or of following more serious pursuits;” gave
us his charming little work as the amusement of his leisure

A. Hertfordshive Valley. 11

hours. It was upon the Colne at Denham, midway between
Rickmansworth and Uxbridge, that his four dvamatis per-
son@ gave up twenty-four hours to the delight of an angler’s

.May-day. In its essential points the description written in
1810 serves now :—

“ This is really a very charming villa scene, I might almost
say a pastoral scene. -The meadows have the verdure
which even the Londoners enjoy as a peculiar feature of the
English landscape. The river is clear and has all the
beauties of a trout stream of the larger size—there rapid
and here still, and there tumbling in foam and fury over
abrupt dams upon clean gravel, as if pursuing a natural
course—and that island with its poplars and willows, and
the flies making it their summer paradise, and its little
fishing-house are all in character; and if not extremely
picturesque it is at least a very pleasant scene, from its verdure
and pure waters, for the lovers of an innocent amusement.”

The record of the actual sport obtained by this quartette
is very tantalizing to readers in these later times. Coming
upon the fish when they had forsaken cad and minnow for
the dainty drake or luscious alder fly, they killed and slew.
Fish under two pounds were returned to the water, and
monsters up to seven pounds were either lost or bagged.
Alas, for the days that are gone! Occasional large fish are
even now killed by minnow, and more rarely by fly, but the
Colne trout, though not extinct, is only represented by
patriarchal specimens, which have probably wandered from
tributaries to take up positions which they hold until
poached or taken by legitimate captors. During the pike
season a large trout, or perhaps a couple, may be taken
with live bait, or a brace in the early spring may fall to the
share of a skilful minnow fisher; but the glory of the Colne
as a trout stream has long since departed.

12 By Stream and Sea.

Not so many years ago the Rickmansworth fishery was
one of the best in the country. It was carefully preserved
by a limited club of gentlemen, who paid a high price for
their sport ; but the sport was worth the paying for, and the
angler was seldom indeed sent empty away.

One morning the keeper walked down the meadows to
perform his daily inspection, and saw a burly speckled
object circling slowly by the side of the stream. It was a
trout, too sickly to dart away at the approach of footsteps.
A few yards further there was another fish 27 extremts ; then
another, and others. In short, along the entire margin the
magnificent trout, objects of his most constant watchfulness,
were dead and dying by the hundred, and by the hundred-
weight. The man has often told me that he wept like a
child at the sight. His employer went to law with the mill-
owner above Rickmansworth, whose iniquities had caused
this dire destruction, and through some technicality lost the
cause. This portion of the river is still preserved as a sub-
scription water, and I know of none that surpasses it for
heavy and plentiful roach, for large dace that afford good
sport to the fly-fisher, and for chub. The pike run small,
though they are of extra quality. The poachers in the
neighbourhood run large, and they also are of extra quality
—bad quality.

No better excursion can be made to behold our Hertford-
shire valley scenery at its best, and at the same time to
visit one of the show-places of the neighbourhood, than to
Cheneys, just over the Buckinghamshire border, five miles
from Rickmansworth. The drive is through delightful
country, along a high road overlooking the course of the
River Chess, which joins the Colne near Rickmansworth.
You ascend from that town by a steep street, which soon
brings you into high ground, among the hedges and trees

A Hertfordshire Valley. 13

and fresh country air. Rickmansworth Park is to the right,
with its cool shady avenues and grand forest trees, and
there is rolling upland to the left, stretching away in well-
cultivated undulations towards Royal Windsor.

A July drive along this route lives bright in my memory,
It had rained hard during the morning, and the sun had, as
if in a fit of sulkiness, refused to show himself for the re-
mainder of the day, though the showers had ceased. Nature
was therefore in tears, but tears which disfigure human
beings become the hedgerows and grassy banks, cornfields
and tree-branches. In the glittering drops which gently
hung upon the leaves there was no trace of grief or sadness,
but rather a suggestion of joy and infinite content. How,
too, the birds warbled on every hand, piping in all the
bushes, answering each other in the tree-tops and making
the woods jubilant with song! And what woods they were!
I saw them on the return journey next day, mottled with
the gold of a fierce sunshine, but now they were clothed in
sober mood that accorded well with their stateliness.

Towards Lowdwater the trees are very fine, and their
naturally noble aspect is heightened by an abundant ad-
mixture of larch, Scotch and other firs. Shapely beeches
(not that the beech is ever other than shapely), lofty elms,
sturdy oaks, showy chestnuts, lift up their heads, rising with
the ground from the little river and covering the opposite
slope with a mass of variegated foliage. ,

Sometimes you forget the woods in the nearer objects—
in the flowering vetch, in the waving corn, bright with
scarlet poppy-heads, the blue blossoms of the succory (so
often mistaken for the corn-flower proper), and the modest
little lesser bindweed, that, entwined and nestled among the
stalks, makes bold in the absence of sun-glare to open its
sweet countenance. To many a cornfield is a cornfield,

14 By Stream and Sea.

but, like the poet’s primrose, “it is nothing more;” to the
careful observer. who has time to lean over a five-barred
gate and look into the wheat a cornfield is a glorious garden
of wild flowers.

On this July day the wild flowers shone in their full glory.
What the fields lacked the hedges supplied. They were
drawn up on either side of the road like troops at a review,
as if for the sole purpose of gratifying me, who drove slowly
between the lines, inspecting their many-coloured uniforms
and accoutrements. It is said that there are no fewer than
twenty varieties of wild rose in these islands, and there were
a good many representatives in this Hertfordshire hedge, in
different stages of bloom and in every shade of delicate
colouring, from the blush that is almost white to the blush
that is almost red. There, too, exquisitely beautiful as it
always is, was the bonny woodbine, climbing always from
left to right, and the white convolvulus obeying the same
law. The cream-coloured and odorous elder blossoms were
there in large masses, and the common bramble with its red
stems and manifold flower-spangles held its own right
bravely.

“ Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O’er all the fragrant bowers,

Thou need’st not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers,”

But we must drive onwards would we not lose caste in
the eyes of the driver, who does not understand why his
horse should be held in when the road is good and the
steed willing. Luckily, he is one of those drivers who,
while not chatting too much, is desirous of telling his
customers many interesting things about the country—how,
for example, the splendid mansion behind the cedars yonder
was built by So-and-so, the great tobacconist, who owns the

A Hertfordshire Valley. 15

‘entire estate and has worked wonders upon it—how Mrs.
Blank, in the cottage, has gathered so many bushels of
cherries already, and will be able to gather as many more—
how, coming down the hill which we are approaching,
Farmer Stubbs, keeping a loose rein, came to grief and
broke his neck—how this fine stretch of furze-covered land
is Chorleywood Common, famous for splendid cricket-
matches promoted by one of the moving spirits at Lord’s,
who lives in the house—how, at the further extremity of
the common, there are the kennels of the old Berkeley
Hunt—how much had been given for the fleeces of the
sheep, which in their newly shorn condition seemed any-
thing but comfortable after the rain.

There ran a stoat across the lane into the plantation, and
here pounced a hawk upon something fluttering over the
richly blossoming pea-field: now we pass a group of rustic
boys examining the rusty gun of a companion who is
neglecting his bird-keeping, or a row of old almshouses
suggestive of Elizabethan times, or a number of model
_ cottages with choice flower and vegetable gardens at sight
of which the driver launches out into loud praise of the
Duke of Bedford, upon whose estate we are, and who, he
says, lets the handsome brick houses for eighteenpence a
week. ;

“By George ! sir,” he says, touching up the mare with the
whip, “I should like to live there myself.” And he might
do worse.

Down in the valley, in a kind of sleepy hollow, sur-
tounded by charming scenery, but very much out of the
world, are Sarratt Mills, on the Chess. Descending the
steep lane by which the mills are reached, you have a
eomprehensive bird’s-eye view of the valley, the. woods,
and, the stream. There are trout in the Chess, and, to let

16 By Stream and Sea.

you into a secret, the article strapped to the umbrella is a
fly-rod, and I have received an invitation to see the paper-
mill and make acquaintance with paper-mill trout. I have
spoiled so much paper in my time that I resolve to inspect
the mill as a matter of duty to conscience ; I need neither
argument nor resolve with the trout, being always ready for
them. From the excitement which the arrival of a stranger
causes among the workpeople, I am led to the conclusion
that life at Sarratt Mills is regular, not to say monotonous ;
it must of necessity be so to the ladies whom I espy over
the garden hedge, in broad-brimmed hats and white gauntlets,
busy at the flower beds, and for whom there is absolutely
no society near at hand.

A mill-head for angling purposes is a very different affair
from a mill-tail. The former is quiet sometimes to stag-
nation ; the latter characterized by perpetual motion. The
Chess in the one fishable meadow at Sarratt takes the form
of a mill-head, and it was like my inveterate ill-fortune that
I should find it smooth and quiet as a pond. A trout
would be nothing less than idiotic to take an artificial fly
under those circumstances. But was there ever an angler
yet who would be deterred from at any rate making an
attempt, whatever the chances might be? The foreman
of the mill, into whose hands the hospitable proprietor
delivered me, thought it the worst of taste on my part that
I did not at once accompany him into the mill. He was
a practical Yorkshireman, and could not imagine why I was
not as enthusiastic about his business as was he himself.

After the honeysuckles, wild roses, woods, cornfields, and
hedgerows, I am bound to say the paper-mill did not
strike me as being particularly attractive. The first process
I found was quite appropriately termed “dusting ;” two
very dirty young women were tending a_revolving circular

A Flertfordshive Valley. 17

wire cage in an atmosphere of dreadful dust which might
represent the sweeping of all the London garrets. In
another room grimy girls. were cutting up barge canvas,
potato sacks, tarpaulins, ropes, and other materials of the
marine store class. In another the “hands” were sorting
the rags—soft pink rags for blotting-paper, and white rags
for white paper, blue and other colours being artificially
produced. Upstairs dressmakers’ clippings and black odds
and ends .of various materials were, after being boiled and
rinsed with lime-water, prepared for the soft whity-brown
paper in which madame’s drapery purchases. are wrapped.
Out of the stinking mass seething in the boiler would by-
and-by come the wholesome paper bags in which your
confectioner sends you your cracknels. Then came the
breaker-room, where, by an ingenious drum-washing ap-
paratus, rags were broken and cleansed. Next it was shown
how the rags were reduced to pulp, or as it is technically
termed,. “ half-stuff.”

By this time the choking dust and uncomfortable rags
had been left in the rear, the atmosphere was sweeter, and the
workpeople were much more wholesome in appearance. The
vats were full of yeasty-looking pulp, which, having passed
through a strainer, bore a resemblance to clean curds. The
pulp requires much refining before it leaves the vats, and
the material at each stage assumed a fairer quality, until it
descended. to the machine-rooms, where what seemed to be
a number of printing presses were at work. Here the pulp
flowed in a smooth stream along a shoot; ran over several
miniature weirs; refining as it travelled, until it spread out
and became an almost impalpable sheet over a tightly
‘strained wire bed: Dryer and dryer it became, and at the
‘last weir the sheet went between two massive rollers of felt,

Cc

18 By Stream and Sea.

to all intents finished paper, though rollers and cylinders
remained for drying and calendering.

The paper-mill trout, it was evidént even to the foreman,
could be kept waiting no longer. It was but a short length
of water at one’s disposal, for the Chess is most rigorously
preserved, and the boundary fence of the Sarratt Mill land
was not more than two hundred yards off. The fish refused
to respond to any manner of temptation. Long line, short
line ; wet fly, dry fly ; fine cast, coarse cast; flies dark and
light, large and small, shared the same uniform fate. In
such case there is nothing lost by suspending operations
and making a few quiet observations. In other words,
spike your rod, lie down on the grass (if it be not too damp),
and watch. So I advised myself, and so I did.

When everything was quiet the fish began to move about,
evidently returning from the deeps into which they had
been scared to the banks under which they had been
originally lying. They arrived singly, and with no little
commotion took up each its favourite position. Giving
them leisure to settle down into confidence, I made ready,
and having previously marked the particular bunch of grass
near which the fish lay, dropped the fly upon it, whence it
tumbled gently into the edge of the water. A suck from.
the trout, a delicate but firm jerk from the fisherman, and
the mischief was accomplished. The fish leaped clean out
of the water, and frightened numbers of which I had had no
previous suspicion away from the margin. But he was well
hooked, and all his plucky fighting could not save him. In
about an hour quietness again reigned supreme, and a
second trout was deluded into the fancy that my hare’s ear
was a dainty morsel accidentally falling in his way. It was
a modest bit of sport, but it fitted well into a long day

A Hertfordshire Valley, 19

which had included a succession of enjoyments as miscel-
laneous as the subjects of this chapter.

And Cheneys still remained. The Sleepy Hollow of
Sarratt was left to its seclusion, and the high-road once more
gained. Cheneys, about a mile and a half farther on, is a
placid, eminently respectable village, commanding the
loveliest woodland walks. Attached to the church is the
mausoleum, where lie many members of the Russell family,
among them Lord William, who was beheaded in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields. No one goes to Cheneys without seeing’ the
remarkable monuments and faded banners of the mau-
soleum ; the fine old Elizabethan Manor House, with its
cool quadrangle and dark-leaved ivy ; and the veteran oak,
planted, it is said, by the fair hand of good Queen Bess
herself. Pursuing the valley upwards Latimers and Chesham
are reached, the Chess rising near the latter place. The
lower part of the river has been spoiled by mill-poisoning,
but between Sarratt and its source it maintains its high
reputation as a trout stream.

4 gee of

CHAPTER II.
MODERN YARMOUTH,

“OR one I do not hesitate to admit undying affection
for the really ancient town of Great Yarmouth. It
is not because St. Nicholas, the friend of the
mariner, is its patron saint, and the building bearing his name
the finest parish church in England. It is a matter of very
little moment to me whether, in the year of our Lord 495,
Cerdicus, the warlike Saxon, and Henricus his son, did or
did not come unto those yellow sands. It may be recorded,
but one need not be particularly moved by the fact, that for
eight hundred years herrings and Yarmouth have been, at
home, if not abroad, synonymous terms. We may, on the
whole, take it as a matter of actual occurrence that the
Dutch and Fleming refugees, persecuted out of their own
countries, settled here. Very little am I moved by, though
not denying, the historical associations of the place, includ-
ing as they do a Cromwell, a Nelson, or even a Winthrop
Mackworth Praed, who: once sat for the borough.

These, though matters of passing interest, are not pro-
vocative of affection. I love Yarmouth because, over and

«

Modern Yarmouth. 21

above other towns within my knowledge, it moves most
slowly with the galloping times, and because, if you take it
at the proper time—and that is not in what the common
world would call its “season”—it still retains that ancient
and fish-like smell which so admirably becomes it. Those
* rows,” to the number of one hundred and fifty, which
Dickens in his own happy manner likened to the bars of a
gridiron, were surely made expressly for the reception of
kippers, the development of red soldiers, and the due
honouring of a superfine bloater, made to hold in lingering
embrace the perfume of cured and curing fish, and thereby
to cut off from, the inhabitants the remotest. chance of pre-
tending that they do not owe their fame to, and keep up
their existence by, the delicious and plentiful little dupea
harengus.

‘Once upon a time* I took the reader to sea with the
herring fleet, and brought him, after one night’s absence from
his feather bed, safely ashore, with a profitable cargo of
silver-sided fish. On this occasion we may confine ourselves
entirely to Yarmouth, albeit these November days are dark
and drear and short. All the summer visitors; the seaside
hholiday-makers, have deserted the lodging-houses. The
beach, so lively and crowded during the dog-days, is mostly
left to local children and native.dogs. Yarmouth, in short,
is itself again, and wholly given up to the harvest which the
bounteous ocean invites it to come and win in the. teeth of
howling gales and foaming seas. Nobody, I presume, who
is not a gross partisan, would venture to say that Yarmouth
is the kind of town a photographer in search of the beauti-
ful would make the subject of views for an art-album or
patent stereoscope,

* « Waterside Sketches,” pp. 188-206.

22 By Stream and Sea.

Mistress Peggotty, who for her part was proud to call
herself a Yarmouth bloater, told little Copperfield that
Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the
universe. Copperfield had not till then held that opinion,
you may remember. Quoth he—

“Tt looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried
my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river;
and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as
round as my geography-book said, how any part of it came
to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be
situated at one of the poles, which would account for it.
As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent
prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to
Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it ; and
also that if the land had been a little more separated from
the sea, and if the town and the tide had not been quite
so mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been
nicer.”

Approaching the town from inland, from the far-reaching
flats over which the North Sea is once supposed to have
freely ebbed and flowed, you must agree with the faithfulness
of Master Copperfield’s portraiture; but, seen from the
water, Yarmouth has a certain quaint picturesqueness of its
own, very pleasing to the eye that rests upon it when the -
windmills on the low sandhills are revolving, when the
autumn sun smites the housetops with his ruddy hand, when
the pierheads are crowded with amateur codling-catchers
and spectators, who gather there at the rate of twelve human
beings for every fish hauled up, and when the heavy black
boats on the beach are busily performing their duties as
mediums between the fishing-vessels and the carts waiting to
bear away their produce. It is worth incurring the dis-
appointment of an unsuccessful two hours’ fishing in an

Modern Yarmouth. ag

open boat thus to see Yarmouth at its best, as you will see
it rocking a furlong or so from shore, while your long line of
a dozen or twenty hooks reposes on the bottom, in wait for.
cod, whiting, eel, or gurnard.

Better, however, will it be for the ‘student of modern
Yarmouth to stroll, with observant eye and ear, into the
quarters where the staple industry of the place is in full
operation. Begin at the bridge and walk by the river side
towards the fish-wharf. The double avenue of trees and the
gay flowers which the inhabitants of the upper part love to
cultivate, and, loving, cultivate successfully, give a colour
of home to the neighbourhood. It reminds you of some
scene in Holland, as many other things in Yarmouth will do
before you have finished your perambulations. The har-
bour is crowded with small vessels, luggers, smacks, and
dandies, that will before to-morrow be off for the fishing-
ground. In the shop and tavern windows the advertise-
ments, in keeping with the surroundings, invite you to
become the purchaser of some strongly built craft, with all her
superior stores and materials, including ever so many tons
of the best pig-iron ballast, the communication invariably
ending with an inventory in which a boat-hook, worth
ninepence, perhaps, has a line of small capitals all to itself.

The ship-chandler’s shops are in great request now; the
little wooden midshipmen at their doors have been newly
varnished and gilt; the shop-boys run hither and thither
with blocks, chains, cordage, and sails. Boys who are not
engaged in these pursuits, pass with spoils of fish suspended
by a piece of twine ; even the policemen and railway porters
coming from the wharf have their fishy morsels dangling from
their hands. There is a tramway, but not for passengers ;
only for cargoes of fish. Herrings are the first considera-
tion here. For them also have been built those handy little

24 By Stream and Sea.

two-wheeled carts, drawn by plump, fast-trotting cobs not to
be beaten in any other English town, and from which may
be any day selected half a dozen greys and iron-greys fit for
presentation to an Arab chieftain.

Here at last is the fish-wharf, a fine straight quay a a
substantially built market facing the newly arrived vessels—
of say fifteen tons average. The tug has just brought in
three of these fishing-boats; having been relieved of their
cargoes these crafts will, without the delay of an hour, go
out of the river, make full sail to the offing, and cast out
their drift-nets before nightfall. The skipper and crew care
nothing about the fish after they have been deposited on the
wharf, and they have nothing to do with their sale. The
wholesale fish-market, to the very doors of which the vessels
are brought, was built to remove many of the inconveniences
formerly experienced under the old system of landing the
herrings on the beach—a system, be it remembered, which,
owing to the monopoly it fostered on land, much better
pleased the local fishermen than the newer free trade regula-
tions under which the Scotch and French fishermen are able
to compete so vigorously with them. The beachmen,
finding to a great extent their occupation gone, naturally
complain of the change, and it is no consolation to them to
know that it is for the public good.

Before the fishing-vessel has fairly brought up alongside
the market wharf she is boarded by a number of men who
are not, as their eager gestures and impetuous language
would signify, about to murder the crew and scuttle the
ship; they are “tellers” on the look-out for an engage-
ment, and the large panniers they carry are not Welsh
coracles, but “swills” into which the fish in the hold will
be counted—each swill, for the accuracy of sale, to con-
tain five hundred fish, The wharf is covered: with -swills,

Modern Yarmouth. 2%

4nd a bell is being rung to call the buyers together. The
auctioneer sometimes, as when the fishermen have been too
successful, may have a difficulty in obtaining an auditory ;
but that is a tare case. He is a man of few words, and
those few he wastes not. The late George Robbins would
have mourned over his matter-of-fact descriptions.

‘ “What d’ye say,” he asks; “shall we begin with five
pounds a last?” A last means thirteen thousand two hundred
fish, and by the rules of the trade herring are sold by the
last. But there is no response until a comfortable-looking
gentleman offers fifty shillings. Him the auctioneer evi-
dently knows, for he familiarly and chidingly remonstrates
with him for his meanness.

At this juncture there is an uproar ‘in the rear, a fight
between a sailor and a teller in the shed, and the auctioneer
is left absolutely alone until the dispute is settled by the
ignominious thrashing and retreat of the landlubber. Even-
tually the bidding begins at three pounds, and proceeds at
advances of five shillings, until, amidst some laughter, the
comfortable-looking buyer who had offered fifty shillings
buys the last for five guineas. Prices vary according to the
supply of fish, and vary therefore immensely. Not long ago
forty-five shillings per last was the highest price that could
be fetched ; at another time herrings had been so scarce
that the auctioneer dared not sell more than a hundred fish
at a time, and then at eight shillings per hundred, or forty
pounds a last. The briskest sale-time is when the earliest
vessels come into the river: at such crises everybody works
double tides to catch the trains and get the fresh fish into
the markets while they are saleable. The auctioneer, it may
be added, is a man of some consequence. He provides the
swills, and is responsible for the money produced by sales ;
in return he gets a good commission, and they do say about

26 By Stream and Sea.

Yarmouth that the auctioneers make as much out of the
herrings as any.

Lying on the wet floor of the market-house are groups of
cod, taken by accident in the drift-nets, or by the single
hook-lines thrown casually by the sailors overboard for the
chance of a stray fish, These cod are arranged in lots of
from eight to five, the fish averaging perhaps six pounds
each, and they, too, are submitted by auction. Who says
that a cod has no expression? It may not have a fine open
countenance for the portrayal of delicate emotions, but
expression it undoubtedly has. Here is one with gaping
mouth and expanded gills, meaning, as any one may observe,
blank astonishment. Its neighbour, by the curl of its tail,
compression of the jaws, and determination of the eye,
informs us that it died in a state of impotent rage. The
little three-pound rock codling, meekly stretched out with
fins demurely smoothed down and lips modestly parted, is a
touching picture of resignation. Another fish must, from the
turn of his half-closed eyes and funnily displayed fins, have
been a humourist in whom the ruling passion was strong in
death, ‘The cod, thus examined, would seem to be, on the
whole, a rather genial fellow, very eligible, if such pursuits
obtain down yonder, for evening parties and the like. Not
so the wicked, leering conger, whom every man and boy in
passing kicks and execrates. The brute is eight feet long,
and sullen and murderous every inch of him.

But the sale is beginning, and—hear it not, London house-
keeper, to whom the boiled cod’s head and shoulders served
up with oyster-sauce, lemon, and horse-radish (pray never
forget that pungent garnishing), is not a trifle—half a dozen
fish are knocked down for two-and-ninepence. A worthy
Gray’s Inn solicitor, keeping me company, waxes so excited
at this richness that he buys half a dozen lots in succession,

Modern Yarmouth. 27

and sends them to London by the next train for distribution
amongst his friends and clients. The natural inference in
town is that he has caught them himself, and as he takes
no pains to explain otherwise he is now renowned in club
and chambers as the finest long-shore fisherman in the
profession.

The Yarmouth girls engaged in the herring trade work
very hard while the season lasts, but they need not swear so
much. Some of them, I fear, are a terribly rough set.
They are sitting about outside the wharf on barrels, or logs,
or baskets, eating their dinner with fishy hands, and shout-
ing unrepeatable jokes to the men: coarse in feature,
slovenly and dirty in dress, wearing heavily hob-nailed
boots, they are a caricature-on “the gentler sex.” The
tavern ‘hard by is full of them drinking at the bar, and who
shall blame them when there is no other apparent accom-
modation? It would be a boon in the interests of charity
and decency alike to provide in the neighbourhood of this
prosperous wholesale fish-market a workwoman’s hall, where
wholesome food and shelter would be provided for them at
a reasonable rate. These women might, of course, take
their meals amongst the fish and salt in the sheds where

“they work, but, as one of them suggested to me, they prefer
‘a change of scene during their dinner hour. But it must
not be supposed that this is a fair type of all the women
who are employed in the herring trade ; they are only the
“residuum.” When in full work in the curing sheds, a
skilful and industrious woman can earn a pound a week,
and many are as respectable in reality as in appearance.
On the Denes yesterday there were three or four girls repair-
ing nets ; they wore fashionable chignons, black silk dresses,
smart hats, and no doubt represented the aristocracy of the
‘Yarmouth workwomen. What a pity it is that these

28 By Stream and Sea.

picklers, packers, and curers do not wear some such tieat
costumes as those in fashion amongst the French fish-
women !

By turning into the yard to the left, we may watch the
process of herring pickling. The fish brought here, it should
be explained, are the herring which have been salted at sea;
that, at least, is the technical expression. In reality, the fish
are simply sprinkled with salt as they are thrown into the
hold. By this process the fishermen are enabled to remain
afloat for days together, and this a run of ill luck renders
a disagreeable necessity. The fortunate ones are those
who, sailing out of harbour to-day, are able to return to-
morrow morning with a cargo of fresh herrings, which are
despatched as such. with all speed. The fish which the
women occupying our shed are manipulating are first
washed by men, then passed on to the female hands who
pack them into barrels with Lisbon salt between the layers,
and finally nailed in by a cooper who is ready with the
caskhead. Fish thus treated are shipped to various parts of
the United Kingdom, especially to Scotland and to the
Continent, and are intended for almost immediate consump-
tion. Some of these lasses, I have said, are dreadfully
rough : it is an expression I cannot recall, nor dare I say
that their converse, their jests, or their songs are in any
sort of fashion womanly; but they are thoroughly good-
tempered and overflowing with animal spirits, and there is
room for hope that they are not so bad as they seem.

The classic bloater is, or is supposed to be, a fresh fish
faintly cured. It is a popular error to suppose that it is a
distinct species, a kind of upper class fish, born, bred, and
educated in exclusive shoals. It is only a herring of the best
quality, and it may be selected from the mass. Nothing
is.more foreign to a generous man’s nature than to play the

Modern Yarmouth. 29

Iconoclast with a household-god, and it would ill become me
to skake the British nation’s faith in her savoury bloater. But
it is said that numbers of the so-called Yarmouth B. come
from Ireland and Scotland, and are doctored and palmed off
to confiding breakfast-tables as the real original article.
When every purchaser of a herring insists upon its being a
bloater, a Yarmouth bloater, and a hard-roed Yarmouth
bloater, it is clear something must be done to keep up the
supply. However, let us confiie ourselves to what is being
‘done under our own observations.

The “herring office,” where the fish are converted into
bloaters, isa very singular place. Upon the ground floor the
herrings recently arrived from the wharf are shot out of the
swills upon the stones, transferred by great wooden shovels
into a huge tub, thoroughly washed, and passed: on to
women—a much better type than those working about the
wharf and in the ruder sheds—who thread them through one
of: the gill covers upon a long slender lath called a “spit,”
which accommodates five-and-twenty fish. The spits are then
taken up into the smoke-room, a lofty, barn-like apartment,
full of dark-coloured. frames and beams from floor to roof.
‘The spits, charged with herrings, are placed horizontally in
niches which receive the ends of the stick, the tiers extend-
‘ing to the ceiling overhead, The only aperture in this dusky
room is in the centre of the roof, the great object being, when
the drying process begins, to “draw” the smoke, The
‘room being filled with tiers, containing sometimes as many
as a hundred thousand fish, small wood fires—of oak, if
possible—are kindled over the stone floor, and maintained
without: flame, The uncemented tiles above, and the one
opening in the roof, promote a free draught, while the smoke
from the oaken logs ‘gives a fine colour to the fish. For
‘certain markets where a particular colour is demanded, ash

30 By Stream and Sea.

billets are substituted for oak. A few hours in the smoke-
room are sufficient for a bloater, and the lower spits are
used for that description of article. The fish higher up are
left to dry according to the will of the curer, the last to
be removed coming down as veritable red herrings.

We have now seen the fresh herring sold and despatched,
the pickled herring lightly salted and barreled, the bloater
and red herring cured to a turn in the smoke-room, but
there yet remain the kippers. The veteran boatman and
fisherman pretend to know nothing about this process of
Kippering, which they regard as a new-fangled notion that
will ruin the country if persisted in. Probably they would
think more kindly of it had it not been of Scotch origin. But
there it is, increasing in importance every year. It employs
large numbers of thrifty, homely women, mostly Scotch.
The best quality of fish must be selected for kippering; no salt
is used; the herrings are most carefully cleansed, and deli-
cately and artistically smoked. Mr. Buckland, in a recent
Report on our East Coast Fisheries, estimates that a thousand
lasts of herring per year are now required for kippering.

Yarmouth, however, does not live by herrings alone.
Trawling is an equally important branch of the local trade.
When the bloom is gone from the herring season the boats
refit, and, under the generic name of smacks, spend the
winter in trawling, a much more hazardous occupation than
drifting, and altogether different in its nature. The drift-
net entangles the shoal swimming near the surface; the
trawl sweeps the bottom. The one captures herrings, with
a very occasional mackerel or cod in the meshes; the other
brings up the more remunerative sole, haddock, plaice,
turbot, brill, and whiting. It is stated in Mr. Buckland’s
interesting little Blue-book that the North Sea trawling-
ground covers, according to Yarmouth calculation, 50,000,

Modern Yarmouth. at

and according to Grimsby calculation, 130,000 square miles;
that is to say, it extends from the North Foreland to Dun.
cansby Head in the Pentland Firth, and from the coast of
England to that of Norway. While, forty years ago, there
were but two Yarmouth vessels engaged in trawling, some four
hundred boats now sail from the Yare. In this matter
Yarmouth and Gorleston have prospered at the expense of
Barking, whose fleet of smacks was transferred to the more
convenient harbours of Norfolk. The trawlers composing
the North Sea fleet are good sea boats, well found, and
manned by excellent seamen, who dare much and do much
that is never known to the world. The smacks remain at
sea from six weeks to two months at a time, and, as the
voyages fall in the depth of the winter, the close of every
season brings a sad tale of missing boats and men. There
was a memorable gale in November, 1863, which in one
night destroyed seven Hull trawlers with all hands, and
disabled twenty other boats.

The trawling fleets are sometimes composed of vessels
from various ports; but there are a few wealthy merchants
who own entire fleets of from sixty to eighty smacks. An
admiral of the fleet is appointed by popular election, and
from his vessel signals are made directing the movements of
the fleet, At night the orders are given by “ flare-ups ”—
flashes of light visible, like meteors, for miles over the watery
waste. According to the number of flare-ups the fleet goes
about, or lies to, or takes in fishing-gear.

Passing along the beach just now, I noticed a hand-
‘somely built and smartly rigged cutter speeding towards
shore, light and swift as a sea-bird. Simultaneously you
might have observed unusual commotion in one of those
lofty watch-towers on the esplanade, which are never
deserted. The cutter is not a gentleman’s private yacht, as

42 By Stream and Sea.

may be supposed from its general appearance, but one of
the swift carriers running between the fleets and the Yar-
mouth beach with the produce of their trawling. The
signalman caught sight of her through his telescope some
time since, and long before the cutter brings up as near the
shore as is consistent with safety the carts will be drawn up
along the shore and the men standing by to ply the “ferry-
boats ”"—the heavy black barges to which reference has
been previously made,

The cutter brings a variety of fish, carefully packed for
the distant markets to which they are to be despatched,
To appear on the fishmonger’s slab in good condition fish
should be taken from the water alive—not battered to
death in the trawl-nets—and immediately packed. Fish
caught in the trawl are known in the trade as either “ prime”
or “offal,” the former comprising soles, turbot, brill, and
dorys, and the latter gurnards, plaice, haddocks, skate,
etc.; and the “prime” are honoured with better packing-
cases than their coarser brother captives.

The carrier, arriving by night or day (in the darkness he
announces his coming by the useful flare-up, and with such
accuracy that the signalman at once knows the particular
vessel challenging his attention), will certainly find every-
thing ready for the reception of his cargo, and in a couple of
hours the fish-train, a special, if necessary, will be on its
way to Billingsgate. The cutter, therefore, which we have
this afternoon watched tearing through the waves at ten
knots an hour, will have been the means of supplying fresh
stores of fish to the London retail dealers by breakfast time
to-morrow morning. Some of the carriers run straight from
the fleet to London, and there is a London steamer engaged
in the Dogger-bank trade. A steamer tried, however, in
Yarmouth for the same purpose a year or two since, was not

Modern Yarmouth. aa

found to answer. ‘The use of ice is now thoroughly under-
stood on board these smacks, and a brisk shore industry is
carried on while there is ice upon the adjacent broads;
though Norway ice, brought to Yarmouth ice-houses in
white Norwegian ships, is preferred.

The soles and other favourite flat-fish seem to be getting
scarcer and scarcer every year, and competent judges attri-
bute the declension to the wholesale destruction of small
fry on the spawning-grounds near the Dutch coast. A
Gorleston smack-owner told Mr. Buckland that he saw
hundreds of vessels trawling in the great fish nursery of the
North Sea, which, twenty miles in width, extends from the
German coast to the Texel, and destroying every night at
least a hundred tons of small fish. From the North Fore-
land far into the North Sea there are numerous fishing banks
well defined on the smacksman’s charts, and productive of
the finest soles, which are found there (the water being
deep) in the coldest weather in immense numbers. The
Dutch trawlers are great sinners against fisherman’s law.

The Dutch smacks being of smaller draught than ours,
the fishing is conducted too near the shore whenever it may
be done with impunity. The Germans, by the effective
argument of an ever-present gun-boat, take care of their
coast fisheries by allowing no trawling inside nine fathoms
of water. At any rate, the spawning-grounds eught to be
protected; and Mr. Frank Buckland will have done excellent
service by the forcible manner in which he has called the
attention of the Government to evils that English, Germans,
and Dutch alike are peculiarly interested in remedying.

The smacksman toils hard for his living, amidst perils of
which we, who are snugly housed ashore, little wot. The
operation most dreaded by him is the conveyance of the
packages of fish from his smack to the carrier cutter. The

D

34 By Stream and Sea.

transfer‘is effected in the smack’s little boat, and frequently
in most dangerous seas. Many aman and boy have perished
in the performance of this hazardous duty,

A ramble through Yarmouth—fish-market, Denes, curing-
houses, rows, streets, market-place—will always be appropri-
ately terminated by a final stroll along the marine parade,
piers, and jetty. After a long-spell of north or south winds,
there are not far from a thousand sail lying in the safe
anchorage of the roadstead. It is computed that 50,000
vessels annually pass and repass within sight of shore, and a
sea-scape so animated is always worth studying. Yonder
dark, heavily laden brig, voyaging southward, is a collier
carrying coals from Newcastle to London. Close behind
her follows a round-nosed barque, listing to starboard more
heavily than the wind justifies; she is a Baltic timber ship
whose cargo has shifted, as such cargoes will, during yester-
day’s gale. The screw trading steamers leave behind them
long lines of foam below, and long lines of black smoke
above. A mist steals gradually over all, and each object
dissolves into a shadow and is no more seen. The inshore
fisherman and the amateur anglers wend their homeward
way, with their strings of codling and whiting, and Yarmouth
ashore settles down to the quiet leisure of evening at the
precise moment when Yarmouth afloat settles down to a
night’s hard, and let us hope remunerative, work.

CHAPTER III.

A SPRING RAMBLE BY THE ITCHEN.

SPRING rainble, do I say?

To be sure, by all law and precedent, there can-.
_. , not be.any doubt that this is spring-time, for we are
in the first week of April, the month when the sealed caskets
of -nature silently. and gradually unlock in beautiful response
to warm sunshine and soft showers. At least so used it to
be;. but the grand vernal movement for which we have
hoped so intensely during the murderous blasts of a severely
protracted winter seems still reluctant to gladden our eyes
in its full April measure. The farmers and gardeners do
not object to a little reasonable backwardness of season, for
anything in the shape of forwardness, you may generally
take it, with most kinds of vegetation, as with men and
women, boys and girls, is unsafe, and not to be desired by
those who are wise enough to look to ultimate issues. Vet
it would be pleasanter, as we sally forth, were we not cut
and slashed so mercilessly by the bitter wind, and were we
able to realize even in a faint degree all the sweet adjuncts
with which poets invest April skies and spring landscapes,

36 By Stream and Sea.

But (fortunately, who shall question?) it is not for mortals to
command in these things ; not one of us by taking thought
can add another bud to the boughs, or develope another
flower in the hedgerows.

Masses of slate-coloured clouds roll over the fine old city
of Winchester as I wait in a porch for the carriage which is
to convey us to Itchen-side, and—miserable luck !—the
hailstones storm us in volleys, making the windows of the
cathedral over the way rattle again, and covering the green
grass of the churchyard with tiny dancing hop-o’-my-thumbs
which speedily are gone for ever. The carriage cometh
not; up the street and down the street we look, and still
the chariot wheels delay their coming. It is but a step
across to the cathedral, and we may spend a profitable
quarter of an hour there. Moreover, it is a spot of Paes
interest to the angler. e

The antiquarian loves Winchester Cathedral es of
its hoary historical associations with the period when the
White City of the Downs was fortified by the Romans, who
established there their College of Priests, and upon its site
—or near enough to it for argumentative purposes—erected
their temples of Apollo and Concord. The connoisseur of
architecture loves the low-towered church for the wonderful
combination of many schools which it represents. Rebuilt
with crypts by Ethelwold, after the rude handling of Danish
invaders, Bishop Walkelyn introduced nave and transepts in
massive Norman style. This was the Walkelyn whose tower
is supposed to have fallen in horror at the burial in con-
secrated ground of His Majesty William Rufus, who, you
may remember, having been sent to his last account by
Master Tyrrell’s arrow in the forest yonder, was brought
hither in a charcoal-burner’s cart. Then we have the Right
Reverend Godfrey de Lucy’s Early English, and fanious

A Spring Ramble by the Ttchen. ay

William ‘of Wykeham’s substitution for the Norman of the
severely beautiful Perpendicular. Cromwell had a word or
two to say, necessarily, about the decorations of our
cathedral, but, as well-preserved specimens of all the above
styles remain, though amidst many incongrtuities, it may be
well observed that to the student of architecture Winchester
Cathedral is an object of admiration. _

The angler, though I will not do him the heinous injustice
to hint that -he cares for none of these things, remembers the
cathedral for another reason. He passes by Walkelyn’s
Norman work in the north transept, the corner by which,
descending to the crypt, may be inspected the most ancient
architectural features of the structure, and makes his way
towards the eastern side to the little chapel, to which the
name of Silkstede is given; but its singular wirework and
other peculiarities are of secondary consideration, for here lie
the bones of dear old Izaak Walton.

The good angler was a great traveller for his time. There
were few parts of England unfamiliar to him. He fished
many rivers, north and south; in Worcester Cathedral he
buried his wife, ““a woman of remarkable prudence and of
primitive piety, who was blest with general knowledge, true
humility, and Christian meekness,” and who was therefore
a worthy mate of the man who could write no higher praise
of Dean Nowel, of St. Paul’s, than the words—“ This good
old man was a dear lover and constant practiser of angling
as any age can produce; and his custom was to spend,
besides his fixed hours of prayer... . a tenth part of his
time in angling, and also... . to bestow a tenth part of
his revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that
inhabited near to those rivers in which it was caught.”

Walton’s son Izaak was a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral,
and Walton himself, dying during the hard frost of 1683 in

38 By Stream and Sea.

Dr. Hawkin’s house in Winchester, was buried in Prior
Silkstede’s chapel. Tread softly, for here is the flat stone
which points to the master’s last home, and thus com-
memorates it :—

Here resteth the body of
MR. ISAAC WALTON,
Who dyed the Fifteenth of December, 1683.

Alas ! he’s gone before,

Gone to return no more.

Our panting breasts aspire
After their aged sire,

Whose well-spent life did last
Full ninety years and past.
But now he hath begun

That which will ne’er be done.
Crowned with eternal bliss,
We wish our souls with his.

Votis modestissic flerunt libert.

And still the hail peppers the streets as we come out into
the light, and yet the angler, having finished the pilgrimage
to his hero’s shrine, is left lamenting at the non-arrival of
the promised vehicle. Well, well, if we may not ride we
can walk to our hearts’ desire! The day is not favourable
for angling, but it may be turned to good account for
rambling purposes by the side of the limpid Itchen. And
there can be no better guide than H. , who loves its
trout with paternal affection, who is known by every Hamp-
shire angler, and remembered by many a Winchester College
boy after he has gone forth unto the ends of the earth to
make the fish of distant waters feel the disadvantages of the
lessons taught him in the art of fly-making and trout-catching.
This worthy is a well-known citizen, and known far and wide.

_The old man has fished the Itchen for thirty years, and,

A Spring Ramble by the Itchen. 39

acquiring water as fast as it came into the market, he is
now the proprietor of several miles of fine trout fishing.
Happily I find him amongst the stuffed fish, flies, and
angling stock in his shop in the peaceful square, not far
from the City Cross, and induce him to don his fishing-
boots, take his rod, and be my guide during the afternoon.
But he decisively warns me to expect no sport, for the
Itchen trout have a keen sense of the proprieties, and at
this time of the year will not rise after two of the clock.
They do not trouble themselves, however, seriously about
the icy wind, and are not necessarily disconcerted at the
hail; but as to times and seasons in other respects mee
like eaful women, will have their own way.

By the bridge at the bottom of the town there is a inten
of water free to the public, and the private soldiers from
the garrison sometimes of a summer evening come down
and mingle with the civilians in whipping the river. If
these free fishers used the fly only the sport would be much
better, for the stream is of such a nature, and in such a
position between the upper and lower waters, that thé
largest fish are to be found there. But all sorts’of unfair
means were at one time employed to capture the trout ; and
perhaps, after all, we should not be too hard upon a poor
fellow who knows that a three-pound trout is lying under a
certain bend in the bank, and that he will be three shillings
the richer if he can transfer it to his bag. So he tries worm
and minnow, as he has a perfect right to do; but~-he
attempted a process locally known as “snatching,” which
was reprehensible and not to be endured. These body-
snatchers lashed three large hooks together back to back,
and weighting them with a bullet or piece of window lead,
threw the apparatus over the fish, and fouled it if they
could. It was a long time before the keepers could under-

40 By Stream and Sea.

stand why so many mutilated and murdered fish were found,
but at length the ruinous cause was discovered to be
“snatching.” Happily, a byelaw was unearthed under
which the snatcher could be brought under the hand of the
police, so that the Itchen anglers during succeeding seasons
reaped the benefit of a strict enforcement of the penalties in
such case made and provided.

The Itchen about Winchester is* the only portion which
is within the reach of the angler who is able and willing to
pay for his sport, and there is no river in England where the
terms are fairer and the probabilities of moderate sport
better. You may, for a trifle per diem, purchase the right of
fishing the lower waters, where large fish roam ; or you may
secure advantageous terms by taking weekly, monthly, or
yearly tickets. The upper water is a ten-rod and ten-guinea
subscription fishery, and there the trout are more numerous,
though not, as a rule, so heavy. These particulars I mention
to assist any brother angler who, wishing to know how best
to spend that holiday which gives him release from care and
toil, is hampered and too often disappointed by not knowing
where to go. The higher parts of the Itchen are most
strictly preserved by the landowners, and hence there exists
a common impression that the whole river is beyond the
grasp of an ordinary individual. Winchester is but sixty-
seven miles from London, and if a London angler takes the
earliest and latest trains he may enjoy a long day’s hard
work with his fly rod by the side of a well-stocked trout
stream and amidst lovely pastoral scenery. —

Yesterday, as I can vouch from actual observation, one of
the subscribers between ten and three o’clock caught seven
brace of fish, weighing twenty pounds; four and five brace

* Referring to the season of 1874,

A Spring Ramble by the Itchen. 41

are not at all uncommon takes in the upper water, and all
fish under three-quarters of a pound have to be returned
to the river. The gentleman who yesterday was able to
exhibit this superb dish of finely conditioned trout pleaded
guilty to having had fifteen losses; that is to say, the fish
were rising short, and escaped with a prick. This the angler
must expect on a cold April day; but it is better only to
touch a rising fish than whip without a sign from morning to
night. Sensitive trout fishermen humiliate themselves some-
times by too much self-condemnation on these tantalizing
short-rising days, cursing their own stupidity because the
pticked fish gets away: the fact being that no mortal man
could have done otherwise. The great time on the Itchen
is during June, when the May-fly is on. H. studied the
minds and bodies of the denizens of his stream until he
knew their tastes to anicety; and his floating May-fly is
quite a chef d’wuvre of the fly-dresser’s art. Prohibitive
tariffs are imposed on casual visitors during the flight of the
May-fly, a most righteous protection for both fish and annual
subscribers. Sixty-nine brace were taken from the stream in
one day not many seasons ago with the floating drake.

Last year, during an evening stroll while waiting for a
train to town, I watched the anglers with, their May-flies,
and in the course of two miles saw captured five fish each
over two, and a couple not many ounces short of three
pounds. It is a peculiarity of the lower water that the trout
are seldom small. A reverend gentleman, whom it is my
pleasure to know as a devoted labourer amongst the poor
and an honour to his profession, every year leaves the
squalid homes of the London poor and the dingiest alleys
of the most wretched parts of the metropolis, and. allows
himself a fortnight’s fresh air and recreation on Itchen-side
during this fortunate season. The river is a blessing to him ;

42 By Stveam and Sea.

and his modest expectations of sport are never falsified
should the water be at all fishable. There are numbers of
other anglers who in the same way never regret their intro-
duction to the stream and the peaceful lowlands through
which it winds.

But we are working at a disadvantage to-day; we try a
few casts with Hammond’s Favourite and Wickham’s Fancy,
two sweet little flies, upon the why and wherefore of which
the author will deliver a two hours’ lecture, so theoretically
has he studied the shining body, delicate hackle, and slender
wing of which they are composed. We see plenty of fish in
the smooth reaches, but not the ghost of arise. A couple
of gentlemen whom we pass have met with no success,
though they have tried all the favourite flies, and artificial
minnows to boot. The mystic hour of two has passed, and,
in the words of the old saying: “As the day lengthens, the
cold strengthens.” Down once more before the sou’-west
blast comes the hail, causing the face to smart as if lashed
with whipcord. The narrow stream is roughened into waves,
We run before the wind under bare poles to the lee of the
willow-bed, disturbing the moor-hens, who dive at our
approach and appear again aleiing their shapely heads ity
yards up stream.

Here, in cool grot, we find a third individual who has
been forced into shelter. He is a man learned in trees and
plants, and for ten minutes he bewails the backwardness of
the season. He has cause, doubtless, for the common spring
flowers which usually smile upward at the passer-by keep
snug within their buds. The little celandine will scarcely
open, though the primyoses and violets have set it a good
example. The trees are sulky as to blossom and bud, the
ends of the branches appearing as if hermetically sealed
with bits of wax. Still the coppices are almost i impercep-

A Spring Ramble by the Ltchen. 43

tibly changing colour, and have now put on that port-wine
hue which indicates advance towards leaf-time.

What was it William Cobbett, who thoroughly knew this
part of the country, so prettily wrote?—“In spring they
change their hue from day to day during two whole months,
which is about the time from the first appearance of the
delicate leaves of the birch to the full expansion of those of
the ash; and even before the leaves come at all to intercept
the view. What in the vegetable creation is so delightful to
behold as the bed of a coppice bespangled with primroses
and bluebells? The opening of the birch leaves is the
signal for the pheasant to begin to crow, for the blackbird
to whistle, and the thrush to sing; and just when the oak-
buds begin to look reddish, and not a day before, the whole
tribe of finches bursts forth into song from every bough,
while the lark, imitating hen. all, carries the joyous sounds
to the sky.”

Let us be grateful, for on there comes a burst of sun-
shine, and we may now continue our wanderings along the
Itchen’s course. On the other side of the river below the
town stands venerable St. Cross, the rooks wheeling and
chattering after their kind in the wind-rocked trees. We
have no ferry here, so we shall be in no danger to-day of
presenting ourselves at the porter’s lodge and claiming the
bread and beer which, according to the charitable bequest
of Henry de Blois, bishop of the diocese in 1136, every
traveller may obtain for the mere asking even unto this day.
The river here is broad, deep, and so clear that you may
count the pebbles at the bottom and admire their polished
whiteness ; and do anything but admire the fearful American
weed which has become a pest to English waters.

Hiding behind the alder, you watch the trout all still and
listless save for the movement of the fin necessary to keep

44 By Stream and Sea.

them head to stream. From any point of view along the
bank the buildings of the Hospital of St. Cross look pic-
turesque. An angler appears on the other bank persevering
in spite of difficulties, and he, without knowing it, throws
straight across to the trout which we have been criticizing.
The fly falls at first too far below him, for it is a long cast.
The trout could scarcely have seen the flash of the footline
on the water, yet at the instant of its fall he makes an
“uneasy movement with his tail, A second attempt brings
the Hammond’s Favourite lightly upon the precise ripple
that would float it over the head of the trout, but he has
disappeared like a stroke of lightning. In all England you
shall not find a river requiring so much delicacy of manipu-
lation as the Itchen. Wherefore let clumsy fly-fishers take
heed.

In the upper waters grayling have been introduced with
great success, and there are bright prospects of improve-
ment in the breed of this handsome and sport-giving winter
fish. There are nothing like the number of grayling there
were in the Itchen twenty years ago, when thirty-three brace
were taken in a day by one rod near Twyford, the village
where Pope was partly educated. The grayling, however,
lost their character, and were killed in season and out of
season. When it was discovered that they far outnumbered
the trout and worried their speckled cousins at the spawn-
ing beds ; when it was darkly hinted that they devoured the
ova of the trout, a war of extermination was resolved upon.
The trout were rapidly decreasing, and trout could not be
permitted to die that the grayling might live.

The march of science, however, interposed to save the
grayling from annihilation in the Itchen. Artificial trout-
hatching removed temptation out of the grayling’s path,
and hostilities ceased. It will be a boon to the grayling-

A Spring Ramble by the Ltchen. 45

fisher to be able to run away from town on a nice snowy or
frosty winter day and be amongst the Hampshire grayling
within three hours. In a beautiful branch of the upper
water there were three years ago placed twelve brace and a
half of grayling. The next year—so rapidly do they grow—
there were quantities of fish six inches long, and the multi-
plication has gone on satisfactorily ever since. A grayling
of three pounds four ounces has been taken from the Itchen,
but, of course, they do not often attain that development,
although two-pounders are not rarities,

At the higher portion of the Winchester waters the
rambler, after a couple of miles through grass and fallow,
with a charming plain beyond, and the commencement of
the Hampshire uplands on his left hand, might profitably
spend his time in either sketching or angling. There are
unusual facilities for both. From Winchester to Bishop-
stoke, as the traveller by the South-Western Railway may
see, the river is smooth in its flow, rippling enough for
music, but not enough for foam. ‘Though it rises in the
down country between Alresford and Alton, and flows
through a vale which bears its name, it possesses none of
the wild charms of a mountain stream, It runs through
about twenty-five miles-of delightfully rural scenery, minister-
ing to seventeen villages brought in a very literal sense
within the fold of the Church in days when abbots looted
and kings thieved; it throws out and receives numerous
tiny feeders, and is very often turned aside to wake up the
drowsy water-wheel of the sequestered mill. It waters a
goodly land ; just such land as the shrewd-headed Lot—if
he and the sheik Abraham had happened to hold their part-
ing interview on one of these loamy hills instead of the
Bethel grazing-grounds—would, on lifting up his eyes, have
selected for his flocks and herds,

46 By Stream and Sea.

A river is often compared to a man’s life in its inevitable
advance from source to' ocean. Does not the resemblance
admit of many applications? Take the Itchen. From the
moment when it rises out of the chalk at Ropley Dean to
its reception in Alresford pond it sparkles in a confined
sphere, bubbling and joyous in its childhood existence.
Pursuing its way through the villages and meads, it widens
and deepens, and casts out influences yight and left, orna-
menting stately manors and aiding the husbandman and
miller in the more even tenor of its prime. Lastly, nearing
the tidal estuary at South Stoneham, it puts aside its shallows
and light-hearted ripplings, becomes “still but deep,” and
mingles with the sea without a murmur. So, the best and
the worst of us must feel, should end a well-ordered life.

A rustic bridge near Winnal Church presents a variety of
exquisite scenes for the artist ; for the surroundings are well
wooded, and the habitations of man and the natural charms
of country life are most harmoniously mingled, T he river
here has several branches, some of them the perfection. of
trout-water, offering steady deeps for the artificial minnow
and alternating shallows for the fly. This is the end of our
ramble, and if we have before regretted the backwardness
of the season and the wintry weather, we may doubly regret
it now at a place where the summer verdure alone is wanting
to complete the picture. The white willows without their
feathery ornaments, the weeping willow without its drooping
branches, the white-wooded alder without its distinctive
though somewhat sombre leafage, are like. ships without
their canvas. To-day, instead of imparting their familiar
lights and shades to the stream, they mournfully catch the
passing wind and convert it into a’song of hope deferred.

- But there is in a tall’ tree opposite a bold missel thrush
whom the hail-storms cannot silence; in Hampshire, and

A Spring Ramble by the Itchen. 47

probably elsewhere, they call this fellow the storm cock,
because of his stormy-petrel qualities. We can hear him
singing a defiant kind of war song, and probably his mate is
near, sitting over her four or five eggs, purple-white, with pale
brown spots. The water-wagtail, tamest of our stream-
haunting birds, is out and about, and one fearless little
busy-body, restlessly occupying a spit of gravel in the middle
of the brook, seems to have an eye to our rods, which we
have long ago abandoned, and which, there is no harm in
repeating, we brought out more for the sake of airing than
using them.

In the foregoing remarks I have spoken of the Itchen and
its trout in terms, may be, that will make an angler’s mouth
water, just as that seven brace taken in this very meadow
yesterday morning made mine perform that figurative opera-
tion. And the experienced angler does not require remind-
ing that his pursuit is the most uncertain of sports, and that
seven-brace days are rare in his calendar. But take it all in
all, the Itchen is a good trout river. I have known it for
some years as a rambler, though not much as an angler,
and have seen the kind of sport it yields under average
circumstances and with due exercise of skill. The skill,
however, must be high, and to skill must be added know-
ledge of the water.

The large size of the trout has always astonished me.
A fish of six pounds weight was taken a few years since with
a fly, and that is indeed a noble specimen of the breed ; but
this, I presume, would be an event in a generation. Some
of the regular anglers, Hampshire gentlemen, who know
their ground, reckon their season’s sport by hundreds, and
not by dozens. The Itchen fish have a peculiarity which
may be noticed occasionally in other streams ; of two fish
precisely alike in every respect to all appearance, one when

48 By Stream and Sea.

served up shall cut pink as a salmon and be delicious
eating, while the flesh of the other is white and tasteless.

Here we may put our rods together and stroll in the
evening halflights back to Winton. Ours has been a
desultory ramble, as rambles should be. We began with a
cathedral, and end with the cooking of trout—very like the
daily run of mundane affairs indeed. The stroll along
Itchen-side has not damaged our appetites; the hail and
wind have imparted to our faces a ruddy glow; and we have
picked up some information which, when the proper moment
arrives, will be turned to useful account by at least one
individual.

CHAPTER IV.

CHARLES KINGSLEV IN THE SADDLE.

Fo, TH him I have cast in my lot, to live and die, and
| be buried by his side.”

So, sitting in the saddle on one of the beauti-
ful moorland eminences overlooking the North Hants parish
where he had cure.of souls, and referring to the humblest
type of his parishioners, soliloquized Charles Kingsley. And
so has it befallen. The good Christian gentleman dwelt
among those dark-haired, ruddy Hampshire men for over
thirty years; lived the life of the healthy-hearted in their
midst, knowing all their ways and wants, sympathizing with
them in their sorrows, rejoicing when they rejoiced ; and
alas ! all too soon for them and for us, he has died in the
prime of his life, and was buried, even as he wished, by the
side of his own people.

The death of such a man as Charles Kingsley demanded,
as it obtained, the notice accorded only to persons who have
left a name on the muster-roll of fame, and the written reviews
of his life dealt with his many-sided character in a manner
to show how soundly and generously the English critic can

aE

50 By Stream and Sea.

appreciate, apprise, and lament the worthy labourer in the
fruitful vineyard of literature. His greatest creations, all the
better perhaps for flaw-specks here and there, have received
their due ; the unspottedness of his character, his fidelity to
the career which he chose for the exercise of his faculties,
were acknowledged in all honour. This and more, how-
ever, we must here be content to take for granted.

There are two essays, published in raser’s Magazine
during 1858, which, so far as I have seen, were not referred
to in any of the obituary notices which all classes of English-
men, and English speakers, must have been indeed sorry to
read, when the fatal announcement of Kingsley’s death was
telegraphed to the world. The one he terms “ My Winter
Garden,” the other “Chalk Stream Studies.” They are
most delightful prose idylls; more than that, they portray
an aspect of Kingsley’s character which is a very pleasant
one to contemplate, and which seems somewhat to have
faded out of notice. In them, too, we find illustrated
with peculiar exactness the many, and not unfrequently
diverse, elements which combined to form a noble nature,
the comprehension of which cannot be complete unless we
study him through them.

The first of these essays is a superb and sustained self-
communing which has such an air of actuality about it
that we may without question accept the circumstances
of its occurrence; herein also I find justification for the, to
some, perhaps, startling title given to this chapter. Charles
Kingsley in the saddle was to many connoisseurs of
oratory a pleasanter sight than Charles Kingsley in the
pulpit; the whole country-side would tell you he was a
splendid horseman, but with all deference it might be said
that the gift of an eloquent tongue was not his. Well can I
remeinber the figure of a wiry, eager-eyed, manly-faced man,

Charles Kingsley in the Saddle. Gi

pelting down one of the sandy roads in the Eversley country
as if he formed part of his favourite cob, and bearing about
him an evidence of the intensest enjoyment ; well remember
also the comment of a Hampshire farmer after the rector.
had cantered by: “ Begad, if he hadn’t been a parson he
would have been the stiffest cross-countryman in these
parts.” This was saying a good deal, for the huntsmen in
that district are no novices ; but it was true.

Here, then, we have Kingsley photographed by himself
in the saddle, blown upon by the chilly March breeze, but
confident that he can always be warm if he chooses in that
Winter Garden to which he conducts us. On the way he
takes us into his confidence, and draws himself with that
wonderful power of language which characterized the author
of “Westward Ho!” In addressing the friend to whom he
is explaining the secret of his happiness in “ this monoto-
nous country-life,” he reveals himself as heart and soul a
naturalist and a sportsman. The Westminster Canon could
tell you as much about birds, beasts and fishes, about trees
and flowers, and all that blooms under the sun, as any living
being, and his eye would kindle at the thought of how many
beauties the world has in store for those who turn their
inquiring gaze towards them. «

There is a perfect history in that strange title to his work
on the West India Islands—‘“ At Last.” For years he had
longed to be in the tropics, and then the time came when he
could shake himself free from his duties and set sail towards
the luxuriant islands of the western seas. Dean Stanley,
who understood Kingsley as man seldom understands man,
said truly, in his Westminster Abbey sermon in memory
of his departed friend, that in every pore he was alive and
awake to the beauties of Nature, and that his “eagle eye
seemed to discern every shade and form of animal and

52 By Stream and Sea.

vegetable life; that listening ear, like that of the hero in the
fairy tale, seemed to catch the growing of the grass and
the opening of the shell.”

Remembering his enthusiastic love of out-door pursuits, it
is not surprising to be told by Kingsley, as he takes his
morning’s ride, that once his brains were “full of bison and
gtizzly bear, mustang, and bighorn, Blackfoot and Pawnee,
and hopes of wild adventure in the Far West ; which,” he
added, “I shall never see,” little dreaming that in years to
come a trip across the Rocky Mountains would sow in that
iron constitution seeds of death.

His pulses, declares this genial country parson, throbbed
as often as he saw the stag’s head in his friend’s hall; and
then with mock dolorousness, and with just a soupcon of that
muscular Christianity of which it was said he was the original.
patentee, and which, if it means anything, means making
the best of both worlds, he confesses that when one can no
longer enjoy the sights after which one longs it is best to
take the nearest and look for wonders, “not in the Hima-
layas or Lake Ngami, but on the turf, on the lawn, and the.
brook in the park. For there it is, friend,” he goes on—
“the whole infinite miracle of nature in every tuft of
grass, if we have only eyes to see it, and can disabuse our
minds of that tyrannous phantom of size. Only recollect
that great and small are but relative terms; that in truth
nothing is great or small save in proportion to the quantity
of creative thought which has been exercised in making it;
that the fly who basks upon one of the trilithons of Stone-
henge is in truth infinitely greater than all Stonehenge to-
gether, though he may measure the tenth of an inch, and
the stone on which he sits five-and-twenty feet.”

Kingsley’s Winter Garden is at the present moment just
what it was when he drew rein and slowly wandered on

Charles Kingsley in the Saddle. 53

beneath the lofty roof of the ever-fragrant pine wood, with
the creaking of the saddle and the soft footfall of the mare
upon the fir-needles jarring upon his ears. He calls this
“ugly, straight-edged, monotonous fir plantation,” into
‘which he leaps over the furze bank, his Cathedral (how like
him to interject “wherein if there be no saints there are
likewise no priestcraft and no idols !”).

It is glibly said sometimes that we in the old country
‘have lost the art of the lighter and more popular form of
‘essay writing, and bequeathed it to the Hawthorns, Emer-
‘sons, Russell Lowells, and Dudley Warners of the New
“World. What, then, is this which Kingsley has in his Winter
Garden ?—

“Endless vistas of smooth red, green-veined shafts hold-
‘ing up the warm dark roof, lessening away into endless
‘gloom, paved with rich brown fir-needle, a carpet at which
Nature has been at work for forty years. Red shafts, green
roof, and here and there a pane of blue sky—neither Owen
Jones nor Willement can improve upon that ecclesiastical
ornamentation—while for incense I have the fresh healthy
turpentine fragrance, far sweeter to my nostrils than the
stifling narcotic odour which fills a Roman Catholic Cathe-
dral. There is not a breath of air within, but the breeze
sighs over the roof above in a soft whisper. I shut my eyes
and listen. Surely that is the murmur of the summer sea
upon the summer sands in Devon, far away! I hear the
innumerable wavelets spend themselves gently upon the
shore and die away to rise again. It has two notes, two
keys rather ; that Eolian harp of fir-needles above my head,
according as the wind is east or west, the needles wet or
dry. ‘This easterly key of to-day is shriller, more cheerful,
warmer in sound, though the day itself be colder; but
grander still, as well as softer, is the sad soughing key in

54 By Stream and Sete

which the south-west wind roars on rain-laden over the forest,
and calls me forth—being a minute philosopher—to catch
trout in the nearest chalk stream.”

So far the poet ; now the sportsman. Still jogging along
among the red fir stems, he ponders upon Life—“ that one
word Life,”—till, reflecting that all we can do is to “ dazzle
and weary our eyes like clumsy microscopists by looking too
long and earnestly through the imperfect and by no means
achromatic lens,” he determines to think of something else.
A hare races towards him through the ferns, and just as
learnedly as he discoursed of everything else he discourses
of the frightened animal, and is only stopped by the ap-
pearance of a great dog-fox, at which the rare old mare lays
back her ears, and stands still as a statue, though he can feel
her trembling between his knees—knées which one would
dare wager instinctively closed upon the saddle in true fox-
hunting grip, as in the old Dartmoor scenes where young
Kingsley passed his early days.

From time to time a novelist of the Whyte-Melville type
makes us tingle with his description of a ride after the
hounds; but I know of nothing in fox-hunting literature so
graphic and soul-stirring as Kingsley’s account of the flight
of the fox, the pursuit of the hounds, and the tearing by of
the hunters. He wants to waken the echoes, to “ break the
grand silence by that scream which the vulgar ‘ view-halloo’
call.” His heart leaps into his mouth, the fifteen-year-old
mare into the air. But no! he reins in himself as he reins
in his horse, watches his red-coated friends ride away
through the wood, and as he waves them on feels in all
cheerfulness that his hunting days are over, yet is righteously
proud that “county, grass and forest, down and vale,” once
knew his deeds, and that his gallant friends now threading
their ways through the dreary yellow bog know that he can

Charles Kingsley in the Saddle. 55

ride if he so chooses ; “and,” adds he, “I am vain enough
to be glad that you know it.”

The poet, the sportsman, and next the parish priest. He
says—and can we not see the tightened lines of his deter-
mined mouth, and bushy brows over kind iron-grey eyes the
while ?— .

“It is past two now, and I have four old women to read
to at three, and an old man to bury at four, and I think on
the whole that you will respect me the more for going home
and doing my duty. That I should like to see this fox
fairly killed or even fairly lost I deny not. That I should
like it as much as I can like any earthly and outward thing
I deny not. But sugar to one’s bread and butter is not
good; and if my Winter Garden represent the bread and
butter, then will fox-hunting stand to it in the relation of
superfluous and unwholesome sugar; so farewell, and long
may your noble sport prosper.”

Shocking sentiments these, no doubt, to many estimable
people. But the peasants and farmers around Eversley in
their heaxts will as long as they live think of Kingsley as
their genial friend and wise counsellor, who in both letter
and spirit ever fulfilled his sacred trust.

The poet, sportsman, parish priest, and, lastly, the philo-
sophic naturalist. For the mare’s head is at length turned
homewards, and though she blunders at every step among
the fir stems, fetlock deep in peat, and jumping the “un-
canny gripes” at every third stride, he talks of “ Aira
ceespitosa, most stately and most variable of British grasses ;”
of gravel, mould, and heather; of decent public buildings,
Scotch firs, and painters; hares, cattle, and turf-parers ;
Snowdon in the glacial era, the CEon, James the First and
his admired hero Raleigh; Goethe’s Helena, green comets’
tails, Australian bushmen,.and Celtic trackways; and so

By Stream and Sea.

goes across the village-green, where his applause encouraged
many a sturdy cricketer on the summer evenings, up a
hollow lane between damp shaughs and copses, to the old
women in the cottages, and thence to the quiet rural church-
yard to perform a rite which, ere this year* was a month
old, his weeping friends under spreading fir branches of his
own selection performed for himself.

Kingsley drew the line at fox-hunting, but he made
amends with his fly-rod. The chalk stream trout had as
much reason to fear him as did the black sheep of his
parochial fold. Few anglers can draw so much delight from
their recreation as did Kingsley. He was a trifle apt to be
dogmatic in his theories upon flies and fish, as anglers often
are, and as a man has a right to be who marries his
enthusiasm to general scientific knowledge. He was a
noted mountain fisherman, but better still he could succeed
in.the clear, steady, lowland streams which tax the skill of
the best of us. Even in the saddle up among the fir-
needles he must needs give a passing thought to his
favourite pastime, of which he elsewhere said, “‘ The angler
is brought close face to face with the flower and bird and
insect life of the rich river banks, the only part of the
landscape where the hand of man has never interfered, and
the only part in general which never feels the drought of
summer—‘the trees planted by the waterside whose leaf
shall not wither.’”

The habit, very common to him, of putting his foot
firmly down upon a thing in which he believed, comes out
conspicuous in “Chalk Stream Studies’”’—a veritable ency-
clopedia to the trout fisher. The Blackwater, a westerly
tributary of, and other smaller streams in, the Loddon

* 1875.

Charles Kingsley in the Saddle. 57

watershed, were within easy reach of Eversley Rectory, and
the May-fly, ‘“‘mortial strong last night, gentlemen,” as the
keeper remarked, would invariably tempt him forth—as it
tempts every proper-spirited Waltonian—to the familiar
waterways. He was able in these well-stocked and well-
preserved waters in a most literal sense to cast his lines in
pleasant places, where the ancient mill hummed for ever
below giant poplar spires, bending and shivering in the
steady breeze.

Failing fish, he pries into the mysteries of insect life,
abuses the Transatlantic curse Anacharis, distinguishes in
the tangled forest, ‘‘ denser than those of the Amazon, and
more densely peopled likewise,” grass, milfoil, water-crow-
foot, hornwort, startwort, horsetail, and a dozen other
delicate plants, never forgetting, however, that there is work
to do, seeing that while the green drake is on, all “hours,
meals, decencies, and respectabilities must yield to his
caprice.” Through his pocket lens he shows you millions
of living creatures upon the Vorticellz ; he takes you to the
muddy bottom and lectures you upon the grubs, tadpoles,
and water-crickets.

Just as when in the saddle he had glorified the foxhound
as being next to a Greek statue in grace and strength, so by
the river, with the spare casts wound round his hat, he lauds
the transcendent merits of drakes green, brown, and white ;
of the dun, black alder, and yellow sally, in particular, and
of the four great trout-fly families, phryganez, ephemerz,
sialidee, and perlide, in general, laying down the very excel-
lent law that the caperer, March brown, governor, black
alder, with two or three palmers, are sufficient to show sport
from March to October, and that “if they will not kill, the
thing which will kill is yet to seek.” In the whole range of
angling literature there is nothing to surpass—nay, nor to

58 By Stream and Sea,

equal—in beauty of language, play of fancy, marshalling of
facts, and flow of vigorous narrative, these forty-nine pages
of “ Chalk Stream Studies.”

In these essays, and on many another page, Kingsley’s
motto is, “Be sportsmanlike and sin not.” Ina still older
contribution to Zraser (1849), in a charming paper upon
North Devon, he puts in a plea for sportsmen on the ground
that some of our most perfect topographical sketches have
been written by them, and while admitting that the majority
of sportsmen are the most unpoetical of men, he argues that
for most of them it is sport which at once keeps alive and
satisfies the esthetic faculties, and helps to make them
purer, simpler, and more genial. “Esau,” he says, “is a
dumb soul, especially here in England; but he has as deep
a heart in him as Jacob, nevertheless, and as tender.”
Kingsley was an exception to his own ruling, for in this
matter he was both Esau and Jacob.

CHAPTER V.

OVER THE MENDIPS.

HE Parliament of Science is over, and the philoso-
pher’s playhour has arrived. At the bottom of the
hill which lies between Bristol and Clifton the

morning mists brood over the shipping ; we have no mists

on the higher ground, however, and no mists in either heads
or hearts, for we are bound for the Mendip Hills, on an
excursion which is to be a mixture of pleasure and profit.

We are a small remnant of a scientific host who have de-

parted, or are departing, full of pleasant recollections of

venerable Bristol. Some went one way and some another.

The far-famed St. Vincent Rocks at Clifton were irresistible

lodestones to some; others wandered away over the splendid

downs which make the fortune of Clifton, Redlands, and

Durdham; others went further afield, and visited the yellow-

watered bathing places in the Bristol Channel; others took

the train to Bath, or carriage to noted villages and country
houses, within the compass of a six-hours’ drive.
Yet there is no necessity for hurrying away from Bristol.

At would take a very long day indeed to get through all the

objects of interest which are contained in the rare old city.

60 By Stream and Sea,

If ecclesiastically minded, there are the cathedral on Cottage
Green, incomparable St. Mary Redcliffe, quantities of old
notable churches, and the exquisite little chapel of St. Mark,
where the Mayor of Bristol has a throne to himself, and the
aldermen separate stalls as if they were bishops, deans, and
canons, and where there are rare monuments and grand
specimens of wood-carving. The antiquarians miscellaneous
have a plethora of riches within their grasp. Here is a
bookseller’s shop, where Cottle, brother of Byron’s loosely
ridiculed “ Amos,” issued the earliest editions of the poems
of his friends, Coleridge and Southey, and where Wordsworth
and Coleridge actually wrote some of their “copy.” There,
still standing, is the house where Southey was born. Pepys
came here, prying, as usual, into everything. Daniel De Foe
(though we have the story only at second hand) here used,
when in hiding from his London creditors, to emerge in
glorious array from cover on Sundays, when, according to
the berieficent laws in that case made and provided, no man
dared collar him for being in debt. There is also the
‘church in which young Chatterton pretended he had dis-
covered the ancient MSS. Richard Savage, the now
‘almost forgotten poet, died in the Bristol Newgate, and is
‘buried in one of the churchyards of the city.

But, however old a city may be, the country around is
older ; the maker of the one was himself fashioned by the
Maker of the other. Let us do the town, and the bits of
‘history associated with it, full justice ex passant, but forget
them when we have left then behind for the open country,

A drive of some eight-and-twenty miles over the finest
Somersetshire country, behind a team of four lively horses,
with agreeable fellow-travellers in company, and a donne-
bouche in the shape of the Cheddar Pass at the end of the
journey, is the very thing, you may take it, to clear out the

Over the Mendips. 61

cobwebs which a week’s severe sectionizing at the Parlia-
ment of Science may weave in the commonplace brain.
It will be a long day, no doubt, but the longest day must
have a termination, and the coachman of one of the five
breaks that are to take our party—a hundred strong—from
Clifton over the appointed route, lessens the difficulty by
appearing just an hour later than he had any business to do.

A brave show our procession of four-in-hands makes as
it clatters through the narrow streets of Bristol. The shop.
boys and girls, glad of the excuse for leaving their work,
rush to the doors and windows; passers-by of all grades
stop short on the pavement and gaze at us with wonder
and envy; the cart and waggon drivers somehow do their
best to hinder our progress and block our path; and the
sky attempts to frighten us, by assuming a most threatening
countenance. But at last we are through Temple meads, on
the right side of Hill’s bridge, and passing the neighbour-
hood to which, according to a Weal historian, Chatterton
referred in

‘¢ The cits walked out to Amo’s dusty vale,
To take a snack of politics and ale.”

What a charming treat is a real country drive! Dog-cart,
four-wheeled basket-chaise, pony-gig, or even donkey-cart,
comes now and then as a welcome relief to the prosaic
railway train; but what shall be said of the four-in-hand
when you have secured a box seat at the driver’s elbow?
It furnishes you with mental eye-glasses that conceal defects.
and magnify delights ; by its aid every wretched hamlet is
“Sweet Auburn, smiling village of the plain!” every pros-
pect pleases, and not even man is vile, except the chuckle-
headed wainster. who will not keep his own side of the
road.

The coachman at first has enough to do to pilot his team,

62 By Stream and Sea.

safely through the close thoroughfares, and get the leaders
in sober trim. When a long hill invites him to slacken
rein he tells you the life and adventures of all his “harses.”
Not very romantic are those equine histories, except that of
the near leader—“a sort of a kind of a silver-tailed roan,”
as Jehu describes him, and who is blessed or cursed with
such an insatiable appetite for chaff that the stable-keepers,
in fine irony, impose upon him the task of working the chaff-
cutting machine for the benefit of the general stable.

We must be careful in descending these steep, winding
hills ; five-and-twenty persons who, by their purchase of
British Association tickets, are fairly entitled to rank
amongst the wise of the earth, are too precious a cargo to be
spilled in the ditch like water. So we apply drag-shoe as
well as brake, and pick our way at a gingerly walk down
the white hills which the Wells mail-coaches of the good
old times used to clear at full tilt. The sportsmen are
abroad, as we may hear by the frequent breech-loader in
the stubble. Here is a country squire quizzing us from
behind the hedge, gun over shoulder and setters by his
side; there comes a gang of nutbrown labourers, sickle in
hand, and gaping open-mouthed at the philosophers until
the last consignment has rolled by in a cloud of dust. The
business of every village is temporarily paralyzed during
our passage.

Never mind ; a balance is struck. The rustics admire us,
and we are charmed with their thatched cottages, the purple-
plums, golden apples, green walnuts, blooming hollyhocks, ’
sunflowers and fuchsias, drooping vines, and homely beehives’
of their gardens.

And what does not a country drive owe to the hedge-
rows? We are a somewhat miscellanous party, but we
all sing its praises; all, save the worthy geologist who finds

Over the Mendzips. 63

his sermons in stones only, and is not enamoured of any-
thing that cannot be chipped with the hammer. A West-
country hedge is always worth looking at, if you know how
to look, and these of fat Somersetshire are in their glory.
Wild hop and clematis let fall their graceful pendants ; the
blackberry appears black, red, and green on the same bough ;
the wild geraniums twinkle with sweet modesty below;
startling crimson bunches set the mountain-ash on fire,
putting out of countenance the hips and haws that, with the
fruit of the elder-tree, are warning us of the approach of
ripe autumn ; among the sombre nettles gleam the orange-
coloured berries of the cuckoo-pint, shunned by the children
as poisonous, and fit only for snake’s food; the harebells
meekly nod their delicate cups; the scabious, wild mint,
thistle, and many another wild flower, keep them company ;
higher up you may find clusters of the ripening hazel-nut,
and wreaths of honey-scented woodbine. The fields are
white with harvest ; the orchards are heavy with bounteous
fruit.

At Stanton Drew the church bells are ringing to welcome
us, and across the lane flags are suspended, and garlands
of dahlias. If any timid passenger has till now been fearful
of the coachman’s talent, the masterly way in which he tools
us over the rough, tortuous roadway must reassure him.
We alight in a meadow near a venerable barn, and follow
the conductors of the excursion into the orchard. Our
conductor-in-chief is a worthy prebendary, an eminent
archzeologist.

Stanton Drew is Stonehenge in miniature. There are in
different fields three circles of stones. A rustic of pure
Somersetshire type confidentially says to me— _

“They be all right, maister. I’ve tried em lots o’ times
wi’ a ctowbar.”

64 By Stream and Sea.

This man is a village Lyell probably, and though his
curiosity has led him into trying sacrilegious experiments.
with his crowbar, he follows the party industriously, and
listens to the prebendary’s lecture, wagging his shock head
with benign approval at the most technical words. ‘“ Mono-
lith” seems to fetch him immensely. Whatever the rev.
lecturer utters he turns to a younger Hodge and winks, as
much as to say—

“Didn't I tell you so, you ignorant young chawbacon ?”

Before the prebendary begins his lecture, however, we
form into a circle in the orchard. The sacred stones, looming
brown out of the grass, are in the rear; a herd of baby-
calves survey us with innocent wonder ; curs snuff, without.
respect of persons, at the heels of professors and learned.
ladies and gentlemen; the village children form an outer
ring, each munching an apple, and chewing the cud of
infantile reflection. Village patriarchs, who wear clean
smockfrocks for the occasion, lean on their staves, and
maintain a stolid demeanour. It is an interesting picture.

The rector of the parish, in the foreground, makes a little
speech, bidding us welcome ; and it occurs to some of us
that his expressed hope that we shall make something out.
of the stones (all the books he had read, he must say,
seeming to contradict each other) is a very neat side-thrust
at the true believer in Druidical remains. Nevertheless, the
prebendary explains everything with great pleasantness of
manner and unobtrusive confidence in his subject, and
shows us in the distance a bit of the real line of communi-
cation maintained by the Romans from Thames to Severn.

Some youthful Gallios of our party, I grieve to say, did
hot express overpowering anxiety to hear the prebendary’s
discourse about monolithic remains, but sat on the gates
and stiles smoking their meerschaums, and, worst of all,

Over the Mendips, 65

seeming to enjoy themselves hugely. What will become of
that heretic who knocked out the ashes of his pipe on the
veritable altar-stone of the Arch Druid, is a fate too painful
for contemplation,

From Stanton Drew we shape our course to the Men-
dips, through more hamlets and lanes. “We are coming
to Chew Magna,” says a terrible Irish wit, who thus, by
one masterstroke, refers to the village we pass and the
luncheon we have in prospect. To avoid Harptree Hill—
a severe stretch for the teams—we are invited to walk
through the woods to Hazel Manor, whose owner is to
entertain us at that repast to which the Irish wit so broadly
referred.

It is a stiff pull for the pedestrians over the slopes of these
glorious woods-; but every breathing-space gives us superb
landscapes. We are face to face with the range known as
the Mendip Hills. Under the sunny sky they smile gladly
upon us; as the clouds are driven over the sun by the south
wind they put on ever-varying expressions of shade and
sadness, The Mendips are exquisite as specimens of highly
cultivated hill country that is not quite mountain, but some-
thing more than upland. They are pastoral to the very
summit, richly wooded, parcelled out into cornfields and
pastures by high hedges, and studded with homesteads and
villages. The hills are boldly and regularly formed, and
stretch away, as we see them from Hazel Manor, for miles,
always telling the same tale of peace and plenty,

At Hazel Manor we are entertained with lavish hospi-
tality ; and the host, like a sensible gentleman, puts a veto
on speechifying, In spite of this—for man, when he has
become a member of a learned association, is essentially a
speechmaking animal—we do get “a few remarks ;” and

one of the speakers openly confesses—‘ The chairman says
F

66 By Stream and Sea.

we are to have no speeches, but I have been ten minutes or
more preparing one, and I mean to let it off.”

After Hazel Manor we resume our drive, first to the
Charterhouse Mines, where we have a number of Roman.
remains to inspect, an amphitheatre to visit, and two more
brief lectures from the prebendary to hear, with much
scaling of stone fences to vary the proceedings. If time
did not press we might linger here to advantage, and look
about us at the lead mines. The Romans appear to have
discovered that the Mendips were rich in lead, lying near
the surface, and it is found worth while even now to re-smelt
the scorize. Amongst the curiously valuable remains taken
from time to time out of the old workings are some Roman
coins of the very earliest times, but not a Saxon example
has ever been discovered. Evening, however, steals upon
us apace, and, bringing our inspections to a close, we start
once more, and for our final stage. We have to see the
Cheddar Cliffs, over which Edward the Martyr, hunting on
the moorland, narrowly escaped the fate of deer and dogs,
which terminated a right royal chase by dashing headlong
over a precipice.

If the Cheddar Pass were in the centre of some far-off
land Englishmen would probably be much better acquainted
with it than they are. Of our own party of six-and-twenty,
two-thirds admit that they know little or nothing about
Cheddar, except in connection with cheeses of that name.
To be strictly accurate, it should be added that a very few.
confessed to a vague idea that there were some cliffs some-
where thereabouts, very fine in their way. We all, how-
ever, formed decidedly. definite opinions of Cheddar before
we had done with it—words could not express our admira-
tion of the unique pass. But this is anticipating,

The descent from the elevated plain is fairly steep, but

Over the Mendips. 67

gradual, and the road winds down a remarkably serpentine
track. The rocks become higher on either side as we
descend, changing from mere stones to ponderous masses of
mountain limestone. The sloping shelves, up which at first
a man might climb, become more and more perpendicular,
until we are looking upwards at walls of picturesque crag,
rising to a sheer height of over four hundred feet. Deep
down in this romantic gorge we look upwards and discover
the sky above, like a mere strip of distant grey. The
Cheddar Pass should be approached as we approach it—
from the Bristol side, and not from the village—because the
scenery gets more imposing as you go down, and culminates
in a truly magnificent spectacle during the last quarter of a
mile. The faces of many of these rugged weather-seamed
rocks are adorned with aspiring ivy and with large trees,
shrubs, ferns, and grasses springing out of the fissures. The
rocks assume all manner of fantastic shapes—now a hoary
castle, now a temple of many spires, now a frowning fortress,
now a city set upon a hill, Mysterious caverns appear high
and low, and water silvers many a hollow. There is nothing
in England, at any rate, to compare in the slightest degree
with the grand rocks that stand, imposing sentinels, over this
comparatively little known pass in the Mendip Hills.

At the stalactite cavern, which is the popular show-place
of Cheddar, a halt is sounded, and we explore the wonderful
interior, in which the son of the discoverer acts as cicerone.
The cave, as the reader doubtless knows, is one of the
finest in the kingdom, and abounds with that singular com-
bination of outlandish figures that belong naturally to stalag-
mite and stalactite formations. It is kept in perfect preser-
vation, and no man should claim to be a judge of British
caves who has not added Cheddar to his experience. The
guide-book is not far wrong when it says that the cavern,
though of small size, is quite a fairy world.

CHAPTER VI.

OUT OF THE CHALK.

a] LE Wandle and the Darent both rise in the chalk
3], downs on the border land of Surrey and Kent: the
former to run its short course of ten miles to the
Thames at Wandsworth, the latter to run much in the same
fashion through Kent to the Thames at Dartford. Both are
trout streams of fair quality; both are most difficult to fish;
more difficult, perhaps, than the limpid Itchen, of whose
tantalizing eccentricities in the matter of fish I have feelingly
written in another chapter.

The Wandle has probably excited more hopes and caused
more disappointments in the heart of the angler than any
other stream that could be mentioned. Standing upon any
of the bridges that overlook the private grounds at
Carshalton and Mitcham, large fish may be discerned by the
score. They make no effort to conceal themselves for more
than a moment at a time; and if, through some bolder
attempt than usual to scare them from the clean-bedded
runlet which they have selected for the poising of their
plump bodies and the graceful waving of their orange fins,

Out of the Chalk. 69

they dart for a moment to the shady bowers of a neigh-
bouring waterweed, they return again even before the pretty
ranunculus blossoms have ceased to wave to and fro, brushed
rudely aside by the vigorous ‘intruder. In deeps and in
shallows, in the open streams, and between shelves of
aquatic vegetation, close to the rushes and flowers of the
margin, or in the centre of the broadest portions of the
river, what matters it? The concentric rings are every-
where to be seen, first as specks, then as gradually enlarging
circles to which the banks are the only limit.

Let us suppose—and I know of many worthy gentlemen
who would be delighted if I could apply my supposition to
them as a reality—that you behold this inspiriting sight as
one who has a personal interest in it: as, let us say, the
general, who rides out of camp to the eminence from which
he watches the gathering of the foe until, hemmed round as
he fondly believes them to be on every hand, he joyfully
returns to quarters exclaiming that, his enemies being
delivered into his hands, nothing more remains than to arise
and smite them hip and thigh with great slaughter. So the
angler, full of confidence as man can be, waits eagerly for
the morrow, and hies to the Wandle.

Yes; there lie the trout with scarcely an altered position.
The big fellow that you are prepared to bet is of two pounds
weight still keeps the eddy which commands the finest
position—for him—in the river, the position towards which
the stream, without any interference or coaxing of his, will
bring food, substantial and luxurious, into his mouth.
There, too, lie the smaller fish on the alert for whatever.
Providence will send them. Putting the joints of your rod
together, you fear that the creel will scarcely hold the trout
you are certain to slay: you affix your winch, and, while
-you pass the line through the rings, generously in your mind

70 By Stream and Sea.

distribute your finest fish—a brace to this lady, two btace to
that gentleman, and so on. As you unwind the cast from
your hat and fasten it neatly to the line, you have the flush
of victory on your noble brow. And you deliver your first
cast.

Hem! But the link, of course, requires preliminary
moistening, and the hand a little practice, before the cast
will fall with that delicacy and precision essential to success-
ful fly-fishing. Therefore you try again; once more; again;
seven times, ay, and seventy times seven; but the adult
trout in the eddy winks at you—if that stately wave of the
tail is‘the way in which fish wink—and never turns aside at
the tempter. Do your best by all means, but you by-and-by
begin to suspect that a smaller creel would have answered
just as well, and that the lovely Mrs. R. and the hospitable
Mr. K. will have no need to write and thank you for those
delicious trout.

Ask any Wandle fisherman whether this is not a fair
picture of his earlier experiences by that delightful Surrey
stream. It, alas! too often by half tells the story of visits
to other rivers; but it has a peculiar application to the
Wandle, until you know the mental and moral character of
its trout.

Roughly speaking, the Wandle has its origin near
Croydon. So much you may learn from any geography
book that condescends to notice so juvenile a member of
the world’s river family; perhaps the last paragraph, as a
sort of afterthought, following the custom of severely
abbreviated treatises, will let you into the secret that “this
river was anciently called the Vandle;” as I daresay it was.

As to its precise origin, I should not like to be bound to
place my foot upon the exact spot; not so much because a
boot-full of water is a thing to be as a rule avoided, as

Out of the Chalk. vi

because there are several springs which might claim the
honour. From the heights from which an enemy might
shell Croydon with terrible effect there issue many crystal
springs, which forthwith, without shaking hands with each
Other, or in any way exchanging the time of day, proceed to
hurry downwards until they approach a spot where a long
while ago there stood the palace of their graces the Arch-
bishops of Canterbury. In presence of so solemn a spot the
rivulets become conscience-stricken, embrace each other,
and, united, form for ever after the Wandle, with such
additions as they gratefully receive from a branch rising at
Waddon, and another that joins fortunes at Shepley House.

A very useful stream is the Wandle, and an object of
beauty everywhere, at least above the point to which the
turbid Thames sends its daily tides, with shoals of coarse-
minded roach and dace that go up with it to hanker after
companionship with the trout in the upper Belgravian
regions, to which, however, they luckily do not succeed in
penetrating. The Wandle grinds immense quantities of
flour ; it has an intimate and valuable connection with the
snuff trade; paper, rough and smooth, is manufactured by
Wandle-turned machinery. There are works of a very
miscellaneous kind, in short, along the little river, and some
of the mills are most picturesque additions to the beautiful
park scenery through which it flows.

Not being in the humour to write four octavo volumes
upon this subject, it will be incumbent upon me to deal
briefly with the historical associations of the Wandle. Her
Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth is supposed to have
ascended its channel at various times in her State barge, and
until very recently there was a venerable tree known from
time immemorial as Queen Elizabeth’s Oak ; but a local
board happened to pass that way, and the revered patriarch

v2 By Stream and Sea.

was lopped, felled, and carted to a Croydon sawpit. The
Queen used to love the neighbourhood of Mitcham.. Sir
Walter Raleigh dwelt there in some of his calmest days
before the shadow of adversity crept over his bright life.

Dr. Donne lived at Mitcham too, and Dr. Donne was
said by Dryden, who probably was not an indifferent
authority upon such a point, to be “the greatest wit, though
not the greatest poet, of our nation.” It was better, anyhow,
to live at Mitcham, where he could teach the trout a little
piscatorial theology, than to take leave of his head in the
Tower, as he very narrowly escaped doing for privately
marrying the lieutenant’s daughter. This, however, it
should be said, was soon after he became a “‘’vert,” and
while he was private secretary to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere,
a period of the witty man’s life not to be confounded with
the days when, becoming suddenly famous as a preacher, he
had fourteen livings offered him in one fell batch.

Sir Humphrey Davy intimates that Dr, Paley, the gentle-
man dear to students of theology, did something with the
Wandle trout, and states that the profound divine was so
thorough an angler that when the Bishop of Durham asked
him when one of his most important works would be ready
for an expectant public, he replied, “ My lord, I shall work
steadily at it when the flysishing season ts over.”

Admiral Viscount Nelson lived at Merton, and was a fly-
fisher in the Wandle, even after he was reduced to one
hand. The great hero fished in more troubled waters
sometimes than “the blue transparent Vandalis,” as Pope
loftily puts it. And referring again to the author of
**Salmonia,” it will no doubt be remembered that the four
gentlemen who are made to interpret Sir Humphrey’s ideas
upon angling opened their discourse, or to use the correct
description, “Introductory Conversation—Symposiac,” with

Out of the Chalk. 93

a fine-flavoured Wandle trout on the table around which
they sat.

The Wandle country (valley we can scarcely term its
course) is surpassingly charming. Beddington Park is open
to the public with its rare trees, fine church and churchyard,
and the red brick building which, once famed as Beddington
Hall, is now used as a Female Orphan Asylum. Queen
Elizabeth was a visitor to the Carews at Beddington, where
the first oranges ever grown in the country—the fruit having
been brought hither by Sir Walter Raleigh—were to be seen.
Poor Lady Raleigh, in the later days of gloom and death,
wrote to Sir N. Throckmorton, asking that “the worthi
boddi of my nobell hosbar Sur Walter Raleigh” might be
buried in Beddington Church. The church, whose tower
is seen peeping above the lofty tree-tops, is a restored
building, but some of the venerable trees around the church-
yard must have weathered centuries of storm and sunshine.

A large, perhaps the major, portion of the Wandle country
is enclosed with park palings and high walls. It is a country
that teems with villas and “desirable residences ;” with
highly cultivated grounds which an ordinary pedestrian
would find it as difficult to enter as Parliament (perhaps as
things go he would find it much more difficult), while a
strolling angler would risk instantaneous cremation if he
dared to look through a hedge. It is, of course, very
natural that when a gentleman has spent money and time in
beautifying his country residence he should wish to keep it
to himself; and equally natural that the owner of a well-
stocked trout river should not insult his fish by allowing
every pot-hunter to thin them out.

There is to my knowledge one bit of free water on the
Wandle, and one only, namely, the ford at Hackbridge.
The space at the angler’s disposal is not vast, and there are

94 By Stream and Sea.

inconveniences natural to the position ; small boys claim a
share in the fisherman’s privileges, and lessen his chances of
sport by their clumsiness, and still oftener by their deliberate
attempts to disturb the water; and all the waggon and cart
drivers who journey that way make it a point of honour to
drive through the stream rather than keep to the high-road.
This they have a perfect right to do, and the legs of the
horses, it is true, receive no injury from a temporary lave.

As a lesson of patience, I never saw a finer trial of temper
than came under my notice while lolling over Hackbridge,
observing the trout, especially the beauties rising and
frolicking in the upper and forbidden part. A gentleman,
who had been drawn all the way from London by the
rumours he had heard of the trout to be caught in the
Wandle, was most skilfully whipping the ford. The water
rushes in the finest style from beneath the bridge, where it
escapes in force from an obstruction on the private side, and
there were three or four trout, as one would expect in the
streams, on the look-out for a meal. An idle urchin, how-
ever, took it into his head to perch upon one of the parapets
directly above and swish the stream with a heavily-leaded
line, to which I discovered (having nothing better to do
than interfere with other people’s business) he had no hook
attached. As in duty bound I promptly informed the
angler that the young scoundrel was not even pretending to
fish, and the latter was requested to desist. He refused, and
was threatened with switching; in reply to which he inso-
lently laid down the law to the angler, discussed general
principles of “right,” and defied the aggrieved fisherman on
pain of the “perlice” to lift hand against him.

The gentleman, seeing the manner of creature the boy
was, turned to the lower part of the ford, and by a series of
artistic casts managed to throw the fly at least fifteen yards

Out of the Chalk. "5

down the stream. By this change of policy he got amongst
the trout, and killed three, averaging perhaps half a pound,
in the course of the two hours during which I was a silent
observer. The boy, as I was leaving, returned with four
others worse than himself and a hideous-looking stableman,
and commenced aggressive action by shying pebbles and
volleys of dry peas into the water. I should hope for the
sake of the free-fishers who take advantage of these few
yards of open ford that this annoyance does not often occur,
for Ihave been told many enthusiasts walk a dozen miles
in order to be at the spot by daylight. Driving over the
bridge you may often see some very good fish rising within
the compass of a long downward cast.

The Wandle trout require the tiniest of flies and the finest
of tackle. With these, and with the utmost skill, you seldom
obtain much sport during the daytime. It is an error to
suppose, as I have repeatedly been informed, that the river
is never discoloured. The water flows from the chalk strata,
and receives but little addition from immediate rainfalls; but
drains and gutters communicating with the roads cannot fail
to bring down a certain amount of discolouring matter, and
at times, soon after heavy showers, the water becomes foul.
But near its sources to an extraordinary extent it speedily
resumes its normal clearness.

A local resident, to whose efforts in fish culture I shall
refer presently, in his delightful book entitled “My Garden,”
says—‘ The Wandle taken as a whole is the perfection of a
river ; its water is as bright as crystal, and is purity itself. It
does not overflow with rain, nor is it deficient in dry weather.
It does not freeze in winter, nor does it become very hot in
summer. It has existed through all historic times ; and as
long as the chalk retains its porosity, and is protected by
a bed of clay underneath, and a bed of blue clay on that

oa

76 By Stream and Sea.

portion of its upper surface which is most depressed, and as
long as rain falls upon the more elevated portion, so long
will the water continue to ooze from the earth by day and
by night, by summer and by winter, and to run its course as
the River Wandle, and it may thus exclaim in the words of
the poet :—

‘“Men may come, and men may go, but I go on for ever.”

The inherent clearness of the river is doubtless one
reason why the Wandle trout have a reputation among
anglers for most unchristianlike obstinacy and immoral
shrewdness. Another cause is the exceeding smallness of
the flies which haunt the river. After dark you may venture
upon moths and hackles of fair dimensions, but so long as
daylight glints on the stream, midge-sized flies, and those
only, must be used. To imitate these tiny insects is not so
difficult as to employ the artificial imitation with effect after
the fly-maker has constructed a perfect specimen. There is,
I believe, a special kind of fly manufactured for the Wandle,
and a neater article could not be conceived. The most
commonly used varieties are a red spinner, a quill gnat with
red hackle, a governor, a coachman, and a blue floating fly,
which you may term either an upright or a dun; but which-
ever description is used it must be considerably smaller than
a young housefly.

Having induced your trout to rise at one of these specks,
you are confronted with the problem how to land a lusty
fellow of over a pound in weight with tackle thinner than
single hair and a hook which, under the most favourable
circumstances, cannot be imbedded much more than the
sixteenth of an inch in his mouth. The Wandle trout are
fond of merrily leaping out of the water when they feel the
barb, and if the first flight does not release them from their.

Out of the Chalk. 77

enemy they try a second and third ascent into the air.
Lucky indeed are you if by a timely lowering of the point
of your rod, and a masterly coolness of mind, you do not in
these trying moments part company with your captive.

But there are other dangers ahead. The line tightens,
yet the well-tempered gut has not parted, and the hook,
Liliputian though it be, has not been torn from its hold.
That is encouraging: you think your friend is as good as
netted when he goes off with a steady strain, and you allow
the top of your supple rod to do all the work. The weed
forest, however, is a refuge for the hunted, and towards it
the fish, butt him as you may, intends to go. If you turn
him and deal firmly in your resolve not to permit him to
take cover, the fish is yours, but the chances are five
hundred to one in his favour should he push so much as
his gills into the tangled growth. Your line comes loosely
back, and you are left lamenting.

And it is astonishing how few rises one obtains compared
with the number of fish to be perceived. It is probable
that there is a vast quantity of natural feed in the river.
Minnows are rare habitants, and in many portions they are
not found at all; but there is a great wealth of insect life.
At odd times—and they are the angler’s golden hours, the
fleeting opportunities when he receives compensation for a
hundred blank days—the fisherman has nothing to do but
to arise and slay. In dull, warm weather, this may occur in
the fore or afternoon, but generally it is found to be at and
after dusk. Then a single fly carefully dropped above the
fish will be certain to seal his fate if the caster have the skill
to retain the prize which fate has given him.

The fun is very fast and furious while it lasts, and you
have no time to pay attention to any other object. Your
friend, wandering up and down in that restless manner with

78 By Stream and Sea.

which a non-angling companion at the waterside provokes
you, flicking off the heads of the purple loose-strife and ox-
eyed daisies, comes and bids you admire the glorious tints
of the sky, newly forsaken by its tyrant king.

“By Jove, sir!” he says, “it’s just the sort of thing
Turner would have painted.”

This is said at the moment when you have found glad
occasion for rapidly removing your thumb from the rod—any
fish may be struck by that simple process—and Turner and
sky and restless friend are as nothing against this twelve-
‘inch salmo fario, We is all the world, and the rest is a
China orange.

The best angling portion of the Wandle is that which is
preserved by an association, numbering a few gentlemen,
who take the greatest care of their treasure, and conduct it
upon the soundest of principles. They are to be envied in
their possession, for, as any one standing on Mitcham bridge
and looking up to the picturesque mill, and sluice running
heavy with trout down by the garden side, may see for him-
self, it is full of fish, Each member is bound by certain
rules, and it is enough to make a hapless outsider’s mouth
water to read that all fish of eleven inches and under must
be returned to the water ; that no member must take more
than three brace per day, and that the limit of fishing after
dusk must not extend over one hour. Three brace of fish
between a pound and a quarter and two pounds should, as
the association very properly deems, satisfy any man blest
with an ordinary appetite for sport. Walking over one idle
afternoon, I found one of the members—and a very accom-
plished fly-fisher he was—in despair because he had caught
his three brace in an hour and a half, and now sighed, like
the ancient monarch, for more worlds to conquer.

The fish were rising “permiscuous.” It appeared as if

Out of the Chalk. 79

they would have gulped a buttercup, or a fusee, or anything
that came floating down the stream. And then, obeying
some unseen law that always puzzles the angler, in a
moment everything was quiet. There was not a rise to be
seen. Who or what issued that sudden command, “Stop
rising”? By what unknown system of telegraphy could the
trout in the mill sluice fifty or a hundred yards off be
brought into the same frame of mind, on the instant, as
these other trout close under the bridge? This is a pheno-
menon the trout-fisher often observes, but can never ex-
plain; nor can he explain why by-and-by, perhaps in an
hour, perhaps in six, the fish in every part of the river
simultaneously resume their rising.

The Wandle: association artificially breeds thousands of
fish by which the water is constantly replenished. Having
had the secretary’s permission to walk through the grounds
in the company of the bailiff, I had the opportunity of in-
specting the boxes in a byewater, where the young fry were
dining heartily off liver boiled, hardened, and powdered
fine upon a nutmeg grater. The keeper spoke of his trout
in terms of almost paternal affection, and apparently longed
to take each mite out of the shoal in order to pat its head-
and otherwise bestow upon it proofs of his undying attach-
ment. The Wandle generally owes a good deal to this
association, which carefully breeds and guards the fish for
the benefit of the entire river.

The most memorable treat I can remember in connection
with the Wandle was a visit paid to the scene of “ My
Garden.” Though ostensibly concerning a small plot of
ground in the hamlet of Wallington, in the parish of Bed-
dington, in the county of Surrey—a plot which, according to
the Ordnance map, consists of 7:925 acres of land and
water—it is a charmingly written and carefully studied de-

80 By Stream and Sea.

scription of the botany, natural history, and much of the
geology of the whole country. The admirable illustrations
with which the book abounds indicated to me that the
garden was a desirable Eden to see; it proved itself to be
Wonderland outright. But I dare not trust my pen to linger
over it—over its glorious roses, its miniature valleys and
glens filled with ferns of the choicest kinds gathered from
all parts of the world; over its thousands of fruits; over
the grand effect produced by allying the natural colours and
forms of flowers and vegetables ; over the faint scent of the
tea-rose, the odour of the sweetbriar, and the honeyed per-
fume of the jasmine; over the romantic vistas, and giant
trees waving on the boundary; over the wild flowers bloom-
ing everywhere, even to the humble but beautiful plants ac-
cursed by the modern gardener as noxious weeds; over the
shrubs, birds, and reptiles, whose habits have been watched
for many a long year, to be now recorded for our benefit.

In “My Garden” there is a chapter entitled “My
Fishery,” and it is that which has tempted me to refer to
this Wonderland by the Wandle, converted by the enthusi-
astic author out of a piece of unprofitable bog. The river
enters his grounds from Beddington Park, and forms a lake
of considerable area and depth ; it also communicates with
a number of brooklets which are made to minister to the
general beauty of the design, and which tend to the main-
tenance of various water-plants which could not otherwise
find a place in the garden. Into the lake or river, for it
partakes of the characteristics of both, ornamentations of
various kinds have been introduced—tustic bridges and
various aquatic plants. The dreadful Anacharis has, as
usual, without being invited, thrust its snake-like branches
into the domain, and thriven, as it thrives everywhere, in
the wildest plenitude.

Out of the Chalk. 81

There were when Mr. Smee first took possession of the
garden two kinds of trout—one short, with white flesh,
which was in season in May and June; the other longer,
with large head but with red flesh, which comes in season in
July and August. From time to time Mr. Smee has made
experiments in pisciculture, adding to the native trout other
members of the family, brought from different parts of the
country. Dr. Giinther, of the British Museum, points out in
his official catalogue that there are seven distinct breeds of
trout in this section of the Wandle, and adds, “It must be
remembered that Mr. Smee has introduced into this river
numerous trout artificially bred from ova received from
numerous sources.” A gallant attempt was made to intro-
duce grayling, but the experiment failed. At first young
ones were raised from ova, but to no purpose. Then twenty
brace of mature fish were conveyed from the Derbyshire
streams, and put safe and sound into the water. It was a
costly and difficult undertaking, but though many of the.
fish lived on for years, and made a show of spawning at the
gravel beds, no young fish were ever seen, and by this time
not a grayling is by any chance observed.

The Wandle is too shallow and gentle probably for this
interesting fish, and the success of the endeavour made to
introduce grayling into the Clyde may be attributed to the
suitability of the Scotch river for that particular kind of fish.
In like manner Mr. Smee failed to breed the burbolt or eel
pout, and he reared thousands of salmon trout and char in
his fish-house and turned them into the water, thus claiming
the honour of placing the first salmon into any tributary of
the Thames. After all the labour, thought, and outlay ex-
pended upon these difficult processes it was found that the
trout and eels—and Wandle eels are as deliciously flavoured’
as Wandle trout—remained in sole and undisputed pos-

G

82 By Stream and Sea.

session, if we may except, as unworthy of mention in the
same breath, the pugnacious little halfarmed stickleback
which is found in great quantities in the river.

% a * % * #

The Darent, or, as it is often written, Darenth, though it
rises in the same hilly formation, sees the light at some
distance from the cradle of the Wandle. Its course, which
is a trifle over fourteen miles in length, is north-east, through
a broad vale smiling with rich pastures, and adorned by
many a noble country seat. By Wandleside you are never
wholly free from the associations of town; the enclosed
grounds give a suburban character to the surroundings, and
indeed a drive through Clapham to Mitcham and Carshalton
suggests that in process of time those genteel places will be
part and parcel of the metropolis. The Darent, on the
other hand, brings you into the pure open country, and into
the sunny districts where hops entwine and cherry-cheeked
fruits ripen for distant markets. Spenser, who took more
delight in the English rivers as a whole than any other poet
except Drayton, says :—

** The still Darent, in whose waters clean
Ten thousand fishes play and deck his pleasant stream.”

Ten thousand might almost be taken in a more literal sense
than Spenser intended, for the Darent is nearly as good a
trout stream as the Wandle. The fish are thought to be
more numerous in the latter river, but some critics pretend
to have discovered a finer flavour in the Kent-bred fish.
Remembering how near London is to the Darent, it is
scarcely necessary to add that the water is most strictly pre-
served by the landowners. There is, however, a fair stretch
of fishing allowed to visitors at the hotel, Farningham, and
a more delightful summer resort you shall not find so near

Out of the Chalk. - 82.

the Royal Exchange as this quiet old-fashioned little town,
which the railway has never yet invaded. The great chest-
nut tree and the antique brick bridge, the old church and
the rookery, are pictures upon which the eye never wearies
of resting, and the country around, rising boldly into sweep-
ing downs, is full of lovely prospects, very varying in
character, but always grateful to the observer who appre-
ciates Nature in her soberer and more contented moods.

In the mill stream, above the hotel water, there are stores
of trout which no man is permitted to disturb. At the head
of this stream there stands a great white mill that supplies
the town with the music of rushing water, which issues with
great velocity from the wheelhouse, gallops along by the side
of the road, disappears under the roadway, and comes into
view again considerably sobered down; thence it flows in
tranquil ripples through the hotel garden, through private
fields where it is heavily fringed with trees, and by-and-by
it meanders prettily through half a mile of meadow land
which also belongs to the hotel fishery.

Fortunately for the Lion water, the intervening section
between the bottom of the lawn and the end of the private
fields is carefully preserved, and so overhung with trees that
many of the fish can defy the angler. The trout, following
their natural instincts, work their way up stream, and so
come within the fair range of the hotel angler. As for the
little millstream beyond the bridge, though it is less than a
hundred yards long, it literally swarms with large well-fed
fish ; they are one of the sights of the place, and are so used
to the profane eye of the public that they bear it with philo-
sophic equanimity. At the lower end a notice-board is
affixed to the wall, requesting the passer-by not to feed the
trout. You may look over the iron railing and see three or
four-heavy specimens directly beneath you, while close to

84 By Stream and Sea.

the sides, and in perhaps not more than three inches of water,
there are hundreds of herring-sized fish lying head to stream.

One Good Friday I went to Farningham to see the
“opening day” of the anglers, and among other sights I
must include large trout taking bread cast upon the water
by an ostler. The fish leaped boldly at the crusts, rejected
them, and turned down again with a mighty lash of the tail.
An old man emerged in alarm from a neat little cottage
opposite and sternly bade the ostler to desist. He was the
guardian of this show place for trout, and right faithfully did
he insist upon obedience to the orders painted upon the
hotice-board. On the face of it this regulation seems absurd ;
but trout are worth so much per pound, loafers are to be
found even at peaceful Farningham, and it is sad to know
that during the last two years the vile art of fish-stupefying
by poisonous compounds has been growingly practised.

The May-fly does not visit the Darent any more than the .
Wandle, and the most successful anglers at Farningham use
the Wandle flies, swearing especially by the Tom Thumb-
like governor and quill gnat. It is but reasonable to expect
that the privilege to be obtained in the hotel water is not
thrown away. On most days there are some rods at work
early or late ; and after the beginning of June, though June
and July are probably the best months in the season, the
most sensible expectations will be those which are restricted
to a very modest limit. On those golden occasions which
are so few and far between, and so impossible to foretell,
three or four brace of fish may be taken, but the man who
can bring away his one or two trout need not mourn over
his ill-luck. There are several very remunerative “stickles”
just below the antique brick bridge ; but the angler, if he
would do anything, must keep far out of sight, and be as
still as a mouse.

. Out of the Chalk, 85

"There are several gentlemen who never failed to appear
regularly ‘at Farningham on the eve of many successive
Good Fridays, and the veteran tragedian Mr. Phelps was.
one of these, recognized always as an eminent actor, but
also as a masterly killer of trout. In the very early morning
or late evening there is generally a heavy trout to be picked
out immediately under the spreading chestnut tree, for the
plump fish in the millstream, in spite of the keeper and the
notice-board, drop down from under the bridge to feed on
the shallows, and may be communicated with if no person
has passed along the brink before the fisherman’s arrival,
The first labourer crossing the bridge to his field-work will
frighten all the fish, and before his heavy boots have ceased
their ponderous thud you will have noticed the clear water
ploughed in four or five different places by prowling truants
scuttling home to the cool retirement of the dark arches and
the protection of the notice-board.

As, year in and year out, time out of mind, this Anglers’
Carnival has been held on Good Friday, a word or two
more may be permitted respecting it. The event is not
advertised or placarded to the world, nor proclaimed from
the housetops ; no special trains are laid on to the scene of
action ; but it is a momentous event, for all that, to a select’
company of the Waltonian brotherhood, to say nothing of
the fish, who, one may reasonably suppose, are very
material parties to the affair. This year (1875) proved no
exception to the time-honoured custom. On this particular
day, early in the spring though it happened to be, the
trouting season commenced in the semi-free reaches of the
Darent, You have, let it be said at once, very little chance
indeed of introducing your hook-maker to a trout unless you
repair to Farningham over night. Just as it is the early
bird which picketh up the worm, so it is the early angler

86, By Stream and Sea,

who taketh the bloom off the day’s sport on such an oc¢a-
sion as this. A smart schoolboy, upon being reminded of
the story anent bird and worm, suggested that the moral
cut both ways, because, though the diligent songster might
by early rising reap the advantage of his excellent habits,
the result was rather hard on the worm; and at Farningham
both men and fish were severely exercised during the first few
hours of Good Friday, as I may forthwith proceed to show.

We are, let us suppose, safely housed at the hotel—a
most indispensable preliminary, for it is only by lodging
there that you can enjoy the anglers privileges. It is
Thursday evening, then, and the trout, as they look after
their evening meal, would almost seem to suspect that their
hours are numbered. Else, why should they dart up stream
at the approach of the gentlemen who are wandering
leisurely along the pleasant banks? The sun is sinking
easily away over the downs, and in the fading light the
campaigners of to-morrow are peering into the crystal depths,
with grim purpose marking the whereabouts of the enemy.
The intense eagerness of look and determination of de-
meanour of these enthusiasts might amuse a miserable
creature who is ignorant of the joys of angling; but their
doings are watched almost with reverent awe, certainly with
kind approbation, by the Kentish men and boys who follow
their movements, resting their arms in prolonged idleness
upon the bridge. They know all about it. This inspection
is one of the essentials of the eve of the Carnival. There
are anglers, so to speak, who have grown grey in making
these annual pilgrimages to the Darent. The miller’s men
regularly look for them ; the ostlers are personally aggrieved
if the major, or the doctor, or the professor, or the parson
does not at the proper time make his appearance, creel over
shoulder, rod in hand, fly casts round hat,

Out of the Chalk. 87

And, alack for the trout, these worthy sportsmen know
exactly where they lie, so that unless they shift their quarters
during the brief space of peace remaining, a sorry Good
Friday will it be for them. This is why, in good humour,
and secretly meditating doughty deeds, the anglers sit down
to their ¢ad/e a@’héte in quiet Farningham, where nothing but
the monotonous music of the millstream breaks the evening
stillness, each diner, nevertheless, religidusly keeping his
own secrets, and resolving, not exactly, perhaps, to steal
a march upon his fellows, so much as not by any means to
be caught napping at the critical moment.

But for this trifling explanation you might suppose that
the persons stealthily emerging from the hotel at the break
of day had been guilty of something, the discovery of which
they are desirous to avoid. They are merely anxious, let us
say, not to interfere with the slumbers of their brother
anglers—of course from the purest motives of humanity. The
first grey of dawn still lingers over the valley and upon the
hillsides when the first angler appears cautiously on the
lawn. He glances around and notes with satisfaction that
he is not forestalled, and that the wind blows down stream,
and comes therefore from that quarter so dear to sports-
men. The lithe rod is put together in a twinkling, the cast
already prepared is affixed to the line, and the sharp whirr of
the revolving winch wakes up the birds which densely
populate the neighbourhood. Soon other devotees of the
gentle art arrive, and finding that they have not been able
to lead off the operations of the day, as they had last night
so resolutely determined, good-humouredly swallow their
disappointment and fall-to with their weapons. But the
fortunate gentleman down the lawn has not been twenty
minutes at work before he has brought three trout to bank,
and, like a sensible man and a knowing angler, hastens on
to the lower meadow, to follow up his advantage,

88 By Stream and Sea.

By six o’clock something like a dozen rodsters are
whipping the rippling Darent, working across and down
stream as they must perforce do with the wind behind them,
and very hopeful of success. Thus the Anglers’ Carnival
commences on a morning bitterly cold, with water clear as
glass, and at a period of the season, there is no denying,
much too early for trout-fishing, for Good Friday does not
often tread so close upon the heels of ‘Lady-day, and the
Darent trout are, unlike their kindred in Wales, Devonshire,
and elsewhere, not in ripe condition until all the April showers
have fallen. Indeed, it soon becomes apparent that the trout
are not rising heartily. In a stream so well stocked as this,
to be sure, in the first hours of the first day, there will be
more or less fish whose fate is sealed, but these picked off,
the rank and file that remain prove very wary and hard to
touch. By breakfast time, therefore, it is not surprising to
find that the best sport of the day has been enjoyed, while
the laggards who stroll across the lawn so late as eight
o’clock find their chances reduced to a minimum.

The hotel water is good but not extensive; hence the
trout have become excited, absurdly frightened at the
dropping of the fly upon the water,,and unreasonably averse
to respond to the fisherman’s desires. All the anglers are
more or less skilled in the science; that is a consolation
they all lay to heart, and a pretty sight it is to the spectator
who can appreciate maSstership in the fascinating pursuit, to
see the delicate foot-lines, and carefully selected flies, cast
straight and airily upon the water. Yet the most successful
angler of the day, according to his own showing, defies the
rules which most fly-fishers recognise. Though the water is
so clear and shallow that you can count the pebbles at the
bottom, he uses coarse white gut. Though small march-
browns, and blue and whirling duns are insisted upon by

Out of the Chatk. 89

learned natives as most appropriate for the Darent, he
employs a big homely-looking fly, that resembles nothing in
Nature, and is not much as a work of Art; it is indeed as
large as a humble bee, and a little like it in shape, only
the body is black and the wings large and light coloured.
Our friend,. however, must know what he is doing, and
before sunset dispatches to town fourteen heavy, handsome
trout that are a credit to the water that bred and the man
that killed them. It so happens that he nearly monopolises
the sport of the day; the other anglers give him all honour,
but they are of course unwilling to admit that his success is
the reward of absolute superiority, and explain away the
undoubted fact—swathed in green grass and half filling a
large basket—in a variety of ways. Truth compels me to
add that it was whispered about that the hero had
feloniously killed his fish with a worm, for which the coarse
tackle and large hook were well adapted. For the sake of
fair play I hope this rumour was ill-founded, as probably it
was, the angler being in position and education a gentle-
man, and one of the most regular visitors to the place.

To the Carnival during the day come numerous persons,
simply to see the fun—strangers from London who have
driven down, and after luncheon will drive back again;
villagers of all grades who have throughout their lives been
“accustomed to go dutifully to church in the morning and
lazily watch and gossip about the trout-teasers afterwards ;
and visitors, riding, driving, and walking, who are acquainted
with the manifold attractions of the country. A delightful
sequestered nook, indeed, is this ancient Kentish village :
the three-arched bridge, hundreds of years old; the Norman
towered parish church, the cottage eaves, the gabled houses
and mills, and the trees far and near, are all venerable in
appearance; and in many another way Farningham, sur-

90 By Stream and Sea.

rounded by the chalk hills which enclose the valley, reveals
itself an out-of-the-world haunt where one may dream
undisturbed, while the river flows on, here broken, there
placid, ever murmuring but never turbulent, and the sights
and sounds of pastoral life change only as the seasons
advance. Farningham always strikes you as content to rest
upon its reputation as one of the choicest specimens of an
English village, dear alike to lovers of the picturesque and
seekers after repose and health-giving breezes. The Darent
beautifies all the district through which it runs, and none
more than that portion of the valley where the busy mills
are situated. So, with a bright sun to temper the cold
winds, and Nature beginning to put on the livery of spring,
it is seen at its best on this Anglers’ Carnival, and the
sportsmen themselves on such a day are not in utter despair
should their lures fail to tempt.

The Darent, before it reaches Farningham, has passed
through the finest portions of its watershed. Beginning its
career at Westerham, hard by the North Downs, it touches
the villages of Brasted, Sundridge, and Riverhead. Near
romantic Sevenoaks it flows in a more northerly direction to
Lullingstone Park, and by old Eynsford Castle. Mills are
to be found at short intervals, there being to my own know-
ledge fourteen paper and flour mills worked by the Darent.
At Dartford, with a parting bit of very fine scenery, the river
widens out into Dartford Creek, and is a navigable branch
of the Thames during the remainder of its course. About
midway between Dartford and the mouth the River Cray
from the south-west falls into the creek.

In the neighbourhood of Farningham the hop-fields, nut,
cherry, and plum orchards are highly cultivated, and well
worth a visit where feasible. The ornithologist also should
be in his glory here. A resident landholder, who has shot

Out of the Chalk. gI

over the district man and boy for forty years, has in his
possession a valuable case of birds, killed and preserved by
himself, as an illustration of the various feathered visitors to
‘be found in the neighbourhood. Besides the more familiar
kinds, I noticed in his collection the landrail; the buzzard,
which, not uncommon fifty years ago, is never seen now; the
handsomely-marked butcher-bird, a yearly visitor, which never
fails to make its appearance in the wake of the nightingale ;
the Dartford warbler; a brace of kingfishers, two of which
not long since were captured opposite the hotel, so furiously
fighting that they allowed themselves to be taken into
custody; skylark, titlark, and woodlark; the restless bull-
finch, and the curious snake-bird ; the delicate little white-
throat; the tiny golden wren; and many other examples of
our British birds.

CHAPTER VII.

WALTON’S RIVER,

ZAAK WALTON, we may venture an easy guess,
was a good fellow at business. Out of his man-
millinery and linendrapery establishments he con-
trived to secure a competency that enabled him—lucky
individual !—to retire from trade at the age of fifty and
exchange the yard measure for the fishing-rod. His business
habits, it may have. been noticed by readers of his book, he
carried with him into his recreations. All his fishing is
done methodically. When he sets out upon an expedition,
meaning to go towards Ware, he is not tempted—as some
of us, and generally to our cost, weak-mindedly persuade
ourselves to do—to dally by the way and waste time in
purposeless fishing. Up Tottenham Hill he trudges,
delivering that wonderful lecture upon all manner of subjects
to his chance companions, nor sounds a halt until Venator,
the otterhunter, in pursuance of a fell resolution made at
starting to quaff his morning liquor at Hoddesdon, suggests
a call at the Thatched House in that quaint Hertfordshire
town.

The conversation of that memorable trio was, you may

Walton's River. 93

remember, according to the lights of the period, very

learned, very moral, and breathing of gentleness and peace.

Beginning with the subject of otters, the discourse turned

upon Montaigne on cats; the habits of birds, upon which

Auceps, the hawker, held forth energetically and con-

fidently, but, as modern ornithologists teach us, erroneously ;

upon the earth as a feeding ground for beasts, as portrayed

by Venator in his defence in Hunting versus Angling ; upon

water, “the eldest daughter of creation, the element upon

which the Spirit of God did first move, the element which

God commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly,” ©
—for so said Piscator in his eloquent harangue upon the use

of fish from the days of Moses downwards; upon Florence

and Rome, the tomb of Virgil, and the humble house in

which St. Paul was content to dwell. Who can forget.
Walton’s triumphant asseveration, “I might tell you that ’
Almighty God is said to have spoken to a fish, but never
to a beast: that he hath made a whale a ship to carry, and
set His prophet Jonah safe on the appointed shore?”
Then came the bold suggestion that if Belus, “the first
inventor of godly and virtuous recreations,” was not the
discoverer of angling, it was Seth, the son of Adam, who
taughts the delights of the rod and line to his children, and
the equally daring hint that the patriarch Job and the
prophet Amos were, if I may without irreverence put it so,
the crack anglers of their day; the poetical contemplations
of Du Bartas, upon whose authority we have it that a
certain fish called the sargus was wont, after playing Don
Giovanni amongst his own kind, to flirt wickedly with the
“ she-goats on the grassy shore”; and many passing remarks
about Thracian women and turtle-doves, the fish-pools of
Heshbon and the piscatorial adventures of Mark Antony and
Cleopatra:

94 By Stream and Sea.

Having this inexhaustible conversation before me, I
should say, were I allowed the privilege of a private opinion, -
that these pleasant wayfarers were quite ready for their cup
of drink when they at last reached the village hostel. We
smile almost as a matter of course at these Waltonian
dialogues, for we are appallingly smart in these days. Yet
it is an appetising picture—these three men going to their
respective amusements along the high road “on a bright
May morning long ago,” and with zest enjoying each other’s
company, the scenery, the anticipations of sport, and ‘ex-
changing notes upon men and things with a beautiful old-
fashioned simplicity and courtesy. Let us accept it, at any
rate, as a picture of the Lea angler and his method in that
middle period of the seventeenth century.

The Lea angler of the present day takes a return ticket
at the Bishopsgate Railway Station, and is rarely to be seen
marching along the high road. Walton’s river represents
the East End angler’s paradise, and special privileges are
granted to him by the Great Eastern Railway Company. The
Sabbatarian who is at all sensitive respecting the observance
of the Lord’s Day had better not take his Sunday walk upon
the banks of the Lea when the East End contingents are
out on the war-path.

The style in which these humble brethren of the angle
charge the ticket-office at Bishopsgate Station is a sight never
to be forgotten. Tired with a week’s toil, and many of them
with honest workshop stains still tinting their noble brows,
*prentice lads and pale adult journeymen by the hundred
rush in, laden with rods and baskets, so eager for the fray
that they forego their night’s rest in order to catch the
midnight train that takes them to Lea-side. When the
grey mists of early morning are hanging over the meadows
you might possibly observe a few couples plodding towards

Walton's River. 95

Tottenham from some Bethnal Green bye-lane, where over-
night they had carefully boiled the rice or wheat for bait
which now forms part of the pack which they bear. Literally
they are too poor to spare sixpence upon railway travelling ;
but it cannot in any wise be said of them that

‘* Chill penury repressed their angling rage
And froze the roaching current of their soul.”

The rank and file of the Lea anglers are, it must be
meekly confessed, a trifle rough in language and in de-
meanour. They employ figurative speech. Even’ in
Walton’s time there were swearers on the Lea; the breed
‘has been perpetuated, wherefore let me recall yet another
reminiscence of that May-day ramble. “At Trout Hall,”
says Walton, ‘not far from this place, where I purpose to
lodge to-night, there is usually an angler that proves good
company; and let me tell you good company and good
discourse are the very sinews of virtue: but for such dis-
course as we heard last night, it infects others. The very
boys will learn to talk and swear, as they heard mine host
and another of the company that shall be nameless.”

At Tottenham I have seen a score of patient fishermen
occupying as many yards of the river bank,—the old barge
river,—and if they had taken roach every time they swore
an.oath there would not have been many fish left to catch.
Milkmaid Maudlin’s mother paid Piscator the compliment
of admiring him and the angling fraternity at large. She
promised him asyllabub of new verjuice “in a new-made
haycock for it,” and one of the daughter’s best ballads,
should he come that way a couple of months later.

“For,” said the sensible creature, ‘‘she and I both love
-all anglers, they be such honest, ctutl, gudet men.”

Maudlin and her mother spoke no doubt as they found.

96 By Stream and Sea.

The Lea milkmaid of to-day does the same : the conclusions
differ. :

“Yl ’ev yer milk ken, Carrots,” I heard a Lea angler
remark, in this year of grace, to a golden-haired maiden who
carried the milk-pail.

“ There’s no abidin’ these imperent reskels; I wish they
was drownded,” replied the nymph—without a hint of syllahub
of new verjuice should the “imperent reskels” happen to
pass that way on a future occasion.

But these criticisms apply only to the rough-and-ready
division of the class—the men who overrun the bits of open
water nearest London. They are not the class of person
who will trouble the innkeepers; the rush basket slung over
the shoulder contains, with the ground-bait maggots and
worms, the frugal fare that will suffice until the cupboard in
Bethnal Green or Shoreditch is once more at hand. They
do not believe in begging or buying permission to fish.
Not only are they acquainted with every inch of free water :
they have intimate knowledge of every piece of half-watched
or wholly neglected subscription fishery, and are not back-
ward in turning it to account.

Fortunately for the bulk of the Lea fishermen, who are
as keen sportsmen as any, the river is being most sensibly
conserved by a board which protects it from the Ishmaelites
who preyed upon it, so that after all this lapse of time and
constant fishing the Lea certainly retains its old Waltonian
character for excellence. In the first volume of that most
useful guide for anglers, ‘‘The Rail and the Rod,” Mr.
Greville Fennel, by his thorough treatment of the Lea
country, simply leaves nothing to be said of the angling
capacities of this river. Of the fish, fishermen, their habits
and peculiarities, he speaks with unquestionable authority,
beginning at Old Ford and pausing at every station until

Walton's River, 97

the Lea and all its tributaries have been described with a
minuteness that omits scarcely a roach swim or reach of
any importance. As a set off against my picture of “the
residuum,” I will put Mr. Greville Fennell into the witness
box. I call him as to character, and this is his evidence:

“Nine-tenths of the Lea anglers are men of sedentary
habits, and they bring these habits out with them. They
walk from the rail to the river, and when there to seat them-
selves before some six or seven feet of water is the extent
of their ambition, and whether they take from fifteen pounds
to forty pounds weight of white fish home or not, they
appear ever contented and thankful for the opportunity of
getting out into the fields and inhaling the sweet air of
heaven, As a body they are remarkable for their sober
industry when at their various trade avocations, and when
following their darling pursuits by the stream for their un-
obtrusive manners and almost taciturn disposition.”

Should any reader wish for practical information respect-
ing Lea angling he will obtain it in No. 1 of “The Rail and
the Rod,” and should any prefer a more general description
of the country through which the river flows its gentle
course, I can recommend him nothing better than the pages
devoted to the subject in one of that river-loving author
James Thorne’s “Rambles.” ‘The fact of the Lea being so
distinctly Walton’s river will probably account for the exten-
sive literature which it may call its own; and the stream,
though possessing no such romantic and diversified scenery
as the Thames, passes through so many centres of historical
interest that the literary taskmaster, taking up the subject,
has been provided with an ‘abundance of very excellent
straw for his brick-making.

The hills are very gentle in their undulations, the uplands
are a charming specimen of pastoral Englarid, the river is

H

98 By Stream and Sea.

fringed everywhere with rushes, flags, and with willows that
whiten, and aspens that quiver, while, to pursue Tennyson’s
imagery,

‘On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye
That clothe the wold and meet the sky.”

A quiet day by Walton’s river seemed to me a heaven-
sent inspiration when in a restless mood I put back the
books that would not seize my attention and took down the
fly-rod that has so often tempted and bidden me come forth,
Yes, a quiet day on the Lea was the recipe for cobwebs on
the brain. The day was favourable—cloudy, warm, breezy
—in a word, the very day for a saunter by a stream which

might be easily whipped. Rye House suggested itself; Rye

House, therefore, should it be.

At Bishopsgate Street Station, after I had taken my seat
in the train, I remembered that it was Saint Monday. The
carriages were crammed with excursionists, in which women
and babies at the breast largely preponderated. Accordions
squeaked and fiddles brayed in, as it seemed, every com-
partment. There were negro melodists by the dozen. A
fat young woman, a thin old woman, and two children who
were regaling themselves on saveloy primitively conveyed to
the mouth, were thrust at the last moment into our carriage,
which had already received its regulation number of inmates.
The children pelted each other with morsels of their dainty
food, hit a High Church clergyman in the eye with a piece
of yellow fat, were cuffed by their protectors, howled like
jackals on the prowl, and finally went from passenger to
passenger examining their garments, buttons, and watch-
chains, and asking the company generally for toffy. The
old woman insisted upon having the window up ; the young
woman drank gin from a flat bottle. Then the young

Walton's River. 99

woman insisted upon having the window down, and her
elder took a turn at the flask. The train rattled along
famously, but the uproar from engine to brake-van was heard
above all. Children squalled, discords from the musical
instruments prevailed, break-downs on the carriage floors
were heard. As I observed above, a quiet day by Walton’s
river seemed to be a heaven-sent inspiration.
_ This lively freight was of course destined for Rye House
the grounds of which were already thickly peopled with
excursionists who had preceded us. Whether the men
adorned with sashes were members of some society I was
not informed’; whether the women who accompanied them
were wives or daughters I did not inquire; whether they
had travelled by rail or come down in the collection of vans
drawn up in position in the meadow is not of much im-
portance, but a larger number of fairly dressed men,
apparently mechanics, and women of the same class, over-
seen in drink before two o’clock in the day, I had never
before seen and would fain hope shall never see again.
These people threw a sinister shade over an otherwise bright
picture. There were hundreds of children present enjoying
the many attractions of the place with the light-heartedness
common to scholars on their annual outing; there were
families of respectable working folks quietly examining the
curiosities to be seen, and strolling through the prettily laid
out gardens; but these hundred or two of club men of some
kind, dancing and whooping, obtruded themselves in the
arbours, fields, and recreation-ground, giving the place,:
which is extremely interesting, and the rest of the company,
which was numerous and well-behaved, -a character which
neither deserved.

Another time I should have explored the Retainers’ Hall,
examined the Great Bed of Ware, descended to the dungeon

100 By Stream and Sea.

depths, and read the true history of the Rye House Plot.
But I had timed my visit inopportunely if a quiet day on
the Lea was my object. Rye House is evidently a most
popular resort, and on a day other than Saint Monday, when
the place is in a chronic state of miscellaneous merriment,
any one who has not previously visited it may spend a
profitable and agreeable hour or two in the old hall and
Conspirators’ Room, where there is a collection of ancient
paintings, tapestry, and antique carvings. The tavern and
the old hall have a really rare picturesqueness, and the
grounds are most enjoyable—only not on the festival of
Saint Monday, unless you can enter heart and soul into
Saint Monday humours. And if I have not made sufficient
allowances on this head, I bow in penitence. Heaven
knows some of the poor creatures, whose life is one long
mill-horse round, ought not to have harsh judgment meted
out to them.

An hour or two’s boating or angling in the Lea, a quiet
dinner in the waterside tavern, a cigar in the rose-covered
summer-house in the cool of the evening, have here afforded
peaceful content to many a citizen temporarily released from
the cares of business. During the summer months the
visitors to this place are numbered by thousands, and on
extraordinary occasions by tens of thousands. It is noted
for its bean-feasts. The Czty Press doubtless honestly
represented the estimate commonly held of Rye House, by
City readers, in the observation “Far away on the other
river which runs its silver thread through the green pastures
and glowing acres of Hertfordshire is the good old Rye
House, where we have art, science, history, romance, boating,
horticulture, fishing, a lovely English landscape, and jolly
English cheer, all in one short holiday.” ie

The Rye House water is beloved by anglers, for the pro-

Walton's River. Io!

prietor, like the proprietor of the Broxbourne fishery lower
down, takes a personal interest in their wants. Roach,
chub, jack, perch, and occasional trout are to be found in
the Lea, and all the fisheries are well stocked. I strolled
away down Lea-side by the tow-path, and soon left the
music and singing in the rear. It was possible, therefore,
after all to get my quiet day, and I appreciated it perhaps
all the more after the experiences of the railway carriage
and the sash-wearing boozers. There were four or fivé
solitary anglers quietly ensconced on the sedgy margin,
admirable examples of the Lea style of fishing. Upon this
river no punt is necessary. The holes are well known, and
each swim has its name, often that of an angler who has at
some time or other performed heroic feats worthy of com-
memoration in a substantial form.

The jack season had not begun, and the solitary anglers
were looking after roach and chub. They used single hair
foot lines, no running tackle, and fine quill floats, carefully
plumbing the depth, and using ground-bait with much more
discretion than is usual amongst Thames anglers. One man
wielded a rod two-and-twenty feet in length, and a tight line
only long enough to give a clear eighteen inches between
point and float. It must have been extremely tiring to
handle the lengthy bamboo and take the joints apart at the
capture of every fish. The men angled with consummate
patience and skill. He of the twenty-two feet implement
caught a chub of more than a pound weight soon after I had
sat down to watch him. To my perception the porcupine
float did not betray a bite or a nibble, but the angler saw a
movement, to which his ready wrist responded by a quick
outward action, the effect of which doubtless astonished the
hooked fish. ‘The chub, chub-like, at first made a dangerous”
run for it, but the point of the rod dexterously followed his

102 By Stream and Sea.

movements, and he soon came up on his side. Two joints
of the bamboo rod were unshipped, and the cheven was
basketed with a couple of dozen of roach that had pre-
viously been taken.

Another man was using the blow-line with some success.
This is a favourite Lea fashion in chub-fishing, and on windy
days not at all a bad notion. It is a well-known mode of
dealing with the May-fly on the West Meath lakes, but it is
not much practised in England, except upon this river. The
Lea blow-line fisher uses the “daddy long legs,” grass-
hopper, blue-bottle, or housefly, and in very hot weather
takes large roach as well as chub by his long floss-silk line.
My Rye House friend had a bunch of “ daddy long legs,” of
the size total of a walnut, and he had the mortification of
hooking and losing a heavy chub that rushed half way
across the river before it seized the mystic object flitting so
naturally on the rippled surface. The fish was struck too
sharply, and the floss silk gave way. With the blow-line
unusual delicacy of striking is required, because of the
length and stiffness of the rod and the slackness and a
certain ,waywardness in the behaviour of the line.

A roach fisher is nothing if not Job-like in the matter of
patience. And a very pretty amusement roach fishing is—
when the fish bite: otherwise I must say the occupation is
a dull one. It is monotonous to hold the long rod in one
position, to make it follow the float to the end of the swim,
to lift the bait out of the water and drop it in the same
spot as before, and to repeat a thousand times over that
uneventful journey of the quill to the end of its tether.
Perhaps once in fifty times the float disappears. It is a
doubtful motion. The slender tell-tale, to be sure, has gone
under the water, but it is in so faint-hearted a manner that
you are quite disposed to believe it is caused by the bait

Walton's River. 103

touching some obtrusive hillock on the bottom of the river.
You must, however, strike, and a tiny fragment of weed, like
a bit of hair, is all that the bait has added to itself. When
the fish are feeding it is a merry sport indeed. The sharp
stab of the float when the roach is in earnest leaves you no
room to doubt; the quick, firm strike is made with a heart
full of confidence and a wrist that knows the correct trick.
Thus, with care, you may go on catching silver-sided fish
throughout the livelong day, never once moving from the
little armchair you have made for yourself out of the bank
of rushes and sedge.

The Lea roach fishers pride themselves upon being the
most skilful in the kingdom “bar none”; it is true they
consider the Thames anglers decent, after a fashion, but
object to a certain coarseness in their style, consequent '
upon the enforced use of the punt. They are willing to do
all justice to the Nottinghamites, yet give them an inferior
place. In sooth, if the Lea men are not first-rate roach
masters they ought to be. Their river swarms with that.
description of fish, and the stream, by comparison with
Thames, Trent, or even Ouse, is small. Moreover, it
abounds with oft-recurring holes, with a firm bed, a steep
bank, and a placid flow of water.

A plethoric Lea roach fisherman, sitting on his square
basket, which answered the treble purpose of seat, game-
bag, and locker after the sport was over, once assured me
that all you require for roach is a stock of patience. His
idea of a “stock” of that article was sublime. He had
been sitting three hours on a muggy, damp November day
without a bite, smiling sweetly as swim after swim was
effected without a break in the ill-luck. He relieved the
monotony to some extent by an occasional affixture of
ground bait to the shot of his foot line. Even I, so great

104 By Stream and Sea.

was the monotony, in half an hour could regard this artful
dodge as a piece of positive excitement. THe float, as every
roach angler would expect, was shotted down to within a
quarter of an inch of the water, and the additional lump of
bran and bread naturally sank it completely under like an
overloaded ship. Then came the agitating moments. How
long would the float remain under water? Would the artful
dodge entice a fish? At last slowly emerging from the
depths issued the glittering porcupine, nodding, as it were,
confidentially to its owner, before it resumed its silent glide
over the tranquil swim. But there was no captive on the
hook, and the angler, I verily believe, would have felt a
little aggrieved if sport came so soon. It was one o’clock
in the day, and the wildest expectations in which he could
indulge were that the fish would “come on” in the cool of
the evening.

It is a pleasant walk from Rye House to Broxbourne,
where the cream, nay, the very Devonshire cream, of Lea
fishing is to be had. Of course, everybody knows Benning-
field’s House and nice gardens. Everybody has known it
from time immemorial, for the father of the present pro-
prietor was an enthusiastic angler, who paid strict attention
to the. water he rented. Carthagena Weir is a really fine
pool, and, as may be supposed, it is in great request amongst
the Aabitués of the fishery. There are not many bream in
the Lea, but a few are generally taken from this weir, and
also a few large trout. The largest bream I ever saw—three
weighing twenty-one pounds—were taken here, and publicly
exhibited when stuffed. For trout, however, you must go
higher up the stream in the most rigidly protected waters.
Of these there is a length of the river at Amwell in highest
repute both as a trout and perch water.

Amwell Hill is, to my thinking, the centre of the Lea’s

Walton's River. 105

best scenery. Scott, the Quaker poet, laid on his colours
rather heavily when he spoke of overhanging grey castles
and romantic farms; he came much nearer nature in these
lines :—
«The pleased eye, which o’er the prospect wide

Has wandered round, and various objects mark’d,

On Amwell rests at last, its favourite scene.

How picturesque the view! .Where up the side

Of that steep bank her roofs of russet thatch

Rise mix’d with trees, above whose swelling tops

Ascends the tall church tower, and loftier still

The hill’s extended ridge.”

Walton’s river runs through various scenes of history as
interesting as its physical landscapes. King Alfred is said
to have diverted the waters of the Lea with the benevolent
intention of bringing the Danish fleet, which had proceeded
in triumph as far as Ware, hard aground in the tideway, and
at Temple Mills certain channels are pointed out as the
artificial courses formed by the Saxon king. The Lea has
associations also with Luton Hoo, Whethamstead, Brocket
Hall, Hatfield Park, Panshanger, Hertford, famous from
early Saxon times; Chadswell Springs, where an unpre-
tending stone commemorates the opening of the New River
Scheme in 1608; Ware, Cheshunt, Waltham Cross and
Abbey, Enfield, Edmonton, and Tottenham.

Thorne tells an amusing story of Charles Lamb’s tomb-
stone, prefacing it with the remark that Lamb himself would
have enjoyed it. Lamb was buried in Edmonton church-
yard, in a spot which, only a fortnight before his death,
he had pointed out to his sister as that which he would
desire as his place of burial. Dr. Carey wrote the following
epitaph on the stone :—

‘¢ Farewell, dear friend! That smile, that harmless mirth,
No more shall gladden our domestic hearth ;

106 By Stream and Sea.

That rising tear, with pain forbid to flow,

Better than words, no more assuage our woe 5

That hand outstretched from small but well-earned store
Yield succour to the destitute no more.

Yet art thou not all lost ; through many an age

With sterling sense and humour shall thy page

Win many an English bosom, pleased to see

That old and happier vein revived in thee.

This for our earth : and if with friends we share

Our joys in heaven, we hope to meet thee there.”

Thorne, in his tour of the Lea, was copying this inscription,
when a couple of working men walked across the church-
yard and read the lines with grave deliberation.

“A very fair bit of poetry that,” said one of them.

“Ves,” the other answered, “I’m blest if it isn’t as good
a bit as any in the churchyard—rather too long, though.”

CHAPTER VIII.

A MOORLAND LEGEND.

4G] REARIEST of all the spots upon dreary Quickmoor
is the small town of Kingsford. Indeed it is not so
much a town as a settlement, and its sombre
character arises from the fact that it is a convict settlement.
The surrounding prospects, to the rambler who has any sort
of love for the beauties of Nature, cannot fail to please,
though they are utterly destitute of the softer graces of an
English landscape. The scenery is famous for its wildness,
for its solitary expanses, for its rugged alternations of grassy
waste and hills crowned with frowning blocks of granite.
The Government, searching for a region as far removed
as possible from the busy haunts of cheerful men, fixed
upon Quickmoor, creating a double solitude, and calling it
a convict establishment. Hither were brought criminals
born, ¢riminals bred, criminals by accident, criminals by
election ; criminals doomed never more to mingle with their
fellow-men ; criminals sentenced to varying terms of punish-
ment; criminals who, coming forth repentant, should, spite
of the difficulties which an imperfect penal and social system
‘built up in their path, strive to lead a better life, and

108 By Stream and Sea.

criminals in whom the iron of vice had been ineradicably
welded by the very means which in others had brought
forth fruits meet for repentance. Around the great central
building there, planted on the barrenest part of the land, a
small colony of necessity clustered, but there was not a
house that did not indirectly reflect the character of the
place. This was Kingsford, and no man of his own free
will sojourned longer within its borders than absolute
necessity demanded.

This, I am well aware, ought to be a chapter recording
the capture of trout. But the particular day which I
selected for a visit to Quickmoor was a pronounced blank
-—a hot, bright, still day, with all the brooks low and clear.

“Light another pipe, sir,” said the old man, my guide and
companion. “T’ll tell you a story.”

“ About fishing?” I asked.

“No, not fishing,” he replied, “but about Quickmoor,”
Certain qualms of conscience about introducing the legend
into this book I have overcome, and will re-tell it. It may
serve to pass away an hour at luncheon-time for some
unsuccessful sportsman doomed like myself to a blank day
on Quickmoor.

One raw winter’s morning the dull level of Kingsford life
was stirred to its depths. The well-known signal had gone
forth that a prisoner or prisoners had escaped. Warders
armed with carbines marched forth in twos and threes; the
few inhabitants who were not in the immediate pay of the
Quickmoor prison aided in the hue and cry, and suspended
their ordinary avocations to take part in the chase. Not
many years before a notorious criminal had run away, and
barbarously murdered a shepherd for the sake of the clothes
without which he could never have got clear of the country.

A Moorland Legend. 109

Self-interest, if no other motive existed, would therefore
prompt these people to become amateur man-hunters,
Hence, within a few moments of the gun-fire which gave the
alarm, Kingsford was thrown into a state of intense excite-
ment. Boys were rushing hither and thither to bring in
with all haste the rough, wiry little Quickmoor ponies from
the pastures and outhouses ; women assembled in the single
thoroughfare of the village, questioning and magnifying, as
they gathered or imparted intelligence ; the grand entrance
to the huge prison was surrounded by eager enquirers bent
upon cross-examining any of the officials who might issue
forth.

Within an incredibly short space of time the warders were
scouring the moors, north, south, east, and west, under
orders to bring in the runaways dead or alive. Every
gully, every ravine, every boulder or tor likely to afford
hiding, was ransacked with prompt completeness; every
shepherd’s hut on the hills, and every lonely vehicle on the
highway, arriving from or passing down into the outer world
was overhauled. The search was rendered the more arduous
by the dense fog which wrapped everything in hoary, chilling
gloom.

At the Kingsford Arms, the one hotel in the place, the
true cause of the alarm was soon ascertained. The convicts
had been marched out as usual to the occupations of the
day—some working at the buildings which were being per-
petually added to the main establishment, others at reclaiming
the adjacent moorland for agricultural purposes. The
warders were posted in their proper strength at the ordinary
posts, and the silent labour of the convicts was proceeding
when, as so often happens in those strange regions, a sudden
mist arose, to develop swiftly into an impenetrable fog.
This was the opportunity for which the discontented and

110 By Stream and Sea.

insubordinate among the convicts had waited, probably for
years, and now was their time. Under cover of the friendly
veil, three of the building gang contrived to elude their
keepers, and one man in the field, taking advantage of the
momentary surprise with which the officials in that corner of
the settlement had been thrown, on hearing the signal, was
equally fortunate. .
* * * * % *

The supposition is that a convict is known only as a
number, as an unknown quantity of the human family ; but
the actual names of the missing men were, in the course of
an hour, being whispered in the bar-parlour of the Kings-
ford Arms. Here a courageous sportsman, making the
hotel his head-quarters for the sake of the snipe and
occasional blackcock and woodcock to be had on the moor-
land; a couple of commercial travellers, waiting for the
vehicle which would shortly bear them into more welcome
beats; and a warder or two off duty, were assembled,
discussing the event of the day, and speculating upon the
probable results.

One other member of this company has yet to be men-
tioned, though perhaps we should take her presence as a
matter of course. It was Miss Western, the hotel bar-maid,
waitress, and book-keeper, a reserved, ladylike, irreproach-
able person, who had fulfilled the multifarious and not
always pleasant duties of her post with faultless faithfulness
—courteous to all, familiar with none. For once, however,
Miss Western’s normal taciturnity was broken: there was no
questioner more eager than she, until the full details had
been told. It was to her that the prison official, over his
luncheon-beer, gave the names of the escaped convicts, with
such incidental additions respecting their crimes, characters,
and behaviour during imprisonment, as would be naturally

A Moorland Legend. . ILI

interesting on so exciting an occasion, and there would be
no doubt that the young fellow, overjoyed at the notice (so
often sighed for) bestowed upon him by the ladylike bar-
maid, was more communicative than is or should be usual
with his class. But even prison-warders, albeit they are
warders at Quickmoor, are very human, and Mr. Sullivan
was not the only uniform-wearing individual in that out-of-
the-way place who had long entertained a sneaking regard
for pale-faced Annie Western.

The young lady, having obtained all the information
which appeared to interest her, disappeared from the room.
All present had observed a sudden change in her demeanour
when the alarm was first given. A face which is always
white as death cannot be said to turn pale, but there was an
indefinable change in Miss Western’s countenance which
seemed to intensify the normal pallor, an ashiness of lip,
and a startled expression of the eye, which did not escape
the observation of those who knew her best.

“T am afraid Miss Western is a trifle frightened over this,”
remarked the prison official.

“Dear heart, no,” replied good Mrs. Preston, the motherly
landlady of the well-ordered homely inn, “she is often like
that.” ,

And so the matter dropped.

By-and-by the fog lifted, and it was everywhere said that
the chances of the convicts were now small. Hapless
mortals! their hour of liberty had been brief, though not so
bright as a butterfly’s! The pursuers—many, and on their
mettle—had been on the track from the first, and it required
only a clear atmosphere to put an end to the man-hunt. It
was not long before a horseman galloped past announcing a
capture ; then a carrier, urging his sorry hack into a dan-
gerous trot that he might be the first bearer of the good

112 By Stream and Sea,

tidings, told the whole village, as he jolted by, that he had
heard shots fired down the ravine through which Fairman’s
Brook leaps from stage to stage into the arms of the far-
away lowlands. The general ‘population deserted their
homes, hastily assuming bonnet, shawl, and hat. The snipe
shooter and the commercial traveller at the Kingsford Arms,
the off-duty warders, everybody hurried to the top of the
street, and across the patch of cultivated bog to the eminence
which commanded a panoramic view of many miles of fair
country. Apart from the crowd, and so intently looking
towards the ravine that no one cared to interrupt her, stood
Annie Western. Yes, there was one who ventured to speak
to the lady—Mr. Sullivan.

“T was sure our fellows wouldn’t miss ’em,” he said,
lightly.

“To you mean miss taking or miss shooting them?” she
asked, in a voice that quivered in spite of itself.

' “Either or both,” the man answered; “our orders are
very positive. We call for surrender three times, and if that
fails—well, there’s only one thing left.”

The latter words had been uttered gently and apologeti-
cally, for the speaker had been touched and awed by the
girl’s wounded, hunted gaze, and by her long-drawn “Ah !
God help them!” Then, furtively observing, and finding his
companion to be, to all outward seeming, in the statuesque-
ness of her countenance, unmoved as a stone, he began to
comment upon what was passing before his eyes.

“ Here’s the first captive,” he said, pointing to the emerg-
ence from a turn in the ravine of a slowly-moving body of
men. ‘Whoever it may be, he’s either settled or badly
winged. Winged, very likely, for they come at a slow pace,
and halt now and then to change bearers.”

Before Sullivan had proceeded thus far, Miss Western

A Moorland Legend. 113

had started forward as if to meet the procession; then she
resolutely arrested her movements, and paused stock still
again. The warder this time did not follow her, and it was
to the sportsman that he continued his comments.

“Oho!” he exclaimed, “this,” referring to the approach-
ing group, “is about the biggest scoundrel in the whole
establishment. Do you remember the fellow who narrowly
escaped hanging for that Southwark affair? This is the
second time he has tried to bolt. Last time he nearly killed
his warder with a hand-saw, and the poor chap will be
maimed for life in consequence.” - 0

The Southwark burglar was just then borne past. He
had been shot twice—once through the shoulder, once in
the thigh—and, limp and motionless as to body and limbs,
and ghastly as to-countenance, seemed already dead. The
crowd followed the procession, and before long a shout was
raised that a cart was bringing the other convicts from
another direction. This turned out to be true. A donkey-
cart was driven at a walk within the walls, conveying back.
to their punishment two groaning men, from whom the
prison surgeons would soon be extracting the leaden checks
upon liberty. The pondérous gates harshly shut out sight
and sound, and gradually the Kingsford housekeepers and
their little ones dispersed. Miss Western had lingered until
the three wounded men had gone in. It was with almost a
smile that she said to Sullivan, in passing—

“They are the builders, are they not ?”

“Yes,” he said; “they were all working beyond the
stone-yard yonder. We make use of artizans in that way.
One of them is a very bad lot. The other two are good
fellows enough, but I suppose they couldn’t resist the
temptation to run away.”

The fourth convict, then, was not captured. The search

I

114 By Stream and Sea.

was thorough, yet the short duration of the fog had rendered
it almost impossible that he could have escaped. Still, as
the hours of the brief winter’s day went on, the invariable
news brought by droppers-in to the Kingsford Arms was
that number Ninety-six could not be traced in any form or
fashion.

The mystery was increased by the circumstances under
which the man had succeeded in eluding the lynx-eyed
chase. The builders had been favoured by hilly and broken
country, affording an abundance of hiding places; the
wielder of the shovel in the Reclamation enclosure could
only have got away over clear, open ground, with no cover
that would have concealed a dog. But got away he had,
and that of a surety.

The three unsuccessful malcontents we may henceforth
dismiss from our story. They recovered more or less slowly,
and the Southwark burglar, it must perforce be said, to the
regret of all the prison officials, was the first to appear once
more in the ranks of the able-bodied convicts. Our concern

is rather with number Ninety-six, the absentee.
* * * * * *

At the Kingsford Arms, after dark, on the day of the
occurences above narrated, the snug bar-parlour was par-
ticularly well patronized. The shooting of three men in
one day was not so commonplace an event that it could be
passed over without special celebration. If the truth must
be known, it threw dreary Kingsford entirely out of gear.
The sportsman had not looked at his gun after the novel
sport of which he had been an indirect witness; the commer-
cial travellers had unexpectedly found it essential to make
several calls on the following morning; an odd farmer or
two from the outlying districts, and the straggling trades-
men of the village—all these assembled with one accord, as

A Moorland Legend. Its

soon as the candles were lighted, to have a night of exhaustive
gossip. Each new comer stamped harder and harder on
the outer door-mat, for the twilight had brought a blinding
downfall of whirling snow.

“That poor devil who’s out of quarters to-night will wish
himself back again,” remarked the postmaster, pointing with
his pipe-stem over his shoulder to the north.

“ Egad, he will,” chimed in one of the commercial gentle-
men. ‘What is he?”

“ What is he?” repeated Mr. Sullivan. “It must be a
clever man to answer that unless the bird’s been brought
back to cage. If you mean Who is he, I can tell you.”

Some of the company said, “Ah! do;” others, “Oh!
thanks ;” others, “Your health, Mr. Sullivan.” All sipped
their liquors and listened.

“Number Ninety-six was rather a curious case,” the off-
duty warder began. “He was a tall, strong-shouldered
young man, straight as a poplar, and when they had cut off
his beard he looked as beautiful'as a woman. We've con-
siderably over a thousand convicts on the books just now,
and thirty of them are what are called gentlemen. Number
Ninety-six, however, was the most genuine of the whole set.
We find some of your real high-born gentlemen cutting up
very roughly; directly the veneer is peeled off you have
a very ugly description of timber indeed to look at. Ninety-
six is real grit though, and everybody is puzzled at his going
off in this manner. But that is by the way. I said I could
tell you who he is. Well, he’s the son of old Sir Simon
Tolly, the banker, and he was convicted of forging deeds
and wills and other papers to an enormous extent. Of
course you know everything now, as I thought you would
when I mentioned the name; that affair, anyhow, wasn’t
done in a corner, for the whole country rung with the story,

116 By Stream and Sea.

and the newspapers for a month or so had room for nothing
else. Now, the strangeness of the case is, that a good many
people say he is innocent, or next door to it.”

“ Rubbish !” interposed the sportsman, “it was a full and
fair trial, and nothing could be clearer than the evidence.”

“Well, well,” continued the warder, “I can’t express an
opinion about that; I only know that all kinds of people of
quality have come down to this God-forgotten part of the
world to see number Ninety-six, and that Harry Hinton, a
brother warder of mine, says he knew the family and all
their affairs, and can answer for it that there are things kept
secret which would alter the complexion of the case con-
siderably.”

“ And,” said a farmer, who had returned to say that if he
was to get home that night he must be jogging pretty soon,
or he would be snowed up, “it always happens to be your
gentlemen convicts that gets away. I dare say it’s all right,
but I never yet heard of a poor man doing it. No, no,” he
added, upon an angry exclamation from Sullivan, “I mean
no offence, but it’s the truth.”

“Then it is not the truth,” retorted the representative of
the prison’s honour, “ the man who last gave us leg-bail was
a low tinker tramp, and the one before that was that precious
Cheshire farmer, who was no more a gentleman than—than
—he is ”—/e being a pet collie curled up before the wide
roaring fire.

The landlady, appearing at the nick of time, prevented 3
continuance of the verbal sparring which seemed imminent,
and Mr. Sullivan, bidding the company good-night, whis-
pered to Mrs. Preston as he went, and received, as if in
reply to a question, “She is upset, I fear, and has gone to
bed with a head-ache.”

That was certainly a memorable night on Quickmoor,

A Moorland Legend. 117

and memorable above all at Kingsford. The heaviest snow-
storm of the generation buried the country before daylight,
and in the morning Miss Annie Western was missing. They
searched high and low without effect until the postmaster
delivered to Mrs. Preston a letter which had been slipped
into his box during the night. It said :-— ‘

“ DEAR Mrs. PRESTON,

“Pray, do not make any inquiries forme. I am
gone, I hope for good, but, be that as it may, certainly not
to return again. You have been as kind to me as a mother,
and would have been kinder had I allowed you. Some day,
perhaps, I may see you again.

* Yours truly,
“ ANNIE WESTERN.”

There was no.doubt about this note; the handwriting
was the same finished specimen of caligraphy which, coming
before them at this lonesome moorland hotel, used to excite
the wonder and compliments of the tourist and official cus-
tomers when they paid their bills.

For awhile the people around had so much concern with
their stock lost in the snow, and their complete isolation
from the world from the same cause, that they soon ceased
to puzzle themselves about the strange disappearance of Mrs.
Preston’s courteous assistant. It was only to be expected
that the disappearance of number Ninety-six should be
coupled with it; but guesses, though plentiful, were unsatis-
fying, and by-and-by the wonder ceased.

* * * * * *

The escape of the convict Tolly, and the shooting of the
other three runaways, strangely enough, excited no more
attention in the country at large than could be measured by

118 By Stream and Sea.

a tamely-worded paragraph of twelve lines which appeared
in the papers weeks after the events happened. Official
reports had doubtless been dispatched in due course to the
Home Secretary, but Government offices give to the public
press only the information that they are forced to surrender.
It was a tragedy that might have been made much of in
the hands of a zealous “Special,” but, through a fortuitous
combination of causes, the public knew it not.

Yet it was tacitly understood at Kingsford that the two
_ gentlemen who used to spend so much time at the little
hotel, and write upon large blue sheets of paper, were im-
portant personages sent from London to make inquiries, and
Mrs. Preston confided her suspicions to that effect to
another customer, who came with his gun-case to Quick-
moor, after the snow had melted. She found this young
gentleman, whose letters were addressed “‘ Horace Herbert,
Esq.,” very sociable, and extremely affable. He took much
apparent interest in the affairs of Kingsford, and was fond
of chatting with the warders over a cigar; but it was observed
that during his week’s sojourn his shooting expeditions
generally ended in an empty game-bag, or in a total of snipe
wholly inconsistent with the fame of the bogs. Wearily, at
length, he packed up his breech-loader and cartridges, and
foretold his departure on the morrow.

“We should have looked after you better, sir,” the land-
lady said; “but I’ve never yet been able to fill up poor
Miss Western’s place.”

“ Indeed,” answered Mr. Herbert, in the tone of one who
was not at all interested in Miss Western, or the landlady’s
difficulties.

“ Poor girl, she left sudden the very night when the con-
vict went.”

“What is that ?” he said sharply.

A Moorland Legend. 119

Mrs. Preston repeated her information, and, as she spoke,
produced from her stomacher a photograph. It was a pic-
ture of the, Kingsford Arms, with Miss Western standing
in the doorway, looking dreamily over the distant moors,
while a pony-chaise and a party of ladies and gentlemen,
postured in and around it, filled up the foreground.

The young gentleman, as the landlady subsequently re-
marked, gave a great gulph, as if he were determined to
keep down any expression of feeling, and turned towards
her with a forced calmness of face and voice that frightened
her. Where,” he asked, “did you get this? Who is
it?”

“Tt’s Lawyer Brown, from Taviton, and his daughters,”
Mrs. Preston began.

“No,” the other sternly said, interrupting, “the lady on
the doorstep, I mean ?”

“ That’s Miss Western. She was standing at the door on
an afternoon last summer, and looking—as she was fond of
doing sometimes for half an hour together—right away to
the hills yonder: we had a rare laugh afterwards ; for, quite
unknown to her, a travelling photographer took her in the
picture, and she never knew it to this day.”

“Ha ha! good joke, indeed. Could you give me this,
Mrs. Preston? Well, perhaps you would not care to part
with it entirely ; but I’ll promise to get it copied, and you
shall have it again.”

The landlady, who had made demonstrations of disagree-
ment with the proposal, was content with this, and was
much gratified to hear, a few minutes later, that Mr. Horace
Herbert had countermanded the four-wheel dog-cart, and
had declared his purpose of remaining at Kingsford a day
or two longer. He was an inmate of the hotel for several
additional days, and was incessant in his inquiries about

120 By Stream and Sea.

Miss Western, and in his rambles with either Sullivan or the
warder Hinton, who it has been previously suggested, was
acquainted with the family affairs of the convict number
Ninety-six.
* * * * * ae

Some six weeks after the memorable snow-storm, Sir
Berton Herbert, Bart., received a letter marked “ private,”
and fastened with evident care by an ample supply of
sealing-wax. It bore the post mark of the town nearest to
Kingsford, the central receptacle for all the correspondence
swept up by the Quickmoor rural postmen. This is a copy
of the letter :—

“My Dear FATHER,

“T am sick and weary of the life of deception which
this wretched business entails, and not the least repulsive .
portion of it is the necessity which the devil lays upon us of
making other people deceivers too.

“ Nothing whatever can be heard of our friend.

“Tt seems certain that he is not in this part of the country ;
equally unlikely is it that he could have escaped to the coast.
The paragraph which appeared in yesterday’s papers assuring
the public that the convict Tolly has been seen in the United
States, &c., is, of course, another mesh in the web of
deception. But, I repeat, of him there is nothing to tell;
the very prison officials are puzzled, and can express no
opinion. So far my expedition has failed.

“But I have something that will pain you to know. Poor
Alice, as I am convinced, lived at this inn—your daughter
and my sister, Heaven forgive us!—~as a barmaid for two
years / and she disappeared mysteriously on the night of
Tolly’s escape. Deception again, you see. After that terrible
trial and sentence, we, you may remember, received a letter

A Moorland Legend. 121

from her from Rouen, announcing her intention of spending
the rest of her days in an Italian convent. While we were
searching the continent for her, she was here as Miss Western,
serving cider to the country folks, and waiting obediently
upon any chance customer who required the ministrations
of a barmaid.

“T will confine myself to bare facts. There is a warder
here named Hinton, a private detective sort of person. I
have discovered that he was induced to come here, in the
pay of, and in constant communication with, Alice. He was
unable to do much, but on two occasions he tells me he
delivered messages, assuring the convict that she was in the
place, ever watchful of his interests. ‘Tell her,’ he sent
answer, ‘my degradation is light in comparison with her
sorrow; tell her she has my pity, for she has. my love.’
This man (Hinton) says it is impossible that Alice could
have had any hand in the escape, and the statements of
persons who observed the wretched girl when the wounded
Prisoners were brought in, quite corroborate this assertion.
Hinton swears he, too, had nothing whatever to do with the
matter. This we must take for what it is worth. It seems
certain that Alice was taken by surprise; also that she is
wandering in search of him.

“So far I have confined myself to facts, and you must
-pardon me if they have been put with apparent hardness.
Pardon me, also, and deem me not wanting in filial duty and
affection, if I betray a hardness of heart in what I have yet
to write, for it is, alas, an inherited hardness. But for
your obstinate worldliness, these horrors would not have
accumulated.

“To you the behaviour of your daughter and my sister
may appear but the madness of despairing affection. You
know that her life was bound up in his, and you cannot have

122 By Stream and Sea.

forgotten how on that day when, in a frenzy of passion, she
renounced you for declining to pledge yourself to endeavour
to obtain what she termed a ‘remission of sentence,’ she
declared that she ought to have been the convict, and not
her lover and my unfortunate friend. When she over-
whelmed you with reproaches as the cause of the crime, you
pronounced her insane. Let me tell you the secret of the
poor girl’s blighted life. It was by her tempting advice that
Tolly committed the forgeries. Until now this secret has
been in her keeping, in mine, and in his ; it is now in yours,
as you may please. I am bound to state the full circum-
stances, for it was your obdurate refusal to sanction Alice’s
marriage with the man of her choice, because he was not
possessed of sufficient wealth, that put the devil into her
soul, and his. Alice, distraught with remorse, confided this
to me herself in an interview more painful than words can
tell. I shall not rest, nor willingly see your face again, until
I have found the unhappy girl whose love has been so
woefully disastrous, but for whom in this world there can be
no more happiness.

“ Although, as a man of the world, you may find conso-
lation in. the knowledge that my friend’s sentence was legally
just, this letter will doubtless cause you some pain. For
myself, the bitter grief of the immediate past, and the dark
cloud hovering over the future, have frozen my heart to ice.—

“Your dutiful son,
cc H, H.”

* * * * * *

The following communication was subsequently received
by Sir Berton Herbert from Mr. Porsan, a confidential
solicitor, who had been dispatched to a remote country |
village on a special mission by the hon. baronet ;—

A Moorland Legend. 123

“ DEAR SIR BERTON,

“T have, according to your instructions, proceeded
to this place to inquire into the truth or otherwise of the
statement made by the Rev. S. Marks, in reply to your
advertisement offering a reward for information touching a
certain missing lady.

“T am sorry to inform you that there is no room for doubt
that the unknown lady who died here, as described by Mr.
Marks, was Miss Alice Herbert, your daughter. I enclose
a miniature of Mr. Tolly, an old note from him to her, and
a portrait of her brother, Mr. Horace Herbert; these formed
part of the deceased’s effects. I enclose, furthermore, a
document, written and signed by Mr. Marks, the incumbent
of this parish. I have communicated this intelligence to
the Hon. Mr, Herbert. Awaiting further orders,

“T am, your obedient servant,
“'H. W. Porson.”

(Extract from Enclosure.)

“The deceased lady was found by a carter partly buried
in a snowdrift by the wayside on the morning succeeding the
great snow-storm of December last. She was insensible
when taken to Manor House farm, where every attention was
paid to hex As clergyman of the parish, I was sent for on
the same day. On arriving at the farm I found that Doctor
B. had succeeded in restoring suspended circulation, but
the patient suffered much. During two days she rambled
in her speech, and no information could be gained from her
by which we could communicate with her friends and ascer-
tain who she was, or where she came from. On the evening
‘of the second day, Doctor B. informing me that the sufferer
was dying, I at once repaired to the farm. It was but too
evident that the sands of life were indeed fast falling. The

124 By Stream and Sea.

fleeting spirit was now tranquil, but the patient was too
weak to speak. She signified acquiescence in my desire to
pray with and for her, and listened with closed eyes to my
reading. Before I had finished my sacred duty, the lady,
with a quiet sigh, and a smile beautiful to look upon, passed
away to the other world.”

* # i * * *

In the spring-time a party of children set out from Kings-
ford to pick violets in Druids’ Wood. As they walked
down the road they halted to clamber upon the low stone
walls to see the convicts working at the reclamation of the
bog. The prisoners heard their merry voices, and turned
away with downcast eyes as if they would shut out the
sound.

Druids’ Wood is celebrated far and wide as one of the
most. remarkable places in Quickmoor. Tourists, artists,
and anglers who visit the neighbourhood during the summer
months, always make a pilgrimage to it. Many of the
country people, regarding it with superstition, avoid it, and
its distance from any hamlet deters others from visiting the
place. It is a grove of dwarf oaks of unknown antiquity.
Though the largest tree is not more than seven feet high,
the oaks present all the shapes and grotesque characteristics
in miniature of perfectly-formed and extremely-aged trees.
In the wood there is a thick tangle of undergrowth, and
amongst the masses of granite strewed around, and gnarled
roots, rare ferns and flowers are to be found. Primroses
and violets in their season, and foxgloves in theirs, flourish
profusely, and a day’s flower-gathering is a treat often looked
forward to by the little ones living near.

The flowers sprang up beautifully after the severe winter,
and our party of children had heard of their appearance.
Bright as the sunshine that bathed the moorland in. soft

A Moorland Legend. 125

radiance, they ran from tor to tor, and from tree to tree,
filling their baskets and pinafores with perfumed blossoms.
Their pleasure was soon tured to fright. A little boy
penetrating further into the thicket than his fellows, ran out
into the daylight, with staring eyes and scared face. He
said a dead man was lying there. The terrified children
ran home and told their story, and in the afternoon the
mystery of the convict’s escape was solved. Number
Ninety-six had secreted himself in the wood, and during
the great snow-storm Nature had covered him with its own
shroud.

So far as could be surmised, from a careful comparison of
the Governor’s report of the investigations made then and
previously, the convict, taking advantage of the outcry raised
by the alarm in a distant portion of the grounds, had
vanished in the mist, and concealed himself in a trench close
to the prison-grounds until the darkness of night favoured
his journey over the lonely two miles of moor intervening
between him and Druids’ Wood, and the heavy snow oblite-
rated all traces of the flight. It was strongly suspected that
Hinton, the warder on duty near the convict at the time,
knew something of the matter, but shortly after Mr. Her-
bert’s visit to Ringsford, that official obtained leave of
absence, on the plea of a sudden death of a brother, and
had never returned.

2 Ee
ee

ee

ei

CHAPTER IX.
IN THE PEAK COUNTRY.

WO hours ago, smoke, crowded thoroughfares, groan-
ing machinery, and the very heart of a prosperous
industrial community of nearly three hundred thou-

sand inhabitants; now purple heather, far-reaching hills,
shooting-boxes, grouse, snipe, and here and there a black-
cock. Two hours ago the landscape was one of chimneys
—a forest of them; now it is a warmly-tinted picture of
mountainous moorland in Nature’s matchless perspective.
Two hours ago the air was heavy and dim, and your temples
throbbed in unison with those wonderful machines that were
pressing out massive armour plates and drawing steel rails
from the roller as if they were bits of thread; now the
atmosphere is, by comparison, preternaturally clear, and
exhilarating to a degree which is best measured by the long-
drawn gulp asked for by the greedy lungs. Two hours ago
the ear was assailed by the shrieks, wails, sobs, groans, and
bellowings that proceeded from some of the most famous
metal works in the kingdom ; here

‘¢ All the air a solemn stillness holds,”

save where the honey-laden bee softly hums herself a homely

Ln the Peak Country. 127

tune as she crosses the road intersecting the moors. Verily,
money-making men of Hallamshire, you may thank your
lucky stars that your pursuits have fallen to you in such
pleasant places. There are no other citizens in this proud
empire who can in so short a space of time escape from
depressing confinement into beautiful freedom; who can
close their office doors at four o’clock, and by six be han-
dling a newly-shot grouse instead of a banker’s pass-book.
Hard-working and grimy toilers, into whose philosophy
neither pass-book nor grouse enters so much as in the dream
of an idle hour, you, too, may be thankful that so near your
grinding implements you have the flowery dells and ravines
that give so much charm to the five streams which “ one of
your own poets,” Ebenezer Elliott, knew so well, loved so
much, and celebrated in such sweet song.

On the high-road between Manchester and Sheffield, in a
hollow under the finest hills, there is a solid stone bridge.
A grand coaching business used to be done between the
metropolis of cotton and the metropolis of steel, and the
Lancashire lads and Yorkshire tykes always found in the
wild grandeur of the surrounding scenery some sort of com-
pensation for the journey. Are any of those old coach
travellers living now, I wonder? Not many, perhaps, for
this was one of the earliest stud-farms for the iron horse.
But there must be some who remember the half-way resting-
place in the hamlet of Ashopton, nestling close under the
bold peaks of Win Hill and Lose Hill; the loneliness
of the situation, the grandeur of the prospects far and near ;
the river rippling under the bridge over which the coaches
used to pass, and below which the Derwent receives the
smaller stream that for some distance had appeared running
parallel with the coach road; and the substantial larder of
the hostelry.

128 By Stream and Sea.

Sportsmen also know the spot—sportsmen, that is to say,
who hire their shooting from a distance, and sojourn in the
district only so long as there is sport to be had—sportsmen,
very often, who here, and here alone during the year, renew
their bygone experiences of country life. At Ashopton and
at Lady Bower, further up in the direction of Sheffield, you
may always reckon upon finding a goodly selection of
setters, pointers, retrievers, and spaniels, and a very miscel-
laneous collection of dog-owners, hanging about the inn
doorways of an autumn evening, when the day’s work is
done, and when the sun scatters about the valleys and hill-
tops shadows so mystical and weird that you may gaze at
them, forming and re-forming, until, in the belief that a new
order of spirits have come down from the rocks and caves
to take temporary possession of the Peak country, you see
visions of cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces rising
out of the shroud-grey of the twilight. Should pleasure or
business call you forth next morning before the sun has re-
appeared over the east-lying landmarks, you may look down
the valley from Lady Bower and watch the stately pageant
dissolve like a scroll, and the old familiar outlines of tor and
moorland gradually steal back again, real as the duties which
daily life brings to responsible humanity.

To this district come tourists, but not in dreaded shoals.
The country is a little too inaccessible for the common-
footed variety of the modern excursionist, who loves to have
his “special” run right into the novelty he has come out to
see. A good walking or riding man with leisure at his com-
mand always loves the Peak, but it may be said that, as a
general rule, the tourist, pure and simple, either stops short
at Chatsworth and that part of Derbyshire which lies south
of the line which you may draw from that noble Dukery
straight across to Buxton, or pursues the railway from

In the Peak Country. 129

Buxton over the elevated permanent way above Chapel-en-
le-Frith to Stockport.

I have known travellers compassing this route declare
afterwards the glories of the Peak country in the Janguage
of venerable experience. Now, if our friends can prove
to you by affidavit that they have halted at Chapel-en-le-
Frith, and pushed up into the high country thereabouts, you
may grant them a certificate of knowledge on the subject,
though you should withhold a medal in addition, unless
they know something of Castleton and the country on the
Ashopton side.

“Chapel ”—the topographical designation is too long for
frequent use—is not incorrectly described as “a market-
-town of some considerable importance in the High Peak.”
If not “in,” it is not far from the Peak. At Hayfield, a few
miles north, begins the range of hills of which Kinder
Scout is the chief summit, and Kinder Scout must be honestly
climbed by your own feet if you would gain that splendid
look-out which, they say, sometimes includes the sea beyond

_ Liverpool. Castleton is pretty well known to tourists, since

it monopolises the most wonderful of the wonders of
Derbyshire, such as the Ebbing and Flowing Well, the
castlé of which Sir Walter Scott had somewhat to observe
in his “ Peveril of the Peak” (the flower, as many think, of
the Waverley flock), and the mines and caves where the
Bengal lights reveal stalactite and crystal spar, and less
showy illuminations intensify the gloom of awe-inspiring
cavernous recesses. ‘These are the show places of the dis-
trict, and naturally they attract all the tourists who pass that
way. Still the traveller who stops short of Mam Tor has
but an imperfect acquaintance with the High Peak,

Let us traverse the mountain through the lovely vale of
Edale until we stand once more upon that bridge which

K

130 By Stream and Sea.

spans the Derwent near its confluence with the Ashop.
Shall I not do well to admit at once that I have brought
you into the Peak country chiefly to take you by the button-
hole and gossip of the streams that lave its lower levels?
And is there not a cause? The rodster and the gunster
coming with a purpose are the men who know most about
the Peak scenery, for they have an incentive to spur them
beyond the point where others retrace their steps; the fur-
ther their explorations are forced the more successful are
they likely to be in their pursuits. Yet the field is so vast
that I cannot pretend to exhaust it; the best that can be
done within the limits of a single sketch is to skim the
surface with a light hand.

The Little Ashop, to which I have above made reference,
is the tributary of a tributary, for the Derwent is, spite of its
goodly size at its junction with the Trent, but a feeder
of that magnificent midland river. The Ashop rises on the
northern face of the High Peak, and is formed by a number
of rivulets springing from Glossop and Alport moors. It is,
however, too small a stream to be mentioned in ordinary
guide books; or to be treated to more than a passing refer-
ence in the abundant angling literature which the Peak
country can claim as its own. Yet it is a noted haunt
of merry, if small, moorland trout, and is strictly preserved
by a few gentlemen of the district. In most of the Derby-
shire streams grayling abound; none, however, are to be
found so far up as this. The water is too shallow for those
lovers of deep, swift currents, and there are besides weirs
which would, if they attempted to act upon the “ Excelsior”
motto, effectually check their advance.

Watching an angler is to one who understands the science
almost as exciting and interesting as angling one’s self. It
brings out your critical faculties; it gives you a good

In the Peak Country. 131

opinion of yourself, though at the expense of your friend ;
it teaches you something. This is why the old schoolboys
on the great summer field-days at Lord’s cricket ground
assume such airs of wisdom, and wax so vigorous in their
praise and blame as they follow with kindling eyes the
movements of the youngsters in the field.

Suppose, then, we become spectators of the two gentle-
men who are making ready for descent into the Ashop,
The dogs leaping around them and sniffing at their heels as
they cross the bridge are evidently jealous of the fishing-
rods ; they consider themselves defrauded of a day’s work
and glory on the moors, though, if they were gifted with
reflective memories, they must recollect that the last week
proved a dreadful blank, and that, eager as they were to
point and retrieve, all the chances were against them.
Therefore, faithful animals, you need not whine and look up
so eagerly with those great loving eyes of yours; your
masters are quite justified in looking after fish when fowl
are scarce. Hie back again, then, to the stable yard and
enjoy a day’s romp and rest.

Our anglers have gone into the village smithy to don
their wading stockings and brogues, without which nothing
can be done; bushes, thick and overhanging, fringe each
side of the stream, and if the gentlemen in the smithy know
their business they will wade stealthily upwards, working
with a short line. Up-stream fishing should always be
adopted when possible: that may be taken as an infallible
rule. It is pedantry, however, to insist upon the method
under all conditions, inasmuch as there are rapid “torren-
tial” rivers where an angler who values his time and
temper, and cares for a basket of fish, will never attempt
aught but down-stream long-line fishing.

Who ever knew a village smithy door without its brace or

132 By Stream and Sea.

so of idlers lounging against its lintels? Here are three
young men, probably keepers taking holiday with the dogs ;
young men whose faces are the colour of a ripe hazel nut,
and whose velveteen jackets are, like the garments of poor,
easily-cheated Esau, savoury of the hunting grounds. They
watch Messieurs the Anglers pull on their waterproof
coverings, thick woollen socks, and clumsy brogues, and
converse of angling news. No daily newspapers come to
Ashopton till they are a few days old; there are no hourly
telegrams affixed to club screen or hotel passage. Such
news as the morning brings them is of the woods, fields,
and streams. Number One has heard of a four-pound trout
taken yesterday in the Derwent. The trio at once move
with slow step across to the bridge, and lean over, gazing
into the peat-brown flood as it races under the arch. This
movement will not help them probably in their compre-
hension of the story, but it seems the natural thing to do,
just as when Micawber contemplated entering into the coal
trade he went out and looked at the Medway with the eye
of a connoisseur. So our velveteen jacket brigade involun-
tarily survey the Derwent as the story-teller proceeds.

It seems that the four-pound trout had been a notorious
character for several seasons. Everybody had made serious
attempts upon its honour. Everybody had failed. Live
fly, dead fly, ants’ eggs, maggot, wasp-grub, worm, minnow,
had been used in ringing the piscatorial changes, but the
trout had kept his corner under the jutting rock, and had
ordered his life aright, pursuing the even tenor of his way,
turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. At length
there had been treason and stratagem, and, alas! spoil.
Nefarious prowlers had netted the fish in the dead of night,
and sold him in Castleton at sixpence per pound. Number
Two caps this story with another while our ¢rozs Sreres

In the Peak Country. 133

dawdle back to the smithy, the dogs following gravely in a
listening attitude.

A gentleman on the previous afternoon down at Hather-
sage was angling with gentles, and caught a small grayling,
which he had pulled nearly out of the milltail when a great
trout ferociously rushed at and gobbled it, taking the
point of the hook also into the bargain. There was a
dash of pathos in this narrative: the gentleman played the
trout for half an hour, and then permitted it to break away
from-him..

It is very pleasant, sitting upon a newly-made wheel-
barrow outside the smithy, to hear all this conversation, and
look up and around at the many-tinted’ hills and village
flower-gardens, to smell the wood fires, and hear the forge,
the rustling branches, and the flowing stream combining in
a sleepy kind of chorus. But our anglers are ready, and
we have engaged to look on as umpires.

One of these fishermen might not untruly be termed a—if
not the—judicious hooker. The first reach of the Ashop is
between a garden hedge on the one side and a wall rising
sheer out of the stream on the other. The water is low
and clear ; there is not a scrap of cover in its bed, except
stones, lying for the most part flat on the bottom. The
current is therefore tolerably even, and the course free for
the up-stream angler. Wisely he uses a couple of flies and
half a dozen yards of line. Wisely he moves warily, never
splashing as he brings one foot before the other, pausing
always for a minute or two on arriving at a new position.
Standing above him the spectator can see every pebble in
the river’s bed, but not a fish within range of his vision.
Yet stop. The eye kept steadily upon the river becomes
attuned to the colour of the stony bed—a light brown, and
soon it detects a long, thin, light-brown form where none

134 By Stream and Sea.

could at first be seen. It is a trout, so like in hue to the
river's bed that only the practised eye can detect it. A
hand lifted into the air scares it away, frightened out of its
wits. The judicious hooker says it is precisely what he
expected; the only chance is to fish under the wall, and
under the bushes on the opposite side, Lightly, and
apparently without any exertion, he drops the tiny artificial
bumble in the direction he announced, and has his reward—
a four-ounce brook trout in admirable condition. The J. H.
cannot now expect to catch his four dozen as he did in the
lucky June days, but he thins out the stock occasionally,
and fishes the Ashop like a master, wind and water all the
while dead against him.

The second angler is a superb illustration of “how not to
do it.” From his talk, as you lingered about the smithy, you
would have fancied him an incomparable fly-fisherman ; the
advice he volunteered to the J. H. was sound, and delivered
in a tone of easy confidence that suggested a limitless
reserve of knowledge that might be used did not modesty
forbid ; the playful flourishes he indulged in, whipping at
the scarlet berries of the mountain ash and flicking his cast
across the road, as we proceeded towards the gate of the
first meadow, were gracefulness itself.

“Here,” we might have remarked without making abso-
lute fools of ourselves: “here is a finished sportsman who
may be backed to pitch a fly into a teacup at thirty yards
distance.”

His aspect when he looked leisurely towards the clouds,
and up and down the stream, was that of profound wisdom.
Perhaps his theory was quite regularly hall-marked ; his
practice was “ Brummagem.” Not to put too fine a point
upon it, he was (in a Pickwickianly-Waltonian sense) an
arrant impostor. Every movement was a false one. He

In the Peak Country. 135

floundered about in the water, partly through too much
haste, partly through carelessness in planting his feet, the
result being to drive away the fish and to treble his own
exertions. Wherefore, while his friend was cool in body
and placid in spirit, he was perspiring and irritable, suffer-
ing, no doubt, mentally and physically from intense prickly
heat. It was astounding to observe how heavily his flies
pitched into the water; you could hear them fall. He
tested every kind of shrub on the bank, apparently with the
view of determining which would most effectually cause
entanglement and loss of tackle ; on the whole, the common
bramble seemed best adapted for this purpose, though for a
propounder of the question how it is possible for a line to
become most inextricably fastened up, there is nothing like
gorse. Need it be said that this gentleman caught no fish,
lost much tackle, and came out of the water at the end in
a vile humour, which the sight of his friend’s pretty dish
of trout did not affect on the side of sweetness and.
light ?

When Sir Geoffrey Peveril, in the flush of hope, suggested
to Master Bridgnorth the possibilities of the King investing
him with a title as the reward of his loyalty he remarked
that “Earl of the Peak” would sound well. That earldom
has never been bestowed, but there is a modern Waltonian
lord of the’ Peak who is known to all fishermen on Derwent,
or Dove, as “ Old Butcher.” This “character” has been
thus charmingly described by Mr. John Hall, a Sheffield
gentleman, who has written much of the Derbyshire rivers
and hills, and who can angle as well as he can write :—

‘¢ Old Butcher is young: though he’s nigh fourscore
He can tramp twelve miles across a moor ;
He can fish all day and wade up stream,
And at night as fresh as the morning seem.

136 By Stream and Sea.

“ Old Butcher is young: he can make a fly
With as steady a hand and as sure an eye
As though he were still in manhood’s prime,
And never had known the ravage of time.

‘* He-will drink his glass and despoil a dish
With an appetite keen as any fish
That ever took grub from baited hook
When hunger its victim overtook.

‘¢ He can spin a yarn, or a sermon preach,
Or on special occasions spout a speech :
He can fast or feast, like a monk of old,
Though he likes the latter much best I’m told.

‘In the summer time when the days are long,
He will rise with the lark at her matin song :
But never a day’s too long for him
When wetting his line by the river’s brim.

‘Vet on winter nights, when the weather’s cold,
And fuel and victuals are scarce as gold,
He will dress his flies in his moorland cot,
“And live on potatoes and murmur not.

‘ He knows each pool of the streams about,
And every stone that conceals a trout’;
Some say that he knows all the fish as well,
Both where they were born and where they dwell.

‘¢ To those who have wander’d in Baslow’s vale,
Through Chatsworth’s meadows and Darley Dale,
Or skirted the banks of the silvery Wye,

Where Haddon’s grey towers rise steep and high ;

* Or straying westward by Calver’s weir,
To Hathersage, Hope, or Edale fair,
‘Where the Noe and the Derwent wind at will,
Beneath the shadow of great Win Hill ;

In the Peak Country. 137

‘* His form and garb will familiar seem
As the guardian deity of the stream,
With his oval face and his grizzly locks,
And his smile like that of a sly old fox.

‘* His vocation is, to instruct the young
Novitiates how the fly is flung:
To rig their tackle and range their flies,
And show them where to obtain a rise.

** Long may he live to pursue his art,
For few are there left to succeed his part :
And when he is gone let his epitaph be—
‘ Here lies George Butcher, rare fisherman he!’ ”

Mr. Charles Cotton knew these Peak streams intimately,
and was no doubt an accomplished fly-fisherman. His
essay “ Being instructions how to Angle for Trout or Gray-
ling in a Clear Stream,” is not such a smoothly-flowing
dialogue as that of his ‘ most affectionate father and friend,”
Walton, perhaps because he was—

“Surprised with the sudden news of a sudden new
edition of your ‘Complete Angler,’ so that having little
more than ten days to turn me in and rub up my memory
. . . I was forced upon the instant to scribble what I here
present to you.”

The styles, however, are different: there could not be
two Piscators. Between the two dialogues there is as much
difference as between a brick building of the Dutchman’s
era and a weather-stained farmhouse thatched, gabled, and
slashed athwart with black oaken beams. Nevertheless,
Cotton is an excellent authority on Derbyshire fishing, and
requires very little editing from the modern expert. The
streams which he lauds as the finest in Europe for angling
have deteriorated, though they are still amongst the best

138 By Stream and Sea.

that remain for trout, if not for grayling. At Bakewell and
Rowsley the wandering angler may purchase his daily ticket,
but the best portions of all the streams are rented by
associations or small bodies of gentlemen who carefully
watch their fish.

CHAPTER X.

NOTES AT BRIGHTON.

HE meet at Southwick is generally a favourite one.
The leisurely ride of four miles along the Shoreham
road braces you up. The Channel is hard by,

deliciously open, and surging over upon the unlovely strips

of waste that will some day doubtless be covered with

“elegant mansions,” marking the certain westward advance

of London-super-Mare. We are, in truth, so near the salt

water that the thorns in the hedge curling inland describe a

distinct semicircle, as if each bush had resolved to turn its

back upon the sea, and point with its outstretched finger,

“This way to the Downs.”

Next to the clean-shaven lawn on the opening day, when
the squire keeps open house for red-coats and black-
coats, gentles and simples alike, there is no place so
appropriate fora meet as the village green. The hunting
men like it, the ladies in the carriages blocking up the high-
way prefer it, the pawing hunters, I fancy, are aware of the
superiority of the frame in whose picture they are the fore-
ground figures, and you may be sure the dogs have no con-

140 By Stream and Sea.

scientious objections. Their sleek forms and satin skins
show well upon the bright-coloured turf which they bedeck
like a flower-bed.

Here at Southwick Green, moreover, we are close to the
scene of action. The Downs, it is true, are but half deve-
loped, being nothing more than spent waves of undulations
by the side of the massive billows that beckon us towards
the glorious Sussex uplands. We cansee the upper spars of
the schooners and brigs in Shoreham harbour, can hear the
murmur of the sea above the bustle incident to meet and
start. Within two minutes of moving from the Green, the
harriers are scattering, nose to ground, and, with but little
fuss or noise, as becomes ’their race, setting about their
business. Carriages and gigs are drawn up along the path
at the bottom of the field; the horsemen are for the most
part posted by the rails dividing the fallow from the turnips,
into which the dogs eagerly range. Their wagging tails and
bodies, rising and falling amongst the dark green leaves, look
for all the world like a flock of agitated geese floundering
out of the way.

The huntsman, satisfied that there is nothing to be done
here, calls his “beauties across to the fallow, where, as so
often happens, from a form which every one of us must have
scanned a dozen times, it being, as you might say, close
under one’s eyes, a hare is unexpectedly discovered. She
discovers herself, in fact, by leaping up and fleeing for her
life, while the shouting of the boys and men, the sharp cry
of the harriers, and an involuntary movement among the
riders proclaim that the sport has begun. The hare, seem-
ing to think there is more safety in humankind than with the
dogs, makes straight for the line of carriages, runs actually
parallel with them, and so near that any one of the coach-
men might slash her with his whip. Within a few yards of

Notes at Brighton. 141

the cottage she turns at one of her favourite right-angles,
and speeds equally close to the waiting horsemen. We can
observe her distinctly—her frightened eyes, her appealing
glance, the shadings of her dark autumh coat, the deteyr-
mined laying of her ears. .

Did you. ever see a hare in full flight? It is only when
she is hotly pursued that you have the opportunity. It isa
yery different thing from that epitaphed Tiny, whose

‘¢__=. Diet was of wheaten bread,
And milk, and oats, and straw ;
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
With sand to scour his maw.”

It is a very different thing from the lanky-legged, awk-
ward-looking animal that scrambles into the copse when you
are taking your evening cigar in the cornfield. These Down
hares understand well how to get over the ground and elude
the enemy, and they are better able to do so than the
covert and what is called the “homeless” variety. Our
Southwick puss has shot into the turnips like an arrow, the
excited rustics having, to their credit be it said, given strict
obedience to the chorus of “ Keep still, boys,” which arose
on every sidé. The urchins therefore drop the stones which
they had picked up, and every one of us—ladies no less
than gentlemen, children as much as adults—watches the
disappearing creature with shockingly hungry eyes. If we,
by a sudden impulse, desire her blood, so, by alike instinct, -
do the harriers.

The leader is pushing through the turnips, and the rest of
the pack, close and compact as a comet’s tail, follow him.
In due time we pursue, not at the dashing charge of the
fox or stag-hunter, but with the calculation which every
sensible rider after hounds will exercise over stony, wet

142 By Stream and Sea.

fallow. You seldom require heavy galloping with these
harriers. Tact serves better than speed.

It is impossible to say when and where the hare will
double, but double assuredly she will. Some members of
the party appear to be quietly cantering off the field, away
from, instead of after, the quarry, and they are most likely
to be well in the running when the fly-away has turned and
twisted according to her nature. She is now making for the
up-country, and we may use the spurs after all for a brief
spell, while the hare dashes along the ridge, descends a
valley of soft rich pasture, and, skirting the rearguard of a
flock of Southdowns, seeks refuge in the friendly swedes.
By what process does she know that here, more than any-
where else in this north-easterly wind, will the scent be in
all probability destroyed? ‘For an hour she pursues this
policy. Hunted in the fallow, she escapes to the rapefields.

Note how splendidly the harriers work. They never lose
their heads. Baffled many a time, they yet plod on with
infinite patience, requiring scarcely a word of direction,
Other hounds charge forward in a mad career; the true-
bred harrier keeps himself, as it were, strictly in hand,
meeting the cunning of the game with a corresponding
artfulness and wiliness of his own. Perhaps it is because
the frequent pauses on high ground, and the circles in
which the pack manceuvre, afford us unusual opportunities
of observation ; but it does seem that no clags of hunting-
dog so largely claims our admiration for persevering and
unobtrusive intelligence as a well-trained pack of beagles or
harriers.

And what an astonishing distance you may travel in these
alternate gallops, trots, and pauses! Now you are away
amongst the springy turf, dark clumps of gorse, and iron-
grey weather of the Downs, with the murmur of the distant

Notes at Brighton. 143

sea, by this time nothing more than a suspicion, and the
ships, houses, and offing, a grateful panorama behind. You
then descend until you regain the old landmarks, only by
an unexpected and rapid change of front, to find yourself
erewhile once more advancing farther upward and onward
than before. Very little fencing or leaping of any kind is
called for in this description of hare-hunting ; you may, of
course, make an opportunity of taking a flying leap if you
choose, but, as a rule, if you know how to ride neatly up
and down steep ascents, and at high speed if necessary, you
need not be afraid of following harriers.

Somehow, there are generally a few pedestrians who
always contrive to be not far from the hunt. As you wait
for a draw on the verge of field and enclosure, and the
horses take breath, those gentlemen on foot soon come
toiling bravely up, having by knowledge of short cuts and
the probabilities of the chase, kept the hounds in constant
sight. At this work it is with men as with horses—the best
~stayer does the trick. The race is not by any means to the
swift only.

Qn these far-reaching Sussex Downs we have no reason to
complain of too many hares. An abundance of them com-
plicates the scent, and this is almost as bad as no game at
all. Happily,.we are in that proverbially desirable con-
dition of having neither poverty nor riches. Our huntsman
views the killing of the first hare to-day with intense satis-
faction, not so much because she baffled the pursuit for
more than an hour, as because she makes up the sixteenth
brace this season, It must not, however, be supposed that
hare-hunting is always so peaceful and slow, as it must be
held to be in the main, by comparison with other forms of
field sport. There was not long ago a most memorable run
almost straight ahead, from near Shoreham to Devil’s Dyke,

144 By Stream and Sea.

over such a tremendously hilly country, that not many ot
the gallant sportsmen, who, smart and fresh, witnessed the
finding of the hare, were visible at the finish.

Sometimes the meet is at Patcham, near finely-wooded
Sanmer Park ; sometimes at Ovingdean, dear to affectionate
equestrian couples anxious to escape from the public
scrutiny of King’s Road. promenaders; sometimes at the
hamlet of Hangleton, with its ancient church and more
ancient manor house; sometimes at Halmer, Thunder's
Barrow, or Water Hall Brow.” Of course, to those who
follow the harriers as an excuse for getting into the country,
and breathing the atmosphere of the Downs, as much as for
purposes of sport, there is no place equal to the Devil’s
Dyke. Once let the surprising prospect open beneath us,
and we desert-the field forthwith, for to linger behind in the
hunting-field is virtually to put yourself once and for all out
of association with the more eager followers. By easy
stages we reach the crest of the verdurous Downs, whence
at one entranced sweep of the eye we take in, on a level of
six hundred feet immediately beneath, an expanse of pastoral
England, which, for diversified beauty and limit, east, west,
and north, cannot be matched in any part of her Majesty’s
dominions.

In the late summer, when the corn-fields. are white unto
harvest, the very earth seems to smile in plenteous gratitude
for mellow sunshine and ripening fruits. On a day like this,
when we stand on the threshold of winter, and a stony cold-
ness hangs between earth and sky, this magnificent pictorial
map of, it is said half a dozen counties, wears a new and
not unattractive face, albeit it is a sombre aspect that
impresses you with the force of foreboding. Before it you
turn shivering in your saddle, while the keen wind, which
Charles Kingsley lauded if he did not love, but which the

Notes at Brighton. 145

common world denounces, whistles around with icy effect;
though a few minutes since, when you breasted it in the
glow of healthy exercise, you exulted in defying its power.

When, by and by, this incomparable stretch of fertile
plain is hidden far and wide with virgin snow, it requires
something more than the otherwise welcome horn or hound-
cry to entice you from your lofty stand-point.

But at present there is one horseman who is called away
from the scene of action; for this is to be a day of beast,
fish, and bird. So, steady, bonny chestnut, until we reach
the bottom, and then rein shall be drawn no more till home
is reached.

mw % as * we R

The casual visitor to the Brighton Aquarium runs through
it in much the same way as some of our Transatlantic
kindred are said to run through Europe. His aim is to
“do” and not to study it. To get all that is to be got out
of an aquarium, you must be there, now in the morning,
now at noon, now at night, with a heart sealed against
the seductions of music, refreshment-buffets, or company.
Thus you may observe the fishes in their moods of dulness
and of liveliness, in their conditions of hunger and satiety,
in sickness and in health.

The people who pay the Brighton sea-lions a visit, pro-
bably find them in the water, looking, I dare say, pretty
much as usual. Dropping in at a very early hour one
morning I saw the lion—that is the male creature—under,
to me, peculiarly agreeable circumstances. He had not
gone into the water, but lay on the rocky edge of the tank,
very sullen and unhappy, probably not having yet got over
his long journey from California. The seasonable dryness
of the atmosphere had dried his skin, and instead of the

L

146 By Stream and Sea.

shiny tarpaulin coat which the ordinary visitor would see,
he presented a soft jacket of well-furred seal-skin, of a
golden brown tint. The keeper tried to rouse him, but he
lifted up his shapely head and made the place echo with
a cross between a howl and a roar. It was tremendous,
and not at all a cheerful noise. The sight of a dead herring
induced him at length to come to his keeper, but an attempt
to fondle set him snarling and roaring viciously, and in the
process he exhibited a formidable set of teeth. Then he
went back to his rocky ledge, sulking as before.. The
lioness, as we must call her, had from the first been gambol-
ing merrily in the water, and was evidently in the best
of health and spirits. Little, however, is definitely known
of these curious members of the seal family. The captives
sleep in a snug railed-in enclosure, some distance out of the
water, and they huddle together in the straw like a pair
of loving children.

But this is by the way. Weare bent upon another visit
to our older friends. The first tank in the main thorough-
fare of the aquarium is the home of the anemones ; and they
are a splendid variety. Many of them were taken from the
bottom of the Great Eastern by Mr. Henry Lee, who found
about three hundred tons of mussels and other mollusca
clinging to the big ship. Those cream-white specks upon
the interior of the glass are fragments of the anemones’ feet :
it leaves them in crawling across, and each speck will
eventually develop into a full-grown specimen. The ane-
mone sometimes runs counter to the wishes of the aquarium
managers ; they prefer to plant it in the best position for
public admiration, and it has a weakness for shrimp-capture.

The symmetrical bright-hued boar-fish used to be thought
the rarest, as it is certainly the most tropical looking, of
British fishes ; but it has now been proved to be plentiful on

Notes at Brighton. 14Y

the Cornish coast, and is invariably found in the month
of July. It is not easy to acclimatize mackerel; out of
five thousand perhaps only five may be saved. Strange to
‘say—and this is an argument to be remembered by anglers
in anticipation of the time when they will be prosecuted for
cruelty to animals—the hooked fish thrive best. There
is only one of the original mackerel left in the aquarium ;
and this having reached a period of aldermanic fattiness, is
not at all an Adonis amongst its brethren. Yet, once
acclimatised, no fish thrives better than the mackerel,
though we have no right to expect them to live longer than
three or four years.

The happy family of the aquarium seem to be the showy
black bream. They keep socially together ; and when the
patriarch wishes to approach, I have'seen them divide right
and left, after the manner of ballet-girls, when the chief
dancer comes on from the rear. The basins. formed in the
pebbly bottom havé been scooped out by the male breams ;
At each a fish takes up position until his female friend
has been persuaded to deposit her eggs there. . Should
another interfere, the jealous sentinel, forgetting his gravity,
‘promptly attacks it, or the whole troop, if necessary.

The salmon tank generally disappoints the uninitiated, for
there is only one fish that looks its character. It must
not be forgotten that the experiment of keeping the salmon
in a salt-water tank hag not yet been fully worked out. The
oldest fish (about five pounds weight) has reached the
critical period when it will be demonstrated how long a
salmon can live in salt water. Its -juniors, too, are to be
subject to experiments to show what difference is made
in transferring them from salt to fresh water, in imitation of
their natural habits.

Why are there no grayling in this or some other tank ?-

148 By Stream and Sea.

It is a pity our old friend the original porpoise died. He
had a fine sense of humour, and often played the Merry
Andrew. He ate his twenty herrings a day with infinite
relish ; and would come to the keeper at the sound of the
whistle. (Who shall say after this—for the porpoise, though
not a fish, lives under the same conditions—that fish cannot
hear?) After seven months of perpetual motion, he died,
without any apparent cause, deeply lamented by all who
knew him. Another. lived five months, and succumbed to
abscess in the liver. Then a juvenile porpoise was put in
possession of the immense tank, and after driving the
rock whiting out of their wits by his rapid charges into their
tanks, he died at the end of his first week’s tenancy.

The little Muscovite delicacy, the sterlet, is quite at
home in this country. Though these fish travelled 1400
miles before leaving their native land, not one was lost.
Observe the prettily-marked spine of this fish, its line of
silver beads down the side, its lightly-shaded fins, and: its
small white tip-tilted snout.

A gentleman has just sent a seasonable present from one
of his Petworth lakes—a quantity of fat carp, tench, and
eels, and three pike that must average twenty pounds apiece.
These shark-like brutes have as yet refused to feed, but when
they become accustomed to the place it will be very sum-
mary jurisdiction that will be meted out to any roach, dace,
chub, or gudgeon that may be let loose amongst them. The
pike are splendid fish, and after you have watched their
wolf-like eye you need feel no compunction in using a large
spinning flight when next you go out pike-fishing.

The larger bass cannot be induced to eat heartily, and
therefore look meanly amongst the bright-coloured shoal of
smaller specimens. The topers occupying the apartments of
the defunct porpoises are well worth watching; though

Notes at Brighton. 149

some of them are five feet in length, they dart about
graceful as a swallow flying to the eaves, now skimming
the ground, then with a turn of their strong rudder-like tail,
shooting swiftly to the other end of the tank. If you have
a chance, observe how they’ dispose of the herrings with
which they are fed; you may then believe anything of the
sanguinary shark, to which they are allied by family ties,

The ever-popular octopus may be seen to excellent advan-
tage in the table tank. A comrade was put there, but the.
bulley brother drove it out. Mr. H. Lee, in his interesting
work on “The Devil Fish of Fiction and of Fact,” gives a
very vivid description of the peculiar amiabilities of
these bandits, and all one’s observations lead one to the
conclusion that at close quarters it would be wise to refuse
their friendship on any terms.

* ¥ %* * * He

From fishes we pass to birds. About a couple of miles
out of Brighton, on the Dyke road, may be noticed, on the
right hand, a long, solid, newly-erected building, lighted by
sky-lights only. It might from its appearance have been a
drill-hall, a windowless schoolroom, or a mysterious place of
worship ; it is, in reality, the private museum of a gentleman
of independent means, who, from his Harrow days to the
present time, has spent his time in the shooting and preserv-
ing of birds. Curiosity was naturally excited in Brighton
by the gradual progress of the strange-looking building, and
.. there was quite a rush for the admission cards which were,
in process of time, by favour granted at certain, hours of
certain days to inspect the wonders it contained.

To say that this is an exhibition of stuffed birds is not
enough, for it is the largest and best set up collection of
British specimens that has ever beenmade. Mr. Booth, who

150 By Stream and Sea,.

has thus devoted his energies to scientific pastime, has here
accumulated more than three thousand, many of them very
rare birds; and as there are two hundred and ninety
distinct species represented, but few individuals remain to
complete the ornithology of the British Islands.

How a sight like this sets a sportsman, whose opportu-
nities are not equal to his zeal, longing to scour the coasts
of East Anglia, to make fowling raids upon: the wild
islands of Western Scotland, to punt warily with heavy
duck-gun about the broads of Norfolk and Suffolk, to range
the health-giving downs of Sussex, to plod through the
desolate and damp fen country. By these toilsome delights
alone this magnificent display of birds has been gathered
together. Norfolk, it is no secret, is the ornithologist’s
happiest hunting-ground. Where else would you be likely
to find this spoon-bill, Paget’s pochard, Bewick’s swan, ruff,
shore-lark, Temminck’s stint, and, over and above even
these vara aves, this fine specimen of the stork? None
familiar with sport on those dreary broads will be ignorant
of what these birds mean to the fortunate fowler; they
mean long nights, cramped and frozen, lying in wait amongst
the forests of reeds which whistle and moan dismally in
the winter wind, and many a return to quarters unsuccessful
and dispirited.

Next to Norfolk, Scotland has furnished the most and the
best birds. There are goat-sucker, gold crest, shield duck,
pintail, grey crow, buzzard, greylag goose, shag, black
guillemot, greenshank, scaup, and many others from the
islands off the coast of Ross-shire; others from the moors
and forests of Sutherland, Perthshire, and Haddington.
Rock and sea birds are brought down from the Bass Rock
and Fern Islands ; Sussex has furnished smaller but no less
interesting varieties.

Notes at Brighton. 151

Having got your birds, the next proceeding is to set them
up, so that no outrage, as is so common even in public
museums, be done to science. What can be more ridiculous
than to place your tree-birds on the ground floor, and your
ground-birds at the top of the collection? No such error is
here committed. The collector has called in the carpenter,
scene-painter, botanist, and geologist, to aid him in showing,
so far as might be, the /aditat of each species. Each case
is therefore a landscape picture in miniature.

Take an example. Grass, actually brought from the spot,
is seemingly growing from between the stones and hillocks,
over which a bramble bush, wonderfully true to nature, is
spreading its prickly branches. From one of the sprays an
anxious little titlark is dropping a green caterpillar into a
young cuckoo’s gaping mouth, while in the background the
titlark’s mate, looking pertly on from a higher perch, ap-
pears only half-consenting to the transaction. There are
insects on the bramble leaves, plants amongst the under-
growth, and all are strictly after nature. This studious care
is apparent in all the cases, It is difficult to realize that
those are not real jays in a real poplar; that the slimy
wood-work with its rusty ring, the marine vegetation and
refuse shells which make a background for the phalarope are
not the actual corner of the Shoreham oyster pond, of
which it is a fac-simile. Sometimes the effect is dramatic, as
with the carrion crow, black as night, upon a snow-white
bank, waiting for the death of the wounded teal, which is
crawling into a hole, with leg draggling and wing out-
stretched. Sometimes it is comic as with the four barn
owls, sitting in a model—copied stone for stone and timber
for timber—of Chiltington Church belfry.

But apart from the strikingly natural attitudes of the birds,
and the photographic spring, summer, autumn, and winter

152 By Stream and Sea.

scenes of which they are the chief objects, we have many
an illustration of how the ways of Providence are fitted to
birds as well as to men. ‘The mature sheldrake appears
in his -beautiful markings of black, white, chestnut, and
carmine; but he can take care of himself. Not so the
brood ; and there you may espy the little creatures amongst
the sand and brown seaweed, to which they are so assimi-
lated in colour that you would never discover them if they
lay close. The difference of plumage at different seasons
of the year, and at progressive stages of the bird’s growth,
are always, where possible, illustrated. Most remarkable
of all in this respect is the ptarmigan, represented (as shot
in Perthshire), in three aspects. In summer we have them
amongst the boulders of the moor; the cock, a handsome
black and white fellow, with showy scarlet top-knot like
comb, the hen so like a grouse that none but a naturalist
could distinguish the one from the other. It needs, how-
ever, no special knowledge to observe how appropriate
these colours are to the grey stone lichens and stunted
heather amongst which they are now feeding. Next we
have the ptarmigan family in autumn, they have changed,
like surrounding nature, to a sober grey. The gay cavalier
that erstwhile lorded it so bravely has become a Quaker,
conscious of his altered condition. Lastly, come the winter
birds, with cocks and hens alike white as the snow on
which they stand.

This is the kind of principle upon which the entire
collection (which is not yet, however, complete) has been
set up, and sufficient has been indicated to show that while
it is a unique collection of British birds, it is also a
charming picture gallery,.and an instructive school of
natural history. In other words, it is a work of genius.

CHAPTER XI.

WINTER AT HAZELBARN.*

HERE are certain long-standing town friends of mine
who affect or really feel concern at what they term
my exile at Hazelbarn. They can understand that
life in quiet country quarters is tolerable enough in the
bright summer time, and they say so. Two poets amongst
them talk of the birds, flowers, dews, and showers; one
notorious lotus-eater babbles of a wide-spreading elm, under
which he has sipped cooling drinks and smoked many pipes
of peace ; others, who are gourmands, are not dead to the
charms of duck and green peas, of strawberries newly
gathered, and cream fresh skimmed. It is the winter that
chills the marrow of their comprehension.

Perhaps it is because I am not an out-and-out country
gentleman, a veritable squire, who must perforce learn that
property has its duties, etc., etc., that I am thus pitied.
There is something in that I fancy.

The man who, like Smythe Smythe, Esq., on the hill

* A statement by ees Fenwick, Esq., Bias of Gray’s Inn
Square.

154 By Stream and Sea.

yonder, where the castellated mansion looks with a hundred
eyes upon the open south, keeps his one, two, three stables
of horses, and his servants galore, has, at any rate, drimd
Jacie, a better chance of killing time than the elderly exile
who [possesses only a cob, and a small one at that, and a
man-of-all-work who is everything by turns but nothing
strong. The squire, too, has been born and bred in the
country; is, so to speak, acclimatised. The tenant of
Hazelbarn stepped out of the London streets pretty late in
life, with ten thousand pleasant Bohemian memories to
haunt and tempt him.

Will you listen to the manner in which winter passes at
Hazelbarn? I promise to make no reference to the Snow
King, or Rude Boreas; on my word there shall be no
quotation from Thomson’s Seasovs, nor from Cowper's
Winter Watk at Noon, It is no question of forefinger @ /a
Johnson ; nothing more than an effort to answer once for
all the everlasting “‘ How do you manage to live through the
winter?”

First, then—the curate helps me to survive the trials of
the long months of short days ; so does his wife. Between
ourselves, I am fonder of the wife than of the husband, and
they are both aware of that interesting fact. The curate
fishes a little; his wife shoots—in moderation when there
is a fear of parishioners intruding, and in earnest when the
coast is clear. ;

“A nice little body,” I find to be the general verdict
upon Mrs. Green Vernon, and it would not be a bad de-
scription from a person who knew her as a merely nodding
acquaintance.

To her intimate friends she has a nice (but not a little)
mind as well, and I should certainly like to see the man
who, fairly knowing our curate’s wife, would not adore her.

Winter at Hazelbarn. 155

This laudation is not so much out of bounds as may be
supposed, for as the Green Vernons live not more than one
plough field, a rape patch, and half a paddock from Hazel-
barn, we pass a good deal of our time in company. The
worthy pair always spend their summer by the sea-side ;
therefore to me they are part—a very essential and distinct
part—of winter.

The little woman receives the fortnightly boxes of books
from Smith’s, opens them, and reads their contents for the
husband’s benefit, and mine. There is at the parsonage a
fine billiard-table over the harness-room, and the curate and
the exile, while the north-easter performs a series of rattling
cannons with hail-stones on the window-panes without, work
the red with considerable frankness on the green cloth
within. Mrs. Green Vernon, tuning her voice to the click
of the balls, and making astonishingly clever use of the
pauses, thus reveals to us the literature of the day, partly
by analysis shrewdly made, partly by extracts beautifully
read. :

Brave little woman! I have seen that curate’s wife, on
a December day, sitting on the stump of a fallen tree from
which we had brushed the snow, and reading the leaders
of the previous day’s papers while her husband and the
exile, by the river’s brink, looked ruefully at the floats which
would not go down.

And it is really astonishing how deeply one may, at a
retreat like Hazelbarn, become absorbed in matters, espe-
cially matters literary, which in the old days would pass by
as the things which you respect not. Your mental respira-
tion, as it were, is more greedy. But, more I think than
by the books, the happiness of Hazelbarn and its inmates
is fed by the more or less regular arrivals per post of the
periodical literature. Thanks to the universal diffusion of

156 by Stream and Sea,

a taste for amusement and knowledge, we have these new-
comers almost every day in the week, quite apart from the
daily newspapers. The great days, however, are Wednesday
and Thursday, when we receive those mid-weekly peep-
holes into the world and its secret doings which make
everybody so wise ; Saturday, when the pictorial papers and
most of the weeklies arrive ; and Sunday, which is sacred
to that welcome journal which no man living in the country
can do without.

There is a Mede and Persian law as to this newspaper
which no one at Hazelbarn dares disregard. On Sunday
morning when I descend (at halfpast eight in the winter
with great punctuality) into the apartment which the ladies
will call “te study,” that record of sports, pastimes, and
rural pursuits must be in its place on the little long-legged
reading-desk, sewn by certain nimble fingers, and carefully
cut with a gigantic paper-knife kept for the purpose,

This dear friend in type (typical friend, perhaps ?) is a
godsend in the winter, because you have not only the
enormous bulk of the current number to digest and make
notes upon, but all the long articles from back numbers
which have been carefully put by, like the good wife’s
preserves, for winter use. Why, at this moment I have
enough of miscellaneous travels in that publication to last
me till the second week in January ; and there are natural
history and angling papers in addition that will keep me
going till Shrovetide. Even at Hazelbarn one must be
methodical, and my method is to read the eld every
Sunday morning during breakfast, and thence till church-
time ; also before and sometimes after dinner.

In the summer, when one gets out of doors as much as
possible, the advertisements, which are always singularly
interesting, albeit they do sometimes tempt you to break

Winter at Hazelbarn. 157

the Tenth Commandment, are of themselves sufficient to
engross you till the placid call from the grey church-tower
floats leisurely and clearly, with jackdaw accompaniments,
over the fields, and filters musically through the fir planta-
tion outside the kitchen-garden. The actual news which,
like that other staff of life, should never be too stale, will
occupy the rest of the day’s leisure. You may, nevertheless,
judge what an accumulation of wholesome Sunday literature
is piled up by the season when we have thrashed the walnut-
tree, laid bare the flower-beds, and put the winter crops in
order.

Shooting must not be omitted in the list of aids to pre-
servation during winter at Hazelbarn, though we do not
rely upon this as half so indispensable a pursuit as angling,
of which more presently. It does one’s heart good, about
the time when the first frosts pearl-powder the fields and
hedge-rows, to behold the curate’s wife approaching, her good-
humoured face made more florid by the November atmo-
sphere, and her heels crunching upon the gravel as if they

meant business. She has come over to tell me that they
are come.

“They ” are the fieldfares.

We—she, the curate, and I—are fond of a day with them
as soon after their arrival as may be, and Mrs. Green Vernon
always assumes the duty of keeping her eye upon their
movements. Last year, bless her heart! she was as angry
as she well could be with the chattering visitants for appear-
ing so early as the middle of October, and she was angry
because in the preceding year we had entered into a tre-
mendous argument in which she contended that the fieldfare
never arrived in this country till after Guy Fawkes’ Day.
Naturally, when on the 2oth of the next October we came
upon a great flock feeding upon the berries in the hawthorn

158 By Stream and Sea.

grove, where, earlier in the season, the nightingales pitch
their orchestra amongst the May blossoms, we said nothing
about the dispute. But the argument was not renewed.

Fieldfares, in the absence of better game, let me tell you,
are not to be despised by an amateur sportsman; and,
under the same conditions, they are not to be despised as
an article of food. Not that Mrs. G. V. is an amateur.
Very occasionally we, by favour, get a day amongst the
partridges, pheasants, and hares: rabbit shooting is a stand-
ing sport. The river gives us water-fowl by fits and starts,
and the water-courses harbour snipe. She can shoot them
all with a cleanly aim. ,

The curate’s wife, it should in justice to that estimable
lady be stated, shoots with a sweet little gun manufactured
on purpose for her from the design of her father, an old
country gentleman who taught his children—boys and girls
alike—to shoot and ride as soon as they could handle a gun
or sit in a saddle. With charming logic she therefore
throws the responsibility of impropriety, if any there be,
upon her father; always distributes the contents of her
game-bag amongst the poor; never takes anything except
on the wing, and never allows her rambles with gun and
friends to interfere with her domestic and parochial duties.
She is chagrined to find that her position, as the curate’s
wife, entails upon her the necessity of great caution, and, to
some extent, deception.

Sometimes she has to hide her gun under her Ulster coat,
and once a cow boy, attracted by the crack, crack, of her
tiny breechloader, leaped through the hedge and discovered
a strange tableau—parson’s wife on the fringe of the turnips,
leaning upon the barrel of the smoking weapon, parson and
parson’s friend returning triumphant with a brace of defunct
partridges that had been grandly dropped right and left.

Winter at Hazelbarn. 159

But the lady was equal to the occasion. As the boy looked
on with mouth wide agape she gracefully handed the gun to
me, with the observation— :

“There is no necessity for me to hold the gun any more,
is there?”

The curate overcoming the man, Vernon glanced a
reproach at his wife. Assuring herself that the rustic was
beyond hearing, she said, demurely—

‘Well, Charlie, I’ve heard you say there may be occasions
when it is right to do evil that good may come. I don’t say
it is right, dear, but that it may be.”

I wonder whether the lady saw that approving wink passed
from Charlie to me. :

The curate, by the way, doesn’t shoot. His eyesight is
not good, and if the truth must be told he is, as the world
would esteem him, rather a milk-soppy gentleman ; a capital
fellow, of course, and all that sort of thing, but not a person
who would be likely to run King Solomon very close in a
competition of wisdom. Stuffing birds is more in his way
than shooting them. Mrs. G. V. says she would never
have followed the sport of fowling had not the desire been
fostered by a genuine love of natural science. The amiable
couple consequently divide the labour ; she brings down the
game, he sets them up, and the collection of feathered
varieties at the parsonage is as interesting as it is valuable.

’ As an angler, the Rev. Green Vernon is distinguished
more by enthusiasm than by cleverness, but he is a capital
angling companion when you know him so intimately that
you can speak your mind as plainly as circumstances render
necessary. In other words, the reverend fisherman wants
rousing occasionally into an atmosphere of common sense.
His line somehow has a provokingly natural tendency to
foul mine ; the splashing of his bait is enough to scare away

160 By Stream and Sea.

all the fish in the river; if there is a possibility of tipsetting
the bait-can, or treading upon the coils of his or my line, or
snapping the top joint in a tree or bush, he is the man to
take the utmost advantage of the situation. But he fishes
courageously right through the winter, never flinching from
rain, snow, wind, or frost so long as there is a chance of
sport; he is, in a word, one of those peculiarly-endowed
natures that will turn to angling as surely as the needle turns
towards the Pole.

I know he, like myself, reads the MMe/d every Sunday
morning before service, at least that department which
concerns angling, and once he preached a sermon upon the
miraculous draught of fishes. It4vas a marvel of piscatorial
research, with a spiritual “tag” attached for the sake of:
appearances. He had ransacked the British Museum for
information respecting the Sea of Galilee, and after
numerous consultations with me over a pipe, produced to
his puzzled parishioners a list and technical description of
the fishes known or supposed to swim in that historic lake.
These he rolled off his tongue with all their Latin nomen.
clature, and his final conclusion was that the fish which
broke the apostles’ net was of the bream family, though, as
he carefully explained, not precisely the same kind of bream
as that caught in this neighbourhood.

As I am known far and wide hereabouts as a man who
thinks of little else but fish and fishing, the congregation
focussed their gaze with one consent upon me during the
entire sermon, appearing to think that I must have had
something to do with that beautifully-portrayed fishing
picture of eighteen centuries’ imprint.

The winter fishing in our neighbourhood is extremely
good; not that it is better than our summer sport, but,
being pursued under difficulties that well become a man,

, Winter at Hazelbarn. 161

it is more creditable to the sportsmen. In the summer we
have bream, and all the coarse fish, with available trout in
a nobleman’s park five miles across country. In the winter,
we have pike, plentiful and large, in the river, and perch to
match ; the same fish, under other conditions, are to be had
in one or two ponds which the owners of the estates in
which they are situated, kindly place at our free disposal.
In times of hard frost, the ponds are literally sealed, but
the river is seldom frozen, and never in every portion,
though it has none of your runaway currents that ‘hurry
through the land with a flash, and a roar, and a sweep, and
a tumble, until sobered by the stealing fingers of the salt
tide into which they are soon absorbed.

Hazelbarn being eight miles from the nearest railway-
station, and the river a mile from Hazelbarn, we have a
monopoly of the angling. You may mark the course of
the river by the sombre line of pollard willows that have
stood on picket-duty from time immemorial. Here we have
holes of fourteen feet deep close to the bank, and a general
depth that would everywhere take in a seven-foot man to
the neck. The stream is always steady, and there are
curves in the banks, and backwaters formed, it might be
thought, expressly to invite the prowling pike and perch to
lie in wait for unconsidered trifles passing innocently by.

Last winter, the curate took an eighteen-pounder, and
I two twelve-pounders, or thereabouts, on the same day.
Generally, however, we are amply satisfied with a brace
and a half a-piece of fish that shall not be under five pounds
each. Perch-fishing depends upon the suitability of the
weather for bait capture. We rarely take them spinning or
trolling, although every enticing phantom, spoon, and
shadow eel that ingenuity has devised has been tried.
Only at rare intervals will they look at the live minnow,

M

162 By Stream and Sea.

which is commonly supposed to be an absolutely fatal lure.
What our Hazelbarn perch prefer in the winter is a lively
gudgeon, and first of all a stone gudgeon. Now, gudgeon
require a considerable amount of trouble, if you have to get
them by yourself with a cast net, and hence it frequently
happens that when the curate’s wife comes down, as she
will be certain to do in all weathers, about one o’clock, with
something appetising in her reticule, and something to tell
us of London news, and recent books, she finds us fretting
and fuming at our ill success with the net. When either of
us captures a two-pound perch—and that is no novelty in
this part of the world—the two families sup together, taking
tums at the parsonage and Hazelbarn.

And a perch night is always a musical night. We have
the perch boiled in his jacket, scales and all; the music is
both instrumental and vocal. Parsley and butter is in-
variably served up for sauce with the fish; Mrs. Green
Vernon or our grown-up daughters play the accompaniments
in the warm, lamp-lighted sitting-room. The perch thus
eaten is a delicious morsel ; and somehow we have all got
to associate that brightly-vestured fish with “ Ring out, Wild
Bells,” “Cleansing Fires,” “Come into the Garden, Maud,”
“The Heart Bow’d Down,” and so on.

Discussions of the most furious kind took place between
the curate and myself upon the vital question of spinning
versus trolling. The curate being a stout, and therefore
somewhat of a lazy man, is partial to live baiting with
gorge tackle; I stand by spinning or trolling, chiefly the
latter, because it is found to be the most killing, as it is the
easiest plan for our particular river. You must never lay
down general rules for angling. We have fought this battle
for four winters now, and on the threshold of a fifth we are
fighting it still. Last Christmas Day, of all others, we made

Winter at Hazelbarn. 163

ourselves a nuisance to the ladies by wrangling about flights,
and dead gorges, swivels and traces, “‘across the walnuts and
the wine,” and never were friends more in danger of falling-
out than were we on that day of peace and goodwill. The
curate brought down an old college chum one January for a
day’s fishing; he knew as much about the gentle craft as
any living creature, and he began to tell us, in the bosom of
our respective families too, that we were not worthy of the
name of sportsmen, if we essayed any method but spinning,
or snap-fishing with live bait. Poor Vernon’s spirit was
disquieted within him.

Next day we put our theories to the test. Our severe
mentor certainly spun the water like an artist, yet caught
nothing but an inexperienced jack of two pounds. The
curate took three fish, of about fifteen pounds total, with his
everlasting double hook threaded under the skin of a lively
roach. Sticking perseveringly to my dead gorge, working it
quietly first close under the bank, and then by gradations
across the river, I killed seven fish that weighed thirty-five
pounds odd. The mentor did not like it; but the argument
was over thenceforth.

Ha! there is the postman’s horn. The light of his dog-
cart lamp flashes like a will-o’-the-wisp, as he descends
the hill. He will call first at the village, and then come on
to me by way of the parsonage. Unfortunately, I must bring
my gossip to an abrupt termination, conscious that having
dallied with my subject, from sheer love of it, I have not
half described how we pass the winter at Hazelbarn. There
is no help for it; this manuscript must be delivered to the
postman at the garden gate, in half an hour's time.

Else I would have taken you up into the granary, and
shown you how much occupation one finds overhauling and
sorting the seeds, and projecting the brave bloom they shall

164 By Stream and Sea.

make next spring and summer, or tending with jealous
watchfulness the store fruit which lends such a powerful but
mellow fragrance to the apple room. We might have
smoked a cigar in the greenhouse, as I do every day, mark-
ing the daily condition of the slips and cuttings. There
are the celery beds, too, and the kitchen garden generally,
which must be looked after summer and winter alike. We
might even have gone out with the gun, and brought down
a rare bird, though that expedition would have answered
better in the later winter. My neighbour’s farm, out-houses,
deeply-littered yard, folds and pig-styes included, I should
have entered in my catalogue of aids to winter life at
Hazelbarn, and there is certain literary work in the lower
drawer of this table that will justify and repay the patient
toil of many a winter evening yet to come. Pruning and
planting, with respect to the trees and shrubs, must also pass
with a mention. Here, again, one is conscious of the
penalty—for of course there are some drawbacks—of the
leisurely gossiping habits which Hazelbarn promotes.

Do I then, after all, conclude with a regret, and conse-
quent justification of that concern which my long-standing
town friends affect or feel? Most assuredly not. Let me
protest—but, there is the horn again with a much nearer
blast ; yet hurrah for winter at Hazelbarn !

“LOLS

CHAPTER XII.

MEMORIES OF THE NEVA.

NE of the new sensations a stranger visiting St.
Petersburg for the first time experiences, is a diffi-
culty in reckoning time. In chronology, if in

nothing else, Western Europe is a fortnight ahead of the

great Russian Empire. It thus falls to my lot for the first
time to celebrate two New Year’s Days within the space
ofa month, It is New Year’s Day in St. Petersburg, and.
the people are blithe and merry, as is their custom on the
occasion. . Thirteen-days ago—although in these strange
surroundings it seems as many years—I “saw in” the New

Year amongst my own English kith and kin, and now I

have a second time watched the departure of one-year and

the advent of another, not under mistletoe and holly, but in
asledge. We literally rang out the Old and rang in the

New, but it was with the musical tinkle of ‘Sleslge bells as we

bounded over the snow.

Three individuals make a very comfortable party for.
sleighing, that is to say, comfortable, if the three are of the.

same sex, and there is no necessity to remember that a

166 By Stream and Sea.

third person is frequently an undesirable institution ; and
our New Years Eve party was of the right composition.
We stepped into the sledge just as the Russian Old Year
had entered into its last hour, and was approaching its disso-
lution amidst a moaning and sobbing of bells from many a
dome, the deep musical boom of St. Isaac’s rising grandly
above them all, as if to bid them take heart of grace for the
good time coming. ;

All the gay city was astir. During the afternoon I had
spent some time in that wonderful conglomerate of curiosity
shops, the Grand Bazaar, and had been amused by the
Russian juveniles, waddling about in their furs. The scene
brought to mind other similar wanderings of a recent date
through our smaller home bazaars, where English children
laughed and chattered, clapped their hands at the toys,
and looked wonderingly at the Christmas trees. That is
precisely what the Russian children were doing yesterday,
with the difference, however, that though children are pretty
much of a pattern all the world over, the Muscovite young-
sters, as I saw them making the round of the huge mart
with their parents and guardians, seemed preternaturally
grave and silent.

Towards evening, the weather, which had been strangely
“oreen” for the time and place, became colder.. Light
snow flakes drifted crosswise in the air, and there was frost
in the breeze. Unfortunately the streets were not in the
best of order for sleighing, nor would they be until there
were several inches more of snow. With frost, even when
it amounts to the three or four degrees which we then had,
a little snow certainly goes a long way, but if it is not soon
replenished it wears out, so to speak, with constant traffic,
and lays bare the palpable ruts and hollows of this city on a
swamp. However, we were bound across the Neva, and had

Memories of the Neva. 167

been assured that in the suburbs the snow was thicker and
better packed than we could reasonably expect it to be in
the busy thoroughfares of the town.

Sleighing with one horse is very well in its way, but if
you would take the amusement in its major form you must
have, at the lowest computation, three steeds, and all the
better if you can make the number four or six. In our case we
contented ourselves with a ¢rozka. The horses were a capital
match as to colour and size, black as ravens, possessed
of long flowing tails and manes, arched necks, and fiery
nostrils, and each was of that long, slender, wiry build to be
seen nowhere in such perfection as in Russia. The middle
horse stood in the broad, bulging shafts, carrying the arched
bar and bells over his head; the two outer animals ran almost
loose, one slight trace alone attaching them to the sledge.

Muffled up considerably above the chin, trussed and
stuffed and tucked in beneath the furs and rugs, away we
went. The Nevski Perspective was full of sleighs; it had
‘been full of sleighs all the day. The excitement was exhil-
arating indeed, as the low-lying vehicles shot here and there
with the lights streaming upon them, the lively choruses
of the sleigh bells doing their best to make common cause
with their louder-tongued fraternity of the church belfries.
It would seem that services were being held in many places
of worship, for as we darted by we could catch sight of
illuminated interiors and masses of empty sleighs around
the entrances. In the Nevski—three miles long though it
is—the sleighs were countless. Every specimen of the
delightful little vehicle was out. Tearing and raging,
thoroughbred steeds snorted in your ear, and passed on
like a flash of thought, escaping collisions only by a
hair’s-breadth, but never harming or coming to harm. Who
the occupants were the rapidity of the pace concealed,

\

168 By Stream and Sea.

almost as much as the costly sables, but as the elegantly-
painted equipages whisked abreast of us silver laughter
sounded like sweet music. Next came the humble sleigh
with a family party packed in after the manner of the
suburban Cockney on Sunday afternoons and _ holidays.
Then the dapper turn-out of the “swell, or the solid high-
set family sledge of some “ vitch” or “ off.”

We had not proceeded a mile down this thoroughfare of
thoroughfares before we discovered that we had another
lesson to unlearn. Is it not a proverb that the Russian
drosky, or sledge-driver, is the most reckless of Jehus, and
that neither life nor limb is safe in hishands? To be sure,
as the Isvostchik strides his queer perch, takes a rein in each
outstretched hand, bends forward his body, and shouts and
gesticulates, he looks uncommonly dangerous ; to be sure,
also, when at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour you
glide before, athwart, behind, and between other sledges
going at a rate equal to your own, it looks a most dangerous
business. Notice, however, that all comes right; that the
beautiful horses which approaching from behind touch you on
the shoulder, or breathe into your ear, never bite, never run
you down, never wince, never falter; that the driver pulls
up short and sharp and sure at a yard’s distance ; and that,
above everything, the horses, notwithstanding their appear-
ance of fire and rage, are perfectly trained and docile, and
the drivers as careful as any passenger with robust nerves
would wish them to be.

At last we reach the banks of the famous Neva. We
have passed by acres of palaces, through long, straight,
well-lighted streets, and now debouch from the rear of the
Czar’s winter residence upon the so-called quay. ‘There is
a roadway slanting across the icebound river. Its course is
marked out by fir trees planted at frequent intervals, and:

Memories of the Neva. . 169

lighted by lamps filled with oil, In the brief and severe
frost which set in early in the winter the Neva froze, within a
few days, to a thickness of three feet, but not till recently
has the ice been thoroughly safe. Some few weeks ago
a party of thirteen sleighers. were drowned not far from the
spot upon which our three highly-mettled steeds dash with
a bound of pleasure from the shore. It is an uncanny
thought that beneath you the deep tide is rolling rapidly
seawards, and that you are far beyond the reach of help
should an accident happen. Thick as the ice is, there is,
moreover, an ugly cracking sound under the dozen hoofs.
The Neva at this point is no wider than the Thames at
Westminster Bridge; but our roadway taking an oblique
direction gives us a full half-mile of ‘glorious, gliding, noise-
less, express speed. The long rows of lamps in the
distance, the palaces lighted within by myriads of wax-
candles, the snowy prospect, the blue shadowy ice of the
river where the wind has swept it bare, mingle together in a
strangely-enchanting picture.

Soon we are amongst the islands formed by the two
Nevas.and the branch canals. An icy wind blows, and but
for the sleigh-bells a weird silence prevails around. There
are festivities in progress in the houses by which we flitin
the starlight, but the fingers of the great artist Frost have
been weaving delicately-designed curtains over the window-
panes, and the candles within only serve to reveal to the
best advantage the fantastic tracery. In the summer, when
there is no night to ‘speak of, these island retreats are the.
popular resort of all classes; but now the gardens are
shrouded in the. white wrappings of a long recess.

Returning to the Neva we face the wind; it comes down:
the river, and brings volleys of hard-frozen sleet, aimed;
point-blank at such slight portions of the face as we expose.,

170 By Stream and Sea.

Across the Neva again we speed at over twelve miles an
hour, the middle horse trotting magnificently, and his com-
panions swinging forward at a proud, stately gallop. It is
three o’clock on New Year’s morning before we once more
enter the Nevski, but the whole city seems as much awake
as ever. Masquers are returning from their revels, family
parties are hurrying home, and so, glowing with health, and
our cheeks tingling again after the prolonged salute of the
frosty night wind, we bid each other the compliments of the
season, and congratulate ourselves that at last we are about
to experience what an honest Russian winter really means.

* * * * * *

There was a good deal that was interesting for an English-
man to see in St. Petersburg yesterday, and much to
remember with pleasure but for the vile slush which every-
where prevailed. It is meet that this latter fact should be
placed in a prominent position, because thereby hangs an
observation. ‘Yesterday, the 6th of January, according to
the Old Style, was the day when, with solemn pomp, the
waters of the Neva are blessed by the Church in presence
of the Imperial Family and the Ministers. It is an annual
occurrence, and one which the poorer orders of the city
regard with veneration and awe. Attached to the ceremony
is the tradition that if winter have not set in before it must
make itself felt on this particular day. An elderly Russian
gentleman assured me that he had never known hard frost
and snow to fail on the 6th, although the morning might
have been one of unnatural mildness.

Three days ago it thawed incessantly, and a fine rain
made the atmosphere as moist and miserable as the ground
under foot. The sledges bespattered you, and crossing the
street invariably plunged you ankle-deep in melted snow

Memories of the Neva. 171

strongly seasoned with mud. Next morning there was no
change, and when it was found that night fell and the mid-
night of the Red-letter day had arrived without a sign of frost,
the superstitious surprise was general. During the evening
a wretched, half-hearted kind of snow fell, but it seemed
ashamed of the dirty thoroughfares upon which it alighted,
and, soon changing to sleet, subsided into the normal
rain.

_ The ceremony of blessing the waters was to have taken
place at eleven o’clock in the morning, but, as the dense
crowds assembled to witness it found to their discomfort,
there was a delay of nearly two hours. To only a few was
the cause of the stoppage known. The first stage in the
blessing of the waters is a service in the chapel of the
Winter Palace, attended by the members of the Imperial
Family. When this was concluded, and before the second
part was begun, the Emperor received intelligence that
Marshal Berg, the ex-Governor of Poland, whom he held
in high esteem, was dying. The Czar at once ordered his
carriage and hurried to the General’s house, where he was
informed that the gallant old soldier had breathed his
last.

Opportunities were afforded me of viewing the ceremony
from one of the windows of the palace, a privilege I
remembered with longing when, preferring to see what a
Russian crowd was like, I was buffeted and squeezed, and
nearly poisoned with rancid sheepskins and garlic perfumes.
The discomfort, after all, was scarcely compensated for by
the experience purchased. A crowd is a crowd all the
world over. The Russian rough, however, is a superior
being to his English brother, for the simple reason that the
Russian, like the German, police stand no nonsense with
him. If he is offensive, or supposed to be so, they knock

17 By Stream and Sea.

him down, and then remonstrate with him, if indeed they
think it worth while to supplement a blow with a word.

And what a tremendous crowd it was that gathered on the
banks of the Neva to see the waters blessed! The river front
of the Winter Palace is separated from the pavement of the
embankment by a broad road, along which, except upon
the spaces which the police and soldiers kept clear, human
beings were closely packed. The ice of the river for half
a mile square was kept clear of people also, but on the free
portions, and on the bridges, and buildings around the
Exchange, there was nothing but black swarms of human.
heads to be seen. At a moderate computation, from the
spot where I was wedged in, the eye could roam over two
hundred thousand persons, without approaching in either
direction the limits of the crowd. The police and soldiers,
including a number of mounted men who exercise the
functions of both, were considerably fewer than would have
been seen in the streets of London on any great public
occasion. The crowd was wonderfully well-behaved, and
gave one the impression of being really impressed with the
business in which it was taking part.

On the Neva’s bank, opposite the central entrance of the
palace, an imposing, if somewhat gaudy, octagonal domed
structure had been erected. This kiosk-like shelter had
cherubs on its panels, sacred pictures on its upper part, and
a cross to surmount the whole; while the exterior of the
dome was painted blue, and sprinkled with golden stars,
after the manner of Russian churches. The faces of the
vast multitude seemed turned by involuntary consent
towards this centre, and their expression was that of marked
thoughtfulness. At times, when patience and the rain had
been in operation for a couple of hours, the crowd would
surge, and perhaps break bounds, and then the officers

we

Memories of the Neva. L738

would howl and yell themselves red. Yet nowhere was
there horse-play, or unseemly noise ; nor could I conceive
a crowd, composed, too, let it be understood, largely of
women, in which there was so little talking. There was a
considerable admixture of the very poorest ‘people, of both
sexes, who wore the heavy, unsavoury sheepskin tied round
the waist with a strap, and did not generally lead you to
suspect that their expenditure in soap was excessive. Here
and there a private soldier, in some strange uniform, mixed
with the spectators ; but, putting these out of the question,
the main features of the crowd were those with which we
are all familiar at home.

Shortly before one o’clock a sudden hush passed over the
masses of people, and in a moment every hat was removed.
It was something to command one’s instantaneous respect
to see this reverent act, which would have been performed
with equal alacrity if, instead of a drenching rain, a dangerous
frost had prevailed. Devoutness begets devoutness. Per-
haps I am a bad Protestant to say it, but nothing within my
observation has ever borne with it the conviction of actual
devotion so much as the services of the Russo-Greek
Church, and perhaps to this we may attribute the marvellous
attention the ignorant Russ pays to religious observances.
Just as your sledge-driver in passing a chapel, shrine, or
picture, will drop his reins und cross himself, these rough-
looking spectators bared their heads, and went through the
thumb and forefinger signs and tokens enjoined by their
faith.

The quick eyes of the crowd had caught a glimpse of the
procession emerging from the palace door. A priest, wear-
ing his white hair and his beard Jong and curled, walked
first with a burning lamp. A second held a crucifix aloft.
Two banners appeared next. ‘The priests slowly descended

174 By Stream and Sea.

the two or three steps upon the sanded road, and walked
across to the kiosk, raised some eight or ten feet from the
ground. A gorgeous pageant was thus heralded by the
burning lamp, cross, and initiatory banners. Long lines of
priests walking two abreast ; columns of the highest officers
in the Russian army, blazing with uniform and accoutre-
ment; a forest of banners, whose poles were terminated
with cross-shaped gilded spearheads; more priests of the
higher rank in the rich white and gold, and with the
streaming hair, tall stature, and dignified appearance cha-
racteristic of the Greek priesthood; choristers in maroon
robes—these were the main features of the splendid proces-
sion moving slowly across the road and ascending the
canopied structure, where candles were burning in readiness
for the service.

But there was something more brilliant still to come.
The grand-looking and grandly-attired Metropolitan and his
associates had passed on, preceded and followed by high
officers of State; the choristers had filled the air with
ravishing vocal music. All this had appeared like a dream
of the middle ages. And now came the Czar, and the
Prince of Wales in his English general’s uniform; the
Czarewitch and the Duke of Edinburgh; Prince Arthur
and all the Grand Dukes and Grand Dukes’ sons with their
equerries. The priests wore their head-dresses ; every other
person in this remarkable assembly remained bareheaded in
the raw rainy weather.

The Czar of Russia, the heir to the English throne, and
all intermediate persons, to the meanest peasant that sweated
under his dirty sheepskin, paid the ceremony the honour of
at least outward respect. From a hole in the ice, battered
in for the purpose, the water of the Neva, in a golden bowl,
was brought to the venerable Metropolitan, by whom it was

Memories of the Neva. 175

blessed, It was handed to the Emperor, and he, having
sipped thereof, returned it to the priest filled with half
imperials—one of the two golden coins in the . Russian
currency. Then, with a bunch of evergreen—hyssop, it was
said, but myrtle apparently—the bystanders on the platform
were sprinkled, chanting meanwhile proceeding from the
choir. At this time the priests, the Imperial and Royal
personages, and the candles, crucifix, and other glittering
objects used in the ceremony, were hemmed in by a ring
of banners planted on the ground, reminding one most
forcibly of some of the pictures of Arthurian times, a fancy
all the more natural inasmuch as some of the banners had
been reduced, by battle or age, to dingy rags.

The waters blessed, the procession, always‘glittering and
stately, returned slowly to the palace, while the fort over
the water thundered a salute of 10 guns. In past times
the people used to plunge into the river, and mothers
craved no higher boon than to immerse their little ones
in the icy flood. So many persons were drowned or frozen
that the practice was discontinued, and now the devotees
only pressed anxiously forward to carry away bottles full of
the sacred fluid from this their Jordan, and carefully preserve
it in their households. They believe the blessed waters of
the Neva will stave off calamity and cure disease.

* * * * *

Thanks chiefly to the eccentric and effective method
pursued by Peter the Great in his desire to give his country
rank in the maritime world, every Russian schoolboy, though
ignorant of other things, is certain to know that he must be
proud of the Russian navy. At an early age the lad is
taken to the cottage down by the banks of the Neva, and
informed that long, long ago the great Czar lived there, in

176 By Stream and Sea.

his island workshop. He is taught to bow to and cross him-
self in presence of the miraculous image of the Saviour,
which was said to have accompanied the Emperor in his’
battles. He is bidden to notice and admire the sturdy little
boat which Peter built, the tattered sails black with age, and
the stool upon which he would sit at his cottage door, look-
ing upon the broad Neva as it hurried out to Cronstadt.

The Naval Museum contains innumerable relics of equal
interest and of much more educational importance. The-
history of naval architecture finds a practical embodiment
there in the models and designs so carefully arranged.and
docketed. The golden spire outside is surmounted by a
ship under full sail, and that is an indication of what the
museum contains. Nothing is wanting, from keel to truck,

to illustrate the science and history of shipbuilding. There
is a complete model of the Russian iron-clad fleet. In a
hall beyond that which displays the models, etc., there is an

apartment devoted to objects of curiosity, including dummy
sailors as they appeared in Peter the Great’s period ; por-
traits, sea views, and carvings, and specimens collected by
Russian ships from every sea; while ships of small burden
are built at the dockyard of the Admiralty, the frigates are
constructed on slips lower down the river.

Ps * * * * *

A pleasant memory is that of a skating festival given by
one of the Neva yacht-clubs, in their grounds. I can
scarcely trust myself to describe the fairy spectacle those
gardens presented. Entering the outer gates, and passing
through the ante-rooms where furs were left and skates
adjusted, you suddenly found yourself before thousands of
dazzling lights. When the first bewilderment had gone,
and things began to shape themselves clearly, the full beauty

Memories of the Neva. 177

and novelty of the féte grew. It was a large lake, dotted
with small artificial islands, connected by rustic bridges, and
covered with trees. Chinese lanterns and variegated glass
lamps were suspended from the branches, and in caverns
and recesses, most artistically arranged, gigantic shells, as
they seemed to be from a distance, were illuminated from
behind by coloured fires, each device formed from solid
blocks of ice. These were placed so as to terminate a
vista.

The skater, skimming across a space in shadow, suddenly
found himself with a powerful limelight streaming upon him,
and far in his wake; or conspicuous in the midst of a blue,
red, or green halo: These soft, ever-varying illuminations
gave a charming colour and effectiveness. Two or three
hundred ladies and gentlemen were on the ice; all “select”
citizens, and the majority of the skaters, especially lady
skaters, I should say, were American and English; a good
honest Glasga’ dialect I undoubtedly heard in one’of the
fairy grottoes. A Welsh family was there to my knowledge,
for I had the pleasure of using the skates of one of the’
younger members; French dialogue and Russian compli-
ments mingled everywhere.

A gorgeously-decorated arbour, half hidden amongst
trees, was occupied by a band, which played the best music
in the best way. It was a sight to be gazed upon, and an
exercise to be taken part in for hours without fatigue.
Graceful as swans the young girls, arm in arm, or hand in
hand, in twos, threes, or fours, flitted through the streams of
light to the strains of Verdi; or, with partners of the other
sex, whirled and wheeled to the music of Strauss. All was
motion, and the poetry of motion. A slight thaw had set
in that morning, but the ice’ was in perfect order, swept as
it was perpetually by an army of liveried attendants.

N

178 By Stream and Sea.

A contrast truly to the modern rink, by daylight, and in
the dog-days ! _

A military spectacle in St. Petersburg means a peremp:
tory stoppage of the main thoroughfares, any thoroughfares
in truth required for the passage of the soldiers. At ten
o’clock the Nevski and its principal feeders were under
martial law. The gendarmes, who performed the duties of
mounted police, and who were as military as any of the
soldiers, never permitted you to argue or explain. Before a
preliminary word could be uttered they would make a
vicious pounce at your horse’s head, and send him another
way with choice Muscovite oaths. Different regiments were
drawn up in different squares and streets, waiting for the
order to march towards the Winter Palace. The main
body of the troops mustered in the Isaac Plaz, and in the
public gardens running along the entire length of the Ad-
miralty and offering an unbroken avenue from the Boulevard
to the Palace Yard. This used to be bare rough ground,
and it is still known by the name of St. Isaac’s plain,
although some really fine gardens have been already laid
out and partially planted.

The space before the palace presented a most striking
scene when, after passing by soldiers for a whole hour, I
arrived before the palace to find still nothing but soldiers as
far as the eye could reach, fifty thousand men and more
being that day brought from the barracks and country
stations to furnish a military spectacle. There was a leaden
wintry sky, and the roofs of the houses across the Neva
were white with newly-fallen snow. Sledges you could see
moving like insects over the ice. Spires and domes of
oriental-looking churches rose above the monotonous lines

Memories of the Neva. 179

of palaces. Through the intervals of troops the Exchange
and its pillars and steps might be seen in bold outline, and
uglier always, the greater the distance between you and
them, the monstrous columns, decorated with the prows of
quaint ships, stood over the river.

In the Square itself our prospect was of masses of
soldiery, out of the centre of whom rose, eighty-four feet in
the air, the Alexander Column—a single shaft of beautiful
red granite, whose pedestal is ornamented with work smelted
from Turkish cannon, and which, as a monument, tells its
own history in the inscription “To Alexander the First—
grateful Russia.” Opposite the main entrance, over which
the yellow Imperial flag floated, is the Constantine Arch, its
gigantic horses apparently in the act of leaping down from
their stucco pedestal amongst the troops below. The public
buildings, of which this arch is part, extend nearly a mile.
The officers, mounted and on foot, waiting before the Palace
gates, were a small army in themselves, and an army of
splendid fellows they were. The spectacle of twenty thou-
sand men standing within ken of the palace, like rows ot
statues, though striking, was not so brilliant as it might have
been, or as it would have been had summer reigned instead:
of winter. These Russian great coats are enormous levellers.
The Emperor and his brothers and sons wear them as
rough and sombre as the rest of the officers. Decorations,
splendid uniforms, and fine figures are thrown away under
these closely-buttoned garments. The thing becomes
monotonous when the men are numbered by thousands.
The privates were alike as two peas, except in the head-gear
—tall straight fellows, in long double-breasted brownish
grey overcoats, buttoned to the throat. Two broad bands of
the same colour crossed the breast, holding in its place the
hair-covered knapsack at the soldiers back. The men wore

180 By Stream and Sea.

boots reaching above the knee, and the only bit of relief to
the sober costume was the monk’s hood hanging over the
shoulder ready to be lifted for the purposes of warmth.
The troops were fully equipped, but the officers appeared in
a kind of undress, certainly without much of the war paint
one is accustomed to in reviews at home.

It was bitterly cold waiting for an hour in the open air,
and I could pity the poor fellows who had been since nine
o’clock standing in the snow. The noon-day gun from
across the river startled the countless flocks of pigeons
which had settled down in good fellowship with the soldiers.
Watching these tame birds had been one of the diversions
during the hour of waiting, and a Russian officer explained
to me that the poorer classes in Russia hold the pigeon in
sacred reverence, allowing it to commit havoc and mischief
everywhere rather than destroy it, and preferring starvation
to a pigeon pie,

Here let me give an instance of the courtesy a foreigner
meets with in Russia. From a young man in an English
naval officer’s uniform, standing like myself in the crowd, of
whom I asked a question, I received a supercilious stare and
“Don’t know.” A colonel in the Russian army, who had
left his bureau to see the inspection, overhearing the
question, observing the snobbishness of the reply, and
learning that I was a stranger and an Englishman, attached
himself to me until the proceedings were over, gave me
information and details of every regiment that passed, and
when I returned him with my thanks a hearty “good morn-
ing,” he lifted his hat and declared the honour and pleasure
were all on his side. Why is it one’s own countrymen abroad
are so disagreeable ?

The Emperor did not keep us waiting long after noon.
The Grand Dukes had been out and about for an hour riding

Memories of the Neva. 181

in rear and front of the regiments. There was a call to
“attention ” echoed in twenty directions, and a commotion
amongst the grooms and horses near the palace entrance.
The Emperor was mounting, and with him mounted also
the Crown Prince of Germany, in the uniform of one of
the Russian regiments. The Emperor is a fine man, but
Frederick William in the saddle is a finer, sits his horse
more solidly, and has the stamp of service upon him. The
bands broke out into brazen and loud welcome of the
Emperor, and the soldiers saluted as he rode down the front
of the palace to join his other guests and pick up the
officers who compose his staff. The British dog that always
scampers over the course at Epsom, and takes part in the
manceuvres at Wimbledon, is also a Russian institution,
Just as the Royal horsemen were abreast of my position a
fine grenadier-looking Newfoundlander galloped down the
ranks, and was chivied by a gendarme. Some of the bands
during the inspection played a bit of Strauss’s Blue Danube,
in a wild barbaric tom-tom style, that clashed horribly with
the English National Anthem, heard in honour of the
English princes, in other parts of the Square. The Czar
passed far away on his tour of inspection, but we could
. follow him by the explosive shouts of the regiments as he
reached them. Every soldier is bound by order to join in
this salute, and the clash of the tom-tom music, the volleys
of cheers, and the substratum of “God Save the Queen,”
mingling together in a kind of salad, made something
remarkable in the way of noise. The soldiers, just before
the return of the Emperor’s cavalcade of some two hundred
strong, had been allowed to stand at ease, a privilege which
they employed to jump a little warmth into their feet.
Seizing their bayonets with both hands they bobbed up and
down in yery comical fashion, You looked over a solid

182 By Stream and Sea.

square of soldiers and suddenly sombre forms would leap a
foot up and down with a decidedly Jack-in-the-box effect.
In front of every regiment at the march-past rode four or
five mounted gendarmes, their horses always being par-
ticularly good. First came a regiment of cadets whose
march soon became a scramble, and the marine cadets
were not a whit superior. Prince Oldenburg’s regiment of
Imperial Guards was the first real specimen of Russian
soldiery.which passed. The marching of the Russian soldier
—and no better example could be given—is not so free
and swingy as either the English or Prussian steps, but it is
good, solid, steady tramping, and the dressing is generally
all that the most critical officer could wish. It is to-day a
work of some difficulty to march the troops off the ground
through different outlets, and perhaps it is well that the
Emperor should not see the rough-and-tumble manner in
which some of the men wheel and form.

The regiments carried a number of small flags affixed to
their bayonets for the purpose of marking position on parade,
and the gay-coloured little bannerets were some relief to the
everlasting brown-grey masses. The second, the Simon
regiment, came by at the double, as if glad beyond measure
to get back to barracks and rations. The Finlanders ran
by the Emperor and his party with a sharp shout. The
sharp shouts of course are precisely as numerous as the
regiments, and if you were not aware that it is the pre-
scribed formula of invoking a blessing on the Czar, you
would take them to mean applause from an admiring public.
The Finlanders were fair, strong, bony-faced men, who
plunged along like elephants. By this time it snowed hard,
and the regiments were white-bearded and powdered.

In the second division there was the famous Moscow
regiment, the Emperor Paul’s regiment of Guards, wearing

Memories of the Neva. 183

the mitre-shaped hats which Paul himself invented. The
Rifles followed, a sergeant in the front company being much
chaffed by his comrades for losing his képi. The Rifles, if
the truth must be told, were out of line, out of order, and
behaving in a very unsoldierly fashion. The Rifle Brigade
men of his Imperial Majesty were a powerful company,
wearing a shako resembling that of the English line regi-
ments. One regiment had turbans. The Sappers passed
next, then the Marine Guard, with the Grand Duke Alexis at
its head. The colonel of this regiment, I am afraid, was using
very profane language to the rear companies, who seemed
to be as wooden as the handles of their bright hatchets.

The next was what I can best interpret as a sample
regiment, a full regiment composed of specimens of every
regiment in the service, but the overcoats brought them all
to the same appearance. One regiment of Sappers was
made up of the shortest men I had ever seen in uniform,
four feet three being the average height. With this, and
perhaps one other exception, it must be taken for granted
that the men were as fine a set of fellows as any country
could produce.

The cavalry was naturally the great object of attention,
and worthily so. The Russian cavalry are not famous with-
out cause; and on this occasion the Emperor had given us
the flower of his troops. The first regiment was composed
of noblemen’s sons who had not yet completed their
military education. Cuirassiers on bay horses, Cuirassiers
on greys and blacks, each man with pennon fluttering and
lance fixed, trotted past, an occasional trooper coming to
grief, but always making light of it, and recovering his
saddle with a smile. The Empress’s regiment—fresh from
Tsarskoe—was admired by every one, and would be held in
the highest estimation did not a chestnut regiment from

184 By Stream and Sea.

Gatchina obtain equal praise. There were Grenadiers,
Uhlans, (own brothers in appearance to the Prussians of the
same ilk), Hussars—the crack regiment in the Russian
horse, as many a Russian nobleman has to admit when his
son’s bills come home—and, lastly, Cossacks of the Don.
These wild-looking fellows ride with short stirrups and short
rein. Their horses are plump, small, shaggy bays, lively as
crickets, and tough as nails. The big Cossack pulled his
little head nearly into his breast coat-pocket, and dug
his heels far under the animal’s belly. They charged
furiously, but halted with wonderful precision. In a gallop,
one pony sprawled on all fours, and four times in succession
he slipped to the ground before recovering his feet; the
Cossack, however, never lost his seat, and in the end pulled
him up bodily, 2

CHATER XIII.

AUTUMNAL ROVINGS.

Toro) N the Lakes of Killarney and the Giant’s Causeway you

j| have the two types of scenery for which Green Erin
is famous. The beauty of the former, as the poet
and painter have ever loved to tell us, is of the softest and
loveliest description ; and its praises should be chanted in
dulcet tones to the trembling cadence of the olian harp.
The beauty of the Giant’s Causeway is of the rugged order,
and its craggy grandeur should be proclaimed by the blus-
terous north wind through a pipe composed of

‘« A hundred reeds of decent growth.”

The mention of these two places suggests, from quite
another point of view, not a contrast so much as a com-
parison. Some one has either said or sung that happiness in
Ireland is always cheap. As is often the case with other
statements, the truth of the proposition depends entirely
upon circumstances. It is generally considered that there
are two sources of enjoyment in this ever-interesting field
for the wanderer and sportsman, which are not particularly

186 Ly Stream and Sea.

noted for cheapness—the one is Killarney, the other the
Giant’s Causeway. The dog who has been unfortunate
enough to earn a bad name, is, as the old proverb tells us,
as good as gone; and places, too, sometimes suffer from an
ill repute they do not deserve. But, as times go, travelling
is reasonably economical in and about the romantic lake
district of Southern Ireland, and the grand rock-bound coast
of the North.

The Giant’s Causeway is somewhat out of the beaten track;
yet everybody goes there, and whosoever can command
leisure should go there. Ireland is, like its neighbour across
the narrow Channel, a land of mountain and stream; but
there is only one Giant’s Causeway. Englishmen, who used
to look upon Ireland as a foreign land not to be thought of,
have for some years been learning not only to trust them-
selves in the more familiar districts, but to penetrate into the
wildest and most unfrequented portions; and the North of
Ireland is now understood to be something more than a huge
flat field, and the battle-ground for Orange and Catholic
“?Prentice Boys.” Increased facilities by land and sea have
opened the eyes of the previously blind, and during the
past ten years a steady stream of Scotch and American
excursionists has flowed through Portrush, and along the in-
teresting high road by which the Giant’s Causeway is reached.
The fact is, it is no longer the fashion to regard Ireland
merély as a convenient landing-stage from which to see
Killarney. The western and northern coasts, always the
favoured resort of the few, are now well appreciated by the
many, and the endless rocks and striking headlands of
Donegal, Londonderry, and Antrim, are more than ever
sought out by admiring and appreciative holiday-keepers ;
and if half the English tourists, who “do” the Rhine, knew
the surpassingly lovely scenery to be found in almost every

Autumnal Rovings. 187

part of Ireland, they would probably think twice, and even
thrice, before preferring the Continent to the sister kingdom,

As a basaltic formation, the Giant’s Causeway is not per-
haps so perfect and compact as Fingal’s Cave; but it is
larger, and its surroundings are finer. Could you, by any
secret understanding with the winds, arrange so as to see
the Antrim coast in both calm and storm, you would see
it to perfection. We have had some very sudden changes
of weather lately. Half the country between Portrush and
Belfast, especially in the valley of the Bann, is under water,
and the rivers, swollen and discoloured, have hastened the
exodus of the salmon anglers. It has been a bad week for
the Giant’s Causeway. If you go to explore all its wonders,
you require a calm sea and the wind anywhere but north or
north-west. Saturday, for example, was a lovely day. The
ocean sparkled calm and blue. Tiny fishing boats, scarce
bigger as they vanished in the offing than the white sea-
birds circling over your head, ventured far from home,
leaving no anxiety behind them. The gentlest of breezes
came sighing from the hills and valleys, keeping the entire
line of shore, with its manifold wonders, clean and clear for
the timidest of visitors. \

The dreamy calm was as short lived as it was delusive.
In a few hours all was changed. During the night.a terrible
storm arose, putting out beacon lights on the more exposed:
headlands, and forcing vessels of large tonnage to run for
shelter into the landlocked natural harbours that abound in
this region of Loughs. Where all was smiling at sunset, all
was uproarious and angry at dawn. Great green rollers from
the Atlantic burst fiercely upon the iron-girded shore, racing
up the cliffs with a roar of rage, and expending themselves
with many a struggle in white foam and spray, showered
hundreds of feet into the air. AScotch steamer, unable to

188 By Stream and Sea.

make the harbour of Portrush, tossed uneasily at anchor
under the lee of the Skerries.

The long line of rocky islets, which for centuries has
stood firm as an advance guard to receive the first shock of
the ocean’s bombardment, lay quiet one day basking like
Brobdingnagian seals in a calm sea; on the next day the mad
billows leapt at a bound over them into the gorges and
creeks and subterranean waterways and caves, the foam
whirling into the interior, and whitening the green downs as
if with snow-flakes. To reach the cliffs, from which alone
on such a day the choicest portion of Causeway scenery can
be commanded, could only be achieved by the hale and
hearty ; indeed, it could only be done at all by leaning
down, as it were upon the gale, until your body represented
the steep roof of a house, and you could walk in a position
which the human form could never maintain unless breasted
by such an unwonted support. Yet but a few hours ago we
could enter Dunkerry Cave, seven hundred feet long, on the
glassy water-floor.

The Causeway itself, or rather the three Causeways in-
cluded in the general term, is not the only, nor to some
minds the most interesting, feature of the neighbourhood.
There is the coast from Dunluce Castle, a rare old romantic
pile of ruins, perched on the top of an isolated rock, which
must have been as impregnable as the Eagle’s Eyrie, far
back into the centuries when the McQuillans and the
McDonnells of the Isles defied the world from its battle
ments. The coast from this prominent precipice to Fair-
head, some twenty miles eastward, is a succession of caves,
crags, and cliffs, far or near, and the scenery is most strik-
ing. People, however, naturally begin with the Causeway.
As its name suggests, it is a huge projection, long and wide,
into the sea. Of course it has a history—what is there in

Autumnal Rovings. 189

Ireland that has not?—and equally, of course, there is a
grotesque resemblance of plausibility in it if you can get
over the A B C of giantology and fairydom.

The Ulster peasants are not so superstitious as the
peasantry of other provinces, but you could offer them no
greater insult than by doubting the authenticity of Fin Mac-
Coul; and the redoubtable Fin is the presiding genius of
these parts. What more natural than that the giant being
Trish and hearing there was over on the Scottish coast a
giant as big and bouncing as himself, should be seized with
an unquenchable desire to fight him. We are in our ignor-
ance prone to think international prize fights a modern
institution. Observe how we have ignored the little affair. of
Fin MacCoul, the Irish pet, and Benandonner, the Scotch
chicken.

‘Let us, however, cleave to facts—the undoubted facts of
history. ‘The Irish giant, wishing perhaps to make the Scotch-
man’s journey to his own destruction as pleasant as possible,
or fearing, maybe, that a sea voyage in the unpretending
ships of those days would have taken the gameness out of
him, considerately. laid down a Causeway from one country
to the other. If you doubt the story, how happens it that
Staffa possesses the other end of it? As legends go, this is
not unreasonable; and, in truth, the Causeway is a great
mystery. No doubt most people who have been to school
are aware that the Causeway proper is composed entirely
of broken columns. In some places they are of various
heights, and in two or three instances you will find one
column shorter than the rest, and so surrounded by others

.that the recess resembles a chair. Thus we have the
Ladies’ Wishing-Chair, and one or two other natural seats,
to which stories are of course attached.

There are in the Giant’s Causeway level spaces where the

190 By Stream and Sea.

peculiarity of the formation is at once seen, and where you
walk upon the heads of the columns, forming a grand floor-
work of distinct Mosaic. The largest column is about
eighteen inches at the greatest width, and whatever shape
a pillar may assume its fellows fit closely as wax to it. No
wonder incredulous persons refuse to believe it is a curiosity
of nature. The guides here use immense words and technical
expressions. They talk about pentagons, hexagons, and
heptagons, which they point out are the general shapes of
the columns. A very few of the pillars are nearly square,
one is seven-sided, and there are a good many octagons.
The main Causeway is an enormous mass of columns, about
forty thousand in number, and each as perfect as if formed
and fitted by a skilled workman. Not the least singular
feature is that each pillar is composed of joints. There is
one pillar, for example, composed of thirty-eight distinct
joints, the end of one fragment being convex and the other:
concave, and each fitting the other with Chinese exact-
ness.

Turning away from the Causeway, the rocks and cliffs,
showing here and there fantastic varieties of basaltic pillars,
assume new shapes as your boat moves gently along near
the shore. Even the rocks have separate names and his-
tories of their own. Pleaskin Head is the furthest headland
visited by ordinary tourists, and there is no view on the
coast to equal that obtainable from Hamilton’s Seat. Below
there are rocks, and two wonderful galleries on colonnades
of pillars sixty feet high, while the shore stretches away on
either hand, always grand in its ruggedness,

To examine the Giant’s Causeway and see its surroundings,
the latter being frequently omitted, although the one is the
supplement to the other, you must follow the line of rocks
in a boat, and climb the heights ; that done, your time and

Autumnal Rovings. 191

money will not be thrown away. I believe most or many of
the people who visit the Giant’s Causeway confess to a little
disappointment ; they do not find the sensation they had
been promised. For this,.as usual, they have to thank the
extravagant language of guide books and their own confiding
faith in it. Then, finding the reality not equal to the
warmly-coloured picture, it is perhaps natural that they
should fall into the other extreme and become unjust. I
met an American gentleman to-day who had spent half an
hour at the Causeway, scanning it from a distance, and who
was returning to the States convinced that the whole affair
was erected by’some speculators of a bygone period. It is
true the first glimpse of the Giant’s Causeway will not take
away your breath with amazement, but for all that if you
conduct your explorations with diligence and care, even
though you may be no geologist and not able to distinguish
greenstone from basalt, calcareous spar from quartz, lias from
chalk, or trap from ochre, you shall soon admit that wonder-
ful indeed are the works around you.

' Do not attempt to argue with the legion of beggars and
touts who will beset you. Never lose your temper; they
do not intend to devour you piecemeal, although at first
you may be pardoned for supposing such to be their dia-
bolical purpose. At Portrush they will swoop down upon
you at the railway station, and at the Causeway they will
give you no peace. The only method of dealing with these
nuisances is to maintain a masterly and good-humoured
silence, although, if you can do it adroitly, it is good sport
to lead your besieger on to suppose—a mere smile, or the
appearance of attention to the fellow will do it—that you
will yield, and then having trotted him over a mile of ground,
simply ignore him. There would, no doubt, be a little
language in the neighbourhood, but the badgered stranger

192 By Stream and Sea.

will be in slight measure avenged. About the hotel at the
Causeway you are worried by men, boys, and women, to
purchase boxes of what they term “specimens of mineral
odds and ends,” some of which are very ingeniously
manufactured.

The guides—boatmen at whose charges everybody
grumbles, but who, having a monopoly, are indispensable—
are steeped to the lips with giant lore, and they talk as if
they believed the pretty stories which they dispense wholesale
and retail. You enter a long cave, into which the sea
gallops for a hundred yards or more, and in the gloom,
surrounded by slime, and with the hollow moan of the
waves stealing up the roof, the guide runs off the reel a yarn
touching a giant hermit, a meek monster, who took a fancy
to pray and fast in a sea-cave, solemnly vowing not to touch
food brought by mortal hand. These eccentric suicidal
intentions were baffled by a seal, who was evidently cut out
for the legal profession. The beast, it is alleged, swam into
the cave with food, and the giant, persuaded by a touch of
the flipper that the clause as to mortal hands remained
inviolate, fell to upon the rations thus providently sealed
and delivered, and lived to a green old age.

Half-way up the highest cliff you will see a grand collec-
tion of pillars of various lengths, and the name is not inapt
—the Giant’s Organ. Some distance to the west there
stands a figure marvellously resembling a crooked old
woman, ‘This is the Giant’s granny, who for some dire
offence was turned into stone without hope of remedy.
The magnificent half-circles of columns, which are the next
great sight to Pleaskin, are the Giant’s Amphitheatre, where
Fin MacCoul would feast a select party of the sons of Anak
of that period, grouping them around him on basaltic seats
and rocky benches, which remain to this day. The semi-

Autumnal Rovings. 193

circle is beautifully regular, and the pillars, some eighty and
some sixty feet high, stand with all the nicety of mechanical
arrangement, not unworthy of association with the Giant’s
loom, Giant’s ball alley, Giant’s pulpit, and Giant’s bag-
pipes.

* * * * *

A night’s halt at quaint, quiet old Antrim, with its
‘miniature Town Hall, and long, wide, clean main street,
will agreeably break the journey from Portrush to Belfast.
There is not much on the line of railway to attract attention
or excite admiration. Mountains—as they count mountains
in Londonderry and in Donegal, where the Highlands are
quite worthy of that name—are not as a rule a plentiful
article in county Antrim, although to an Englishman who
has not qualified as a connoisseur in such matters, there are
some eminences that require a considerable amount of
climbing, and a few ranges that find a place upon the map
even along the track traversed by the Northern Counties
Railroad. In the riorth-western portion of the county
there are mountains running to a height of over 1800 feet,
but even this altitude is not reached by the hills which run
parallel with a portion of the route.

It is not cause, therefore, for poignant regret if the railway
windows, as will often happen in this land. of perpetual
atmospheric weeping, are dimmed and blurred with rain.
Get out at Antrim by all means, for thereby hangs a tale—
the startling tale told apropos of Shane’s Castle, which has
more foundation in veritable history than the reputed life
and times of our friend Fin MacCoul. A visit to Shane’s
Castle involves acquaintance with Lough Neagh, the largest
lake in the three kingdoms, and therefore entitled to all

veneration.
fe)

194 By Stream and Sea.

You may have your fill of the Lough, visit the ruins, and
at night find comfortable quarters at a modest hostelry
where a waiter in greasy black, and clouded white necktie
was never seen; but where you may take your ease in a
solidly comfortable way that smacks of the olden times.
The sound of water greets you in Antrim town, and under
an ancient bridge rushes the very ideal of a trout and
salmon stream. The river is known as Six-Mile Water,
so-called apparently because it rises in the hills something
between nine and twelve miles from its entrance to Lough
Neagh. Alas! through the progress of commerce and
manufacture, the Six-Mile Water has been ruined by the
mills up stream, and, as a favourite haunt of the finest
salmon and trout, its glory has long since departed. Not
many weeks ago the fish for miles—such few fish as were
left—were borne down from the other manufactories on a
current black as tar, and quite as unsavoury, dead and
dying. The voracious pike and tempting trout floated in
peace together, and as proof, if any were wanted, of
the poisonous ingredients which had wrought all the mis-
chief, even the eels, which do not generally stick at a trifle,
but prefer a half-decayed corpse to any other seasonable
delicacy, passed by limp and lifeless in the melancholy
procession ; and yet a worthy youth, in that half Irish, half
Scotch tone which you expect in Ulster, tells us that he can
remember shovelling the trout out of the still pools by the
barrow-load.

On your way to the Lough, which is but a pleasant walk
from the town, you pass a well-built mansion, Antrim Castle.
The gardens and grounds, laid out in the Louis Quinze
style, are reputed the finest in the province, and they must
be indeed fine which surpass them. There are thick woods
and an abundance of game hereabouts. Here, even within

Autumnal Rovings. 195

half a mile of the county town, you put up a covey of birds,
who will probably be less familiar with mankind in the
course of the autumn. An enthusiastic curate is being
rowed off in one of the boats as we near the beach of Lough
Neagh, making ready his spinning tackle. He might save
himself the trouble, for the main river and the other
streams that feed this vast sheet of fresh water have been
terribly swollen with the recent rains, and the reverend
angler must go far from shore before he will get a chance of
slaying either pike or trout.

Let us, far wiser in our day and generation, make friends
with the fishermen who, in a picturesque group on the grass,
are engaged in the occupation which those other fishermen,
eighteen hundred years ago, by another inland lake, were
pursuing—mending their nets. This will be about the hour
when they should be looking after their lines and snares in
the Lough, and we must persuade them to bring their fishing
ground into our course for Shane’s Castle.

A lake resembles a jewel in this—it is all the better for a
good setting ; and the best settings for a sheet of water are
risings woods if it be small, and bold, receding hills if it be
of extraordinary dimensions. Nature has kindly recognized
this with most of the Scottish lakes, and who cannot remem-
ber the wonderful effect which the brawny brow of the
neighbouring Ben has upon the loch which is so happy
under its protecting shield ? Lough Neagh, on the contrary,
has every right to complain of its flat uninteresting shore ;
still it has some counterbalancing things to boast of. It
claims affinity to Antrim, Tyrone, Armagh, Londonderry,
and Down. It receives several streams, and jealously
absorbs them all, allowing but one outlet, the river Bann.
It is twenty miles long, and from one point of embarkation
a dozen miles broad, with a shore line of some eighty

196 By Stream and Sea.

miles in it. Fishermen still make a good living by plying
their calling, although, in common with their brethren every-
where, they sadly mourn the hauls of other days.

It is blowing a good deal more than half a gale of wind,
and there_are waves tumbling over the bar that a victim to
mal de mer would not probably regard with an excess of
favour ; but we have a stiff boat, with a keel of twenty-two
feet, and a general run reminding you of the fishing cobles of
the Yorkshire coast. A couple of large fore and aft sails
send us at a spanking rate through the lough, and in the
centre we espy, tossing and fretting at the restraint, the
buoys marking the whereabouts of nets and lines.

As we shoot through the water the fishermen dispel an
illusion. The lough has always been reputed a home of
the Gillaroo, the strange, thick, gold-coloured trout found
but in few waters, and whose habits are fully described in
the book of the Erne, an old but most delightful volume on
Irish sporting. ‘The helmsman—who is the patriarch of our
crew—says he never caught but one Gillaroo, and his two
comrades never saw one perhaps; the supposition is that the
race has declined in Lough Neagh. To make amends for
the disappointment we are, however, introduced to a finny
stranger, a pretty little fish,-called the pullan, a fresh-water
herring of delicate flavour, but used chiefly here as baits for
night-lines, It is not at all out of order to call this genteel
fish a fresh-water herring, but he is more compact than that
delicious plebeian, and has a dash of the grayling about his
silvery overcoat.

It is great fun pulling in the eel lines, each of which is
taut, and troubled with a wriggling captive. In they come,
one after another, protesting until the last line is drawn, and
there is very little short of half a hundredweight of such
game in the basket. A big pike or salmon has broken out

Autumnal Rovings. 197

of one of the nets, but the other imprisons in its meshes
two brace and a half of nice trout, that cut pink and firm
as a salmon, when dexterously tickled at table, by-and-by,
with an antique silver fish slice.

Shane’s Castle looks very spectral as we up sail and run
at express speed for its projecting grounds. The sun sink-
ing rapidly over the western shore of the lough, warms the
hoary brown of the ruins, and bathes the splendid wood
behind, while the shadows seem to adda few extra turrets to
the pile. If you have ever seen a yacht belonging to the
Ulster Club (whose head-quarters are in Belfast Lough) you
may have noticed that the burgee displayed a bloody hand.
A sinister hand, gules, is the armorial ensign of the province,
and it was a Shane’s Castle chieftain who figured in the story.
which suggested the emblem. The chief of an invading
expedition, so the story runs, approaching the shores of
Ireland, said that the follower who first touched the coveted
territory should possess it. One man outwitted his fellows
by chopping off his hand and hurling it on shore before the
foremost boat could touch land. This was the founder of
the great Ulster chieftains, the O’Neills of the Red Hand.
The member of the family after whom the castle was
named, Shane O’Neill, was a name known at the English
Court. He of the red hand lorded it over the other chiefs,
and in Queen Elizabeth’s time the reigning chieftain O’Neill
was virtually king of Ulster. This was Shane O’Neill, who,
with a body-guard of 600 soldiers, and an army of 5000
horse and foot, had many a brush with the English troops,
made a journey with the armed retinue of an independent
prince to London, and treated personally with the British
maiden Queen.

The days of Red Hands are gone; the O’Neills no
longer summon body-guards of long, curled gallow glasses,

198 By Stream and Sea.

armed with battle-axes, and attired in yellow vest, short
tunics, and shaggy cloaks, to burn, kill, and destroy. Shane’s
successor, Lord O’Neill, dwells undisturbed on his estate,
and courteously allows the stranger to wander through the
demesne, inspect the interesting ruins, and capture the
speckled trout in the river, overhung with umbrageous
branches. Red Hand, forsooth! The Rifle Club have
just broken up their encampment.

Before re-entering our boat we are shown the remnants of
a carved head, whose fall, it is said, will be simultaneous
with the end of the ancient race. The Banshee of Shane’s
Castle we did not hear, although its shriek, denoting im-
pending evil to an O’Neill, is, they say, sometimes to be
heard among the woods, upon the shore, along the ruined
walls of the falling castle, echoed by the vaults underneath,
and wailing through the nettle-covered graves of the de-
parted.

There are some geological valuables associated with
Lough Neagh—pebbles of chalcedony, cornelian, opal, or
quartz, a couple of little islands, and a reputed quality in
the water of petrifying wood. And in the poem in which
Tom Moore calls upon Erin to remember the days of old,
and refers to the Knights of the Red Branch, an hereditary
order of chivalry known in Ulster before the birth of Christ,
he embodies the pretty legend of Lough Neagh—

“On Lough Neagh’s bank as the fisherman strays
When the clear cold eve’s declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining !”
4
Ireland is worth living in, if only because of the cheap-
ness of its horse hire. But for this we might have felt con-

strained to deny ourselves a seat outside a jaunting car

Autumnal Rovings. 199

along the road between Antrim and Belfast, for it is a spell

of seventeen mild Irish miles, of which humorous, pleasant
Sam Lover sang—

‘The miles in this country much longer Le;
But that is a saving of time you see,
For two of our miles is aiqual to three,
Which shortens the road in a great degree.”

The journey affords a most interesting study of the agri-
cultural aspect of a country which, in this respect, may be
taken to represent the thrift and prosperity of the province.
The producing capabilities of the land are not of the best,
but the careful cultivation and the neat farmsteads show the
kind of stuff of which the people are made.

To an observer, who has seen the slovenly farming and
miserable dwellings of the West, this drive will present a
contrast little short of amazing; instead of tumble-down
walls, broken fences, ill-divided and undrained land, roofs
that would be black with dilapidated thatch if they were
not covered with vagrant weeds and strong stalks of
grain, peasants’ mud-wall cottages in which pigs, fowls, and
children eat out of the same three-legged iron pot, we have
substantial stone tenements, in perfect repair, gleaming with
clean whitewash, flanked by comfortable gardens, and taste-
fully brightened by a few flowers, while’ along the entire
route the hedges are well set and well kept. The gates
cannot be kicked down by the first passing calf, and to the
crest of the highest ridge industrious hands have subdued
the natural unfriendliness of the soil, and made the most of
it. There is not a4 better high road in England, and there
are few so broad, and in such sensible order as this. A
turnpike road you cannot term it, for there is not a tollbar
from beginning to end. The labouring people are not bare

200 By Stream and Sea.

legged or ragged, and, in truth, there are some English
counties where Hodge had better hide from comparison
with the Antrim farm hand. ‘There seems this year to have
been great delay with the hay crop, and it is high time the
cocks which still stand in the meadows should be ricked.
The grain is not ripe, nor are the crops good even for this
land ; but such potato fields were never seen before.

Some one has informed the independent, civil, well-dressed
driver of my car that when there is a comet grapes and
potatoes are to be had galore, and this certainly happens at
present to coincide with known facts. Somehow the potato
in Ireland makes a much grander show in the field than
elsewhere. The leaves are greener and more gracefully cut,
the stalks are more bushy, and the flowers better shaped and
coloured. One would not care to mention an Irish potato
field as the subject of an epic or an Academy picture, but
an Englishman cannot fail to be struck with the luxurious
picture it presents.

Happily the flax at this time of the month rests at a stage
when the nostrils are not seriously offended by it. It covers
the field just now, like straight short lengths of hay, and is
undergoing the process of drying as rapidly as the moist
climate will allow it. The English characteristics of the
landscape are continued by the appearances of Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, and other places of worship in the villages. A
range of hills, along the base of which we wind, extends to
the left; the commons of Carrick are very picturesque, and
in a high state of cultivation. For what is called scenery
the country, however, is not remarkable; nature has done
nothing violently here, but has been content with gentle
undulations and a fair proportion of wood and water. The
rain-stained placards on the walls remain to show that,
whatever a recent election cry in other parts may have been,

Autumnal Rovings. : 201

Tenant-right was the all-absorbing watchword in Antrim,
and looking round once more upon the fair scene, we are
reminded of what Ulster tenant-right has done, and may jog
onward, musing whether without it the hand of the diligent
would have wrung out of the soil the flax, oats, and potatoes
which it now yields.

The face of the country suggests plenty. But for the
news we had heard of troops moved and policemen drafted
in readiness for the “fifteenth,” and the possible conflicts
between Catholics and Protestants—but for the appearance
by-and-by at the brow of a hill of a little regiment of con-
stables with rifles over their shoulders and bayonets in their
sheaths, one might have written peace as well as plenty, and
the word happily could yet be written, for the fifteenth
came and departed, and the peace was not broken.

At length we have reached the highest point of the road,
and Belfast Lough, lovely.as heart could desire, lies beneath,
five miles distant, it is true, but stretching seaward—a view
decked with the brightest of crystal and purest of green.
The houses of Bangor and Holywood on the opposite coast
sparkle in a treacherous burst of sunshine, ships of every
tonnage lie motionless in the ample natural harbour, the
steamers cross and recross, the ruins of Carrickfergus Castle
far up the western shore are conspicuous ; but it is evident
that beyond, where Ailsa Craig should be visible, there are
rain and storm. ‘

Belfast, into whose suburbs we are descending, demands
more than a bird’s-eye view. ‘The absolute stranger will be
surprised at its vigour, position, and importance. The fleet
of full-rigged ships, the tier of large steamers in the docks,
the imposing buildings, the prosperity which is apparent in

the broad busy thoroughfares, tell their own tale of work

in the past, and a promised reward in the future.
* * * * * &

202 By Stream and Sea.

How many schoolboys, I wonder, could, on the spur of
the moment, describe the whereabouts of the North Chan-
nel? To a very learned professor yesterday, it had to be
explained that it has nothing to do with Arctic exploration
or the mysteries of the North-West Passage, that it is not
even a far-away corner of the German Ocean, but that it is
simply the narrow strait which graciously offers to passengers
affrighted at the thought of sea sickness the shortest possible
voyage from Ireland to England. It yields many obvious
advantages to persons compelled to hurry from this section
of the Sister Isle, and who at the uttermost can only steal
two or three days for dawdling on the march back to home
and duty. The sea voyage is a mere bagatelle of three
hours ; in itself the passage is most interesting ; it is new to
the majority of Englishmen ; and then, as a final argument,
and having that dawdling project in view, it brings under
your notice the southern coast of Scotland, with its numerous
though little-talked-of beauties.

By this time I have pitched my tent at the clean little
town of Newton-Stewart, which flourishes on the western
boundary of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The river Cree,
tumbling over a broad weir on its descent to Wigton Bay,
makes melody so soothing that I half suspect it of having
conspired with the boulders, around which the current
whitens into foam, to prevent me from recalling the principal
features of the journey hitherwards—a bit of national
‘jealousy which cannot, however, for a moment detract from,
or prevent me from recurring to, the delightful parting views
of the Irish coast.

The train to Larne follows the coast of Belfast Lough so
close that you might, if the fancy seized you, shell old Car-
rickfergus Castle with a pea-shooter ; so close that you can
see the movement of the sea fowls’ eyes on the foreshore,

Autumnal Rovings. 203

and hear their shrill piping and screaming; so close that
the opposite coast appears to pass before you like a moving
diorama of exquisite scenery. Then, winding round the
base of a wood-crowned hill, it runs along the margin of the
smaller but not less charming Lough Larne, and lands you
close to the pier where the comely scarlet-funnelled steamer
snorts impatiently to be released from her moorings. A few
revolutions of the paddles and we are in the blue water of
the North Channel, heading straight across the narrow
waters.

Nothing would induce me to be unfaithful to Dublin Bay,
than which there is no more glorious prospect to the in-
coming or departing visitor, save, perhaps, the Cove of Cork,
which is so superlatively lovely as to warrant exclusion from
an every-day. catalogue. But the North Channel, to be
prosaic, has two strings to its bow ; you have scarcely done
with Ireland before you have to deal with Scotland, showing
that nothing is easier and more agreeable than to be off and
on with the old and new loves at discretion. South of
Larne is a low craggy headland; beyond and above are
fields, hedged in from the distance like so many pocket-
handkerchiefs of assorted patterns and colours, and ranging
from the water’s edge to the high sky line; mountains, dark
and rolling northwards, darken the background, and as the
good ship speeds from shore it is a study, indeed, to watch
their solid heads change from blue to grey, and from grey to
to impalpable cloud.

The Maidens, solitary at their posts far from shore, gleam
white as nuns in the evening shadows. Be thankful that
they are not sirens to lure the hapless mariner to his destruc-
tion, but conspicuous beacons warning him of hidden
dangers. Away northwards looms very conspicuously a
long tongue of land, low-lying at first, but gradually rising to

£

204 By Stream and Sea.

to a goodly altitude, and then suddenly sloping down into
the sea. This is the famous Mull of Cantyre that, running
a clear forty miles away from the mainland, might by
running only thirteen miles farther have formed a bridge
between Antrim and Argyllshire.

Midway in the Channel we are on the highway of the
Scotch and American packets, and there is coming up at full
speed a stately vessel that to-morrow will be taking on board
her last passengers at Londonderry, and then, heigh-ho!
for the broad Atlantic. Like a huge dome thrust out of the
sea at a venture stands Ailsa Crag, clearly visible to us
though six miles distant. This rocky island is a striking
feature from both sea and land, and must be reverenced, if
for nothing else, because it has given a name to a peer of
the realm.

Loch Ryan, which during the last five minutes has ex-
changed its soothing music for a decidedly brawling tone,
may now conspire no more. Ireland by this time is blotted
out of sight. And how better could I conciliate this
Scottish stream, whose clannishness is so worthy of itself,
than by pointing to the hilly coast which stretches yonder
into northerly dimness? We were not so ignorant, maybe,
we smokers on the bridge, as not to know that yonder was
the land of Burns. Even the river Cree will admit that
he sang as sweet a song as any of its own splashing brooks
or murmurous falls. The banks and braes of bonnie Doon
were not very far from us as the crow flies, and we could
scan it, at any rate by the eye of faith, with some degree
of certainty too, for we had an American lady in the saloon,
whose bulky European guide-book was stuffed with flowers
and ferns culled from the scenes trodden by the Ayrshire
Ploughman, and who held her pilgrimage to the cottage,
monument, and “ Alloway’s auld haunted Kirk,” as of the

Autumnal Rovings. 205

first importance. But with every desire to converse of the
bard whom we all loved, the thing was not easy while the
steamer was racing into Loch Ryan at something like
thirteen knots an hour, and fresh landscapes were opening
out, bringing fresh suggestions, and fresh topics of con-
versation.

So Burns and all the romantic associations of his name
passed from the mind, while a north country professor,
to whom the severest mathematics are pastime, and who
smokes the strongest tobacco ever blackened into twist,
- walked aft, the black ribbons of his bonnet fluttering, and
his deep bass voice undertoning something which sounded
remarkably like Auld Lang Syne. The narrow green-lined
loch was a delightful termination of the North Channel
passage, and you may begin your.dawdling as soon as you
choose after touching ground at Stranraer. I believe there
yet remain people who can find subject for admiration in
other than the modern rule-of-thumb riband system of
gardening, and to such might be mentioned the ruins of
Castle Kennedy, near Stranraer, where the magnificent
grounds are kept in the good old-fashioned style of land-
scape gardening, and where it is shown that the true business
of art—in gardening—is to serve and not stamp out
nature.

In a mountainous country if you have a choice in the
matter, always halt near the mouth of a river; and if a salmon
river all the better. As a rule, it may be taken for granted
that you are then in a position to command the pick of the
neighbouring scenery. Up the stream will be whatever
there are of glens, and burns, and moorland. A little thought
upon the character and predilections of the salmon might
almost excuse you for passing your plate for a second slice
of the curded delicacy. He leaps and fights his way through

206 By Stream and Sea,

life like a hero, and is, by the same token, a capital guide-
book of the country which he honours by ascending.

Of Newton-Stewart, till within a day or two, I am
ashamed to confess the most benighted ignorance ; but it
was enough for me to hear that the Cree was a salmon
river. The result has verified my long-established con-
viction of the worth of the fish as a direction-post for the
sight-seer. Here at Newton we are on the confines of
Ancient Galloway, and the modern province of that name
includes the counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire.
The river Cree, indeed, which I am doing my best to con-
ciliate, is the western, as the Nith is the eastern, boundary of
the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. There is a popular drive
on the left bank of this stream to Glen Trool, which
bountifully repays a halt here, since it combines a variety of
all that should enter into the composition of fine scenery.
Take it as a sample of other “outings” at hand. The
historical thirst from which tourists are supposed to suffer
may be within half an hour dissipated by a draught from the
ivy-covered ruins of Castle Stewart. Distance in the shape
of hills, and mountain-tops purpled by heather, lend a
necessary enchantment to the view; the loch into which the -
Cree widens adds the salient water feature; and for three
miles at a stretch the famous woods of Cree are reflected in
the river. Moorlands put in an appearance to complete the
proportions, and northward and westward mountains arrest
the clouds at one moment, and at the next shake them off to
look the god of day boldly in the face.

At the spot where the road crosses an arm of the Cree,
the prospect seems alive with silvery streamlets hurrying and
winding in their everlasting course through picturesque
banks to the coast. There are romantic stories of Bruce, and
bloody remembrances of the troopers who hunted down the

Autumnal Rovings. 207

Covenanters, to be told of the neighbourhood; but the
all-powerful pictures spread out upon this wide, wonderful
canvas of land and water absorb all attention. At Glen
Trool, containing a snug shooting lodge, under a range of
rocky hills, you ascend an eminence to overlook the gem of
the collection—Loch Trool, studded with islets, and over-
awed by a burly mountain standing stern guard afar off,
with other mountains around to keep it company, though
less grimly, in its steadfast task.

The Linns, a majestic waterfall, thunders through a
neighbouring gorge into the loch, Across the hills is Loch
Dee, from which the superannuated gamekeeper, acting as
guide, declared to us that a Liverpool gentleman last year
bore away six dozen of prime trout—a statement open
to doubt, for the worthy man admitted upon cross-examina-
tion that there were both pike and perch in plenty in the
loch ; and in that case the trout, though perhaps large,
could not be numerous. But there are some fish for the
angler in all the lochs and streams. I was, for example,
shown a pool, not three miles from Newton, in which a lad
a few days since slew an eighteen-pound salmon. This,
it is true, was in preserved water; but Lord Galloway’s
agent is liberal in permission to fish waters equally good,

* * * * % *

The journey from the river Cree to the river Nith, the
next stage on our way-to the English border, is across the
widest part of the Stewartry of-Kirkcudbright. The country
traversed is surpassingly beautiful. There are occasions
when we sigh for the old coaching days, and for a land in
which the shriek of the locomotive is never heard, but in
this lovely part of the Stewartry we have every reason to be
grateful to the railway, since without it one of the most
interesting portions of the district would be unopened.

208 By Stream and Sea.

It is Lowland only by courtesy. For miles the moun-
tains heave northward in a billowy formation that resembles
the most striking Dartmoor scenery, only the billows are
more gigantic, and there is an absence of the granitic
masses which speckle the desolate Devonshire moorland.
At one station the line crosses a deep valley over a tall,
handsome viaduct, and, far beneath, the passenger from his
window sees the mountain stream madly chasing itself
from rock to rock, turning, twisting, bubbling, contracting,
spreading, and sparkling along a sandy margin, unrelieved
by bush or shrub, and in its every feature suggestive of still
bleaker and wilder country far up in its cradle land. The
journey is not long enough to be monotonous, but of
sufficient duration to familiarize you with the bold grandeur
of this description of landscape. The well-rounded moun-
tains are now developing the mellow hues of autumn, save
where the heather assumes a startlingly deep purple by
contrast with the golden brown or the mossy herbage. The
cattle for which this famous Galloway land is noted are
upon all the hills, and black-faced mountain sheep, nimble
as goats, leap from knoll to knoll, in their haste to escape
upwards from the approaching locomotive.

Railway travelling, after all, is not absolute misery,
although it is somewhat the fashion to say so. In the latter
half of our journey a thunderstorm broke; forked lightning
cleft the sky, and seemed to pierce the summits of the hills
like daggers aimed with a deadly hand; a hailstorm fol-
lowed, and then, with marvellous rapidity, the atmosphere
cleared, the sun recoloured the mountains, and the sweet
bow of promise was placed in the clouds. All this ap-
peared as a succession of set scenes, of which the carriage-
wiridow was the framework. In similar fashion the moun-
tains seemed to parade before us like regiments on a review

Autumnal Rovings. 209

ground, pregenting every variety of shape, and colour, and
distance. By-and-by the hills gave place to the softer
surroundings of Lochs Kerr and Dee, and to the woods,
gardens, and habitations of the well-cultivated pasture lands
intervening between the lakes and Castle Douglas.

Castle Douglas is another such halting-place as Newton-
Stewart, being the centre of many interesting places recom-
mended to tourists. Here, as at Newton, in the middle of
the community, there is a solidly-built town-house, with its
tower and clock ; but the ancient meeting-place for bailies,
provosts, and councillors has been turned into a billiard-
room, while a new and more fashionable building has been
provided as a home for the fathers of the burgh. In
the pre-railway era Kirkcudbright (pronounced Kurcoobri)
was an out-of-the-world town, sleeping placidly to the
lullaby of its own bay; but it will scarcely do to accuse
it of somnolence now that a pert little branch line has
brought it. within reach of the main road between Dumfries
and Stranraer.

A rare old royal burgh is Kirkcudbright, thriving, too, in
these days, with its handsome new bridge and_ bustling
harbour. Here again, in the heart of the town, do we find
the old court-house, surmounted by a quaint tower and spire
and clock, and from “turret to foundation stone” of evident
antiquity. The river Dee affords many picturesque views
and walks, and there is a particularly fine prospect from the
west end of the bridge. The castle ruins by the river's
brink stand isolated from all modern whims and con-
trivances. The crumbling walls, reared three hundred
years since on the site of a Franciscan Priory, have for
generations clothed themselves in a living mantle of ivy of
the most luxuriant foliage.

Dundrennan Abbey, nearer the shore of Solway Firth,

P

210 By Stream and Sea.

is reputed to be one of- the finest specimens of Gothic.
architecture in Scotland. It stands in a nook which is fit
shrine for such a genuine relic of the past. It overlooks
the sea, and, southward, gives glimpses of the Cumberland
mountains, but otherwise it is hemmed in by hills ; and the
trout stream, which you may always expect near an abbey
or monastery, is near at hand. The patriarchal arches and
columns, some of which are in excellent preservation, are
covered with lichen as aged apparently as the stones it
conceals. The sentimental visitor may sit down in one of
the silent, mouldy recesses of the ruins, and indulge his
fancy to the full, for it was at Dundrennan Abbey that Mary
Queen of Scots spent her last night in Scotland.

On the homeward road is the Auchencairn estate, with
a coast abounding in creeks, caves, rocks, and smugglers’
traditions. Sir Walter Scott, who was very fond of the
Solway Firth scenery, and who used it with photographic
effect, is supposed to have laid the most stirring incidents of
“Guy Mannering” in or about Auchencairn Bay. Captain
Dirk Hatteraick and his smugglers might certainly have
hidden in many of the fastnesses on this small peninsula,
and have ample room to spare for the accommodation of a
few waifs and strays from their lawless brethren on the
other side of the Firth.

The Nith, charged with the recent scourings of the far
distant Lanarkshire and Ayrshire mountains, has a gloomy
and turbulent greeting for the wayfarer. The sunshiny
weather which had gladdened us, seemed to have broken,
and Dumfries, by the time we enter its streets, lies under
a brooding sky. ‘The river tumbles hoarsely over the weir
opposite the broad timber quay, and the men and boys on
the opposite bank, seeing the colour deepen every moment,
put up their rods and lines, and depart with dejected

Autumnal Rovings. 211

countenances. In the morning the stream had presented
the hue of London porter; in the evening it has thickened
into the consistency of pea-soup. But in storm or calm Dum-
fries cannot be robbed of its great natural advantages—of its
delightful environs, which rise like ramparts bristling not
with weapons of war, but with a chevaux de frise of coppice
and plantation, and bright villas set in verdant grounds—
of its Vale of Nith, or of its second line, so to speak, of
defence, the higher mountains that stand respectfully back,
as if reluctant to lord it too obtrusively over the vale.

Adown this vale Burns said he wandered to mark the
sweet flowers of the spring, and to muse and sing of
Phillis. If one might speak from passing experience, the
more modern youth of Dumfries have also discovered the
aptitude of the Valley of the Nith for musing and talking
with Phillis. The grand avenue of trees and level stretch of
sward are scarcely worth the name of park, but still it is not
the less agreeable as a promenade because of the misnomer,
and there are few towns in the United Kingdom that can
give its inhabitants such a stroll as that waterside walk past
the docks. Dumfries is venerable, and in the surrounding
neighbourhood supplies abbeys on quite a wholesale prin-
ciple.

But before you can bestow undivided time and thought
upon historical or archeeological matters, Robert Burns
must be remembered. Not, however, that you are likely to
forget the poet in Dumfries, which is for ever sacred to his
memory. There is a street named after him, and there,
glistening in the shower, hangs a very fair portrait of him on
a signboard. You are shown the house in which he died,
the conspicuous tomb which contains his dust, the rooms iti
which he lived, the tavern where he was served by Anna of
the Golden Locks, the chair in which he sat, the window:

at2 By Stream and Sea.

panes he scribbled upon, and the octavo copy of “De
Lolme on the British Constitution,” in which he wrote,
“‘ Mr. Burns presents this book to the library, and begs they
will take it as a creed of British liberty until they find
a better—R. B.”

The poet, doubtful of the manner in which the senti-
ment would be received, afterwards pasted the fly-leaf back
upon the next page. But the tale of Burns’s lifein Dumfries
has been oft told. We know how he stamped leather, gauged
malt-vats, noted the manufacture of candles, granted spirit
licences, took his morning and afternoon walk along Dock
Green, received his six o’clock tea from Bonnie Jean, dis-
cussed the news with his friends at the Globe, was respected
and admired by the public, and beloved by his friends, and
died on the 21st July, 1797, in that small upper chamber in
Bank Street.

The old bridge which divides Galloway from Dumfries is
justly regarded with pride by the burghers. It is one of
their witnesses in chief, proving their title to a place in the
history of six centuries ago. Moreover, it is in itself a
romance of blood and feud, or, rather, would be so could it
tell of the deeds it witnessed in the blustering days of the
past; and, in its elevated position, it is a happy ornament
alike to the river and the town.

It is impossible to narrate in their order, and with the
detail they deserve, the many attractions which the Scottish
Queen of the South loves to display. Space fails us to
write of Carlaverock Castle, the Ellengowan of “ Guy Man-
nering ;” of the monument to “Old Mortality” (Robert
Patterson) ; of the resting place of Helen Walker, the
original of Jeanie Deans; of the much-frequented walk
along the Nith to the ruins of the Lincluden Abbey; of
Sweetheart Abbey, built in mediseval times by Dame Baliol

Autumnal Rovings, 214

to receive the heart of her husband, which she embalmed
in an ivory casket, and kept beside her until the abbey
should be ready to enshrine it, and where the true wife was
afterwards laid with the precious memento upon her breast ;
of the striking view of mountain and sea caught from the
crest of Whinnyhill; of the room in Dumfries known as
Prince Charlie’s, in remembrance of a visit that unfortunate
gentleman paid to the town, which he looted to a heavy
tune; or of the works and ways of modern Dumfries.

At the railway station, the only station probably in the
country planted in the midst of a blooming nursery garden,
the train is waiting to bear us by Gretna Green across the
Border to Carlisle, and thence by midnight express through
Cumberland to the South,

CHAPTER XIV.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN A PUNT.

mt] OME people are never satisfied. It would be too
tedious, too laborious a task to enter into the why
and wherefore of this latent discontent in human
nature, nor does the subject befit a festive season of the
year.

It would not be altogether correct to say that Harvey
Kype, of Kype Manor, Esquire, was never satisfied ; but it
is no libel to whisper that his fits of satisfaction were of the
description of angels’ visits—few and far between. He was
especially displeased with his son and heir, Harvey junior.
I am informed that in these days of juvenile precocity,
when boys tell each other that “the governor is a jolly old
chap,” and girls vote parental lectures “awfully slow,” it is
no uncommon thing to find the head of the household in
opposition to the young hopeful who will some day sit on
the domestic treasury bench. But Harvey Kype, of Kype
Manor, had really very little cause for dissatisfaction.

Harvey junior was quite a model boy. He never told a
lie, nor tried his hatchet on the favourite pear tree ; he was

4

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 215

innocent of tale-bearing and other amusements of the genus
sneak, and he was a most lovable brother and son. But
he seemed to have been born with a love for natural history.
In the eyes of the pater that was a high crime and mis-
demeanour, for the old man, a month before the lad was
born, had decided that, if he proved to be a boy, he should
be a clergyman, a canon, a dean, and a bishop. But
Harvey junior cared-for none of these things : gun and fish-
ing rod, butterfly net and botanist’s box, were the things
which he promised from the earliest days to make the
articles of his life’s creed; and Harvey Kype, of Kype
Manor, Esquire, therefore lived and died a dissatisfied man.

Harvey junior, nevertheless, contrived to make a good
many excellent friends. J. B. Thornbury, B.A., was one of
them, and the very merriest Christmases of his life were
spent at Kype Manor, over which Harvey junior in due
time became titular lord. The young squire was a sterling
fellow ; even his father could not deny that. His master at
Harrow would account for the pupil’s backwardness by
deploring his inordinate love for out-of-door studies, but
would take the edge off the complaint by admiration of the
lad’s noble nature. His Cambridge tutors knew that the
youth who was scouring the fens when he ought to have
been poring over his books would never be a bright light of
the University ; but they would say there wasn’t a fellow in
his college with less vice. Yes, he was a sterling English-
man ; and, after all, he was rich enough to survive any little
scholastic shortcomings.

You grip a man’s hand all the heartier after indulging in
some such mental preface as the foregoing. So gripped
Thornbury, B.A., on that memorable Christmas visit, to
which the reader is being gradually led up. Let his delight
at finding the train not more than two hours late; at spying

216 By Stream and Sea.

his friend and his dog-cart outside of the station ; at being,
after flying over ten miles of road in three-quarters of an
hour, welcomed at Kype Manor—I say, let these be taken
as matters of course. There he was, in the warmth and
light, and there he meant to stay. The snow seemed to
come down expressly to welcome him: it had been expected
for days, but not a flake appeared until the dogcart turned
into the avenue of elms by which the house is approached.
The most sentimental of Harvey’s daughters plucked a very
sweet sonnet out of the circumstance, hailing the snow as at
once a welcome guest and a welcoming host.

“ Quite an old-fashioned winter,” said Harvey next morn-
ing as the friends stood together at the French window of
the breakfast-room, looking out in that dreamy manner that
people somehow always put on when the landscape has been
newly whitened.

“Ves,” Thornbury answered, “everybody seems to have
discovered that this morning; but we have not had much
downfall yet, and I see the thermometer only marks forty
degrees in the hall.”

“ All in good time,” continued the host. “To-morrow
morning we shall be below freezing point, and hard weather
is a dead certainty; I told you so,” he added, turning to
his gentle wife.

“Ves,” Mrs. Kype said, “ Harvey is a very good weather
prophet. He declares that the movements of the birds
during the late autumn are as good as any barometers,
terrometers, or meteorological departments. He certainly
has, from Michaelmas to the present time, foretold a hard
winter.”

“That's a nuisance then,” said Thornbury, “for there’s
an end of my sport.”

“Ah,” replied his friend, “I had forgotten that you are

Christmas Eve in a Punt. Qi

fonder of the rod than the gun. We must take our chance
when we can get it. Put Rory into the cart, Tom, and get
a few baits. We must try Turnhill Broad before it gets
frozen over.”

Naturally, this was not a satisfactory scheme for the young
folks, who were reckoning upon help in those delightful
preparations that give Christmas Eve so much of its charm.
But neither Harvey nor Thornbury, B.A., cared a great deal
for church decorations, nor, indeed, for the long-legged,
long-skirted curate, who had appointed himself commander-
in-chief of the bevy of fresh-coloured girls. They made
the best of it, quoted necessity (about the broadest-
shouldered victim for excuse-hunters the world ever knew),
and promised to return very early.

“Do please come back before dark,” Mrs. Kype en-
treated ; “remember it’s Christmas Eve, and we never fail
in yule-log worship.”

“And we have three of your favourite songs which must
be sung to-night,” said Alice the fair.

“ And you owe me a game of chess,” said Lina the gipsy-
eyed.

“Ves, Uncle Thornbury (the children had years before
appointed him “uncle”), and you promised to give me
twenty out of a hundred,” said Tracy Kype, who actually
had a taste and was destined for the church, and who would
perhaps have satisfied even the grandfather, had that worthy
not been a long resident of the family vault.

“As sweet a Christmas Eve programme as heart could
wish ; trust me not to fail,” concluded Thornbury, in light-
ness of heart.

“Tl just bring my gun,” said Harvey, coming out of the
house with a workmanlike breech-loader in his hand ; “you
never know what may turn up at these times, and there’s a

218 By Stream and Sea.

bird I’ve been looking for these three weeks. Ah! (glanc-
ing down at the cob’s feet) they’ve frosted old Rory, but
there’s no need of that. There’s only an inch of snow, and
it looks a trifle clearer just now. Shouldn’t be at all sur-
prised if you get a good basket of pike to-day.”

“So mote it be,” was the response. Thornbury, B.A.,
had been so forced to the mill-round of town duties that
since the close of the trout season he had never handled a
rod; therefore was he at this moment very blood-thirsty in
his intentions towards the ferocious denizens of the well-
stocked expanses of water towards which they were driving.
His friend was a better judge than he, and evidently thought
little of the severity of the weather, but it seemed to him to
be bitterly cold—that hard steely sort of cold against which
there is no appeal. However, it would not be a long drive ;
they had rugs, wrappers, and Ulsters, and there is no better
exertion in the world than the wielding of a supple spinning
rod. Rory trotted without a slip over the ground, and soon
brought the adventurers to Harvey’s boat-house.

Said Thornbury, “You may talk of the joy-inspiring
features of spring, laud the more matronly charms of sum-
mer, and paint and sing the beauties of mellow autumn;
but, so long as it be thorough, give me a winter scene.”

Here before the sportsmen lay an immense lake of oval
shape, its waters, in the pure white setting of the snow-
covered earth, dark almost to blackness. Beyond the
further shore were seen the blue straight-rising smoke of a
hamlet, the pointed spire of the church that to-morrow would
ring a merry Christmas chime, the peeping chimneys of the
cottages, and the long outstretched motionless arms of
the windmills on the higher ground. The bared limbs of the
larger trees were powdered lightly on the upper portions
of the branches ; the smaller boughs and the hedges were

Christmas Eve tn a Punt. 219

like fine coral ; the sere amber leaves of the oaks were plainly
visible in the clear atmosphere. Nor cattle, nor herdsmen,
nor horses, nor flocks were to be seen; birds in columns,
and lines, and masses, regular and irregular, were manceuv-
ring over the water and uplands. The tall sedges and
bullrushes, dry and yellow and ghostly, around the margin
of the lake, rustled and rattled as the wind shivered fitfully
through them.

“ How picturesque it all looks in the spotless veil which
conceals what is unlovely!” Thornbury ejaculated. “How
ethereal the smoke hovering over the snug hamlet ; how fair
the country in its silent repose !

‘‘The cormorant on high
Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.
Loud shrieks the soaring hern ; and with wild wing
The circling sea-fowl cleaves the flaky clouds.”

“When you’ve made an end of your ecstacy, Thornbury,”
broke in his companion, “we had better push off. The
days are short now.”

That was the only fault to be found with Harvey; he
had no soul for poetry. But he was right. They pushed
off, selecting a small half boat and half punt. Harvey said
it would keep him warm to row about while Thornbury cast
right and left ; so the lad who had met them at the boat-
house took the cart to the farm where Rory usually found
stabling, and was directed to return at four o’clock. There
was quite a collection of punts in the boat-house; long
narrow craft decked with canvas, variations of the old Poole
punt, boats with sails, boats with oars, boats with broad
paddles and setting poles; boats with oars muffled, oars
tied, and oars loose ; boats, in short, for the serious business
of wild-fowl shooting in all its branches, and boats for the

220 By Stream and ‘Sea,

lighter demands of pleasure and half-hearted sporting. The
little punt in which the friends put off was of the latter
category—a snug, round-bottomed, snub-nosed affair, just fit
for the work in hand.

It was cold to be sure, but when they were fairly at work
—one with the oars, the other with the rod—a healthy glow
shone on their faces. Although a little snow had fallen in
the water, there had not been sufficient to constitute the
mixture the angler dreads as snow broth; certainly not
enough to put the jack off the feed. There fell to Thorn-
bury’s lot on that twenty-fourth of December on Turnhill
broad as lively a bit of sport as often falls to one man in
one day. Spinning with small rudd—the store-box having
run out of roach and dace—he tickled the serrated jaws of
many a prowling /wce. None of the fish captured were very
weighty, but the numbers told well. The mighty patriarchs
of the deep somehow kept quiet; so did the very small
jack, but the five, six, and seven pound gentlemen appeared
to snap at anything and everything. They were taken far
out, and close to the boat ; in some instances the long dark
form would follow the spinning bait like a gliding shadow
to within six inches of the boat, then there would be a bang,
bang, and a swirl of the tail on the surface as the fish
turned to go off with three or four flights of triangles in his
jaw for Christmas fare. Two fish actually leaped out of the
water in pursuit of the bait.

Harvey enjoyed the success as much as the angler did—
true mark of the sportsman. Yet, as has been observed in
the prologue of this little story, some people are never
satisfied. The bottom of the boat was, before very long,
covered with the brightly-mottled, olive-hued slain ; never-
theless, Thornbury would not be comforted until that
monster which every fisherman carries in his tackle-case, in

bas

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 221

the same way as the French soldier carries the field-
marshal’s baton in his knapsack, had come to hand. His
good friend by-and-by pulled him into the middle of the
broad.

“The big ones are in the deeps at this time of the year,”
he pronounced. “They never get near the reeds if they
can help it after November or thereabouts.”

He had him, by Jove! at last. The style of the fish’s
striking fairly took away the fisherman’s breath. It was not
the waggle, waggle, whack sort of strike, but one strong,
swooping pounce, succeeded by a rush which none but a
fool would attempt to check. I here repeat that Harvey
was a true sportsman. In this supreme moment he was
silent. A common man would have bawled—

“Be careful, Thornbury, my dear boy,” or “Gad, you'll
lose him if you don’t look sharp,” and so forth,

Harvey simply rested on his oars and watched for emer-
gencies, backing after the fish when it was apparent that he
meant to fight for his life, having perhaps previously marked
a few small water-fowl or a favourite brother for his Christ-
mas dinner. Seen from the shore it must have been an
edifying tableau—the intrepid angler standing in the boat,
his rod bent in a graceful curve towards the water, and the
oarsman cleverly following in the direction of the runaway
fish. They were the sole occupants of the middle distance
of that wintry picture.

The description shall not be prolonged. Say, for short,
that that Christmas Eve pike gave the pair twenty minutes’
play; say half an hour or more, if you will The im-
portant point, so far as the fish was concerned, is that
they caught him; so far as the captor was concerned, that
he weighed five-and-twenty pounds, seven ounces, and
eleven-fifteenths.

222 By Stream and Sea.

After the excitement of the capture, Messieurs Kype and
Thornbury, B.A., made a discovery. It was freezing hard.
The rings of the rod where the wet line had passed in and
out enclosed rapidly thickening inner rings of ice ; the line
was stiffened.

“You’ve done very well, old fellow,” Harvey said; “sup-
pose we go ashore now. We have worked our way far
across the broad, and it will take us some time to get back
again. We shall find Rory champing by the boat-house,
and the good wife and bairns will be on the look-out.”

“ Agreed,” said the other. ‘“Enough’s as good as a
feast.”

A sip from the pocket-flask sealed the bargain. Thorn-
bury stored away his tackle, wound up the winch, unjointed
the rod, and announced himself ready and willing to go.

“Ym afraid I’ve been very selfish, dear boy,” he now
said. “You've been fagging for me all day, and I never
offered you a turn with the rod, nor gave you a chance with
the gun.”

Idiot that he was to touch that mainspring !

“Well,” slowly but not reluctantly remarked his friend,
“perhaps if we pull silently in-shore here, before we cross
over, we may get a shot at something that is worth the
taking to show the people at the Manor. There are only
four or five cartridges in my pouch ; I wouldn’t bring more
for fear of temptation. I’ll tell you what, though, with a
little hard weather we shall have these waters swarming
with wild-fowl. Pull slowly, Thornbury; don’t rattle your
oars in the rowlocks as if they were castanets.”

“Slowly it is,” he said, nautical if nothing else.

“Good,” he continued. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised
if this year we came back to the old times when you could
buy ducks at tenpence a pair. When the flights are good, I

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 20%

can assure you, Thornbury, these lakes are visited by tens of
thousands of birds in a night.”

A man must be flinty, I take it, if he could witness such
enthusiasm as that of Harvey Kype without sidling gradually
within its influence. Facing him as Thornbury did he
could see his honest eyes beaming at the thought of the
feathered hosts that journeyed to those parts when hard times
drove them to a great winter invasion. Most likely the
B.A.’s honest eye beamed too; he certainly listened with
pleasurable content (the pike being beneath the thwarts),
while he pulled softly into a small creek that penetrated the
reedy barrier.

“Hush a moment,” commanded Harvey.

And he hushed. They were now in one of those clear
lanes of deep water by which this singular series of lakes is
connected for miles at a stretch, and the watery pathway
was so narrow, and the reeds so high, that the men were
very effectually concealed.

After a pause Harvey smiled, and placed the gun ready to

hand. He had often astonished his friends by a mysterious
gift enabling him to understand the language of birds.
What to them was an unintelligible noise, was to him infor-
mation, music. The cry of a bird revealed to him some-
thing more than its species—it sometimes warned him of its
intentions, and told him its feelings and aspirations. So
now—
“ Ducks,” he said:; “and they are just settling between
themselves whether they shall go into the next broad, or
betake themselves to the Mill Marsh at the other end of
this. Ah! they’ve heard us. The old woman has ceased
her loud talk, and there isn’t a cackle amongst a hundred of
them now.”

It was not a wild duck, however, that would detain

224 By Stream and Sea.

Harvey now. His larder was, so to speak, full of them.
Thornbury knew well enough what he wanted. He had
expressed a wish to have in his collection a Paget’s Pochard,
and that is a description of fowl not to be bagged every
day.

They stole cautiously through the passage and paused,
holding on by the reeds at the mouth of the second lake,
Turlingham Broad by name. It behoved them to be wary.
The Dunbird is one of the most artful of aquatic birds,
as any professional fowler will tell you. When every other
kind has been enticed into the decoy-pipe, Master Pochard
either remains without or dives and retreats before he can
be captured. At the Manor, they had eaten of this bird on
the previous evening, and agreed that in flavour, as in
appearance, he was eminently worthy of comparison with
the famous canvas-back duck of America. It was in dis-
cussion over the dainty morsel Thornbury had mentioned
his desire to have that rare variety, Paget’s Pochard. Hence
the present action.

“Dunbirds, as I live!” whispered Harvey, pointing to the
centre of the lake. They could hear their widgeon-like note,
softened by distance, and see them upon the water in con-
siderable numbers, scattered too over a large space.

Harvey Kype’s blood was up, and the passage overhead
of a goodly skein of geese did not at all tend to keep it
down. Pulling stealthily, first down by the reeds as a flank
movement and then out into the open, the sportsmen
thought neither of home nor beauty. To shorten the story,
however, their stalking was fruitless ; Harvey had predicted
as much though a chance shot was possible, if not probable.

“Ttis darkening very suddenly,” Thornbury said.

“Yes; and here comes a snowstorm,” ejaculated his
companion.

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 225

The snowstorm came and took them completely by
surprise. It was driven down the broad from the north by
a high wind, that grew into a gale in a few minutes. The
B.A. had often read of the blinding attributes of snow, and
was now fated to learn by bitter experience that it was
something more than a poetical phrase. It seemed that in
a few seconds they were completely wrapped up in snow
that came from every point of the compass, and that whirled
upwards as well as downwards, the flakes fighting and
dancing in the maddest fashion.

‘Where are the rugs?” Harvey asked. ;

“In the bow of the boat, under the waterproof,” the
other answered, turning round to bring them forth.

“ Heavens! you have let the oars go adrift.”

Alas! too true. Buffeted by snow and wind, Thorn-
bury had overbalanced himself, tumbled backwards into
the bottom of the boat, and given the little sturdy oars
such an impetus that they disappeared like darts into the
water, and came up probably several yards from the
boat. I say probably, because the storm still wrapped the
two men in its pitiless folds, and shut them in to them-
selves.

‘‘ This is serious,” Harvey said, looking around and sorrow-
fully referring to his watch. “It will soon be dark; we
have no oars; there is not a board in the boat that will do
for paddling, not even a stretcher; we can’t see our hands
before us; it snows and blows harder every minute; in half
an hour it will be black as pitch, and we are driving to
some place or other at a very decent rate.”

He was a sound judge; it was exceedingly serious, and
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn himself could not have summed
up the evidence more pointedly. They were in for it
indeed. After all their rosy visions and promises and

Q

226 By Stream and Sea.

expectations, the end of all appeared to be Christmas Eve
in a punt !

Night came on apace, and something more, and the
battle of snowflakes raged incessantly, the only difference
being that whereas at first the combatants were small and
hard—the militia, let us say, of the corps d@’armée—they were
now the guardsmen of the force—large white blossoms of
snow that smote you with a decisive pat, and stuck with
more tenacity than was at all pleasant to the exposed por-
tions of the face.

“Thank goodness that farmer’s child had a trick of
making dolls’ beds and dresses of our rugs,” said Harvey.
“You see, things are not so bad” (he had to shout this
as through a speaking trumpet) “as they might be. But
for the little girl’s propensities for meddling with our pro-
perty the rugs would have gone on with the cart, and we
should perish with the cold. Come aft, Thornbury, and
cheer up. Let’s huddle together under the rugs, and defy
fate.”

They made the very best of their position ; but to his
latest day Thornbury says he shall not forget the horrors of
that Christmas Eve. Harvey could not conceal from him
that he was ill at ease. He laughed, or made believe to
laugh, and drank healths out of the flask, but he was all the
time thinking of that scene at the Manor House—the ruddy
glow of the fire, the subdued light of the old-fashioned
lamps, the holly and mistletoe, the anxious gudewife,
wretched and hoping against hope, the children frightened,
and dinner spoiling. Ah me! and all this through a
moment’s clumsiness, to which Harvey Kype made not the
ghost of areference. Thornbury would have been grateful
had he clubbed him with his breechloader.

He may not have intended to punish the author of the

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 227

mishap by a succession of unintentional backhanders, but his
conversation, by reason of its very cheerfulness, had that
effect upon Thornbury. Under the rugs, the wind shriek-
ing and the snow sweeping and circling as much as ever, he
would break out thus, in the gentlest of tones—

“Sorry, old fellow, about the yule log. We're bound to
miss that, anyhow. It is, as I think the wife told you, a
particular custom of ours. The yule log orthodox might be
either of oak orash; but in the olden time it was the fashion
to light it on Christmas Day, keep it burning for an hour,
then take it off and preserve it for the following year. We
had a great discussion a few years ago as to. whether we
should have oak or ash, and resolved, in full household
session, to burn, as a compromise, an ashen log on Christ-
mas Eve, and an oaken billet on Christmas Day. There’s a
capital log for to-night, but I know they won’t put it on if we
are not there. Why don’t you smoke?”

Then they would smoke through holes in the wrappers,
and after a decent interval of silence the forgiving victim
would resume—

That collection of mine is looking up famously, and
Alice gives me most valuable help in the artistic furnishing
of the cases. Since you were here last I’ve set up the
osprey, marsh harrier, Arctic tern, knot, Bewick swan,
Temminck’s stint, and a lovely bean goose.”

“Oh! hang your goose!” cried Thornbury; “how the
dickens can you think of anything at all now? We shall
die on this infernal waste of water.”

“Well, not immediately at any cost, if we can help it.
There is room, though, to fear being frozen in; then we can
get ashore on the ice. At present we are driving, slow but
sure, to the lower end of the broad; twenty to one, if we
don’t run ashore, that we slip into the next broad, and so on

228 By Stream and Sea.

to the ocean. But cheer up. How thankful we ought to’
be! If the wind did not lash the water, we should have
been frozen in long before this.”

Grazing against something as the punt passed on, the
belated ones popped simultaneously from beneath their
covering and grasped the reeds, thankful that they had at
least the means of keeping themselves from travelling. The
wind shrieked less; became only reasonably strong, changed
from howling to grumbling, and, finally, in a sobbing whine,
scuttled away across the flats to the sea. The snowflakes
gave up fighting, agreed to make it a drawn battle, and fell
peaceably without interfering with each other’s freedom.

Harvey was equal to the occasion. It was nine o’clock ;
in a couple of hours they might be at Kype Manor, though
that was not likely.

“Now, Thornbury,” he said, “let us take another pull at
the flask, light our pipes, and act.” Then, as he kindled
his bird’s-eye, he remarked slyly between the puffs, “How _
picturesque it all looks in the spotless veil which conceals
what is unlovely!”

“No more of that, for mercy’s sake!” Thornbury implored.

“ How ethereal the smoke hovering, etc.,” he continued.

Surly as Thornbury was, he could not but acknowledge
that the hit was palpable and fair. They made fun over
it together, and hauled the boat along the edge of the reeds
—hauled, hauled, hauled, at snail’s pace, for two mortal
hours, and, as they discovered afterwards, hauled nearly
round the entire broad. What flights of wildfowl there were
after the storm! Harvey talks to this day of the teams of
ducks, rushes of dunbirds, coveys of coots and greylag
geese, that doubly darkened the night, and kept the water
alive until the frost began to tell upon it.

Hard upon midnight a water passage hove in sight on

Christmas Eve in a Punt. 229

the larboard bow. They rounded into it, crackling through
the wafer ice, still progressing by means of the reeds. It
reminded them of the habitual drunkard, whose only means
of reaching home is to place his back against the wall
directly he gets outside the tavern-door, and slowly trundle
himself in an upright position along the fronts of the houses
until he rolls against his own door. How long they were to
progress in this fashion was a very uncomfortable problem
to face. They were embarked upon an apparently illimit-
able enterprise. Penetrating that dense forest of reeds was
out of the question. ,

“Hark! That’s Giles’s watchdog,” said Harvey.. “We
are near the hamlet. Ah! you may talk of the joy- nee
features of spring ; you—— ”

Crack ! crack !

The mocker had cut his mockery short ; he had taken up
his gun, and like lightning-brought down a bird that’ rose
out of, or somewhere. near, the reeds.

“That’s your bird,” he said. “It has dropped in the
reeds. We must fetch it.”

The little boat cleft the tall reeds easily; the pochard '
was, in good luck, retrieved by Thornbury almost at once ;
and, best of all, they discovered a method of approaching
the shore. Worst of all, however, they had to get over-
board and plunge up to their waists in mud and water to
drag the boat after them.

Mr. Giles, the worthy farmer of the picturesque hamlet,
stared somewhat under his tasselled nightcap when the
gentlemen from the Manor threw shot at his casement, and
calmly stated their case. Hearing their determination to
proceed at once, he roused up a carter, and despatched
them in a neat two-wheeled vehicle without springs, and
which had been recently employed in the conveyance of
artificial manure.

230 By Stream and Sea.

A pretty figure they must have cut! The ladies were all
in the hall porch waiting for them, and the place was in a
blaze of light. Tracy had met them at the end of the
drive, where, in shamefacedness, they alighted from the
savoury chariot, and his loud laughter had forewarned the
ladies that there was no mischief to grieve over.

The returned prodigals advanced, pretending to enjoy
the joke, Harvey with Paget’s Pochard dangling in his right
hand, Thornbury, B.A., with the large pike trailing upon
the snow from his left hand. Their grinning attempt at
laughter must have been ghastly indeed. They were thickly
caked with frozen mud of a rich black colour, and the
smears on their faces presented a fine example of light and
shade. As they slunk off to the kitchen, the worthy spec-
tators of the wanderers’ return laughed until the tears
streamed down their cheeks.

That was right. The sportsmen had, in their pretended
enjoyment of their mishaps, advanced. upon the party with
a gaily-said “ Merry Christmas to you all,” and, to do every-
body justice, although it was two o’clock in the morning, a
merrier beginning of Christmas was never witnessed.

PART Ti,

NOTES BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
AUSTRALIA.

em ri hoe,

MY OCEAN LOG.

IN SEVEN ENTRIES.

FIRST ENTRY.
FROM NEWCASTLE TO PORT SAID,

NGLAND is doubly dear to the man who has left it ;
yet it has, when the fit seizes it—and that is not
seldom—a villainous climate. In days to come,

when home-sickness gnaws at the heart, the emigrant may

yearn even for English fogs and east winds, but never can -
he desire to pass through two such days as those which
marked the commencement of this long voyage of mine from

Newcastle to Brisbane, capital of Queensland.

The Tyne is a fine river—for business purposes; and, as
aquatic men are aware, some excellent boating is done upon
its turbid tide. Far up in the country the young stream
adds to the beauty of Northumberland landscape, and affords
good sport to the angler. But the scenery from Newcastle
to Tynemouth is, to put it in the mildest form, depressing—
ay, depressing under the most flattering conditions. The

234 By Stream and Sea.

patriot who loves to behold material signs of his country’s
prosperity cannot do better than steam up the Tyne; the
artist going forth in search of the beautiful should choose
another way. The outward-bound traveller wishing for final
glimpses of home that shall be pleasant to recall upon distant
shores could not do a worse thing than sail from the Tyne
on a foggy January afternoon, when the smoke hangs like a
funeral pall over the grimy docks and dingy river banks, and
the pervading gloom penetrates one’s inner being.

The east coast of England has neither the variety of the
indented western shores of our islands, nor the bold charac-
teristics of the southern cliff-land, but it has its agreeable
points. At any rate, it is better than none. But good or
bad it availed us little, as, the land wholly obscured, our
noble vessel crawled through the foggy night at slow speed,
the dismal steam-whistle hooting at frequent intervals to
warn other belated ships of our neighbourhood. After
trying our best during four-and-twenty hours of thick fog
and piercing cold, the anchor was cast, and, according to
the maritime law in- such cases made and provided, the
clangorous bell, in lieu of the whistle, was kept going night
and day. There is—as we had often heard and read, but
now knew from chilling experience—no such dangerous or
disagreeable navigation as that in the shoal water of which
the Goodwin Sands are a dreaded and terminating feature.

We were lying somewhere near a fishing ground, which
to me was a kind of native heath. Now and then my old
friends the fishing smacks came and went ghostlike, magni-
fied by the fog into gigantic and weird figures.

During a partial clearance of the thickness, a smack ap.
peared a short distance at sea, and we found some occupation
in watching the men shooting their long line for cod-fishing.
This is purely a winter pursuit of the East Anglian fishermen,

From Newcastle to Port Said. 235

and is by some conducted not far from shore. The majority
of the fleet which in the herring season I had seen busy
with their drift nets were now trawling in the North. Sea.
The trim yacht-like cutter which in the afternoon sailed across
our bows towards land was one of the fleet carriers whose
business it is to convey the smacksman’s hauls to shore. As
far distant as the eye could stretch in the miserable yellow
haze you might descry a keg-like buoy floating in the sea,
conspicuous afar by reason of a blue flag fluttering from its
head.

This was the termination of the cod-line which we had
watched the men in the boat shoot out from the smack. It
was an immensely long line, and attached to it by snoods six
or seven feet long were probably a hundred or a hundred
and twenty hooks baited with sand launce, mussel, or morsels
of fresh white fish. Cod is the one sea-fish that is caught
only by hook and line as a matter of habitual business, and
when the creature does bite he takes the bait freely. I have
heard of three hundred fine cod captured by one boat during
a single night of long-line fishing.

The line having been shot across the tide, the crew of our
smack in view proceeded to fish with hand-lines from the
deck of their craft ; and in default of better employment our
first officer kindly got out such tackle as the steamer carried,
and we attempted a little angling on our own account. But
our lines were too coarse and we had nothing but butcher's
meat for bait. To state this is tantamount to saying that
our labours were in vain, for the small fish which alone were
likely to cross our station were not to be caught in so igno-
minious amanner. Nevertheless we tried perseveringly, and
deserved better fortune than befell us in our last bit of
angling in English waters.

Ah! how well one knew whither those birds were bound ;

236 By Stream and. Sea.

nor was it without a pang that one speculated as to when, if
ever, one should again breathe the pure air of those splendid
Broads which in winter teem with wild fowl, and from whose
waters, in the quietude of many a summer morning, one had
captured the shining bream until one’s arms ached with the
exercise. Doubtless, as the short January day was closing,
and as we paced the deck and called up many a delightful
angling reminiscence, the gunners and punters were out upon
the muddy banks of the creeks, in their flat-bottomed boats,
looking after ducks and geese,.and bagging an occasional
rarva avis driven thither during the storms of the previous
month.

Why, but a week since, a piscatorial friend in one of
the lovable angling clubs of town had filled me with envy
and desire as he told his experiences with yacht and gun
upon this coast, and to-day each land-bound bird seemed to
be a messenger from that snug room with Frank Buckland’s
grand cast of the giant pike taken in Windsor Park on the
sideboard, a tray of fine perch, pike, and roach fresh from
the Thames on the table, and Rolfe’s inimitable pictures (the
genial artist was himself one of the company) interspersed
with the stuffed fish on the walls. Oh! excellent true
Waltonians, Stanley anglers, and West End Piscatorials,
when shall I look upon your like again?

It was not till the morning of the third day that we were
emancipated from the bondage of fog and shoal, and able to
put our pilot over the side in the Downs. Then the voyage
commenced in good earnest ; familiar landmarks passed in
review ; at night the brilliant beacon of St. Catherine’s at
the back of the Isle of Wight gleamed boldly over the.
waters, and a soft haze of light brooding over the land
marked the whereabouts of Ventnor, where, one might dare’
assert, midwinter though it were, you could find a bouquet

From Newcastle to Port Sard. 237

of flowers in the open air. Next evening, as a farewell
token, came Start Point.

One traveller was there upon the deck who looked long
and wistfully towards the Devonshire shore, albeit its out-
lines were indistinct. That wistful looker was, on the feet
of fancy, roaming booted and basketed over bonny Dart-
moor, picking out its delicate little trout from the purling
brooks ; was climbing the Tors into an atmosphere of dry
champaign, to feast his eye upon the lovely panorama that
stretched between his moorland standpoint and the Cornish
hills in the west. In his pocket-book there was, as there
had been by accident during the two previous years, a speci-
men fly known to Devonshire anglers as the Meavy Red,
and he must forsooth bring it forth to inspect it in the un-
certain flicker of the binnacle lamp, and wonder if that tiny
artificial insect would again be cast upon any waters.

Eight bells cut the reverie short. It was appropriate that
Milton’s lines should that very evening fall in my way, for a
truer description of what was lying in our wake could not
be :—

‘¢ Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
While the landscape round it measures
Russet lawns and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray ;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The lab’ring clouds do often rest ;
Meadows trim with daises pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide,

Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom’d high in tufted trees.”

And now being fairly at sea, may I be allowed the luxury
of open confession? I have no objection to plead that
there is something more resounding—call it pretentious if
you will—than correct in the title chosen for these chapters.

238 By Stream and Sea.

A “log” should be distinguished, above all its other qualities,
by the painful minuteness of its details ; it should bristle with
facts and abound with figures. In this sense “My Ocean
Log” will be a rank imposition ; it is only as the fancy hits
me that I enter my paragraphs, and it does not hang heavy
upon my conscience if the topic which intrudes itself be but
indirectly connected with the voyage.

Would the fortunate gentlemen of England who sit at
home at ease be surprised to discover that in these days an
ocean trip is apt to be an extremely humdrum affair? A
journey of between sixteen and seventeen thousand miles,
extending over, say,a couple of months, might perhaps be
expected to produce a heavy crop of exciting adventures.
But such is not my experience. A veritable log of our
voyage from England to Australia would be, no doubt, more
interesting than Bradshaw’s “Railway Guide,” but not much.
The fact is, there is nothing new in these days: we know
all about everything ; and there is.no denying that steam,
while it has given us rapidity of communication and
conveniences and luxuries which never entered into the
conceptions of the mariners of the wooden-wall period, has
introduced a wonderfully prosaic element into travel. The
man who used to sail round the world was a hero ; now he
is merely a globe-trotter. For which and other reasons I
post up “ My Ocean Log” after my own fashion, and cherish
the assumption that the reader knows as much of the mere
maps of the route as the writer himself.

Suppose we take, then, at a bound, the Bay of Biscay?
This is an expanse of water with which all the terrors of the
ocean are associated, and, as we know full well, many a
gallant ship has been drawn down into its treacherous depths.
But the experienced sailors on board assured me that storms
in “the Bay” are the exception rather than the rule: that

From Newcastle to Port Satd. 239

they are awful when they do rage, but that on the whole there
are many other latitudes more dreaded by the mariner.

We. naturally expected to meet with a rude Biscayan
reception in the month of January, but we encountered
nothing unpleasant save a ludicrous rolling motion, due
rather to some previous disturbance than to present tempest.
The dark billows had never a crest, and were scarcely curled
by the breeze; but they were long and high notwithstanding
—very innocent and smiling of countenance, but downright
teasers in their actual effects. A steadier or better sea-boat,
or a better handled, than the Eastern and Australian Com-
pany’s R.M.S. Queensland* never sailed the seas, but she was
compelled to give in to the Bay of Biscay ; after a few gallant
attempts at resistance she rolled until the decks described
angles of any number of degrees.

If you intend to travel on the ocean never write a book
about shipwrecks. That was an enormity I once perpetrated,
as I had good cause to remember during the first night’s roll
and racket in the Bay of Biscay O! Disasters that had long
since, as I imagined, escaped my memory were brought to
mind by some evil spirit, which took a delight in marshalling
before me the details in their most harrowing form.

“Look you, my brave comrade,” it would whisper, “ you
_ pretend that you are enjoying the fun of this midnight
uproar, the portmanteau rushing after the hat-box, the glasses
crashing in the saloon, the cabin floor the arena of contend.
ing pieces of furniture. Remember, it was in the Bay of
Biscay that the Kent, East. Indiaman, was lost through just
such rolling as this; here went down the ill-fated Amazon ;
and what of the Zondon with her 230 lives, or the Captain
with her 500 brave blue jackets, off Cape Finisterre yonder?”

* Run down and lost, within a few months, on the Australian coast,
by a clumsily-sailed steamer.

240 By Stream and Sea.

In this manner one of the memories of bygone work arose
to haunt the dreams and harry the dozer. Then falling half
asleep, I became-oblivious of storm and sea, and dreamt
I was jack-fishing at Luton Hoo, a privilege so rare that I
strove to make the most of it. It seemed to be an immense
float that was bobbing up and down; but there are big fish
in those waters, and the bait, from the motion it imparted to
the float, must have been lusty and lively. By-and-by this
large round float began to sink lower and lower and lower;
what a splendid run it was !

Ay. The circular porthole upon which I had fixed a
dreamy gaze had with the roll of the ship gone down as my
berth came up, and the water obscuring it for a while
accounted for its final disappearance. Altogether that was
a funny night in the Bay of Biscay, and the steward, I noticed,
had not many passengers to wait upon at the next breakfast
table.

The sea-gulls, being the only living creatures to look at
for days together, obtained a lion’s share of attention. You
cannot angle for gulls as you do for the wandering albatross;
that is to say, you may angle for them if you choose, but it
will be to no purpose. ‘The gull is a sufficiently pretty bird,
but it is not what is called interesting. And what is the use
of shooting it? Few commanders of a large steamer would
be willing to stop their ship in her proud career of twelve
knots an hour, and man and lower a boat, to pick up the
fowl which an idle passenger had shot. Else we might have
brought down several which, wheeling over the stern, pre-
sented that desirable under-view of the breast which is any-
thing but favourable to the bird under the observation of a
good marksman. We had gulls at all times around us in
the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean, and the pretty
black and white winged kittiwake was frequent as we neared
the Spanish coast.

From Newcastle to Port Sard. 241

In the Mediterranean one afternoon I noticed a fine
brown-backed fellow amongst the flock that followed us to
pick up whatever unconsidered trifles the cook gave to the
waves. The bird’s left leg was dangling, as if broken—a
_particularly noticeable disarrangement of the gull’s physical
economy, considering the compact manner in which in flight
its pink legs and feet are tucked up under its shapely body.
In other respects, too, the bird was noticeable; it was
larger than its comrades, its wings were stronger, and it was
always in the forefront, and boldest of all in circling over
the poop. About the same time next day, what must have
been the identical bird still flew in our wake, and there it
remained at dusk. In the four-and-twenty hours the steamer
had made 250 knots in the teeth of a strong head-wind ; it
was almost incredible that a bird could have performed this
‘feat of endurance, but the evidence was overwhelming.

A starling boarded us in the Mediterranean, a stray,
panting, tired-out castaway, that must have hailed from the
dusky mountainous coast of Algeria, about twenty miles off.
Starlings are not in the habit of making journeys except in
large flocks, and one would like to have heard the story,
perhaps tragical, perhaps romantic, of this feathered waif’s
unfortunate flight. It was at its last extremity when it
reached the ship and perched upon the gunwale of the
captain’s gig; after a few minutes’ rest it was able to take a
feeble flight into the shrouds, to which higher refuge it was
driven by an attempted capture by one of the crew. The
bird, in lieu of the trim and prettily-marked plumage of good
condition, was a rumpled mass of faded feathers. The men
chivied it from point to point, until it reached the mainyard.
When the field was clear it descended, very warily watching
all the time, and enjoyed a hearty feed from the poultry
coop. It took leave of the ship some time during the night.

R

242 By Stream and Sea.

A day or two previously, a couple of large hornets gave us
a passing call, having been tempted fifteen or eighteen miles
from their sunny haunts in Estremadura by a light wind from
the land. Under similar conditions butterflies have been
seen over a hundred miles at sea.

A very jolly set of dogs the porpoises appear to be: quite
the Mark Tapleys of the sea. Even in captivity, when de-
prived of the society of their playfellows, they are admirable
examples of making the best of things. A porpoise with
whom I was once on intimate calling terms, that lived for a
while and died generally lamented in the Brighton Aquarium,
used to dart from the farthest limits of its spacious tank at
the sound of a whistle, and would take its food gently and
mannerly from Mr. Henry Lee’s hands. This intelligent
member of the whale family was a mature specimen, weigh-
ing about seventy pounds, and it ultimately died of diseased
liver—the old story, too much to eat and nothing to do,
The sea is their proper sphere, and right pleasant it was to
watch them in every variety of gambol.

Porpoises we saw everywhere—members of the same
order, at any rate, though perhaps of different species. Some-
times they would be small, and sometimes seven feet long,
but, light or heavy as their carcases might be, their spirits
were at what Tom Moore would call the “highest top-
sparkle.” They, of course, have their feelings like other folk,
and cannot always be in the same mood. Thus to-day they
would rise gently like trout, merely touching the surface to
blow, and disappearing noiselessly the moment that necessary
function was performed. To-morrow they would leap several
feet clear out of the water, as if engaged in a high-jump
contest, and at such times we could take stock, not only of
their sleek hides, but of their sly little eyes. In the morning
they would be seen rolling over lazily with that arched back

From Newcastle to Port Said. 243

which leads many people to entertain a very erroneous
opinion of the animal’s shape; in the afternoon they would
try their speed against that of the ship, and in every case
would out-distance her.

We entertained ourselves by backing our favourites, and
some excellent sport they gave us. A shoal of eight on one
occasion ranged up close to the ship, and without any
apparent effort kept a level pace until, apparently satisfying
themselves that the Queensland was their inferior, they gave
a frisky plunge out of the water, shot ahead at the rate of
twelve miles an hour, and in very wantonness darted across
the stem before going down into the blue depths with a lively
flourish. In the shoal you would generally find one or two
Specially “ larky” individuals, who were clever at maintaining
a sinuous course, at vaulting head over heels, at imitating
under water the flight of a bird, and at turning and twisting,
so that you could contrast the dark greenish-brown with the
dirty white underclothing.

If sometimes they rose like trout, at others they would,
also like trout, of a sudden, without any apparent cause,
cease playing, and withdraw from our gaze. The smallest
porpoises were those off Cape St. Vincent. They were,
perhaps, under twenty pounds in weight. The largest were
leaping high in the air off more southern seas, and there
were specimens amongst them that could not be far short of
two hundredweight each.

The good Saint Anthony must have been a good deal of
a humourist if he really preached that sermon yonder to the
fishes. By great good luck, one of the books in the ship’s
library contained Addison’s translation of the famous homily,
and after enjoying it over a Sunday afternoon cigar near the
pigeon-haunted island of Pantellaria, I copied an extract or
two for the benefit of such readers as have riot met with the
composition.

B44 By Stream and Sea.

The saint, it should be known, disgusted because the
heretics paid no heed to his discourses, went down to the
shores of the Adriatic and summoned a finny congregation.
Forthwith the fish came swimming around in multitudes,
ranged themselves in their tribes and households apart into
“a very beautiful congregation,” and listened with devout
attention to the saint. He, wondering and delighted at the
spectacle, found a secret sweetness distilling upon his soul
and an inner prompting that made him discourse,

The legend narrates that the preacher, employing the
orthodox mode of beginning, namely, “My dearly beloved
fish,” went on to point out that fishes have to be thankful for
many special mercies. “ For,” he observed, “ notwithstand-
Ing you are comprehended under the name of reptiles, par-
taking of a middle nature between stones and beasts, and
imprisoned in the deep abyss of waters; notwithstanding
you are tossed among billows, thrown up and down by tem-
pests, deaf to hearing, dumb to speech, and terrible to
behold ; notwithstanding, I say, these natural disadvantages,
the Divine Greatness shows itself in you after a very wonder-
ful manner. In you are seen the mighty mysteries of an
infinite goodness. The Holy Scripture has also made use of
you as the types and shadows of some profound sacrament.”

The preacher next reminded the fishes from Whom they
received being, life, motion, and sense, and, in compliance
with their own inclinations, the whole world of waters for
their habitation, observing of the latter—

“It is He that furnished it with lodgings, chambers,
caverns, grottoes, and such magnificent retirements as are
not to be met with in the seats of kings or in the palaces of
princes. You have the waters for your dwelling, a clear
transparent element brighter than crystal; you can see from
its deepest bottom everything that passes on its surface; you

From Newcastle to Port Said. 245

have the eyes of a lynx or an Argus, you are guided by a
secret and unerring principle, delighting in everything that is
beneficial to you, and avoiding everything that may be hurt-
ful; you are carried on by a hidden instinct to preserve
yourselves and to propagate your species; you obey in all
your actions, works, and motions the dictates and suggestions
of Nature, without the least repugnance or contradiction.

“The colds of winter and the heats of summer are equally
incapable of molesting you. A serene or a clouded sky is
indifferent to you. Let the earth abound in fruit or be
cursed with scarcity, it has no influence on your welfare.
You live secure in rains, thunders, lightnings, and earth-
quakes ; you have no concerns in the blossoms of spring or
in the glowings of summer, in the fruits of autumn, or in the
frosts of winter. You are not solicitous about hours or days,
months or years, the variableness of the weather, or the
change of seasons.”

At the conclusion of Saint Anthony’s sermon the fishes,
every angler will be proud to hear, bowed their heads with
becoming humility, moving their bodies up and down as if
approving of the good words that had been spoken.

SECOND ENTRY.

THE SUEZ CANAL AND RED SEA,

%\F this chapter should meet the eye of a lover of
angling, who is likely to be spending any time in
the Suez Canal, may I suggest that he should not
forget to include fishing-rod and tackle in his kit? From
what I saw and heard of the abundance of fish in those
waters it would, indeed, be almost worth the while of a
man of leisure to go to Port Said or Ismailia for the express
purpose of sport, especially if he also cared for wild-fowl
shooting.

Lazy Arab fishermen, in high-prowed boats, not twenty
yards from the Port Said wharves, standing picturesquely in
the bows of their boats with nought but a wisp of cloth
round their loins, made feeble casts with their nets, and
were instantly rewarded with a dozen or twenty fish. This
was enough to satisfy their moderate wants, and, their
bronze skins shining with wet, they pulled leisurely ashore,
cooked their spoil over the embers, squatted on their hams
to eat their meal, and fell asleep where they ate, for the rest
of the day. Mullet were plentiful, and a large fish, salmon-

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 247

shaped and prettily tinted with pink and gray. Sea bream,
and a number of fish new to me, were on sale in the fish
market. In the Arab village the native fish shops were in
the open air, and generally by the side of a gutter not half
so savoury as the fried fish. The negro boys seemed to have
a sweet tooth in the direction of fried fish, and so did the
spectral curs which, in Port Said, as in other Egyptian and
Turkish towns, do the work of scavengers.

The canal itself swarms with fish, which are taken in
considerable numbers by the sailors anchoring in the sidings
for the night. The mullet rarely take bait, but the salmon-
shaped fish above referred to, sea bream, a sea perch, and
cat-fish, are not at all fastidious. They prefer a whitebait
description of small fry first, after this a cockle, but do not
reject pork or beef. The native anglers use fine hooks and
lines, and no rods. Had we not by ill luck consigned our
rods and spinning-flights to the hold, “not to be used on
the voyage,” I am convinced we might have employed our
time most pleasantly and profitably, during the many hours
we were doomed to linger in the canal.

The native fishermen, chiefly Egyptian-Arabs, might be
seen stealing silently into the canal at nightfall, and at very
early morn they would be in the market with the results of
their night’s hook-and-line work—in some instances s0 lbs.
of fish and over, all of good size, and, until breakfast time,
good quality too, and of a dozen different varieties. After
nine or ten o’clock, fish in hot climates can no longer be
called fresh. The fishing is conducted on the old-fashioned
system to which we are accustomed at our English watering-
places, and with the varying fortune to which fishermen in
all climes and times are resigned. The Oriental—and I
presume the Port Said Arab is of that generic multitude—
does not lust after a meat-laden table, but is generally

248 By Stream and Sea.

satisfied with very frugal fare; fish, however, are favourite
morsels everywhere.

At Ismailia, we contrived to rig up some kind of tackle—
cross-stick, gut hooks, and ordinary deep-sea lines. The
promises held out to us were not realized; but I did
contrive to catch a brace of the beautiful fish that, I hold,
would have taken a spinning or live bait as keenly as pike
or trout. The French pilots informed me that it is called
the Bitter Lake trout, and that it is abundant in the canal
and all the lakes connected with it. But for its perch-like
dorsal fin it might pass anywhere for a well-fed, handsome,
deeply speckled sea-trout; and I can answer for its game
character, although my captives were not over half a pound
in weight. The seamen anchoring in the lake frequently,
according to trustworthy accounts, catch fish enough in an
hour or two to supply the tables for a couple of days. The
Waltonians in turbans and flowing robes, who came on ~
board -in the mornings with their night’s spoil, thought
nothing of fish of this kind 8 or g lbs. in weight, and
splendid specimens they were. I dare say I ought to be able
to give the name of this fish, but I must confess it was new
to me. It seemed as plentiful in the Greater and Lesser
Bitter Lakes as in Lake Timsah; and, on the latter half
of the canal, nude fishermen, sitting on the sand or in their
rude feluccas, and baking hard in the sun, waited patiently
for a communication from the bottom to their fore-finger.

At Ismailia one afternoon—for a break-down of the
engines, brand-new from a Tyne shipbuilding yard, detained
us in Lake Timsah for eight-and-forty hours—I cut me a
reed from the wayside, a lissom cane-like rod, fifteen feet
in length, and tapering from an inch in diameter to a point.
To this I attached an ancient fly-tracing, and having cut the
wings and body from a cinnamon fly that killed a fine trout

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 249

last year in a Surrey meadow knee-deep in grass and flowers,
and having, by the gift of a few centimes, persuaded a black-
eyed young Arabling to fetch a small heap of cockles, I
proceeded to angle from the jetty, in the company of a
couple of donkey boys whose love of sport tempted them to
neglect their duties and to come in for as neat a drubbing,
when detected, as any Old World pedagogue would desire.
The young rascals, I regret to say, caught nothing but their
whacking, while there seemed to be no limit to the number
of six-inch fry falling to my share. They were either mullet
or a charmingly tinted bream, but always the small fish prey-
ing about the woodwork. The engineer of one of the pilot
boats stepped ashore, and in a minute caught two silver-
sides, just the things for live or dead bait fishing, and for
that purpose he used them, threading a large single hook
through the skin of the side and hurling the bait with a
pound and a half of lead far out into the lake. He said he
generally took a fish as long as his arm when he tried.

But, for a moment, I must leave such trifles as natural
history jottings, to which I had at one time intended to
confine myself, and look at the Suez Canal from a practical
stand-point. It was not a bad idea to speak of it as a
continuous dock nearly ninety miles long, though the com-
parison was decidedly uncomplimentary to the genus dock.
Whatever else the famous canal may be, it certainly cannot
boast any charms of landscape scenery. A thread of silver
shot through a vast fabric of brown sand, it is still essentially
part only of a. desert whole. Yet it should have some attrac-
tions to the traveller using it for the first time, and this quite
apart from the new interest felt by politicians and financiers
now that, more than ever since its establishment, the scheme
has become deserving of the original titlh—“ Compagnie
Universelle du_Canal Maritime de Suez.”

250 By Stream and Sea.

In a small way, here you may consider yourself to be on
the threshold of the east; from the moment your ship leaves
her moorings in Port Said harbour the strangely-fascinating
life of the land of the morning sun begins to unfold itself,
The very dreariness of the outlook will probably be a
striking, if not welcome, change to the Englishman who may,
for the first time in his life, really know how to appreciate
the sweet shady lanes, lovely woods, and fair meadows of his
native land. More than this, spite of the notorious sterility
of the isthmus, the man who makes fair use of his powers of
observation may enjoy some effective and many curious
sights.

No doubt he must be somewhat of an optimist to do this,
for it is more than likely that the majority of travellers will
opine that a little—a very little—of the Suez Canal is enough
and to spare. The man of business, for example, firmly
believing in the creed that time is money, will regard every
moment of delay beyond the two days which should be the
duration of the fortunate voyageur’s transit, as an experience
against which it would not be unreasonable to rail; every
day beyond this limit will be a hardship grievous to be
borne, since by that time all the novelty will be worn
threadbare, and camels, Arabs, and landscape will have
lost all their picturesqueness, and become execrated objects
in a wide picture of desolation.

Sometimes a ship is eight days passing through the canal,
but this, of course, is an extreme case. The steamer in
which I myself performed the trip was two days in making
the first forty miles, and the vessel which preceded us was
delayed six days and nights in the canal through the eccen-
tricities of a Dutch trader, which manifested a perpetual
desire to thrust her snub nose into one bank, and her bald
round stern into the: other, leaving any ship that followed

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 251

the pleasant alternative of leaping over her or awaiting her
tardy emancipation.

Of course you will run ashore at Port Said, if you have
the chance, though you probably will not remain long within
its unsavoury borders. It is not an inviting town. How-
ever, the nimble, half-naked, and wholly uncleansed gentry
who bring your coal on board get through their work in an
incredibly short space of time, considering that the supply is
transferred from a barge alongside in baskets borne on men’s
shoulders. Fruit, too—ever welcome at sea—may be got at
Port Said ; melons, oranges, lemons, and dates all the year
round, and something better in season; also vegetables,
excellent fish, and general stores. Port Said is, at any rate,
serviceable. The place just now is said to be overrun with
rascally Greeks, who are ready, at a moment’s notice, to cut
your throat, rifle your pockets, or scuttle your ship. A few
nights before my arrival a youth had made a pile of money
at a roulette table; next morning he was found murdered
at the upper part of the town, and he had no effects on his
person.

In saying, however, that of course you will run ashore at
Port Said, I am assuming that you take no ladies with you.
Even the best part of the town, if there be a best where
everything seems to be bad, is no place for any person of
refined tastes ; and those who remain on board had much
better not be too curious in examining the wares which
rascally Europeans (dirty Frenchmen and women, or blear-
eyed Turks) hawk about the decks. The places of amuse-
ment seemed to be of the lowest description, and I doubt
whether in any tavern anything like fair accommodation can
be had for man or beast. The streets are foul, the people
unwholesome, and the precincts arid desert.

Ever so little greenery at Port Said would be grateful,

252 By Stream and Sea.

By the aid of a powerful glass I could make out a half.
withered shrub to the east of the Custom-house, otherwise
there was nothing growing to be seen. Round about the
harbour the red-tiled and white-walled houses are of fairly
respectable structure ; elsewhere Port Said has a decidedly
tumble-down appearance. The long breakwaters by which
the port is made approachable no doubt answer their design,
and could only have been laid down with much cost and
patient labour ; but rougher sea-walls were surely never seen.
These are typical of the town. It is a motley collection of
hastily put together shops and stores ; a place of temporary
sojourn for the odds and ends of all nations, and a per-
manent home for none. Surrounded by the desert primeval,
and glared upon by a pitiless sun, Port Said is fearfully
hot as a residence; no amount of jalousies and verandahs
can alter that fact. The trade is precarious, because the
customers are here to-day and gone to-morrow. ‘The entire
aspect of the place is consequently unsettled. There are
some barracks, truly, and soldiers, the former wretched
hovels, the latter terrible rapscallions in appearance. I saw
a sentry on duty in absolute tatters, and foul swine were
tearing at a sewer that ran at his naked feet. The tiles
were tumbling off the house of the chief Egyptian official ;
the civil servants of the Crown in the everlasting fez were
writing despatches and documents in a tenement to which a
village barn in England would be palatial.

In the Arab village, as they grandiloquently dub it, things
were more interesting, because there was no pretence at
civilization, and the native Egyptian-Arabs and negroes of
every description appeared in the scorching streets in all the
unconscious simplicity of their race, and in all the really
picturesque variety of costume peculiar to their tribalities,
Women covered from head to foot, save the two black

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 253

roguish eyes which they levelled at the passing foreigners ;
bronze-legged Egyptians engaged in their favourite occupa-
tion of doing nothing ; patriarchal Turks squatting on their
hams ; groups of ebony-faced men from all the torrid regions
round the Khedive’s dominion; wearers of turbans, fez,
skull-cap, and nature’s own wool; garments of many colours
and varying degrees of cleanliness, and vagabonds of every
description—these were to be seen swarming in the main
street of the Arab community outside of Port Said.

In a mosque we saw the faithful at their devotions. It
was a very tude temple. The long-bearded individual who
ascended the dovecote-looking perch to announce the hour
of prayer might have been improved by soap and water, but
from the earnest response made to his declaration I suspect
his harsh accents were

*¢Blest as the Muezzin’s strains from Mecca’s wall
To pilgrims pure and prostrate at his call.”

The council which administers the affairs of the Suez Canal
Company last year mooted the necéssity of increased ex-
penditure for the purpose of rendering more easy and more
rapid the passage of the canal. That this hits the blot you
perceive before you have advanced a mile from Port Said.
In the early days of the undertaking two objections were
made: it was predicted that in a short time the channel
must inevitably be filled by drifting sand, and it was declared
that the narrowness of the canal would prove a fatal bar to
prosperity. The first prediction need not now be considered
fora moment, since it has been abundantly proved that there
need be no apprehensions on that score. As to the question
of narrowness, that is at the present time an all-important
consideration.

The business of the company has increased at such a ratio

254 By Stream and Sea.

that the enlargement of the canal has become an admitted
necessity. During the last five years the tonnage passing
through the canal has quadrupled. In March, 1874, there
were thirty-three vessels at one time in the canal, and when
you consider that the speed of transit must not exceed five
miles an hour, and that the sidings are few and far between,
you may understand why something should be done. At
Port Said I found a general impression that the English
Government, in their new-born capacity of large shareholders,
would take the initiative in proposing the widening of the
canal as an improvement that must be effected if the pro-
prietors would secure from their remarkable enterprise all
that it is capable of yielding.

Having taken on board your pilot, you slowly make for
the canal. Perhaps, however, I should have mentioned that
the trifling ceremony of paying your account to the company
is first gone through. Prepayment saves time and simplifies
book-keeping. Now, the Suez Canal is a luxury that costs
jot a little. The tariff has been altered once or twice, but
it is now settled at a nominal 10 francs, but actual 14 francs
per ton, and ro francs per head for passengers. Our ship
was a moderately large one (2500 tons register), there were
next to no passengers, and we took in 150 tons of Welsh
coal at 35s. per ton; yet the money paid for canal dues and
coaling (the items being included in the same account)
amounted to £1176 Ios.

At last, then, we are in the canal—barges and lighters
under the one bank ; rusty cranes, broken-down trucks, and
dilapidated iron bars and wheels strewed higgledy-piggledy
on the other—Port Said all over. Physically and morally,
they never clear away the débris. However, we soon get
clear of the suburbs.

The shallow sheet of water to the right is what is left of

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 255

Lake Menzaleh, and the snow-white sea fowl, as we pass, are
in patches so plentiful that the expanse looks like a shimmer-
ing plain, variegated by beds of daisies. In the distance
the graceful latteen sails of the native feluccas flash and
fade. Here comes our first camel along the sandy path by
the canal. The Arab who leads it wears the universal turban
and striped calico robe to his knees, with continuations of
unadorned shanks; and the young Bedouin’s white teeth
gleam out of their copper casket when he observes that I
have my field glass levelled at him. The camel is, to be
accurate, a dromedary, laden with firewood grubbed out of
the grudging desert ; the solemn beast passes on with swing-
ing noiseless stride. Next behold a group of fellahs sitting
in the sand on the margin of the water. They are naked,
save a bit of blue cloth round the loins, and as imperturbable
of aspect as their passing friend the dromedary. So our
vessel crawls on between sand-banks at first low, but by-and-
by varying in height. In one stage they cannot be less than
forty feet high. You descry an occasional dromedary, or
ass, with natives in attendance; and so joyless is their ex-

pression that they increase rather than enlighten the general
desolation.

M. de Lesseps has said that not even a fly lives in this
desert ; and that may well be. There are telegraph poles
‘and wires, however, on one side, and on the other posts on
which the distances are marked every tenth of a mile. Here
and there a hut may vary the prospect, or one of the stations
where the signalman lives ; that is the extent of the outlook
for miles. At Kintara, where the road to Jerusalem crosses
the water, and where a score or so of negroes and Arabs
were sitting, motionless as statues, on the Syrian side, the
station-house is pretty, and the neatness of the village a great
relief to the jaded eye.

256 By Stream and Sea.

The canal is well worked and well kept, and is conducted
on a principle similar to that of the block system. of the
English railways. The captain of our steamer received his
orders by a code of signals from the station ahead, and the
purpose of these tokens during the first two days was that we
were to wait in the next siding—a small bay scooped out of
the sandbank—until some other vessel signalled from the
station beyond had passed. Repeated halts of from one to
two hours’ duration, and five miles an hour as the maximum
speed, severely tried our patience. It might have been
worse, however, for the heat (it was in January) was
bearable, and we were not, as many are, blinded by sand-
storms, although we had taken the precaution to lay ina
stock of wire-gauze goggles, which we were assured were the
only effectual protection for the eyes.

Ismailia is as pretty as Port Said is ugly. It was pretty,
as I saw it in the winter time—thermometer over 80° in the
shade—and when the foliage is at its best it must be indeed
an oasis in the wilderness. The houses are tasteful, clean
finished, and as substantial as they are required for such a
climate; the streets are laid out in good order, and the roads
are excellent. There are public gardens, pretty boulevards,
and well-shrubbed private grounds everywhere. The Greek
element crops up like a noxious weed even at Ismailia; but
they manage to keep it down, for this is the head-quarters
of the Suez Canal Company, and people have to behave
themselves accordingly.

The disarrangements in the engines of the steamship, which
caused our detention in Lake Timsah a couple of days,
gave us many runs ashore. M. de Lesseps has a charming
residence here, where he is emperor, and Madame no less
empress. The Khedive’s palace is a prominent object in the
foreground ; so is the distant and isolated “grand stand,” in

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 257

which the great personages who attended the opening of the
canal were entertained. Ismailia, from the centre of Lake
Timsah, is very inviting. A cool avenue of trees, bordered.
by thickets of tasselled reeds, twenty feet high, leads you~
across a small canal, through which the water of the sacred
Nile is conducted. Gigantic cacti, tree ferns, and similar
growths wave high above the tops of the walls. The shops
are good; there is a general air of civilization—which is none
the worse for being pronouncedly French—in the town.

In the gardens attached to the waterworks, which pump
400,000 gallons per day of Nile water into Port Said, I was
astonished to find a number of dear old friends—geraniums
‘and jonquils in full bloom, a bed of violets, gilliflowers,
mignonette, nasturtiums, roses, and many another English
flower. The strawberries were nearly gone, though some
fruit and blossoms still remained, and the last bunch of
grapes had been cut a week before. We wiped our steaming
foreheads .on the (to us) piping hot January day, and ex-
amined the lettuces, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and green
peas ; then the courteous manager of the works took us to a
little. orange grove, and plucked the fragrant fruit for our
refreshment. It is not every Eastern garden that possesses
remembrances of home after.this fashion ;:but the worthy
French gentleman is blessed with an: English wife, as the
Turks and infidels of Ismailia are proud to tell you.

At Port Said there were no donkeys ; at Ismailia all the
well-known scenes of Cairo. and Alexandria were repeated.
A wall-eyed Arab boy thought to drive a good business by
informing us that his animal was “the Claimant ;” another
beast was “Bismarck,” and another “ Ditchreally,”—the
nearest ‘rendering, apparently, that could be given by
native tongues to Disraeli’s name. Very few vessels, I
should remark, halt in Lake Timsah more than an hour—no

s

258 By Stream and Sea.

longer, indeed, than to give the Ismailia pilot time to put off
in his steam launch, and come on board to take charge from
his colleague, who had assumed command at Port Said.

The Frenchman, even in the desert, is ever gay, and must
have his little amusements. At Ismailia you may see him
sitting under the trees to keep up his remembrances of the
Champs Elysées by a temperate consumption of sugar-water,
iced’ syrups, and syphon drinks. Of course we found an
Irishman in Ismailia. Where do you not find one, especially
if there be a French colony anywhere handy? He owned a
splendid Arab horse that he intended to ride at the forth.
coming races at Alexandria, but the animal had been ridden
too hard from Jerusalem across the desert, and was in a
sorry plight when his Egyptian groom led him out for his
afternoon canter to the Viceroy’s palace. In his fez, and
from the fluent manner in which, as an officer of the telegraph
bureau, the owner of the Arab steed conversed with Turks,
Arabs, and niggers in their own tongues, I was puzzled to
account for his nationality until I discovered by accident that
he was a genuine son of green Erin. How out of place in
those sandy Egyptian wastes looked the telegraphic wires and
railway line !

At night we went the round of the places of public enter-
tainment. They were all well-conducted and some of them
really entertaining. In one concert hall we heard some
capital music from an orchestra composed of young German
girls, who discoursed most sweet strains from stringed, wind,
and brass instruments, and who, by contrast with the women
at the Café Chantant, looked the essence of homely sim-
plicity, and prettiness withal. There was a little too much
Wagner, perhaps, in the programme, but one could forgive
that in a bevy of genuinely blonde-haired enthusiasts fresh
from Fatherland.

The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 259

The liveliest audience was at the Café Chantant, where
there were a little ballet dancing of a free and easy character,
and one of the most dismal comic singers that ever earned
a living by public performances. The only comical thing I
saw during the comic man’s infliction was the blank astonish-
ment of an English sailor who found he had to pay four
shillings for a bottle of Bass’s beer, and who uttered an
exclamation so touching and so loud that the soz-disant
disciple of Momus, beholding perchance a dangerous rival,
looked stage daggers at him. There was a short Jallet
@ action very well done by three small boys and two fat young
women, and the glasses on the tables were set ringing again
by the boisterous applause of a party of officers from a
French corvette lying in the lake.

A bal masque was going on somewhere, for we saw a pro-
cession of devils, monks, crusaders, and mummers frisk by
just as a silent file of dromedaries laden with wood stalked
in from the outlying desert. The two oddly-contrasted
parties passed each other in the narrow thoroughfare, the
dromedaries snorting viciously at the outrageous figures, of
which we may be sure they had never dreamt in their
philosophy.

“And doth not a meeting like this make amerids?”
soliloquized my companion. It did make amends, and we
proceeded straightway to our boat.

After Lake Timsah the canal becomes a trifle more inte-
resting. Tamarisks and less graceful shrubs are trying to
grow around the ponds and lagoons flanking the southern
corner, and there is quite a copse of the species of wild
broom under which the prophet Elijah is said to have taken
his repose in ages gone by. In the matter of shelter the
prophet might certainly have done worse; and lo, as if to
make the remembrance of the seer complete as we pass, a

*

260 By Stream and Sea.

“

few ravens, representatives of the Heaven-sent messengers
who at another period of his life preserved him from starva-
tion, rise noisily from a hillock and make in haste for the
shores of the lake.

Bold scarified highlands appear rising steep out of the
billows of eternal sand, and we are delighted with a placid
lake fringed with nodding palms and other poetical trees.
Alas ! though the mountainous piles of sterility are real, the
rest is nothing but mirage. Coarse grass, as we proceed,
begins to grow by the deep, green water, and sometimes you
may actually see straggling sheep and exiled goats browsing
upon it. A dozen or so of white-robed Arabs and a string
of camels move across the plain in single file, two of the
men in advance carrying matchlocks that must have been
taken out of some collection of singularly antique armour.
Huts are more frequent; at one station a few women and
children, all huddled together on the sand, cover their faces
till we are out of sight.

The Bitter Lakes are forty leagues in circumference,
allowing you the luxury of proceeding at full speed for a few
miles. The water, as the name implies, is frightfully salt,
almost as salt as that of the Mormon lake, which, I believe,
yields one pail of salt to three pails of water. The canal
water, also, is so impregnated that it leaves a white line of salt
where it trickles, and, as every engineer who loves his boilers
knows to his Cost, encrusts everything it touches. Both the
Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah were mere sand basins until
the canal was opened ; they gave the excavators a good deal
of trouble, and to this day require continual dredging. From
the Bitter Lakes to Suez Bay the sand is as sandy as before ;
but tall cliffs and a ridge of rugged tableland that, as the
hours wear on, receive a succession of umbers, browns, and
greys from the sun, and in the evening display dark purple -

The Suez Canal:and Red Sea. 261

tints of inconceivable beauty, add variety to the horizon
line, until the Ottaka range becomes clearer and nearer, and
the white houses of Suez, glittering in the sun, warn us that
the desert lies behind us.

In leaving the canal I come back to my previous con-
clusions—first, that there will not be many travellers eager
to deny that a little of the canal is enough; and, second
that the widening of the channel is the chief question
for the consideration of the shareholders. Probably it
will be urged that the game is not worth the candle ; for to
make any improvement scheme final or effective the present
width of 72 feet of deep water must be at least doubled,
and that would be indeed a costly and troublesome, though
not perhaps in these days of scientific triumph, and with no
lack of labourers at hand, difficult business.

The proverb mentions a certain unmentionable person as
not so bad as he is painted. I will mention the Red Sea—
speaking of seas as I found them—in that conjunction.
That it was the cool season in those regions I knew, but I
had been led to expect a gradual frying even in January.
‘The temperature, in fact, was extremely enjoyable, as it had
been in the main from the time of our entrance into the
Mediterranean ; it was not till we were much nearer the
equator than the outlet to the Red Sea that we began to
know what heat really meant.

The scenery on either side of the Gulf of Suez is very
wild, and at times romantically sterile. One side was as bad
(or as good) as the other. It may be, as I have somewhere
read, that the Peninsula of Sinai is geographically, geologic-
ally, and archzologically one of the most interesting places
in the world, but it is not a whit the more attractive to the
-general traveller for those intrinsic merits. If the Arabian
side was not more fertile in the early days of the world than

262 By Stream aud Sea.

it is now the Israelites did not gain much by their flight from
the flesh-pots of Pharaoh.

The lofty hills skirting the tableland of the interior may
be, and some of them are, grand in their outline, but it
cannot be forgotten that they stand direction posts to the
Wilderness of the Wanderings. The sides of the hills and
rocks appear to have been calcined by a terrible convulsion,
and in places to have been seared as with a hot iron. The
occasional glimpses of Arabia and Nubia as you pass down
the Red Sea are of the same hard, burnt, treeless character,
and the only attractiveness lies in the fantastic forms of the
granite peaks and spurs. These, looked at with the most
interesting historical associations as motive power, are of
course not to be neglected, but the observer who had
recently been reading highly-coloured accounts of what the
Prince of Wales was to wonder at in his passage through the
Red Sea would not obtain the superb views he had been led
to expect.

THIRD ENTRY.

FLYING FISH AND THEIR ENEMIES.

HE flying fish seems to prefer wind, and is particu-
larly merry when the sea is agitated by a six-knot
breeze. Perhaps it would be more correct to say

that the larger fish which prey upon it are very much on
the alert on such occasions, even as the pike of the fresh
waters at home make more frequent demand upon the fisher-
man’s energies in rough than in calm weather. The fact
remains, on the evidence of my own observations renewed
every day for a fortnight, and on that of the seafaring
people on board, who must be excellent authorities on the
subject, that the flying fish appear in greater number and
friskiness on moderately rough days.

The movements of the flying fish are as graceful as a
swallow’s, and the creature is a much more shapely object
than I had been led to expect from pictures, written descrip-
tions, or the few preserved specimens I had seen. ‘The
stuffed affair at the British Museum, like all the other repre-
sentations of the fish world there, is, of course, an outrage on
Nature. The wings, large in comparison with the body,

264 By Stream and Sea.

which may ‘be compared roughly, in shape and size, to-a
Christchurch mackerel (a small, sweet-eating description
much prized on the Hampshire coast), are, as we saw them
in flight, outspread at right-angles, and underneath you might
at times catch sight of the second set of smaller wing-fins,
which are thought to have more to do with the actual flight
than the others. The upper wings (we may so term them
for convenience) were a dark brown in some, a reddish
brown in others, beautifully speckled in many, while the
tiniest varieties displayed brown fringes to wings which
differed but slightly from the grey-coloured back. The
twinkle of these singular membranes as the sun caught them
was a very beautiful sight.

No less beautiful was the method of flight. I am aware
that some naturalists deny that the flying fish flies at all, deny
that it flaps its wing-fins, deny or doubt that it has the
power of changing its course. If rising five or six feet out of
the water, skimming now up, now down, wheeling first to the
right and then to the left, and sustaining these movements
for a distance of a hundred yards or more, do not constitute
flying, there is no meaning in words. The fish did all this
unmistakably, and in their flight they repeatedly turned over
slightly on one side until the silvery white of their bellies
flashed again. Their sweep from the trough of the sea, paral-
lel with the side and over the summit of the billows, forcibly
reminded one of the joyous return of a martin to the house-
hold eaves. Sometimes two or three fishes would be in
company; sometimes a numerous shoal would get up from
close under the ship’s bows, scattering like a covey of par-
tridges, and with a patter-patter that recalled the wild fowl
roused from their reedy retreat by the margin of some inland
lake. They were probably frightened by the approach of the
noisy steamer, and dispersed beyond what is usual when

Flying Fish and their Enemies. -265

their motions are regulated by hungry pursuers swimming
in the rear. On such emergencies the shoal keeps well
together. I noticed that the “flights” consisted generally
of fish of uniform size, and not of an admixture of great and
small.

The most numerous shoals were of fish that could not
have been over six inches long, and this I take to be the
average dimensions of the species. Perhaps not more than
a dozen individuals of the multitudes I watched without
tiring in the Indian Ocean were a foot in length, and the
people on board were unanimous in saying that fourteen
inches is an extreme size. The majority of the fish reminded
one of the swallow tribe as much from their bulk as from
their rapid airy flights. At fifty yards’ distance a flying shoal
might be likened to a handful of half-crowns hurled into the
air by some submerged distributor of largess; should the
ship come unexpectedly into the very thick of the gathering
they would disperse on either hand with a flutter that might
go far to excuse the alarm of “ Breakers under the bow.”

The theory that the large pectoral fins, or wings, do not
actually flap may, after all, be well grounded. The doctor
of the ship and myself resolved ourselves into a,committtee
of investigation to decide this point, and leaning over the
bow we loyally performed our duties for the space of an
hour, during which hundreds of flying fish of all sorts and
sizes passed under our review, and frequently at such close
quarters that we could clearly mark the shape of their large
round eye. Notwithstanding these favourable opportunities
we could not agree in the result. The fish were here now,
and the next moment gone like a gleam, touching the top
of a wave perhaps fifty yards off, and away again with un-
diminished rapidity. I was certainly at first rather inclined
to the non-flapping theory as far as the major wing-fins are

266 By Stream and Sea.

concerned, but not with respect to the lesser pair underneath.
But afterwards I formed a decided opinion that the creature
begins its career by a rapid motion of the wing-fins, and
that, having acquired the requisite momentum, it keeps them
fixed and outstretched until it touches water once more.
The following I quote as a technical description of the
flying fish’s modus operandi :—

“‘The principal external agents employed in this mode of
locomotion are the large lobe of the tail-fin and the broad
transparent pectoral fins, which on this occasion serve at
least as a parachute, and which, being situated close to the
back, place the centre of suspension higher than the centre
of gravity. It is also curious to notice how well the specific
gravity of the fish can be regulated in correspondence with
the element through which it may move. The swim bladder,
when perfectly distended, occupies nearly the entire cavity of
the abdomen, and contains a large quantity of air; and in
addition to this there is a membrane in the mouth which can
be inflated through the gills; these two reservoirs of air
affording good substitutes for the air cells so freely distributed
within the bones of birds, and having the additional advan-
tage of being voluntary in their function.”

Whether the occasional dipping of the fish into the sea as
it flies is an absolute necessity to further progress is also an
open question, but it would seem reasonable to suppose
that the delicate wing-fins outspread in the sun and wind
would soon become dry, and, like the throat of the orator,
require occasional moistening. The fish does dip, and
pretty often too, but, it struck me sometimes, not because
there was pressing occasion for it so much as because the
ridge of the billow afforded a passing temptation. Neither
could it have been for purposes of rest after exhaustion, since
there was no pause; the fish on the wing simply brushed

Flying Fish and their Enemies. 267

through the water. without perceptibly “slowing” the
mysterious engine power with which it has been invested.

Very earnestly did everybody wish to welcome a few flying
fish to the deck. The mouths of those passengers to whom
the morning and evening publications of the ship—to wit,
the neatly got-up breakfast and dinner menus—were all im-
portant as official gazettes, remembered that there had been
no fresh fish for many days, and the officers and stewards
drove them frantic by repeating at every meal their descrip-
tions of the luscious morsel. It was little short of mockery
to tell us that the cook—and a capital cook that yellow-
bearded Frenchman was—had a special gift in the browning
of flying fish, and that, to a well-regulated human being who
was not hypocrite enough to affect contempt of good living,
nothing more delicately succulent, more exquisitely flavoured,
could be offered.

Was it only to tantalize that the chief officer told us how
last year, in the same latitude and almost the same longitude,
the deck one morning was covered with welcome fish, which
had taken a flight, alas! in the dark, from which there was
no return? If so, the second officer was in the plot, for he
supplemented his superior’s experiences with his own; the
effect of his asseverations being that many a time and oft he
had hung lanterns over the bulwarks and attracted the fish
to their doom—a cause and effect in which the sailor places
unhesitating belief, though I suspect there is about as much
ground for the notion as there was for the statement of the
ancients that the flying fish invariably flew ashore every night
to escape its manifold enemies at sea.

The flying fish undoubtedly does fly on board ships when
lanterns are suspended from the chains; but, then, just as
often it is found on deck when no such reputed lure has
been exhibited. However, that not at all uncommon cir-

268 By Stream and Sea.

cumstance of dead flying fish being found on a vessel’s deck
at daybreak did not happen to us. This was a matter of
special regret to me. I do not deny that I should have
been very glad of so agreeable an addition to the pleasures
of the table, but that there was a higher motive than that I
would fain protest.

Years ago, I remembered, the Rev. Mr. Wood, in his
“Popular Natural History,” pointed out that the climbing
perch and other fish of similar habits possessed certain
reservoirs of water which oxygenized the blood, but that
such a provision was not found in the flying fish. Mr.
Wood upon this asked whether the fish might not be wrought
into a temporary intoxication through the excess of oxygen
caused by its passage through the air, and he suggested that
it would be an interesting experiment to test the temperature
of the blood of a newly-caught flying fish, and mark the
length of time it would live out of water.

Those experiments may have been made long ago, but in
the absence of any knowledge to that effect I had deter-
mined, if ever the chance came in my way, to distinguish
myself in the cause of science, and perhaps give to the
world a new and wondrous locomotive power that should
far surpass steam, electricity, or ballooning. It was not to
be; the instrument was ready for thrusting into the fish’s
mouth, or under its pectoral fin, the instrumentalist was
both willing and anxious to find out the precise temperature ;
the drawback was fatal: we could not secure a single subject.

The mariner will tell you that deep-sea fishes as a rule are
dry and tasteless, and that the flying fish, which, in spite of
its occasional trips into the upper air, must rank as one of
the class, is the one delightful exception. It is likely that
a similar opinion is entertained by three, if not more, pre-
datory inhabitants of the seas—namely, the dolphin, bonito,

Flying Fish and their Enemies, 269

and albacore. The poor little flying fish is their tit-bit.
They hunt it remorselessly, apparently enjoying the sport
of pursuit as keenly as the ultimate capture and final scrunch
of its tender bones.

The popular estimation of the animal creation is, as we
know in such examples as the lion, camel, goose, owl, hare,
and the like, founded more upon imagination than upon
observation. The dolphin must be included in the list of
these overrated, underrated, or perhaps altogether unworthy,
idols. He has been made the subject of the painter's art,
who, for some inscrutable reason or other, has given him a
curl in the tail which Nature never dreamt of. Poets have
had a turn at him. Thus :—

‘Kind, gen’rous dolphins love the rocky shore,
Where broken waves with fruitless anger roar ;
But though to sounding shores they curious come,
Yet dolphins count the boundless sea their home,
Nay, should these favourites forsake the main,
Neptune would grieve his melancholy reign.

The calmest, stillest seas, when left by them
Would awful frown and all unjoyous seem ;
But when the darling frisks his wanton play
The waters smile and every wave looks gay.”

And that warm, wicked syren Cleopatra, wishing to say
‘the very highest thing that could be said of her lord, the
hapless Marcus Antonius, observed that his delights were
‘dolphin-like. In the olden time the dolphin was believed
to be in moral nature quite a model fish. He was lauded
as the possessor of a big, philanthropic soul, as a fond lover
of the human race and notably of the weak, helpless, and
young. Instances, with every circumstantiality of detail,
were given of boys riding to school on a dolphin’s back,
and of distressed seamen rescued from peril by the eager

270 By Stream and Sea.

dolphin, who volunteered to convey them in safety to the
shore. It would be highly interesting to hear what the
flying fish had to say touching this Shaftesbury of the shoals
—this scaly pattern of piscatorial piety.

One dark night, far out in the Indian Ocean, we were
treated to a series of highly effective illuminations. It
seemed as if all the finest stars in, the firmament had fallen
down into the sea, and, after sinking somewhat, had been
arrested in their descent by an under-current which took
them in slow procession past us. We could see them
luminously pale half a fathom beneath the surface, floating
solemnly on in never-ending numbers. The larger lights—
the planets, so to speak—shone gloriously when not too
much submerged; the ordinary constellations glowed in
meeker but not less enchanting measure. These were
Medusze—if the metaphor must be dropped—and the ocean
was full of them. By-and-by the vessel steamed through
what I presume must have been a dense field of spawn ;
dazzling cascades of silver were cast off from her sides,
and for a few minutes we were ploughing through a lake
of living fire.

This peculiar condition of the water revealed to us some-
thing of the dolphin’s philanthropic quality. Abreast of the
ship, and not far removed from the weather bow, a shoal of
small fish could be descried scudding along after the manner
of foam. At first it was believed to be foam, but a moment’s
reflection showed that the white mass would in that case be
moving in an opposite direction. Further watching convinced
us it was a shoal of flying fish. Soon there was a racket
below and a pyrotechnic discharge: the fish had broken
cover and flown out of the sea. After a short flight they
settled again, and then I understood the secret. A couple
of long luminous bars appeared in rear of the shoal—dol-

Flying Fish and their Enemies. 271

phins, beyond a doubt, hotly chasing their prey. They do
not often venture so near a steamship as this, but at this
moment they were reckless—angry, maybe, that the flying
fish should still keep out of their clutches. The dolphins
raced mostly neck and neck, but the outer one sometimes
-sheered off and increased the distance between him and the
ship. As the flying fish rushed out of the sea the dolphins
would put on a spurt, and literally side by side shoot ahead
with the evident intention of catching the quarry as it touched
water. So they disappeared—the dolphins very confident ;
the flying fish wary, but alarmed. It was an exciting race,
for the odds were not by any means even.

The brilliant-coloured fish which is always called dolphin,
but which is, accurately speaking, the coryphene, knows the
difference between a steamer and a sailing ship, and is there-
fore rarely to be seen in the vicinity of the former. The
noise of propeller and paddle is, indeed, most effective in
frightening the monsters of the deep, and this, coupled with
the great speed at which steam vessels travel, robs the steam-
boat passenger of the enjoyment which falls to the lot of
those who go down to the sea in canvas-propelled ships.
At a moderate speed, say from four to six knots an hour,
dolphin, bonito, and albacore may be taken, either by
harpooning from the bowsprit or the chains underneath, or
by trailing white and red rag, or any other rude imitation of
the flying fish, from the stern.

In the Red Sea I attempted something with two tassels
of crimson and white wool, but as the ship was making
eleven knots an hour the experiment was a miserable failure.
No fish was likely to have been so befooled, and if one had
been hooked, I must have hauled its head from its shoulders
before I could have brought it to the ship. In the Gulf of
Aden three or four bonitos leaped out of the sea a little

272 By Stream and Sea.

astern, affording us a fair view of their kind. They were
handsome fellows, about two feet long, with roundish body
and mottled blue back—in short, an overgrown mackerel.
Indulging in useless regrets never pays; for all which I
should not have bemoaned the fate that had given me a
few hours amongst the bonito in a nice little sprit-sail boat,
with a certain whiffling apparatus twirling along the wake.

Before setting forth on my long voyage, I received from
avery clever friend a letter, in which this sentence occurred :
“Do not omit to slay the regulation shark with the silver
watch and seals and the partially-digested pair of boots in
his interior, and do not try to investigate his mysteries until
you have divided the spinal narrow just above the tail,
secundum artem, with an axe, while Neptune and Amphi-
trite, and all the rest of them, are holding high jinks at the
equator.”

Now, it so happened that on the afternoon which intro-
duced us to the bonitos, and not far from the spot whence
they had leaped, after the manner of roach eluding the grab
of Master Jack, an innocent bit of fan-shaped leather, as it
would appear, protruded from the water. Strange to say,
it veered round and began to sail leisurely off in the wind’s
eye. It was a rascally white shark ; and even he did not
fancy the noise of our revolving screw, though plainly on
the war-path in general, with a design in particular upon the
bonito.

So runs the world, my masters—shark eats bonito, bonito
eats flying fish, flying fish eats other fry, and other fry eats
something else.

One of the officers had in his cabin a walking-stick, of
which he was very proud—a richly-mounted and highly-
polished staff, that had once’ “officiated” as the spine of
a great shark,

Flying Fish and their Enemies. 273

The history of this officer’s walking-stick, as told to me,
was in this wise: Cat in saloon falls sick, becomes useless,
and is voted a nuisance. Boatswain, according to orders,
heaves Tabby overboard about seven bells in the dog watch,
which, as everybody should know, is half-past seven o’clock.
First-class passenger jokes because cat is drowned in dog
watch, and cat is thereafter forgotten. Shark is caught next
morning on hook baited with three pounds four ounces of
pork ; hideous beast is boused up, and slain in the custom-
ary manner with axe. Shark being opened, cat is found in
the interior; that it is the defunct Tabby is patent to the
meanest understanding. This may be considered by some
persons a mere long-bow shot ; for myself, I firmly believe
the story. The man who told it me, and who assisted in the
capture, was incapable of romancing over such a matter.

The passing view we obtained of the southern extremity
of Ceylon was a grateful break in the monotony of the
Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal, and it was hailed with
delight, not only because it was land seen after many days
of sea and sky, but because it presented the first grateful
foliage (with the exception of the gardens of Ismailia) we
had seen since leaving England. A few catamarans came
off as a matter of course, but as they had no fruit on board
we treated them with true British contempt. The cocoanut
palms are drawn up in line all along the shore, and the
entire island, mountain and lowland alike, appears profusely
wooded. The harbour of Point de Galle is surrounded by
leafy groves, and to us, passing two miles out at sea, its
avenues and plantations, with cool habitations peeping above
the plaintains and palms, smiled like a Land of Promise.

Equally bright, by contrast with the brown granite ranges.
of Africa, the desert expanses of the Isthmus of Suez, and

the hopeless sterility of the land bordering the Red Sea,
T

274 By Stream and Sea.

were the beautiful islands and islets of the Straits of Malacca.
In these latitudes one of the sailors caught a booby bird.
As the sun sank rose-red over the island of Sumatra vivid
lightning began to play on the western horizon, and as we
watched the distant storm a dark form swept along the
bulwarks and silently vanished. In the brief twilight, which
in these low latitudes comes and departs without ceremony,
this mysterious apparition attracted considerable notice. A
young person given to sentiment suggested that it was the
Spirit of the Tempest hovering over us to warn us of im-
pending doom. Whatever it might be, it seemed to have a
decided penchant for hovering ; it hovered sometimes with-
in a few feet of us, mournfully flapping its long wings; after
an absence of a few minutes, or moments as the case may be,
it would return, as though unable to overcome the doubt it
entertained of our honesty, or to resist the temptation of
keeping near the ship.

Soon there was a shout forward, succeeded by a speedy
solution of the matter. The mysterious Spirit of the Tem-
pest was a booby bird ; it had been taken prisoner, and was
now being brought aft a miserable captive. It had fluttered
around the steamer until the coloured lights were being put in
their accustomed niches, and then the stupid bird, as if it
were a moth and the green lantern a candle, clumsily
alighted on the head of the man who had affixed the lamp.
It reminded me of the gannets of Bass’s Rock, but was
smaller ; although its body did not weigh a pound, its wings
outstretched measured more than four feet. We tried the
silly creature by judge and jury, tying its wings as a tempo-
rary precaution, and allowing it to flap about as best it might
on the deck. The balance of evidence tended to show that
the booby most righteously deserves its name, that it fool:
ishly courts attacks that another bird would avoid, and that

Flying Fish and their Enemies. 275

it would be useless to us either for food or preservation.
The sentence therefore was that the captive booby should be
set at liberty. Its bonds were accordingly unfastened, and
its long dark wings -began to bang the deck while its out-
stretched head, terminated by a formidable beak four inches
long, invested it with dangerous propensities in the eyes of
the ladies. The booby, like the albatross, is unable to rise
from the deck of its own accord ; our released prisoner was
therefore treated to a friendly heave by the deck officer—an

act of kindness which it repaid by a vicious parting tweak |
from its bill.

SS ‘

FOURTH ENTRY.
THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.

“Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish ;
A vapour sometimes like a bear or lion.
A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain or blue promontory
With trees upon’t that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air.”

The motion of the vessel, the insufficient ifetits
below, or the liberties taken by the wind with your
papers on deck, tempt you with all manner of excuses.
Before commencing your voyage you have puffed yourself
up with commendable resolutions, and cumbered your bag-
gage with formidable materials for hard work. Every travel-
ler, I believe, does the same ; and every traveller, I believe,
ends by abandoning himself to unblushing indolence. For
a few days you play at hide-and-seek with conscience, and in
the end, persuading yourself that the heat or cold is fatal to
mental exertion, lock up your papers, and take out old book
acquaintances, to renew former loves and hold sweet
counsel with tried friends. In the tropical seas Shakespeare

The Straits of Malacca. 274

proved a most admirable deck companion, and every day at
sunset the picture which opens this entry in ““My Ocean
Log” was hung up in Nature’s artistically-lighted picture
gallery.

The sunsets were quite indescribable. All too brief as
they were in duration, they combined colours that no painter
could imitate without being condemned as a wild dreamer.
After the usual golden proclamation of approaching depar-
ture, the sun would swiftly descend into the depths, and then
would begin flushes and blushes of the most delicate carmine,
rose, orange, blood red, purple, and ‘violet, tinging the fan-
tastic shapes assumed by the clouds according to the condi-
tion of the atmosphere. The dinner bell would generally
ring as we watched in silence the glorious scene, but few
stirred from the deck until the final fold of the curtain of
dusk had fallen. Those who had lost loved ones thought of
them, associating with the spectacle the idea that the angel
world must lie somewhere beyond such radiant portals. The
seriously-inclined involuntarily remembered the description
of the city whose walls were of jasper, whose foundations
were garnished with all manner of precious stones, whose
gates were pearls, and whose streets were pure gold, as if it
were transparent glass—a description, however, prefaced by
the significant statement ‘‘ and there was no more sea.” On
sea as on land, no doubt it is a beautiful world.

When we have crossed the Bay of Bengal, blue as indigo,
and a good deal ruffled by the change of monsoons, we must
look more closely to our courses, for upon entering the
Straits of Malacca we naturally feel that another phase of
the voyage opens.

From the captain of a Dutch troopship lying at Singa-
pore, on her way from Acheen to Batavia, it was possible to
obtain reply to a question which we had a couple of days

278 By Stream and Sea.

previously asked each other on passing Acheen Head, as to
whether upon those beautiful highlands, so welcome to the
sight after the monotony of ocean travel, the wearying war
of races was still going on.

“Yes, we are fighting still,” the Dutch officer said to me,
‘“‘and there seems no more prospect of a termination to the
campaign than there was three years ago.”

On the deck, within a few yards of the bridge upon which
we were standing, a_ Javanese lay dying ; around him were
other natives (soldiers and coolies), halfnaked skeletons
shocking to behold, stretched helpless upon the planks,
gasping out the last few breathings that would convulse their
spectral frames. The more fortunate took no notice of their
wretched comrades, whose bodies by this time have feasted
the sharks swarming in the Straits. The Malay, like the
stoical Chinaman, is not frighted at death, for the sufficient
reason that he takes no notice of it. By the side of an
emaciated man, who actually died before I left the ship, sat
a woman ;.and whether wife or mere companion, it must to
her credit be said that, though not apparently in any mental
distress, she patiently tended him, putting morsels of banana
between his fevered lips. The ribs protruded through the
mahogany skin, the black eyes rolled in mortal agony, but
he munched on at the juicy fruit, and so munching, died,

It was a common occurrence apparently on board that
ship, for it was taken by everybody as a matter of course.
The blue-eyed Dutch sailors, gaunt and yellow, and each—
for so the rules of the Dutch service in the East allowm—
accompanied through the wars by a native female compan-
ion, though delighted at the prospect of rest after the
campaign, were but shadows of their former selves ; their
spirit had departed, their shabby blue clothes—it were an
outrage to call them uniforms—hung loosely about them,

The Straits of Matacca. 279

and their hungry gaze wandered over the pine apple gardens
and cocoa nut groves of the island opposite, as if Paradise
itself lay beneath the bright green foliage and bowers deeply
shaded by tropical vegetation. Those heaps of matting on
the foredeck covered dead men; the eight natives on the
main deck were rebel prisoners, very jolly indeed with their
games and laughter, though knowing well enough that their
brief hours were numbered. The flat-faced Javanese women
cumbering the ship laughed and chatted and strolled with
their miserable white owners; the Chinese and Hindoo
hawkers displayed their wares; the business of the vessel
went on briskly; and on the bare decks, wherever you
turned, the haggard victims of jungle fever and dysentery
lay silently staring into space.

This, I fear, is not a cheerful beginning for a description
of the Straits of Malacca, but it is a natural one. Here we
had proof that the fairy scenes which had greeted our eyes
on entering those lovely waters are fatal to the Europeans
fighting against fearful odds to subdue the Acheenese in their
jungle fastnesses. The country is fair to the passing eye,
but pestilence is the real enemy against which the Hollanders
have to contend, and against which no weapon yet discovered
can prevail. The war, therefore, still drags its slow length
along. Sometimes another stockade is carried, and the
general’s despatches give three or four more of the foe killed
or wounded. Meanwhile regular:relays of soldiers arrive
from Batavia to replace worn-out detachments such as those
of whom we had specimens on board the troopship.

The Dutchmen shrug their shoulders and are content. It
is certain enough that if they had at the outset (four years ago)
wedded a liberal expenditure of money to energetic action
in the field, the Acheenese would have been at once brought
to their senses. Just what we did in the Ashantee bush

280 By Stream and Sea.

should have been the policy adopted in the Acheen jungle.
Mountain guns? Rockets? Roads? Yes, these should
have been employed, certainly. The Dutchman admits it;
but, as I have said, shrugs his shoulders and is content.
For ten years the Dutch have been engaged in similar trifling
in Celebes, and now the fourth commander-in-chief was ex-
pected in Acheen to fill up the place made vacant by the
sudden death, after a successful advance, of General Pell.

From the deck of our steamer on entering the Straits of
Malacca you spy out the tall white lighthouse on Acheen
Head. This portion of the great island of Sumatra, neverthe-
less, looks peaceful and smiling. Here, verily, must be the
“oreen islands of glittering seas” which, in the fascinating
verse of Mrs. Hemans, enchained the wondering thoughts
of our childhood. Islands clothed in verdure to their lofty
crowns, and islets set like gems in the emerald waters, break
the endless expanse of sea and sky of which, through day
and night, you have been the solitary centre. Close to the
water’s edge the straight bare trunks of the graceful betel
palm stand in serried array ; behind them virgin forest,
repository of unnumbered natural wonders peculiar to this
part of the world, rises to join hands with the lower clouds.
Tiny islets—mere hillocks of coral above the watery plain—
you may notice, too small to bear a plantation, but not barren
enough to reject the solitary cocoa nut palm whose plume
nods high above. The sea is untroubled and glassy, and
the fleecy clouds, ‘‘ white as carded wool,” hover with gentle
wings over the land.

Not soon will you forget that charming passage down the
Straits of Malacca. Dim in the distance you can make out
the Sumatra Mountains; they are quite worthy of that name,
since one of the peaks reaches the brevet rank of 15,000
feet. Golden Mount, a landmark seen, it is said, under

The Straits of Malacca. 281

favourable conditions of atmosphere, ninety miles off, is
another conspicuous object, and our eyes rest lovingly and
fondly upon beautiful Water Island, rising sheer out of the
sea, and presenting all the variety of colour and form of
which gorgeous foliage is capable. The greatest breadth
from land to land in the Straits of Malacca is 160 miles, and
the narrowest about twenty. During the monsoon, which
blows from November to May, you have thus over 500 miles
of exquisite voyaging, perpetual glimpses of tropic-land, an
enjoyable temperature, and a prevalence of zephyrs rather
than breezes.

One remembers how people at home laughed when the
importance of the Straits of Malacca was advanced by Mr.
Disraeli as a paramount national consideration. But after
making personal acquaintance with this great highway to the
East, one somehow moderates one’s mirth, and the convic-
tion grows that our possessions upon the Malacca side of
the Straits are of immense consequence to us. It so hap-
pened that, giving the island of Penang a wide berth, we
missed a view of one of our most delightful settlements.
With Malacca we fared better. This rare old town, once
the trading emporium of the Archipelago, was concealed
behind the gauzy curtains of early morning, but as we neared
it the hastening sun came up in all his majesty. The sudden
beams, like willing fingers, seemed to search for and promptly
loosen the strings confining the vapoury veil, and in suc-
cession there appeared the white houses, the bungalows
amidst the rich foliage, the barracks, stadt-house, and other
prominent buildings; the bold hill of St. Paul’s with its
remnants of the old Portuguese fort, and the ruins of the
church, erected in a bygone era by the conqueror Albu-
querque, to be the scene of the heroic labours and reputed
miracles of St. Xavier,

282 By Stream and Sea.

If a photographer, on an expedition round the world, should
ever pass this way, let him take a view of Malacca from the
roadstead. The town lies in a crescent-shaped bay, with a
grand background of hills and mountains, terminated towards
the south by Mount Ophir, a lofty triple-peaked mountain
famous for its gold mines, and sometimes, though wrongly,
confounded with the Ophir which the Old Testament
associates with the riches of the East.

The Straits contain numberless islands: some of them
the haunts of pirates ; others the basking grounds of turtle.
The latter afford the natives—who take very kindly indeed
to the trade of fisherman—a source of revenue, and I can
answer for the excellence of the creatures captured. There
are worse things in the world than turtle cutlet, fin, and soup.
As to the pirates, they still find the means, when they dare,
of picking up a dishonest livelihood, but their comb is being
cut to the smallest dimensions. We have several’ gunboats
upon the coast, and the Malays have long ago learned
that the little craft bite as well as bark. Formerly the
Straits swarmed with murderous sea-robbers, who lay hidden
behind the headlands watching for the becalmed trader
caught in the doldrums. The gallant mariners might resist
valorously to the death, but they would be overpowered by
numbers and barbarously despatched.

The modern steamship has, amongst other benefits con-
ferred upon mankind, ruined the ancient Malay business of
murder and piracy. The pirates, nevertheless, retain their
old characteristics, Nothing but the unceasing vigilance
and determination of the English gunboats and law adminis-
trators on shore holds them in check. They prey upon any
small craft that unwarily falls into their clutches, and the
mariner’s hand-books of the Archipelago contain frequent
paragraphs that conclude with warnings to boating parties

The Straits of Malacca. 283

landing at certain islands for water or provisions. By this
time the Straits have been very fairly surveyed. In the
infancy of hydrography the East India Company did ex-
cellent service in this respect, and the Dutch navigators have
ably assisted in the production of a good chart of the reef
and island-bestudded seas.

The beauties of the Straits of Malacca grow upon you as
you reach their southern terminal at Singapore, which, since
the days when Malacca, the oldest European settlement in
the far East, declined from its ancient prestige, has become
not only the seat of Government in this quarter of the world,
but the metropolis of general commerce. Through Penang
come the sugar grown in the province of Wellesley (about
140 miles of coast country opposite the island) and the
fruits of Penang itself. Malacca, too, has not entirely retired
from business, but lives on in hopes that the development of
the mineral resources of the interier of the peninsula will by-
and-by give it a new lift in the world. But Singapore is at
present master of the situation, and Singapore must on this
account, and because of its peculiar attractions, be one of
the calling places which will most delight the traveller who
is bound to China, or who selects the short and diversified
sea route (the Eastern and Australian Company’s line) to
Australia through Torres Straits.

_ The island of Singapore is covered with small hills
wooded, as is the fashion in these seas, on summit, slope,
and plain. The European residents have naturally taken
advantage of these airy coigns of vantage, and it is their cool
bungalows which, while we cluster on the poop, with eyes
fixed upon land, we discuss admiringly, and not without
some envy, as the engine slows, and finally stops till the pilot
arrives. There are the airy verandahs, the sleek broad leaves
of the tropical trees and shrubs, which are in the old country

284 By Stream and Sea.

with difficulty introduced as curiosities into rare palm houses ;
and the residents, in cool white garments, take measure of us
from under their umbrellas. In latitudes where the sun has
equatorial power there is a wonderful clearness of perspec-
tive, and withal a dreamy look about air, earth, and sky,
that suggests szesta, and makes indolence—a sin and a
shame at home—both a virtue and a necessity.

When the pilot mounts the bridge, and the propeller
chums the green water once more into milky foam, we
steamed slowly through a narrow channel, past clustering
islands of spices, cocoa nuts, pine apples, and bananas, out
into the spacious roadstead, where ships of every nation, not
excluding the towering Chinese junk, rock lazily at anchor ;
and so by a broad backward sweep abreast of the distant
town we arrive at the wharf, where the European officials
and natives in all their oriental strangeness of costume, or
no costume worth mentioning, await us. Before the gang-
way can be shipped the sun has streamed over the islets
opposite, suffusing them with a final outpouring of gold,
purple, and rose colour; then the king of day suddenly
leaves them and us to a twilight that in brevity, as in scenic
effects, is a dissolving view of amazing splendour.

In the Himalaya troopship lying at the Tanjong wharf at
Singapore, I recognized the vessel in which I once made
passage on a journalistic expedition, and I was not long in
renewing my acquaintance with her gallant captain. She
was waiting for one of our regiments that had been settling
our little difficulty at Perak ; and to this extent she resem-
bled the Batavian vessel that had brought warriors from
Acheen. There, however, the resemblance ended. Need
I say that the Avmalaya was “alow and aloft” precisely
what every English navy ship is wherever you may find her
—a pattern of order and efficiency ? . Nor need I apologize

The Straits of Matacca. 285

for observing that when, next day, I stood upon the littered
and lumbered and repulsive decks of the Dutch troopship, I
remembered with pride the perfect discipline, sweet air, and
irreproachable cleanliness of our own transport.

FIFTH ENTRY.

AT SINGAPORE.

HERE is no place, perhaps, in the far East which has
received greater immediate advantages from the Suez
Canal than Singapore. Most of the vessels which
pass Port Said without increasing its trade by so much as
the value of half a dollar, halt at this curious capital of
the Straits Settlements. It is the half-way house between
England and China on the one hand, and Australasia on the
other. At the beginning of the present century it was a
collection of Malay fishermen’s huts. Even Sir Stamford
Raffles, through whose forethought the island became part of
the British possessions in 1819, could never have dreamt of
the great commercial importance it would some day obtain.
A convenience it was from the first ; now it is a necessity.
Fine docks have been built out of a humid swamp by the
Tanjong Paggar Dock Company, near the western entrance
of the roadstead, where the handful of savage fishermen have
grown into a thriving population of over 26,000 persons, who
are enjoying the advantages of European trade and English
rule, and who, though chiefly natives to the manner born,

At Singapore. 287

.

are content and happy because well governed and pros-
perous. And there is no town in the far East which affords
the traveller a better insight into certain phases of oriental
life. = ‘

At Point-de-Galle you are delighted with the Eastern
scenery and Eastern humanity, but it is Eastern humanity
with a prevailing flavour of India. At Singapore you have
the Malayan races at home, with all their national character-
istics, and not as at Malacca, so mingled with the Dutch
and Portuguese that it is difficult to tell where Europe
begins and Asia ends; the Chinese quarters are as much
Chinese as streets in Hongkong or Canton; and in smaller
proportions, the singular diversity of races is increased by
the Kling from Madras, the slender Bengali, the Parsee, the
Chittie, the Armenian Jew, and the Arab.

An Englishman fresh from home will be surprised at the
busy appearance of the docks. Chinese carpenters and
blacksmiths are hammering and sawing in the sheds, using
tools as primitive as those which, as Holman Hunt’s famous
picture shows, stood upon Joseph the Carpenter’s bench
eighteen hundred years ago. Nothing can induce these
remarkable people to adopt modern inventions. They do
their work well, but it must be in their own way, and at their
-own slow speed. The better class of Chinese artisans you
may distinguish by the light clothing which they permit
themselves to wear. The majority of the Chinese and
Malays about the docks, like their compatriots up in the
town, are content with a wisp of cloth fastened round the
loins, to hang more or less (generally considerably less) to
the knees. To be sure, you have on your outward voyage,
beginning at Port Said, become accustomed to these trifles,
and by the time you have travelled far enough to be able to
look about you in the Singapore docks, you regard any

288 By Stream and Sea.

clothing exceeding in dimensions an ordinary handkerchief,
as a reckless and surprising extravagance in “the lower
orders.” é

It seems, after all, tolerably possible to get along without
beef and beer. Strong and lissom are some of these rice
and fish-fed fellows; tall, straight, and displaying good
muscles. That this semblance of strength and condition is
not delusive you may perceive by the amount of work the
Chinese or Malay coolies get through, and the weights they
carry. As a rule, it takes several orientals to accomplish one
Englishman’s labour, but this is a rule not without a wide
margin of exception. Speaking of men as they find them,
the European employers give the native mechanics and the
copper-skinned hewers of wood and drawers of water an
excellent character ; indeed, you will often be not a little
pained to hear English employers speak better of them than
of the British workman, who is taught to pity his dusky
heathen brother bowing down to blocks of wood and stone.
However, I wish to draw a picture, not to moralize. So we
will leave the docks and the workmen there, many-tinted,
from the sickly yellow of the fair Chinaman with his shaven
pate and everlasting pigtail, down through every shade of
brown until you come to the sable Bengali with his glossy
black ringlets.

Before starting for the town, a mile and a half off, you
may turn into the bungalow, liberally provided for English
and American seamen and passengers. It is a reading-room,
and travellers in a thirsty land scarcely welcome water with
greater eagerness than that with which we, who had not seen
an English newspaper for six weeks, charge at the files of
The Daily News, Punch, Fun, the illustrated journals, and
one or two of the cheaper magazines. The gharries, driven
generally by Bengali boys under strict Scotland-yardlike

At Singapore. 289

regulations, are drawn by capital ponies ; they are Singapore
specialities, born and bred in Sumatra and in certain portions
of the Malay peninsula, and though diminutive they are
perfectly shaped, safe, swift trotters, and hardy. As to colour
they run a good deal to piebald; and they are most kindly
treated by their owners. ,

Along the Tanjong Paggar Road you continually meet
rude carts, heavily laden with merchandise—gambier and
pepper, hides, or fancy woods from the interior, where the
irrepressible Chinaman is gardener, woodman and all else
that is remunerative. To the carts are yoked hump-
shouldered bulls, sleek-hided as a deer, mostly fawn-coloured,
and as docile as the lamb. Fan palms, bananas, cocoa nut
and betel palms, tree ferns, bamboos, rattans, tropical
creepers and flowers, and vistas of strange and beautiful trees
appear on either side of the well-kept road. Next you pass
through a native street, probably holding your nose until you
pecome acclimatized to the indescribable stenches of the
native quarters. There are “rows” on either side of the
thoroughfare, very different from the picturesque covered
ways of ancient Chester or the continental towns, but
affording shelter from the sun for the inhabitants, who have
a wonderful love of squatting on their hams outside their
small primitive places of business ; squatting in company ;
squatting in silence ; squatting morning, noon, and night.

There are miles of streets.in Singapore, but in every one
of them the natives shall be found perseveringly engaged in
this absorbing do-nothing occupation. Longfellow would be
charmed with the perfect way in which they have learned, if
not to labour, at least to wait. John Chinaman, of course,
is everywhere. ‘The little bazaars with the hieroglyphs over
the door, the lanterns suspended from the ceiling inside, the
‘idol over the candle-lit shrine, and the curtained-off inner

U

290 By Stream and Sea.

apartment; the licensed opium shops; the places of the
tailors, butchers, and bakers—these all mark the whereabouts
of the Chinaman. In the heart of the town the countless
shops (all open to the street) admirably illustrate the indus-
trious character of the Chinese artisan ; illustrate also the
teeming numbers of the race, their sobriety, their quietness,
their skill. A blacksmith’s establishment, I was told,
contained sixty inmates who all sleep in one barn-like
garret.

Our transatlantic cousins appear to be at sixes and sevens
‘with their Chinese fellow-citizens, and to be anxious, by
legislation, to roll back the unwelcome tide of “ Mongolian
invasion.” A gentleman fresh from Queensland by the last
Torres Straits mail tells me, over a Manilla and_ sherry-
cobbler at Emerson’s restaurant, that the northern portion
of that colony is waxing wild at the steady increase of
Chinese emigration, and that the rolling back theory is
already mooted there. As Queensland is to be my future
home, I naturally turn special attention to these folks whom,
my Queensland friend assures me, it will be my duty as a
good colonist, to regard as my future enemies, and endeavour
to stamp out and improve off the face of the country. I
peer and pry about everywhere ; I cross-question magistrates,
senators, high and low, the chiefs of the police, army men,
and merchants, and never a word can I tempt them into
saying against John Chinaman. As a Scotch resident, whose
clerks, shopmen, and porters are all of that race, poetically
put it to me,

“What the devil would Singapore be without the
Chinese?”

You see; you must live with a man to know him; we have
the authority of a most ancient proverb for that 3 and since
the British residents of Singapore give the dreaded Mongolian

At Singapore. 291

the best of testimonials of character, and my own observation
does not kick against it in any manner or form, I shall with-
hold my opinion as to how far the hullabaloo against the
Mongolian invasion is justified or not. Of course, I always
expect to have to look after my pockets when I am in John
Chinaman’s company ; I may regard theft as a sin, but he
does not.. It is simply a matter of education, and John in
time must learn better, as he is learning, and will go on to
learn.

The great houses of the European merchants—Scotchmen
predominating in the ratio of five to seven—are confined to
the central and best portion of Singapore, near which is
“The Plain,” a fine promenade, with cathedral and public
buildings around, and a wide and well-shaded lower road
parallel with and close to the beach. Here, in cool even-
tide, the fair European ladies take their drives in gharry,
waggonette, or buggy, reclining languidly after their manner
when once they deign to take wings to the East. Here the
white robes and scarlet sashes of the Government House
peons, and the pronounced colours of other great folk’s
liveries, flash amongst the green trees; here the young
gentlemen of the place in spotless white trousers, gossamer
morning coat, and solar topee, saunter and smoke. their
Manillas.

The wonderful markets, provision shops, and thickest
centres of native population, are not far off, an inner harbour
-and canals full of broad-sterned sampans and sharp-prowed
Malay proas penetrating into their very midst. You can
buy almost anything you require at Singapore : costly goods
at the European repositories, and odds and ends, chiefly
Brummagem, at the petty Chinese stalls and shops. Native
hawkers, their heads covered with large circular discs of
straw-work, pointed on the outer centre like an ancient

292 By Stream and Sea.

shield, trot about, their wares suspended in baskets from
a bamboo pole balanced over the shoulder. Sometimes it
is pork for the Chinamen, or rice, or fish, or fruit, or com-
pounds unmentionable, but apparently all fairly clean and
appetising, thus offered for sale by street cries which, in an
unknown tongue, have still a family resemblance to those
we have been accustomed to in the well-beloved thorough-
fares afar off.

Here comes a regular Chinese swell, a young placid-faced
Flowery-lander, into whose pigtail has been woven scarlet
silk, as a recognized hall-mark of gentility. He is attired
in the wide loose trousers and wide loose smock charac-
teristic of the clothes-wearing Chinaman in every quarter of
the globe, but the materials are of exquisitely fine silk or
cloth, and not the simple glazed stuff of the commonality.
Moreover, his head is surmounted by a natty drab English
deer-stalker, and his umbrella and fan are of dainty work-
manship. Then we have a native policeman, a Malay, or
more probably a Kling, in the blue uniform of “ the force,”
leading by their pigtails a couple of handcuffed thieves,
upon whom the scantily-robed shop people come out to
look with that expression of sweet smiling innocence which
is as characteristic of the Chinaman as are his pigtail and his
queerly-placed eyes.

At night there are certain streets all ablaze with lamps—
a kind of Oriental New Cut, where everybody sits on his
haunches and takes life easy, giving or receiving the pur-
chased banana, cocoa nut, mangosteen, pine-apple, durian,
orange, betel nut, and leaf wrapper, with an air of supreme
indifference on both sides. The durian is the fruit by which
some Europeans swear, while others hate it with a bitter
hatred. They say you have first to overcome the stench of
the thing, and they say truly ; a skunk is nothing to it. The

At Singapore. 293

mangosteen is a delicious little fruit, confined to limited areas
in the Malay Archipelago. It is round, the size of a small
billiard ball, and a deep dead purple in colour. You cut
through the hard rind, which is a third of an inch in thick-
ness, and, pulling off half the cup, discover a white, firm,
pulpy interior in five, six, or seven segments. This, re-
moved by a fork, becomes a mouthful for an epicure. In
a book J once read it is likened to a “blend” of strawberry
and grape; but after much argument at dessert, one of us
discovered that the mangosteen offers in one happy sensa-
tion the flavours of sweet-water grape, mulberry, jargonelle
pear, and doné fide Johannisberg.

The natives eat bananas by the bushel. I bought three
pine-apples, magnificent in weight as in flavour, for two-
pence half-penny ; with three cents the thirsty coolie obtains
a green cocoa nut, containing a pint and a half of refreshingly
cool milk; and there are other fruits, all new to the European,
too numerous to mention. Fish of grand size and quality are
caught without much art or toil within half a mile of shore.
You may pity these benighted barbarians, as it is the Chris-
tian Briton’s duty to do; nevertheless, they appear to enjoy
life very fairly, having few wants, and an abundance of good
things dropping into their very mouths; no tailor’s bills, no
religious or educational difficulties, no votes, no superfluous
furniture. The Chinaman certainly has to provide himself
with a brace of chop-sticks, but they are inexpensive ; the
Malay does without even these.

It was very interesting to me to visit the gaol, under the
guidance of one of the magistrates, and to see the prisoners
printing in English, Chinese, and Malay, weaving blankets,
making superb rattan wickerware, and working in the most
orderly manner at all the common trades. A few were “in”
for piracy, some for assault, the majority for theft. This

2904 By Stream and Sea.

latter assertion, of course, is the same as saying that the
majority are low-class Chinamen. Some of our good re-
formatory workers at home would have been gratified
beyond measure at the excellent way in which the institu-
tion is conducted. The prisoners, up to the present time, have
been housed—one might almost say caged—in common
sheds and dormitories. Now, under the presence of pres-
sure from without, the separate system is to be tried, and
solitary cells are being built. The men, especially the
Malays, are generally very tractable.

All being in chains, the prisoners move about with the
old-fashioned clank-clank familiar to the present generation
in England only on thé melo-dramatic stage. Out of 620
prisoners there were only two women (not bad for a set of
heathens), and the few prisoners in the European quarter
were soldiers and sailors, who had been overtempted by the
low grog shops (there are by far too many of these) into the
commission of minor misdemeanours. Formerly there were
not more than half a dozen European warders to manage
this large prison, to which, perhaps, it should be mentioned,
are brought long-sentence men from other portions of the
Straits Settlements.

Last year there was an outbreak, and Mr. Dent, the
superintendent, was murdered. The plot was, no doubt,
hatched in the common dormitory, or in the gangs, and
for a wonder the conspirators united sufficiently to effect
their purpose, a fact to be noted when it is known that the
Chinese and Malays have different languages of their own,
and that the Chinese and Malays have no fervid love for
each other. Many readers may dimly remember the story
as briefly told in the English newspapers at the time, but
I cannot call to mind that one particular incident was in-
cluded in the account. I will give it for the benefit of the

At Singapore. 295,

author of any projected work on “The Brave Deeds of
Women.” Fame has been acquired by less worthy pretences.

For a while on the fatal evening it seemed as if the
prisoners would overcome and, of course, massacre the
authorities, and overrun the town. The final obstacle to
their. complete success was ultimately found in a corner of
the prison area, defended by Mr. Lamb, an English, or
rather Scotch, warder, who, throughout, behaved splendidly.
He conceived and promptly put in action the bold idea of
calling to his assistance and arming the handful of European
prisoners under confinement in another part of the ground.
The project answered thoroughly. Pending its execution,
however, Mrs. Lamb undertook thé defence of a certain
central door, against which the howling mob of natives
were concentrating all their fury and strength, The plucky
woman seized a sword, and hacked and slashed at the
naked feet and legs of the foe as often as they appeared
through the space between the bottom of the door and the
ground.

The breaking down of this barrier was expected eyery
moment, but Mrs. Lamb never flinched from the post or
relaxed her attacks, and the good woman’s bravery gave her
husband time to bring up his reinforcement. This manceuvre
was so effectual that when thé Brigade Major, who happened
to be the senior military officer within call, on requisition
from the Commissioner of Police hastened to the prison
with what troops were then in Fort Canning, the disturb-
ance was virtually over. More than a dozen prisoners had
been shot down, and others were in custody, to be after-
wards hanged or re-sentenced. The justices petitioned the
Home Government to reward Mr. Lamb’s services by a
small annuity, but, so far as I could héar, no response has
yet been sent out to this very reasonable suggestion. Of

296 By Stream and Sea.

course such an oversight at the Colonial Office (if the
petition has not already been granted) is an accident.
Anyhow, Lamb and his courageous wife were mainly
instrumental in checking what might have been a most.
dangerous outbreak of murderous criminals.

The Botanical Gardens are situated at Tanglin, about
three miles from Singapore, and the drive over a perfect road,
with beautiful tropical scenery on either side, and here and
there glimpses of jungle, is a treat no passing stranger should
miss. The footprints of a tiger had been marked on the
outskirts of the gardens on the morning of our visit, but
such game is very rare now in the island.

The gardens owned by the Hon. Mr. Whampoa, the
wealthy Chinese merchant recently invested with the order
of St. Michael and St. George, should also be seen, both
because of the rare plants and trees cultivated there and
the quaint Chinese devices into which many of the shrubs
had been clipped. The pretty orange-coloured flower,
which so profusely covers the hedges everywhere, in perfume
and formation somewhat resembling our heliotrope, is a
common jungle flower.

Near the town, on your return from the gardens, look
out for the Bengali washermen in the middle of the stream
provided for them ; you will then understand why your linen
comes home so sadly perforated with unmendable holes.
The small plantation of sugar-canes fringing the highway
so prettily is evidence of the sweet tooth of the country ;
every other native you meet in the evening is munching his
section of cane, for which he has paid some decimal portion
of a farthing. As you drive to your quarters at night, the
birds being silent and the lizards at rest, the insects are loud
in concert in the hedges, gardens, and jungle ; and the music
may be heard high above the shrill rattle of the gharry. It

At Singapore. ; 297

will be neeessary to look carefully after your mosquito curtains,
and to be at all times prepared for a really elegant little lizard
running up the wall, or a brown-winged cockroach, not much

less than two inches long, scampering across your dressing-
table.

SIXTH ENTRY.

STRANGE FISH.

EVER doubt there are very strange fish in the sea;
stranger than any of which we have at present
heard, read, or imagined. Allowing a wide margin—
not a dot less than 50 per cent.—for travellers’ tales, this is a
conclusion forced upon a thoughtful observer thrown into the
society of persons who live on the ocean. Whatever we may «
be provoked into saying in our haste, it is not true that all
men are liars, and I have heard sufficient of late to lead me
to believe that the extraordinary stories of what is hidden in
the depths of the sea, in the quiet fathomless hollows never
disturbed by the storms that agitate the upper world, are not
so strange as might be told upon a plain statement of facts.
Of beasts and birds there is probably known as much as it is
possible to gather, but he would be a bold man who would
say the same of fishes. When it was gravely stated (and I
have just heard the full narrative, so callgd) that a stout
ship was within the past three years pulled over and under
by some many-armed devourer in the Indian Ocean, seamen
wink and laugh ; yet if you ask them whether they actually

Strange Fish. 299

deny the existence of the Great Sea Serpent, they confess
that they nurse a half belief in the monster. Why should
there not be such creatures? they demand. Verily, why not?
If not very probable, this thing is, in their opinion, not at all
impossible.

This paragraph I indited at Singapore, after a visit to the
fish market at dawn one delicious morning. Something of
the piscicultural wonders of the Malayan waters I had myself
seen, watching the natives fishing from the wharves; much
more I heard from a certain English youth in the town. He
certainly drew the long bow with something of the genius of
a Munchausen.

“ Did you ever shoot an Argus pheasant?” I asked him,
upon his telling me that he had often been at Mount Ophir,
the notable summit which, though forty miles in the interior
of the peninsula, is such a conspicuous object from the
Malacca roadsteads, and which is famous for its rare birds
and wonderful ferns.

“Lots of ’em,” he readily answered. “But talking of
pheasants,” he broke off at a voluble tangent, “we were
lying off the coast of Borneo one morning, and, by my word,
I went ashore and shot two hundred and thirty birds before
breakfast; two hundred and thirty, sir, besides seventeen
deer.”

Naturally (as if I thoroughly believed the statement) I
remarked that this was sport, and no mistake.

“Tt was so,” he modestly admitted. “I had three black
boys loading guns for me, and when I got back to the boat
my hands were so knocked to pieces that I could not pull
an oar. The fellows on that account upset the boat.”

“ A good look-out for the sharks,” I hinted.

“You talk of sharks! See, sir, Pll tell you what: I was
once off the coast of West Australia, and we killed a shark.

300 By Stream and Sea.

I dare say you wont believe it now, but we got @ tuz of pure
oil out of the fiver—a tun, every drop of it. I’d never have
believed it if I had not seen it myself.”

In such a strain my eloquent countryman narrated his
adventures, mingling with the romantic so much that
appeared likely as to the Singapore fish market that I deter-
mined to explore it before the sun was up, and the fish
either spoilt by the heat, or sold for breakfast consumption.

A morning drive in the tropics is delightful. The night
has been close, and the mosquitoes (confound them !)
numerous and warlike. In spite of the carefully-adjusted
curtains some of these dreadful pests somehow contrive to
reach you, and after worrying you by their shrill brazen
trumpeting they seize the precise moment of your dropping
asleep to make an attack in force. You have tossed rest-
lessly, and perspired with amazing freedom; you have in
the dark hours groaned and wished it were morning. Bath
and coffee before daybreak, however, pull you together
finely, and the early cheroot is a luxury indeed. Therefore
you forgive, if you do not forget, the detested insects that
have left their traces upon your wrists and forehead.

Early as you may rise there will be natives astir before you,
and Europeans also taking their morning saunter before the
sun has climbed high in the heavens. Vegetation is fresh
with dew, and you can look abroad upon the world without
the painful glare of a later hour. In lines, remembered not
without mingled feelings of pleasure, Issac Watts, D.D., sets
forth the profits and delights of early rising. These Malays
and Chinese are of one mind with him. The little shops
and bazaars are all open, and toiling back from the market,
their copper-hued and oleaginous hides glistening in the
young sunlight, come the itinerant vendors of fruit and fish.
The man of means is followed by his “boy,” bearing an

Strange Fish, 301

assortment of garden produce—fruits and vegetables mostly
strange to Englishmen. In the grove singing birds (they
are few in number, however), gaily answer each other’s
hymns of joy. The Malay children, in Nature’s cheap garb,
laugh and play with a vivacity very foreign to their natural
gravity of demeanour. That indescribable smell, half-incense,
half-sewage, peculiar to all oriental quarters, has not yet dis-
tilled in full offensiveness. A fresh invigorating breeze from
the sea fans your face. Wherefore a morning drive in the
tropics should be keenly enjoyed.

Though the Chinese coolies prefer their fish dried, and to
our taste doubly high, there is a large consumption of fresh
fish amongst the native population. The Singapore Billings-
gate I accordingly found to be a lively and interesting place,
and quite lacking the attributes which have made our great
London fish market proverbial. These untutored people run
a-muck occasionally, I presume, like other folks, but as a
rule they are quiet and courteous to every one. The fish
were carefully classified in heaps upon the wooden floor of
the wholesomely-kept sheds.

The marketing housewife at home justly regards the lordly
salmon and the delicious trout as the highest objects of
fishmongering desire; at Singapore the best affection is
bestowed upon sharks. In the shops in another portion of
the town there were to be seen dried, cured, and pickled in
a variety of ways, all manner of sharkish delicacies.
Squatting on the edge of a gutter, and busily at work with
chop-sticks, rice, and fish all hot, a number of natives
watched with zest the cutting up of a hammer-headed shark,
about four feeet long, which had just been landed, barely
dead, from a sampan. ‘The operator first smote the brute
across the head with a keen-edged knife, to remove any
doubt upon the question whether the ugly customer had

302 By Stream and Sea.

given up the ghost. Then he removed the fins, then cut out
a few choice cutlets; at this stage a hungry-eyed Chinaman
purchased quite a large slab, and bore it away in triumph.
I had always imagined that this queer specimen of the shark
genus was too tough and nasty for table purposes, but one
has to unlearn many things in travelling. The real donne-
bouche seemed to be a very juvenile member of the white
shark family. There were scores of them for sale, and those
who could not afford to buy surveyed them with watering
mouths:

Fourteen strange fish I could make nothing of. They
were of all shapes, and frequently, even after death, of every
colour of the rainbow. One fish was carp-shaped, and of a
gamboge colour, weighing perhaps fourteen or fifteen pounds.
Some were striped like zebras; one was tinted with the
shades of the maiden-blush rose. I saw a fish that was
almost square in shape ; some that were all eyes, some all
teeth. Spots carmine, spots orange, and spots blue and
‘green jewelled the broad sides of others. Here lay a heap
of silvery fry next of kin to our own whitebait; there a fish that
a boy could scarcely carry. But somehow they were all, to
my mind, suspicious in appearance, having nothing in
common, so far as moral character goes, with the sheepish
roach, gentlemanly grayling, cavalier trout, kingly salmon, or
sportive dace of temperate climes. And after I had feasted
my eyes upon the collection I went back to my gharry, very
sad because of my own ignorance of the science which could
have given these singular fish local habitations and names,

One afternoon a hideous Chinawoman, who used to angle
every day with heavily-leaded line and stout brass wire hook,
caught a great fish close to the shipping. It was an oval
fish, something like a John Dory, but coated with fine gold,
and it was a singular coincidence that I should there and

Strange Fish. 303

then recognize amongst the spectators a well-known official
of the Bank of England, that very day arrived from home
on his way to spend his holiday in Brisbane. I say it was
a coincidence, for when I had last seen him he was con-
ducting me through the treasure houses of Threadneedle
Street, and tantalizing me with a sight of cart-loads of
sovereigns and bales of bank-notes. Here we met by
accident, thousands of miles from home, and we agreed that
the old Chinawoman’s fish was intended as a delicate
reminder to him that the power of the precious metal, with
which he had dealt until his hairs were grey, was simply
world-wide.

SEVENTH ENTRY.

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF,

HE actual novelty of the Eastern and Australian
Mail Steam Company’s route to Australia begins in
earnest after you have sailed from Singapore. In

the matter of travel, of course, in these latter days, nothing

remains novel long; the world cannot afford time now for
old-fashioned nine days’ wonders, nine hours or minutes
being the utmost allowable limit. In a year or two, prob-
ably the “short sea route to Australia” will be better known
than a hundred years ago was the highway from London to

York. On our way to the antipodes we met with shoals of

people, including the very old and very young of both sexes,

who were putting a girdle round the globe without thinking
anything of it. They were just taking a trip to Australia by
the Torres Straits route, and a trip home again by way of

Honolulu, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, New

York, and the mighty Atlantic, and it was the E. and A.

Company they had to thank for making the girdle complete.
To Singapore you have a choice of routes. You may

purchase a ticket at Charing Cross, and rush through Paris

The Great Barrier Reef. 305

and Marseilles, and take ship by the Messageries line, run-
ing between Corsica and Sardinia, calling at Naples, which
you have plenty of time to explore; making for the Straits
of Messina, so as to boast ever afterwards of a passing
acquaintance with fiery Stromboli, and finding yourself, after
six days of Mediterranean variety, at the mouth of the Suez
Canal. Or you may work your way across Europe w7é
Brindisi, and patronize the P. and O. Company, or adopt one
or two humbler lines direct from London, such lines being
in correspondence with the E. and A. Company’s system.
There is a fierce controversy amongst travellers as. to which
is the better class of steamers, that of the long-established
P. and O., or that of the French company. Both have their
advocates, but the most important point is that if you are
prepared to pay your money you may take your choice, and
that, travel how you may, Singapore must be your final
changing place, and the Eastern and Australian Company’s
fleet your sole alternative.

The Torres Straits passage was, not so long ago, regarded
as too fraught with deadly perils to be practicable ; now it is
thought little of except as a great improvement upon our
communication with Australia, and a popular highway to the
youngest, and, in the matter of resources, richest of the
Australian colonies. The E. and A. Company has a fleet of
admirably-appointed vessels, commanded by experienced
navigators, who know how to thread their way through the
wondrous Eastern Archipelago, amidst beautiful islands, now
clothed with profuse vegetation, and now conspicuous by
boldly-asserting mountain ranges and volcanic peaks, If
the monsoon is favourable the course lies through the
Straits of Rhio, the scenery of which is of the finest; then
by the island of Banca, where the Chinese work the produc-
tive tin-mines for their Dutch owners ; then along the coast

x

306 By Stream and Sea.

of Sumatra and Java. At first the E. and A. steamers called
at Batavia, or Sourabaya; but they have for some time
discontinued the practice. It did not pay; the explanation
being really that which was once sent home from the Hague
by an official who, setting all the red-tapeism of the diplo-
matic service at defiance, wrote as his despatch—

“In matters of commerce, the fault of the Dutch,
Is giving too little, and asking too much.”

In these latitudes all the devices which the knowing ones
have picked up in going to and fro on the earth, and walking
up and down in it, are put in force, if haply artificial currents
of air may be produced. The maids and matrons who have
hitherto scandalized steady family people, like ourselves, by
their flirtations—and on board ship many women somehow
think they have a special license for this—are now so over-
come by the muggy heat that they lie languidly about on the
couches and chairs, thinking, let us hope, over their past
delinquencies. No one challenges you now to deck quoits,
or the classic game of bull ; the bores and the bounces, who
are to be found in every large steamship, are nearly, if not
altogether, extinguished, except in the morning, when, by the
rules of the establishment, they may appear on deck in airy
pyjama costume, and paddle about on the wet boards in
bare feet. But, hot or cold, wet or dry, in thunder, lightning,
or in rain, the propeller grinds on, and the Java Sea is
succeeded by the Flores Sea and its islands. By turning
through the Straits of Lombok, we, however, get southward
" of that long line of islands which begins at Acheen Head,
includes Sumatra, Java, Bali, volcanic Lombok, Sumbawa,
and Flores, and finishes only with the Timor Group.

So far as the close: atmosphere will permit you to think,

The Great Barrier Reef. 307

now is the time to overhaul your Wallace, and make’a note

of the fact that the narrow straits separating the islands of
Bali and Lombok constitute a mysterious band of division

in the Eastern Archipelago, the one side representing Asia

and its peculiarities, the other Australia and its peculiarities.

Mr. Wallace, who is the best authority up to the present time

upon the physical features of the Archipelago, argues that at

no very distant period Java, Sumatra, atid Borneo were part

of the continent of Asia, but although Timor, the eastern

link of the chain of islands, partakes of the appearance of
Australia, he is confident that it never formed part of the.
Australian continent. Certain it is that the glimpses of
Timor and the smaller islands which pass in review before

you enter the Arafura Sea bespeak an altogether different

world. In vain you look for the palms that hitherto have

added variety to the island scenery ; though in their stead

you are frequently surprised by landscapes at a distance

resembling genuine English park scenery.

Still steaming towards sunrise through water deepening
and lessening in a remarkable manner, we put aside our
literature of the Archipelago, and make ready for our intro-
duction to thé New World. The E. and A. company pro-
vides you before starting (if you inquire for it) with a
voluminous hand-book of the voyage, and from it you may
learn everything about those northern portions ‘of Australia
which are far beyond your ken, but which you may see by
the eye of faith, and about which you may soon become
learned by a judicious system of cram. I once heard Lord
Palmerston tell of a man who was wont to say that what he
didn’t know would make an amazingly big book ; and the
anecdote may be not inaptly applied to what you do not see
of that portion of South Australia which strangely enough
lies to the northernmost verge of the continent. Let it suffice,

308 By Stream and Sea.

then, to know, that to-day we are seventy miles from Melville
Island ; that to-morrow, perhaps, we are opposite Port Es-
sington, “proved to be notably the permanent abode of
mosquitoes, malaria, and death,” and not, therefore, a desir-
able spot for a summer picnic ; that 220 miles due north are
to be found the Aru Islands and their pearl fisheries ; and
that for the next 300 miles we are ploughing the head of the
Gulf of Carpentaria. Just as town councils take uninterest-
ing reports “as read,” we, having nothing better to do, will
take all this, and much more, for granted.

Booby Island, a square brown dome of rock, is, as a
matter of fact, the first intimation we have that Australia is at
hand—the land of anomalies, of wealth untold because
undeveloped, of ardent hopes and strong desires ; the land
for an early glimpse of which we all strain expectant eyes.
Once upon a time Booby Island was known amongst
mariners as the Torres Straits Post Office, where there were
no late and early deliveries, where prying postmistresses and
sneaking postmasters never opened your letters, and where
the postman’s knock was never heard. In a cave which
required neither padlock nor money-order office, passing ships
would call for, or leave letters or provisions; the desolate
crag is, however, now left to the undisputed possession of the
birds from whom it derives its name, and the lonely port of
Somerset, which they say is in its turn to be abandoned,
does duty as a medium of communication or relief.

Considering all that we have heard and read of Australia,
it is not surprising that our first glimpse is, if not prejudiced,
at least biassed. Prince of Wales Island we pass at close
quarters, admiring as we go its grassy highlands, green
glades, and dense forests. At our elbow are a couple of return-
ing colonials, who warn us that the first view of the mainland
will not be half so inviting ; that, in short, Australian scenery

The Great Barrier Reef. 309

is monotonous. One of these gentlemen, who has made his’
fortune in Queensland, goes so far as to say that if we have
come hither for romantic scenery, we have come to the
wrong shop. That is how he puts it. But his attempt to
prejudice the strangers fails, for they had already discovered
that he had not a soul above hides and tallow. His com-
panion, living up to his privileges as a son-in-law, told him
he was a noodle, and told us that if we had an eye for the
beautiful, Queensland would amply gratify it. They have
both dwelt long in the land ; which are we to believe? The
information vouchsafed touching the first glimpse of the
mainland was undeniably true. When the almost impalpa-
ble cloud on the horizon became a distinct “loom of the
land,” and Australia was visibly though indistinctly before
us, there stole over the mind a general impression of sterility
and monotony. Then the man of hides and tallow was,
after all, in the right !

But, patience. By-and-by the indistinct line of hills
becomes a succession of billows of upheaved land, rising
sometimes into sharp peaks. Closer in you may notice that
there are trees, but trees struggling as if for bare life. At
last, the sober grey prospect develops into an expanse of
woodland that is just a little monotonous, This is our
first acquaintance with the famous gum-trees of Australia.
It is autumn, but autumn without the radiant reds, umbers,
yellows, and browns that glorify decay in the English copse.
So that things are not so bad as they-seem. We must make
allowance for the time of the year, though St. Patrick’s Day,
to be sure, is a strange period of the year to offer an apology
on the score of autumnal advance. The country, too, as
we learn later, has been suffering from one of the tco often
recurring droughts.

A nearer acquaintance teaches us how unjust it is to rush

310 By Stream and Sea.

to hasty conclusions. The scenery, if not grand, is pretty ;
if there are no forests there are patches of picturesque wood-
land and shadings of grassy dell. Ant-hills, neatly fashioned
as obelisks reared by human hands, rise ruddy-brown on the
hill sides. On the shore line, strips of clean, hard yellow
sand alternate with dark rocks, honeycombed by the wear
and tear of time.

Somerset, the first Australian port of call, comes upon you
suddenly from behind a point on Albany Island. By the
time these lines are reproduced in England, Somerset will,
in all probability, be disestablished and disendowed, for
Thursday Island passage, a little to the north, has been for
various reasons preferred before it as a Government depot
and a port of call for the mail steamers. Somerset, though
to our eyes the cove is extremely pretty, and the sight of
houses amongst trees welcome, is said to be a dreary place
at the best—sterile, deserted, exposed. The pearl fishermen
call there for stores, and they are a rude race. I believe
there are not a dozen houses in the whole township, and the
inhabitants are sometimes on absolutely short commons in
the matter of food. On the day of our arrival a great event
had happened—a boy had shot a wallaby and brought it in
for a feast. The day previously a carpet snake twelve feet
long had been destroyed near one of the verandahs. The
aborigines in the bush are, as they always have been in this
part of the colony, a constant source of trouble and an occa-
sional source of danger. On the whole, therefore, you may
find better places of residence than this Somerset: but it was
not without interest to me, who had read De Beauvoir’s
book, and been informed how that clever Frenchman had
been treated very hospitably at the place, and had partaken
very freely of a collation of marvellous stories dished up out
of sheer devilry by some of the people with whom he had

The Great Barrier Reef. 31I

come into contact ; who had also read of that plucky over-
land exploration of the brothers Jardine, which solved the
hitherto undecided question as to the course of certain rivers
which emptied themselves into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and
of the elder Jardine’s settlement at Cape York, where he
had through weary months to hold his own against the
dangers that walk at noonday and the arrows that fly in
darkness.

Somerset harbour we entered in the midst of a tropical
storm that made the little pearl-shelling vessels rock like
paper boats. We remained long enough to learn something
of this same pearl-fishery. One informant proved that it is
a most thriving business, and deplored that, by some astonish-
ing oversight, the Queenslanders allow the entire profit of
the enterprise to go to another colony. Nearly the whole
of the boats hail from Sydney, some of whose merchants are
making rapid fortunes out of the trade, upon which, added
my complainant, there is no tax; not even a boat license,
he says, is imposed by the Government of Queensland.
The vessels engaged in the business are smart little fore-
and-aft schooners, and last year there were taken from the
port of Somerset not less than 200 tons of pearl-shells, the
selling price of which would be about £200 per ton. One
firm in Sydney received seventy-two tons, and I heard of
one Birmingham house that had already bought £30,000
worth of the material.

As it often happens with other important industries by
which large fortunes are made in a short time, the pearl
shelling capabilities of Queensland were discovered by
accident. The hardy seamen and native divers engaged in
the deche-de-mer trade, about four years ago, brought up an
occasional pearl oyster, and as the matter was talked about
in the straits it was remembered that the blacks along the

e138 By Stream and Sea.

coast were in the habit of wearing crescent-shaped pearl-shell
ornaments about their necks. The industry was then orga-
nized, and with the most gratifying pecuniary results.

The pearl oyster averages from seven to nine inches in
diameter, and the inside is lined with a beautiful coat of the
mother of pearl, from which buttons and other articles are
made. At Somerset I was presented with a pair that,
mounted, make capital card trays, being fully eight inches
across. The people engaged in pearl diving seem to bea
very miscellaneous set. The white men are mostly big, rough-
bearded fellows, some of whom would not thank you for
inquiring too closely into their antecedents, and who adopt
a remarkably “conciliating” way of dealing with their
coloured assistants. Very often in Australia you hear that
the blacks of a certain district have been conciliated—that
is to say, knocked down or shot. But it is only a very few
aboriginals who work at the pearl fishery, or indeed any
other steady pursuit. When the coasting steamers pass
‘between the mainland and one of the more southern islands
off the Queensland coast, the passengers are sometimes
puzzled to account for the black balls bobbing up and down
on the waves. The explanation is that they are natives
swimming off from the island to board the boat and beg a
passage to one of these northern ports. Three or four may
contrive to catch the rope that is thrown astern; the re-
mainder return to shore, swimming, as before, the entire
distance of four or five miles. Some of the fortunate ones
are amongst the aboriginals to be found in Torres Straits
amongst the pearl fishers. The South Sea Islanders, how-
ever, or Kanakas, as it is the fashion to call them, make the
best divers. In some of the boats may be found natives of
the islands around New Guinea, gentlemen who, if report
does not belie them, are not, at their own domestic hearths,

The Great Barrier Reef. 313

insensible to the attractions of nicely-cooked human
flesh.

At Somerset I had the pleasure of meeting the Rev. Mr.
Macfarlane, of the London Missionary Society. He is a
missionary ; he is also an explorer; and if ever we are to
know much about New Guinea I believe it will be from
him. Riding at her anchor in the sandy cove was his little
steamer, the Ellangowan, presented to his mission by Miss
Baxter, of Dundee, and sent out for the express purpose of
civilizing the Papuan savages. In his last trip to New
Guinea Mr. Macfarlane and his party were attacked by the
natives, who, though probably they had never before seen a
ship, much less a steamer, in their river, rushed into the
water, and, with incredible fury, hurled their spears and
launched their arrows at the exploring party.

Periodically, Mr. Macfarlane steams round to visit the
native teachers he has planted here and there, to leave them
supplies and give encouragement. The big-booted pearl
shellers have all a kind word to say of this devoted gentle-
man, whose burly form and open countenance are of more
consequence to them, I expect, than his clerical position.

“ Mr. Macfarlane is the missionary, is he not?” I asked a
man who boarded the steamer.

“Dunno about that,” the fellow replied, “but by G— he’s
aman every inch of him.”

I can answer for it there was one passenger on board the
R.M. steamer who, amidst the rude tempest which ushered
us into the next phase of the voyage, wished Mr. Macfarlane
and his pretty little mission steamer a hearty “ God-speed.”

That next phase of our voyage was the Great Barrier Reef
of Australia. Roughly speaking this is a wall of coral reefs .
extending some 1300 miles, from the coast of New Guinea
dnwn to the shores of Queensland, and running so parallel

314 By Stream and Sea.

with the land that its shortest distance is ten, and farthest 120
miles from shore. The ocean outside may be moaning
and bursting, but within the Barrier all is comparatively
calm. The channel is mostly shallow, but it varies in the
most extraordinary manner. Sometimes close to the wall
of the reef there is a sheer depth of sixty fathoms ; then the
water shoals suddenly away. No wonder that the steamers
adopt the precaution of anchoring after nightfall, unless the
moon is up.

Every day now brings its new subject of interest. The
Barrier Reef shows above the sea at irregular intervals, now
black and low, now as an undefined something that, just
beneath the surface, night and day angers the water into
foam. A trusty pilot comes on board at Somerset, not to
leave the vessel until the reef is past. We are always within
sight of Queensland, and at each stopping place we hear
from the new arrivals more and more of the wonderful
riches of this colony, which stretches from close to the
equator, with a seaboard of 2250 miles, and teems with
capabilities that cry aloud for development.

Birds from the land come out to criticise the sea-fowl,
never venturing, however, farther than the reefs, which in
the surf look like black pillows bordered with white lace.
Blue smoke ascending from the edges of the forests indicate
the camp fires of the natives, and sets the “ colonials,” who
gather as the voyage goes on, discussing, not the virtues,
alas ! but the ineradicable vices of the race. We have not
proceeded a hundred miles down the reef passage before we
are aware that it is not the fashion here to think or speak
anything good of the Australian aboriginal. The only
anxiety I could discover was that he and his should die
out as quickly as possible. All efforts to make something
of him seem to have failed. Reclaimed for a time, he

The Great Barrier Reef. 315

sooner or later wanders stealthily back to his tribe. Miser-
able wanderers they have been, are, and apparently must be.

A chart is positively a romance of the sea, if studied
aright. It tells of adventurous mariners pushing their way
along an unknown coast line, amidst ever-recurring obstacles
and terrors, real and suggested. The names of the Queens-
land bays and headlands, which we spell out in the chart-
room, were, we may be sure, given with a meaning. In
these days the mariner heads south with the confidence
which a rich harvest of science warrants. How fared the
intrepid pioneer who sowed the seed? Here, upon the
outspread sheet, we have the fruit of such inscriptions as
“numerous reefs divided by narrow deep channels ;” or
‘safe entrance here ;” or “ heavy confused sea,” or “ sand-
bank slightly vegetated ;” or “submerged rocks.” Wreck
Bay lies yonder ; here Cape Flattery ; there Cape Direction.
There is Mount.Cook at the entrance of Endeavour River,
where the gallant Captain Cook careened his ships on the
southern bank while he climbed the granite mass called
Lizard Island to spy out an avenue of escape from the
network of channels in which he had become involved.

The district is busy enough now, for beyond the moun-
tains are the famous Palmer gold fields, and, beyond them,
so the newcomers rumour, a brand new gold field, to which
people are rushing at the present moment. Cooktown
accordingly sprung up almost, as one may say, in a night,
as indeed townships frequently do in this vast new country.
The harbour is good, but not deep enough to admit close
to shore a ship of large tonnage ; but we can make out the
square, low, white houses, and the verandah running round
as many sides as the owner can afford, and can discern
that all the buildings are of wood, with roofs of shingle.
Thoroughly Australian is the aspect, and thoroughly homely.

316 By Stream and Sea.

Cooktown occupies a fine situation. Its bold hills are
diversified by great ribs covered with a brownish grass, by
ravines full of green undergrowth, by peaks and pyramids
verdure clad, by ridges capped with rocky crowns of fan-
tastic pattern. There is one hill which would appear to
have had an eruption of Brobdingnagian beehives breaking
out all over its face. One of the bystanders says that the
scenery about Cooktown is not amiss, but that it has an
unfinished sort of look, as if it had been created late on
the sixth day. This is not reverent, but it hits the case
pretty fairly, and there are other portions of the coast that
come under the same category. The scattered township
looks pleasant from seaward, but’an inhabitant recommends
me not to bring my family up there for a holiday.

Next day we have more significant nomenclature. We
pass Weary Bay; also Cape Tribulation, the latter a low
mound flanked by finely-wooded slopes, Peter Botte
mountain is over 3000 feet high, but in association with
a far-reaching range it does not look so lofty. Towards
evening these imposing mountains are magnificently purpled
with a purple that is peculiar to Australia. It suffuses
mountains, valleys, and islands alike, save where cloudlets
rest like silver epaulettes upon the shoulders of some
obtrusive summit. It is the land of gold beyond, but
there is no other attraction apparent. The coveted treasure
is wrung amidst burning heat and chronic privations from
the bosom of the very desert. .

There is an abundance of mountain grandeur down the
entire coast of Queensland, with islands and narrow water
passages charmingly picturesque in their variety of foliage.
There are curiosities, too, such as Magnetic Island, which
seems to have passed, at some remote period, through a
terrible fiery ordeal. One of its headlands is covered with

The Great Barrier Reef. cay,

square boulders, resembling the old-fashioned tombs of a
country churchyard. Leafless trees stand weird as gibbets
on the higher peaks. There is a bay which reminded me
much of the Giant's Causeway—not the first time I had been
led involuntarily to think of Northern Ireland or Western
Scotland. The Orchard Rocks are a singular group of
gigantic boulders, so poised that you might imagine the
weight of a finch or sparrow would overbalance and send
them thundering into the sea. One pillar upon this island
is thirty feet high, and as perfectly cubed as if wrought by
mathematical skill ; and there is a facsémdle of ancient ruins
at the extremity of the hard sanded beach of a delightful
bay.

We have now voyaged about 600 miles down the coast,
.and, of course, 600 miles of any kind of scenery would begin
to be monotonous somewhere about the five hundreth mile ;
yet if that travelling photographer I spoke of in a previous
chapter should pass that way he might bag a series of very
striking views. By-and-by comes Townsville, finely situated
under a big hill sparsely wooded at the base and displaying,
as its upper half, masses of red rock curiously seamed and
wrinkled. Cleveland Bay looks bright with its long clear
stretch of sand, and with houses dotted here and there, with
a good deal of intervening space; while upon the lowest
terrace of the craggy steep, itself a fair hill, there are other
houses—white-roofed bungalows, each with its inevitable
verandah. The steamer anchors here some two miles from
shore. At Cooktown we approach much nearer land.

What the coast scenery of Bowen might be we could
only gather from hearsay, since we halt off the bay at
midnight in blackness and rain, but we make up for our
disappointment by hugely enjoying the charms of the
Whitsunday Passage.

318 By Stream and Sea.

Unfortunately, large vessels cannot call at the various
ports that are opening up on the Queensland coast, and
we have to communicate with shore by small paddle-wheel
boats, some of which would be highly successful in an ex-
hibition of monstrosities of naval architecture. A gentleman
comes aboard from Townsville—the outlet for a fine group
of gold fields—and he tells us in confidence that Townsville
is the finest town in Queensland. A gentleman from Bowen
sings precisely the same song of his town. Mentioning these
things to a Rockhamptonian later on, he assures me Bowen
is a village, and Townsville a mere collection of shanties ;
but that Rockhampton really ought to be the metropolis
of the colony, and will be when the round pegs are
inserted in round holes, etc., etc. My friend’s pzdce de
resistance was the argument that’ Rockhampton boasted
two daily newspapers; ergo, it must be a place of con-
sideration. From whatever point he started, he came
back naturally to the daily newspapers. He told me of
the Fitzroy, and of many creeks with singular names, of
schools of arts, hospitals, and churches, but sooner or later
he wound up with his daily newspapers. Even when he
appalled my timid nerves with his stories of the fearful
alligators which abound in the Fitzroy it was the same;
it was just as I expected—copies of The Rockhampton Bulletin
and Argus were found amongst the cartload of marine stores
taken from one saurian stomach. Of course when a Mary-
borough patriot appeared, I innocently asked him how far
behind the other ports Maryborough was, and of course I at
once found that Rockhampton, Bowen, and the rest were
simple frauds ; the real Queensland port was Maryborough..

Moreton Bay at last! The white sand of Moreton and
the woods of Stradbroke are before us as the chain cable
gallops through the hawsehole, and the Government steamet

The Great Barrier Reef. 319

ranges alongside to tranship the mails and passengers. I
dip my pen to make the last entry in my Log. The
voyage is over, and the voyagers are glad. New scenes
are before them. As they enter the Brisbane River they
become aware that they have turned over, for weal or woe,
a new page in the Log of their life. Somehow, the kind
welcomes they have received have made them feel already
at home, even before they have placed foot on land. They
had read of Moreton Bay scenery as consisting of mangrove
flats, swamps, and numberless mud banks; had, in truth,
been led to form a dismal anticipation of it, of the river,
and of the town. In all they are agreeable surprised.

Two emigrant ‘ships, recently arrived from England, lie
at anchor in the bay; one, we are told, under quarantine,
the men, women, and children, perhaps, gazing wistfully at
the land which, as yet, they are forbidden to enter. What
do they think of the prospect? It must be a doubly serious
matter to poor folks who have come out so far to begin life
again with all their kith and kin. Thanks to a kind Provi-
dence which is too wise to err, too good to be unkind, the
flower of hope may droop, but it never absolutely scorches up
while there is the sap of life to sustain it. The very vastness
of the unbroken forests which cover the land is calculated to
inspire them with awe; and, doubtless, while the immigrants
wait in anxiety for release by the Health Officer, fears and
hopes alternate. As the Ka/e steams up the Brisbane River
I try to look around from their standpoint, putting myself,
as it were, in their place. ,

The Brisbane is a broad stream that bends and twists
through a variety of scenery, and is skirted with a verdant
fringe of mangrove almost to low-water mark. It introduces
the stranger to the smooth ash-coloured trunks and scantily-
leaved branches of the tall gum trees that shed their bark

320 By Stream and Sea.

instead of their leaves, and which are never, therefore, with.
out some sort of foliage. At one turn these woods appear
covering the slopes of mountainous country, not with the
April greens or October colourings of home, but with a
prevailing greyness which soon becomes familiar, and in
time uninteresting. The clearings, however, will most
attract the immigrant’s attention, for it is from them that
they receive their first inkling of Australian life. After
three months of sea and sky it will be pleasant to look out
upon green pastures, and see once more cattle and horses
grazing in close proximity to the dwelling-houses of man.
The newly-arrived immigrants wonder why in the meadows,
as they have been used to call them, there are so many
stumps of trees, cut off a yard or so from the ground; but
they soon learn that this is how new homes are made, and
that the prostrate logs and charred trunks from which arises
thin blue smoke, mark the determination of some settler to
cut down and burn until he has cleared himself a space in
the Bush for pasture and homestead. The immigrant begins
even thus early to perceive that in the sweat of his brow lies
his chance in the future. He perceives that rough and strong
posts and rails replace the sweet-scented hedgerows of the
shires ; that here there are immensity of space and freedom
to roam at will; that though a settler may live in a tiny
slab-hut, with roof of bark or shingle, he looks as happy as
a king, with his children playing about, and with the con-
sciousness that though his estate be uncultivate and wild,
it is his own to make or mar.

Nearer town the scene becomes less primitive. Groups
of bananas, patches of maize, lucerne, sugar, and clumps
of feathery bamboo around the larger dwellings of well-to-do
colonists, are visible amongst numerous other evidences of
industrial pursuits. Then come the suburbs of Brisbane—

The Great Barrwr Reef. 321

cool, picturesque-looking villas, wood-built, protected from
the glare and heat by broad verandahs, and surmounting
high-wooded eminences; clusters of neat cottages, houses
great and small, overlooking the river; and, finally, having
rounded a sharp tongue of land, the busy wharves, ware-
houses, churches, and shipping, burst into view. Upon
hills, right and left, the city of Brisbane stands revealed,
charmingly situated, but as yet in its infancy, though an infancy
which any one may see at a glance is lusty and rapid in its
progression to maturity; Government House, standing in
ample grounds, the Botanical Gardens, full of strange tropical
trees and plants, and the Parliamentary Buildings, with
their conspicuous centre dome, appear in succession as the
steamboat sweeps round yet another sharp curve and makes
for the wharf at which, bag and baggage, we land, to begin
our practical experience of the antipodes,

PRINTED AT THE CAXTON FRESS, BECCLES.

March 1877.

CHATTO & WINDUS’S
LIST OF BOOKS.

— Re

A HANDSOME GIFT-BOOK.

Half-bound, paper boards, 21s.; or elegantly half-bound crimson
morocco, gilt, 255.

The Graphic Portfolio.

, Fifty Engravings from “The Graphic,”

Most carefully printed on the finest plate paper (18 in. by 15) from the
Original Engravings. The Drawings are by S. L. Fitpes, [ELEN
PATERSON, HUBERT HERKOMER, SYDNEY HA Lt, E. J. GREGORY,
G. D, Lrestiz, W. SMALL, G. Du MAuRIER, Sir Joun GiLperr,
G. J. PINWELL, CHARLES "GREEN, G. Duranp, M. E. Epwarps,
A. B. Houcuton, H. S. Marxs, F. W. Lawson, H. WEIGALL,
and others.

“Contains some of the choicest speci: , both of d; rand wood engraving. *
ie fees in details and ampression, and engraved with rare delicacy.” —DalLy
EWS. :

UNIFORM WITH THE ‘‘ TURNER GALLERY.”
Handsomely half-bound, India Proofs, royal folio, £10 ; Large Paper
copies, Artist? India Proofs, elephant folio, £ 2G.

Modern. Art :

A Series of superb Line Engravings, from the Works of distinguished
Painters of the English and Foreign Schools, selccted from Galleries
and Private Collections in Great Britain.

With Descriptive Text by JAMES DAFFORNE,

2 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Demy 8vo, price One Shilling.

Academy Notes for 1876.

With 107 Illustrations of the Principal Pictures at Burlington
House : a large number being Facsimiles of Sketches drawn by
the Artists. Edited by HENRY BLACKBURN,
* * AcapEMY NoTEs for 1875 may also be had, price One Shilling.
“* We at once take an opportunity of offering our thanks, as well as those of all
visitors to the Exhibition, to Mr. Blackburn for his very carefully executed review
of the Academy pictures, illustrated by some 100 woodcut memoranda of the
principal pictures, almost half of them from the pencils of the painters themselves.
A cheaper, prettier, or more convenient souvenir of the Exhibition it would be
difficult to conceive and unreasonable to expect.” —TIMES.,

ACADEMY NOTES FOR 1877, in which nearly the whole of
the Illustrations will be Facsimiles from Drawings by the Artists
represented, will be published immediately upon the opening of the
Exhibition, in May.

Crown 4to, containing 24 Plates beautifully printed in Colours, with
descriptive Text, cloth extra, gilt, 6s. ; illustrated boards, 3s. 6d.

A s0p’s Fables

Translated into Human Nature. By C. H. BENNETT.

“For fun and frolic the new version of Esop’s Fables must bear away the
palm, There are plenty of grown-up children who like to be amused ; and if this
new version of old stories does not amuse them they must be very dull indeed,
and their situation one much to be commiserated.””—MORNING Post.

‘Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 215.

A Handbook of Architectural Styles.

Translated from the German of A. ROSENGARTEN by W.
COLLETT-SANDARS, With 639 Illustrations. ;

Crown 8vo, with Portrait and Facsimile, cloth extra, 75, 6d.

Artemus Ward's Works:

The Works of CHARLES FARRER BROWNE, better known as
ARTEMUS WARD. With Portrait, facsimile of Handwriting, &c.

“ The author combines the powers of Thackeray with those of Albert Smith.
The saltis rubbed in with a native hand—one which has the gift of tickling.” —
SaTuRDAY REVIEW.

Small 4to, green and gold, 6s. 6¢.; gilt edges, 7s. 6d.

As Pretty as Seven,

and other Popular German Stories. Collected by Lupwice
BECHSTEIN. With Additional Tales by the Brothers Grimm,
and 100 Illustrations by RICHTER.”

“ These tales ave pure and healthful; they will shed over childhood a rosy

light, and strew the path with stars and flowers, the remembrance of which will
last through life.” —PREFACE.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 3

Crown 8yo, Coloured Frontispiece and Illustrations, cloth gilt, 7s. 6.
<4 Hlistory of Advertising.
From the Earliest Times. Illustrated by Anecdotes, Curious
Specimens, and Biographical Notes of Successful Advertisers.
By HENRY SAMPSON. .

“* We have here a book to be thankful for. Among the many interesting tllustra-
tions is a photographed copy of the Times’ for Fanuary 1st, 1788, which may be
easily read by means of a magnifying glass. We recommend the present volume,
which takes us through antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the present time, illustrat-
ing all in turn by advertisements—serious, comic, roguish, or downright rascally.

The chapter on ‘swindles and hoaxes’ is full of entertainment ; but of that the
volume itself is full from the first page to the last.” —ATHENAUM.

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Coloured Illustrations, 16s.
A Popular History:of Astronomy.
By J. Ramzosson, Laureate of the Institute of France, the French
Academy, and the Academy of Sciences. Translated by C. B.

PITMAN. With 10 Chromolithographs, 3 Celestial Charts, and
63 Woodcuts.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 75. 6d.

A Handbook of London Bankers ;

With some Account of their Predecessors, the Early Goldsmiths ;

’ together with Lists of Bankers, from the Earliest London Direc-
tory, printed in 1677, to that of the London Post-Office Directory
of 1876. By F. G. H1LTon PRICE.

“ An interesting and unpretending little work, which may prove a useful con-
tribution towards the history of a difficult subject. . . . Mr. Price's anecdotes
are entertaining. . . . . There is something fascinating, almost romantic,
in the details given us of Child’s Bank. . . . There isagreat dealof amusing
veading and some valuable information in this book.” —SATURDAY REVIEW.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 9s.

Bardsley’s Our English Surnames :
Their Sources and Significations. By CHARLES WAREING
BARDSLEY, M.A. Second Edition, revised throughout, con-
siderably enlarged, and partially rewritten. :

“ Mr. Bardsley has faithfully consulted the original medieval documents and
works from which the origin and development of surnames can alone be satisfac-
torily traced. He has furnished a valuable contribution to the literature of sur-
names, and we hope to hear more of him in this freld.””—T1mzs. E

Small 8vo, cloth extra, with Frontispiece by CRUIKSHANK, 35. 6d.

Blewitt’s The Rose and the Lily;

How they became the Emblems of England and France. A Fairy
Tale. By Mrs. OcTAVIAN BLEWITT. With a Frontispiece by
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. an

nak,

4 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 18s.

Baker’ Ss Clouds in the East:

Travels and Adventures on the Perso-Turkoman Frontier. By
VALENTINE BAKER. With Maps and Illustrations, coloured
and plain, from Original Sketches. Second Edition, revised and

corrected.
“(A man who not only thinks for himself, but who has risked his life in order to
gain information. . A most graphic and lively narrative of travels and

adventures which have’ nothing of the commonplace about them,.”—LEEDS
Mercury.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra gilt, with Illustrations, 75. 6d.
Boccaccto’s Decameron ,;

or, Ten Days’ Entertainment. Translated into English, with an
Introduction by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. With
Portrait, and STOTHARD’S beautiful Copperplates.

Price One Shilling Monthly, with Four Illustrations.

Belgravia.

THA T the purpose with which “ BELGRAVIA” was originated has been
fulfilled, is shown by the popularity that has attended tt since its first
appearance. Aiming, as may be inferred from its name, at supplying the most
vefined and cultivated section of London society with intellectual pabulum suited
to its requirements, it sprang at once into public favour, and has since remained
one of the most extensively read and widely circulated of peri ls. In passing
into new hands it has experienced no structural change or modification. In-
creased energy and increased capital have been employed in elevating it to the
Aighest standard of excellence, but all the features that had won public apprecia-
tion have been retained, and the Magazine still seeks its principal support in the
homes of Belgravia. ‘As the means through which the writer most readily reaches
the heart of the general public, and in consequence as the most important of aids
.tn the establishment of morals and the formation of character, fiction still remains

a principal feature in the Magazine. Two serial stories accordingly run through
its pages; supplemented by short stories, novelettes, and narrative or dramatic

. sketches: whilst essays, social, biographical, and humorous ; scientific discoveries
brought to the level of ‘popular comprehension, and treated with a light touch ;
poetry, of the highest character; and records of adventure and travel, form the
remaining ‘portion of the contents. Especial care is now bestowed upon the
-tllustrations, of which no fewer than four appear in each number. Beyond the
design of illustrating the article they accompany, these aim at maintaining a

: position as works of art, both as vegards drawing and engraving. In short,

t ine before p Z to favour have now been enhanced,
and the Aarne can but leave the result to a ‘public that has seldom failed to
appreciate all earnest, persistent, and well-directed efforts for its amusement and

benefit,

Ks The THIRTY-FIRST Volumeof BELGRAVIA (which includes
the BELGRAVIA ANNUAL ), elegantly bound in crimson cloth, full gilt
side and back, gilt edges, price 7s. 6d., is now ready. —Handsome Cases
Sor binding the volume can be had at 2s. each.

SEconD EDITION, crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 65.

Boudoir Ballads :

Vers de Société. By J. ASHBY-STERRY,

CHATTO & WINDUS PICCADILLY. 5

Imperial 4to, cloth extra, gilt and gilt edges, price 21s. per volume,

Beautiful Pictures by British Artists :

A Gathering of Favourites froth our Picture Galleries. In 2 Series.

The First Series including Examples by WILKIE, CoNn-
STABLE, TURNER, MULREADY, LANDSEER, MaActisz, E.. M.'
WarD, FRITH, Sir JOHN GILBERT, LESLIE, ANSDELL, MARCUS
Stons, Sir Nor, Paton, FAED, EYRE CRoWE, GAVIN O’NEIL,
and Mapox Brown,

The SECOND SERIES containing Pictures by ARMYTAGE, FAED,
GoopDALL, HEMSLEY, HorsLey, Marks, NICHOLLS, Sir NoEL
PaTON, PICKERSGILL, G. SMITH, Marcus STONE, SOLOMON,
STRAIGHT, E, M. Warp, and WARREN.

All engraved on Steel in the highest style of Art. Edited, with
Notices of the Artists, by SYDNEY ARMYTAGE, M.A.

‘* This book is well got up, and good engravings by Feens, Lumb Stocks, and

anges bring back to us pictures of Royal Academy Exhibitions of past years,”
—1IMES.

Crown 8vo, with Photographic Portrait, cloth extra, gs.

Blanchard’s (Laman) Poems.

Now first Collected. Edited, with a Life of the Author (includ-
ing numerous hitherto unpublished Letters from Lord LyTToN,
Lams, Dickens, ROBERT BROWNING, and others), by BLAN-
CHARD JERROLD.

“His humorous verse is. much of it admtrable—sparkling with genuine
* esprit,’ and as polished and pointed as Praed’s.”—ScoTSMAN.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 75. 6d.

Bret Harte’s Select Works

in Prose and Poetry. With Introductory Essay by J. M. BEL-
LEW, Portrait of the Author, and 50 Illustrations.

“" Not many months before my friend's death, he had sent me two sketches of
a young American writer (Bret Harte), far away in California (‘ The Out-
casts of Poker Flat,’ and another), in which he had found such subtle strokes
of character as he had not anywhere else in late years discovered ; the manner
resembling himself, but the matter fresh to a degree that had surprised him ;
the painting in all respects masterly, and the wild rude thing painted a quite
wonderful reality. I have rarely k him more he tly moved.” —FORSTER’S
Lire oF DICKENS.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75. 6d.

Brand’s Observations on Popular Anti-

guities, chiefly Illustrating the Origin. of our Vulgar Customs,

1 Ceremonies, and Superstitions, With the Additions of Sir

Henrw Et.is. An entirely New and Revised Edition, with fine
full-page Illustrations.

6 BOOKS FUBLISHED BY

Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with full-page Portraits, 4s. 6d.

Brewster’s (Sir David) Martyrs of

Science.

Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Astronomical Plates, 45. 6d.

Brewster’s (Sir David) More Worlds

than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the
Christian.

Small, crown 8vo, cloth extra, 65.

Brillat-Savarin’s Gastronomy as a Fine

Art; or, The Science of Good Living. A Translation of the
“* Physiologie du Gofit” of BRILLAT-SAVARIN, with an Intro-
duction and Explanatory Notes by R. E. ANDERSON, M.A,

“We have read it with rare enjoyment, just as we have delightedly read and
re-read quaint old Izaak. Mr. Anderson has done his work of translation
daintily, with true appreciation of the points in his original, and altogether,
though late, we cannot but believe that this book will be welcomed and niich read
by many.’ —NONCONFORMIST.

Demy 8vo, profusely Illustrated in Colours.

The British Flora Medica:

A History of the Medicinal Plants of Great Britain. Illustrated
by a Figure of each Plant, coloured by hand. By BENJAMIN H.
BaRTON, F.L.S., and THomas CasTLE, M.D., F.R.S. A New
Edition, revised, condensed, and partly re-written, by Joun R.
Jackson, A.L.S., Curator of the Museums of Economic Botany,
Royal Gardens, Kew. / [Ln the press.

THE STOTHARD Bunyan.—Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75. 6d.
Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress.
Edited by Rev. T. Scorr. With 17 beautiful Steel Plates by
STOTHARD, engraved by GOODALL ; and numerous Woodcuts.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 75. 62.

’
Byron’s Letters and Fournals.
With Notices of his Life. By Tuomas Moore.” A Reprint of
the Original Edition, newly revised, Complete in one thick Volume,
with Twelve full-page Plates. Preity
“We have read this book with the greatest pleasure. Considered merely as a
composition, it deserves to be classed among the best specimens of English prose
which our age has produced. . . . The style is agreeable, clear, and manly,
and when it rises into eloquence, rises without effort or ostentation. It would
be dificult to name a book which exhibits more kindness, fairness, and modesty.”
~-Macautay, in the EpinsurGH Revikw. .

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 7

Demy 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges, 315. 6d.

Canova’s Works in Sculpture and Model-

ling. 150 Plates, exquisitely engraved in Outline by Moszs, and
printed on an India tint. With Descriptions by the Countess
ALBRIZZI, a Biographical Memoir by CICOGNARA, and Por-
trait by WORTHINGTON.

“* The fertility of this master’s resources is amazing, and the manual labour
expended on his works would have worn out many an ordixary workman. The
outline engravings are finely executed. The descriptive notes are discriminating,
and in the main exact.”—SPECTATOR.

Two Vols. imperial 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, the Plates beautifully ,
printed in Colours, £3 35.

Cathn’s Illustrations of the Manners,

Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians : the re-
sult of Eight Years of Travel and Adventure among the Wildest
and most Remarkable Tribes now existing. Containing 360
Coloured Engravings from the Author’s original Paintings.

Small 4to, cloth gilt, with Coloured Illustrations, ros. 62.

Chaucer for Children ;

A Golden Key. By Mrs. H. R. HAWEIs. With Eight Coloured
Pictures and numerous Woodcuts by the Author.

‘* Tt must not only take a high place among the Christmas and New Vear books
of this season, but is also of permanent value as an introduction to the study of
Chaucer, whose works, in selections of some kind or other, are now text-books in
every school that aspires to give sound instruction tn English.” —ACADEMY.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75. 6d.

Colman’s Humorous Works:

*¢ Broad Grins,’ ‘‘My Nightgown and Slippers,’”? and other
Humorous Works, Prose and Poetical, of GEORGE COLMAN.
With Life by G. B. Bucksroneg, and Frontispiece by HoGARTH.

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Coloured ‘Mllustrations and Maps, 245.
Cope’s Hustory of the Rifle Brigade

(The Prince Consort’s Own), formerly the 95th. By Sir WiLi1a
H. Cope, formerly Lieutenant, Rifle Brigade. ;

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Portraits, 7s. 67.

Creasy’s Memoirs of Eminent Ettoutans ;
with Notices of the Early History of Eton College. By Sir
EDWARD CrEAsY, Author of ‘‘The Fifteen Decisive Battles of
the World.” A New Edition, brought down to the Present
Time, with 13 Illustrations, .

“A new edition of ‘Creasy’s Etonians’ will be welcome. The book was a
favourite a quarter of a century, ago,and it has maintained its reputation, The
value of this new edition is enhanced by 'the fact that Sir Edward Creasy has
added to it several memoirs of Etonians who have died since the first edition
appeared, The work is eminently interesting." —SCOTSMAN.

8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, Two very thick Volumes, 75. 6d. each.

Crutkshank’s Comic Almanack.

Complete in Two SERIES: The First from 1835 to 1843; the
SECOND from 1844 to 1853. A Gathering of the Best Humour
of THackeray, Hoop, Mayyrw, ALBERT SMITH, A’BECK-
ETT, RoBERT BRouGH, &c. With 2000 Woodcuts and Steel
Engravings by CRUIKSHANK, HINE, LANDELLS, &c.

To be Completed in Twenty-four Parts, quarto, at 5s. each, profusely
illustrated by Coloured and Plain Plates and Wood Engravings,

The Cyclopedia of Costume ;

or, A Dictionary of Dress—Regal, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Mili-
tary—from the Earliest Period in England to the reign of George
the Third. Including Notices of Contemporaneous Fashions on
the Continent, and preceded by a General History of the Costumes
of the Principal Countries of Europe. By J. R. PLANcHi,
Somerset Herald.— A Prospectus will be sent upon application.
Part XV. now ready. ‘ *

“(4 most readable and interesting work—and it can scarcely be consulted in
vain, whether the reader is in search for information as to military, court,
ecclesiastical, legal, or professional costume. . . . All the chromo-lithographs,
and most-of the woodcut illustrations—the latter amounting to several thousands
—are very elaborately executed ; and the work forms a livre de luxe which renders
it equally suited to the library and the ladies’ drawing-room,” —TIMES.

*,%* Part XIV. contains the Completion of the DICTIONARY, which,
as Vol. I. of the Book, forms a Complete Work in itself. This volume
may now be had, handsomely bound in half ved morocco, gilt top, price
43 135. 6d. Cases for binding the volume may also be had, price 5s. each.

The remaining Parts will be occupied by the GENERAL HISTORY
OF THE COSTUMES OF EUROPE, arranged Chronologically.

Parts I. to X. now ready, 21s. each, '

A History of Hertfordshire.

By Joun E. Cussans. Illustrated with full-page Plates on Copper
and Stone, and a profusion of small Woodcuts. -

“Mr. Cussans has, from sources not accessible to Clutterbuck, made most
valuable additions to the manorial history of the county from the earliest period
downwards, cleared up many doubtful points, and given original details con-
cerning various subjects untouched or imperfectly treated by that writer. The
pedigrees seent to have been constructed with great care, and area valuable addition
to the genealogical history of the county. Mr. Cussans appears to have done
his work conscientiously, and to have spared neither time, labour, nor expense to
a te his volumes worthy of ranking in the highest class of County Histories,
— ACADEMY.

Demy 8vo, half-bound morocco, 215.
Dibdin’s Bibliomania ; ;
or, Book-Madness : A Bibliographical Romance.: With numerous

Illustrations. A New Edition, with a Supplement, including a
Key to the Assumed Characters in the Drama,

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 9

Two Vols. 8vo, cloth extra, 30s.
Dixon's White Conquest :

America in 1875. By W. Hepwortu DIxon.

“" The best written, most instructive, and most entertaining book that Mr.
‘Dizon has published since ‘New America,’ —ATHENAUM,

SEconp Epirion, demy ‘vo, cloth gilt, with Illustrations, 18s.

Dunraven’s The Great Divide:

A Narrative of Travels in the Upper Yellowstone in the Summer

of 1874. Bythe EarLof DUNRAVEN. With Mapsand numerous

striking full-page Illustrations by VALENTINE W. BROMLEY.
“There has not for a long time appeared a better book of travel than Lord

Dunyraven's ‘ The Great Divide, The book is full of clever observation,
: and bothnarrative and illustrations are thoroughly good.” —-ATHENZUM.

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 24s.

Dodge’s (Colonel) The Hunting Grounds

of the Great West: A Description of the Plains, Game, and
Indians of the Great North American Desert. By RICHARD
Invinc DoncE, Lieutenant-Colonel of the United States Army.
With an Introduction by WILLIAM BLACKMORE; Map, and
numerous I\lustrations drawn by ERNEST GRISET.

.“ This magnificent volume ts one of the most able and most interesting works
which has ever proceeded from an American pen, while its freshness ts equal to
that of any similar book. Colonel Dodge has chosen a subject of which he is
master, and treated it with a fulness that leaves nothing more to be desired, and

in a style which is charming equally for its picturesqueness and its purity

—NoNcONFORMIST. i ly

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 6s.

Emanuel On Diamonds and Precious

Stones : their History, Value, and Properties ; with Simple Tests for
ascertaining their Reality. By Harry EMANUEL, F.R.G.S.
With numerous Illustrations, Tinted and Plain. °

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s.. 6a.
The Englishman's House:

A Practical Guide to all interested in Selecting or Building a
House, with full Estimates of Cost, Quantities, &c. By C. J.
RICHARDSON. Third Edition. With nearly 600 Illustrations.
%,* This book is intended to supply a long-felt want, viz., a lain, non-technical

account of every style of house, with the cost and manner of building ; it gives .
every variety, from a workman's cottage toa nobleman's palace.

10 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Crown 8yo, cloth boards, 6s. per Volume ; .a few Large Paper
copies (only 50 printed), at 12s. per Vol.

Early English Poets.

Edited, with Introductions and Annotations, by Rev. A.B. GROSART.

“Mr. Grosart has spent the most laborious and the most enthusiastic care on
the perfect restoration and preservation of the text 3 and itis very unlikely that

any other edition of the poet can ever be called for.

. From Mr. Grosart we

always expect and always receive the final results of most patient and competent

scholarship,” —EXAMINER.

1.. Fletcher’s (Giles, B.D.)

Complete Poems : Christ's Victorie
in Heaven, Christ's Victorie on
Earth, Christ's Triumph over
Death, and Minor Poems.
With Memorial-Introduction and
Notes. :

2. Davies’ (Sir Fohn)
Complete Poetical Works,. in-
cluding Psalms I. to L. in Verse,
and other hitherto Unpublished
MSS., for the first time Col-
lected and Edited. With Me-
morial-Introduction and Notes.
Two Vols.

3. Herrick’s (Robert) Hes-
perides, Noble Numbers, and

Complete Collected Poems. With
Memorial-Introduction and Notes,
Steel Portrait, Index of First
Lines, and Glossarial Index, &c.
Three Vols. t

4. Sidney's (Sir Philip)
Complete Poetical Works, in-
cluding all those in ‘‘ Arcadia.”
With Portrait, Memorial-Intro-
duction, Essay on the Poetry of
Sidney, and Notes. Three Vols.

5. Donne’s (Dr. Fohn)
Complete Poetical Works, in-
cluding the Satires and various
from MSS. With Memorial-In-
troduction and Notes.

[Ju the press.

*,* Other volumes are in active preparation.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 6s.

Frairholt’s Tobacco:

Its History and Associations ; with an Account of the Plant and
its Manufacture, and its Modes of Use in all Ages and Countries.
By F. W. Farruott, F.S.A. A New Edition, with Coloured
Frontispiece and upwards of 100 Illustrations by the Author.

“A very pleasant and instructive history of tobacco and its associations, which
we cordially recommend alike to the votaries and to the enemies of the much-

maligned but certainly not neglected weed.

formation.” —Datty News.

Full of interest and in-

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 45. 6d. :

Fravraday’s Chemical History of a Candle.

Lectures delivered to a Juvenile Audience.

A New Edition.

Edited by W. Crooxes, F.C.S. With numerous Illustrations.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 45. 6d.

Faraday’s Various Forces of Nature.

A New Edition. Edited by W. Crookes, F.C.S. With numerous

Illustrations.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. Ir

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 75. 64.
Finger-Ring Lore: ‘

Historical, Legendary, and Anecdotal—Earliest Notices; Supersti-
tions ; Ring Investiture, Secular and Ecclesiastical ; Betrothal and
Wedding Rings ; Ring-tokens; Memorial and Mortuary Rings; Posy-
Rings ; Customs and Incidents’ in Connection with Rings ; Remark-
able Rings, &c. By WILLIAM JonES, F.S.A. With Hundreds of
Illustrations of Curious Rings of all Ages and Countries.

“ Enters fully into the whole subject, and gives an amount of information
and general reading in reference thereto which is of very high interest. The
bo0k 2s not only a sort of history of finger-rings, but ts a collection of anecdotes
in connection with them. . a volume is admirabl) illustrated, and

altogether affords an t of t and information which is not other-
wise easily accessible.’’—ScoTSMAN. .

“ One of those gossiping books which are as full of amusement as of instruc-
gossiping
2202.” —ATHEN.EUM. ie

One Shilling Monthly, Illustrated.

The Gentleman's Magazine.

Edited by SyLvaNus URBAN, Gentleman.

IN seeking to restore the “GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE” to the position

it formerly held, the Publishers do not lose sight of the changed conditions
under which it now appears. While maintaining an historical continuity which
dates back to the reign of George the Second, there will be no attempt to burden
the present with the weight of a distant past, or to adhere slavishly to traditions
the application of which is unsuited to the altered conditions of society at the
presént times It is sought to render the Magazine to the gentleman of to-day
what in earlier times it proved to the gentleman of a past, generation. New
features will be introduced to take the place of those which disappear; in the
most important respects, however, the cling inks betu the present and
the past will be closest. Biography and History, which have always formed a
conspicuous portion of the contents, will retain the prominence assigned them,
and unll be treated with the added breadth that springs from increased famili-
arity with authorities and more exact appreciation of the province of the
Biographer and the Historian. Science, which confers upon the age special
eminence, will have its latest conclusions and forecasts presented in a manner
which shall bring them within the grasp of the general reader, The philo-
sophical aspect of Politics, the matters which affect Imperial interests, will be
separated from the rivalries of party, and will receive a due share of attention.
Archeology (under which comprehensive head may be included Genealogy, To-
pography, and other similar matters), Natural History, Sport and Adventure,
Poetry, Belles Lettres, Art in all its manifestations, will titute a portion
of the contents; and Essays upon social subjects will, as heretofore, be inter~
spersed. Under the head of Table Talk matters of current interest will be
discussed, and facts of historic value will be preserved. A Work of Fiction by
some novelist of highest position will run through the pages of the Magazine,
and will be iliustrated by artists.of known excellence. With a full sense of
what is involved in their promise, and with a firm resolution to abide by their
pledges, the Publishers undertake to spare no exertion that ts necessary to secure
the highest class of contributions, to place the Magazine in the first rank of
serials, and to-fit it to take its place on the table and on the shelves of all classes
of cultivated Englishmen.

*.* Now ready, the Volume for Fuly to December, 1876, cloth extra,
price 8s. 6a. ; and Cases for binding, price 2s. each.

12 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

’ THE Ruskin GRIMM.—Square crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s. 6d.;
gilt edges, 75. 6d.

German Popular Stories.

Collected by the Brothers GrimM, and Translated by EDGAR
Taylor. Edited, with an Introduction, by JoHN RuvuskIN.
With 22 Illustrations after the inimitable designs of GEORGE
CRUIKSHANK. Both Series Complete.

“ The illustrations of this volume... . are of quite sterling and admirable
art, of a class precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales which
they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to
my ‘ Elements of Drawing, * were unrivalled i: in masterfulness of touch since Rem-
brandt (in some qualities 9, un! lled even by him). . . . Tomake
somewhat enlarged copies of them, looking at them through a magnifying glass,
and never putting two lines where Cruikshank has put only one, would be an exer-
cise in decision and severe drawing which would leave afterwards little to be learnt
in schools.”—Extract from Introduction by JOHN RUSKIN.

One Vol. crown 8vo, cloth extra, gs.

Gilbert’s (WS) Original Plays :

“A Wicked World,” ‘‘ Charity,” ‘‘The Palace of Truth,
** Pygmalion,” ‘* Trial by Jury,” &c..

* His workmanship ts in its way perfect; it is very sound, very even, very
well sustained, and excellently balanced throughout.’’—OBSERVER.

Demy 4to, cloth extra, with [lustrations, 315. 6d. *

Gillray the Caricaturist :
The Story of his Life and Times, with Anecdotal Descriptions of
his Engravings. Edited by THomMAsS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A.
With 83 full-page Plates, and numerous Wood Engravings.

Gold ;

or, Legal Regulations for the Standard of Gold and Silver
Ware in the different Countries of the World. Translated from
the German of STUDNITZ by Mrs, BREWER, and Edited, with
additions, by EDWIn W. STREETER.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with a Map, 3s. 6d.

Crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt edges, 75. “6d.

The Golden Treasury of Thought :

AN ENCYCLOPADIA OF QUOTATIONS from Writers of all Times
and Countries. Selected and Edited by THEODORE TAYLOR.

Small 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s.

Gosse’s King Erik :
A Tragedy. By EpMunD W. Gossz. With a Vignette by W. B.

Scott.
“We have seldom seen so marked an advance in a second book beyond a erst
Its merits are solid and of a very high order.” — ACADEMY,

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.

13

Small 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s.

Gosse’s On Viol and Flute.

Second Edition. With a Vignette by W. B. Scort.

Square 16mo (Tauchnitz size), cloth extra, 2s. per volume.

The Golden Library:

Bayard Taylor’s Diver-
sions of the Echo Club.

The Book of Clerical Ance-
dotes.

Byron’s Don Fuan.

Carlyle (Thomas) on the
Choice of Books. With a Me-
moir, 1s. 6d. °

Emerson's Letters and
Social Aims.

Godwin's( William )L ives
of the Necromancers.

Holmes’s Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table. With an In-
troduction by G. A. SALA.

Holmes’s Professor at the
Breakfast Table.

Hood’s Whims and Oddt-
ties. Complete. With all the
original Illustrations.

Irving’s (Washington)
Tales of a Traveller,

Irving’s (Washington)
Tales of the Alhambra.

Sesse’s (Edward) Scenes
and Occupations of Country Life.

Lamb’s Essays of Elia.
Both Series Complete in One Vol.

Leigh Hunt's Essays: A
Tale for a Chimney Corner, and

other Pieces. With Portrait, and
Introduction by EDMUND OLLIER

Mallory’s (Sir Thomas)
Mort d’ Arthur : The Stories of
King Arthur and of the Knights
of the Round Table. Edited by
B. MONTGOMERIE RANKING.

‘Pascal’s Provincial Let-

ters. A New Translation, with
Historical Introduction and
Notes, by T. M‘Criz, D.D.,
LL.D.

Pope’s Complete Poetical
Works.

- +
Rochefoucauld’s Maxims
and Moral Reflections. With
Notes, and an_ Introductory
Essay by SAINTE-BEUVE.

St. Pierre’s Paul and
Virginia, and the Indian Cot-
tage. Edited, with Life, by the
Rev, E, CLARKE,

Shelley’s Early Poems
and Queen Mab, with Essay by
LeicH Hunt. :

Shelley's Later Poems:
Laon and Cythna, &c.

Shelley's Posthumous
Poems, the Shelley Papers, &c.

Shelley’s Prose Works,
including A Refutation of Deism,
Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, &c.

White's Natural History

of Selborne, Edited, with addi-
tions, by THOMAS Brown,

“A series of excellently printed and carefully annotated volumes, handy in sis

and altogether attractive,” —BOOKSELLER

14 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 215.

The Life of the Greeks and Romans.
Described from Antique Monuments. By Ernst Guu and W.
Koner. Translated from the Third German Edition, and Edited ,
by Dr. F. HuEFFER. With 545 Illustrations. ‘

‘

Crown 8v0, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7s. 6a.

Greenwood’s Low-Life Deeps:

An Account of the Strange Fish to be found there; including
‘*The Man and Dog Fight,” with much additional and con-
firmatory evidence ; ‘‘ With a Tally-Man,” ‘‘A Fallen Star,”
‘*The Betting Barber,” ‘A Coal Marriage,” &c, By JAMES
GREENWOOD. With Illustrations in tint by ALFRED CONCANEN.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Greenwood’s Wilds of London:

Descriptive Sketches, from Persona] Observations and Experience,
of Remarkable Scenes, People, and Places in London. By JAMES
GREENWOOD. With 12 Tinted Illustrations by ALFRED CONCANEN.

“ Mr. Fames Greenwood presents himself once more in the character of ‘ one
whose delight it is to do his humble endeavour towards exposing and extirpating
dees abuses and those hole-and-corner evils which afflict society.’”—SaTURDAY

EVIEW.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 45. 6d.

Guyot’s Earth and Man;

or, Physical Geography in its Relation to the History of Mankind.
With Additions by Professors AGASSIZ, PIERCE, and GRAY. 12
' Maps and Engravings on Steel, some Coloured, and a copious Index.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.

FHake’s New Symbols :

Poems. By THomMAs GoRDON HAKE,
‘" The entire book bretthes a pure and ennobling influence, shows welcome
originality of idea and illustration, and yields the highest proof of imaginative
faculty and mature power of expression.” —ATHENAUM.

Medium 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 75. 6d.

Hall’s (Mrs. S. C.) Sketches of Irish

Character, With numerous Tllusts. on Steel and Wood by DANIEL
MACLISE, Sir JOHN GILBERT, W. HARVEY, and G. CRUIKSHANK.

“The Trish Sketches of this lady resemble Miss Mitford’s beautiful English
Sketches in ‘Our Village,’ but they are far more vigorous and picturesque and
bright.” -BLacKwoov’s MAGAZINE,

° CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 15

. _ Three Vols. royal 4to, cloth boards, £6 6s.
Httstorical Portraits ;

Upwards of 430 Engravings of Rare Prints. Comprising the
Collections of Ropp, RICHARDSON, CAULFIELD, &c.. With
Descriptive Text to every Plate, giving a brief outline of the most
important Historical and Biographical Facts and Dates connected
with each Portrait, and references to original Authorities.

Two Vols. 8vo, ‘cloth extra, with Illustrations, 36s.

Haydon’s Correspondence & Table-Talk.

With a Memoir by his Son, FREDERIC WorDsworTH Haypon.
Comprising a large number of hitherto Unpublished Letters from
Keats, WILKIE, SOUTHEY, WorDsworTH, KirKup, LEIGI
Hunt, LANDSEER, HoracE SMITH, Sir G. BEAUMONT, GOETHE,
Mrs. Sippons, Sir WALTER SCOTT, TALFOURD, JEFFREY, Miss
MITForD, MAcREADY, Mrs. BROWNING, LockHaRT, HALLAM,
and others. With 23 Illustrations, including Facsimiles of many
interesting Sketches, Portraits of HAYDON by Keats and WILKIE,
and Haypon’s Portraits of WILKIE, KEATS, and Maria Foote.
“ There can, we think, be no question of its interest in a purely biographical

sense, or of tts literary merit. The letters and table-talk form a most valuable

contribution to the social and artistic history of the time.” —PatLt MAL GAZETTE.

Two Vols. royal 8vo, with Coloured Frontispieces, cloth extra, £2 5s.

Hofe’s Costume of the Ancients.

Illustrated in upwards of 320 Outline Engravings, containing Re-
presentations of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman Habits and
Dresses. ?
“ The subst. of many expensive works, taining all that may be necessary ©
to give to artists, and even to dramatic performers and to others engaged in
lassical rep tations, an idea of: ient cost: sufficiently ample to prevent
their offending in their performances by gross and obuious blunders.” ~-

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75. 6d.

Hood’s (Thomas) Choice. Works,

In Prose and Verse. Including the CREAM OF THE Comic

ANNUALS, With Life of the Author, Portrait, and over Two
Hundred original Illustrations. :

®© Not only does the volume include the better-known poems by the author, but

also what is happily described as ‘ the Cream of the Comic Annuals.’ Such d:licious

things as‘ Don’t you smell Fire?’ ‘The Parish Revolution, and‘ Huggins and

Duggins,” will never want readers.” —GRAPHIC. 1 ,

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Photographic Portrait, 6s.

Hood's (Tom) Poems, Humorous and

Pathetic. Edited, with a Memoir, by his Sister, FRANCES FREE-
LING BRODERIP

16 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Square crown 8vo, in a handsome and specially-designed binding,
gilt edges, 6s,

Flood’s (Tom) From Nowhere to the

North Pole: A Noah’s Arkeological Narrative. With 25 Illus-
trations by W. BRUNTON and E. C, BARNES.

The amusing letterpress is profusely interspersed with the singling rhymes
which children love and learn so easily. Messrs. Brunton and Barnes do full
Justice to the writer's Z aa pl ter result of the harmonious co-

1, aN.
operation of author and artist could not be desired.” —TimEs,
Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75. 6d.

Flook’s (Theodore) Choice Humorous

Works, including his Ludicrous Adventures, Bons-mots, Puns,
and Hoaxes. With a new Life of the Author, Portraits, Fac-
similes, and Illustrations.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7s.

Florne’s Orion:
An Epic Poem, in Three Books. By RICHARD HENGIsT HorRNE.
With Photographic Portrait. Tenth Edition.

“ Orion will be admitted, by every man of genius, to be one of the noblest, if not
the very noblest, poetical work of the age. Its defects are trivial and conventional,
its beauties intrinsic and supreme.” —EDGAR ALLAN Por,

Atlas folio, half morocco, gilt, £5 5s.

The Itahan Masters :

Autotype Facsimiles of Original Drawings in the British Museum.
With Critical and Descriptive Notes, Biographical and Artistic,
by J. Comyns Carr.

“ This splendid volume. . . Mr. Carr's choice of examples has been dictated
by wide knowledge and fine tact. . . The majority have been reproduced with
remarkable accuracy. Of the criticism which accompanies the drawings we have
not hitherto spoken, byt it is this which gives the book its special value.”—PALu
Matt GazeTTE, :

‘ Crown 8vo, cloth-extra, with Illustrations, ros. 6d.

Fennings’ The Rosicrucians: .
Their Rites and Mysteries. With Chapters on the Ancient Fire
and Serpent Worshippers, and Explanations of Mystic Symbols
in Monuments and Talismans of Primeval Philosophers. By
HARGRAVE JENNINGS. With upwards of 300 IIlustrations,

: Small 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
r .
Feux a’ Esprit, ;
Written and Spoken, of the Later Wits and Humourists. Collected

and Edited by Henry S. LEIGH.

“* This thoroughly congenial piece of work . .. Mr. Leigh's claim to praise is
three-fold: he has performed the duty of taster with care and judgment ; he has
restored many stolen or strayed bons-mots to their rightful owners; and he has
exevcised his editorial functions delicately and sparingly.””—DaiLy TELEGRAPH.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 7

Two Vols. 8vo, with 52 Illustrations and. Maps, cloth extra, gilt, 145. -

Fosephus's Complete Works.

Translated by WHISTON. Containing both ‘The Antiquities of
the Jews ” and ‘‘ The Wars.of the Jews.”

Small 8vo, cloth, full gilt, gilt edges, with Illustrations, 6s.
Kavanaghs’ Pearl Fountain,

And other Fairy Stories. By BripGET and JULIA KAVANAGH.
With Thirty Illustrations by J. Moyr SMITH.

“ Genuine new fairy stories of the old type, some of them as delichtful as the
best of Grimm's ‘ German Popular Stories. . « . Kor the most part, the
stories are downright, thorough-going fairy stories of the most admirable kind.
«oo: © Mr. Moyr Smith's illustrations, too, ave admirable. Look at that
white rabbit. Anyone would see at the first glance that he is a vabbit witha
mind, and avery uncommon mind too—that he is a fairy rabbit, and that he is
posing as chief adviser to some one—without reading evena word 2 the story.
Again, notice the fatry-like effect of the little picture of the fairy-bird ‘ Don't-
Sorget-me,’ flying away back into fatry-land. A more perfectly dream-like im-
bression of fatry-land has hardly been given in any illustration of fairy tales
within our knowledge.” —SPECTATOR.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Portraits, 7s. 6d.

Lamb’s Complete Works,

In Prose and Verse, reprinted from the Original Editions, with
many Pieces hitherto unpublished. Edited, with Notes and In-
troduction, by R. H. SHEPHERD. With Two Portraits and Fac-
simile of a page of the ‘‘ Essay on Roast Pig.” ‘

““ A complete edition of Laml’s writings, in prose and verse, has long been
wanted, and ts now supplied. The editor appears to have taken great pains
to bring together Lamb's scattered contributions, and his collection contains a
number of pieces which are now reproduced jor the first time since their original
appearance in various old periodicals.” SATURDAY REVIEW.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with numerous Illustrations, 10s. 6d.

Mary & Charles Lamb:

Their Poems, Letters, and Remains. With Reminiscences and |
Notes by W. Carew Haziitt. With Hancocx’s Portrait of
the Essayist, Facsimiles of the Title-pages of the rare First Editions
of Lamb’s and Coleridge’s Works, and numerous Illustrations.

“<< Very many passages will delight those fond of literary trifies; hardly any
Josten toil be. vest for lovers of Charles Lamb and his sister." STANDARD,

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Life in London ;
, or, The History of Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom. With
the whole of CRUIKSHANK’S Illustrations, in Colours, after the
Originals.

18 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Maps and Illustrations, 18s,

Lamont’s Yachting in the Arctic Seas;

or, Notes of Five Voyages of Sport and Discovery in the Neigh-

bourhood of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. By JAMES LAMONT,

F.R.G.S. With numerous full-page Illustrations by Dr. Livesay.

“ After wading through berless volt of icy fiction, concocted narrative,

and spurious biography of Arctic voyagers, itis pleasant to meet with a real and

genuine volume. . . . He shows much tact in'y tii ‘s adi es, and
they ave so interspersed with dote informat:

uy his
and infor ion as to make them anything
but wearisome. . . . The book, as a whole, is the most important addition
made to our Arctic literature for a long time.” —ATHEN ZUM.

Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, 45. 6d.

Linton’s Foshua Davidson,

Christian and Communist. By E. Lynn Linton. Sixth Edition,
with a New Preface.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Long fellow’s Complete Prose Works.

Including ‘‘ Outre Mer,” ‘‘ Hyperion,” ‘‘ Kavanagh,” ‘* The
Poets and Poetry of Europe,” and “ Driftwood.” With Portrait
and Illustrations by VALENTINE BROMLEY.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 75. 6d.

Longfellow’s Poetical Works.

Carefully Reprinted from the Original Editions. With numerous
fine Illustrations on Steel and Wood. ‘

“* Mr. Longfellow has for many years been the best known and the most read of
American poets ; and his popularity is of the right kind, and rightly and fairly
won. He has not stooped to catch attention by artifice, nor striven to force it by
violence. His works have faced the test of parody and burlesque (which in these
days is almost the common lot of writings of any mark), and have come off un-
harmed.”—SaTURDAY REVIEW. :

THE FRASER PorTRAITS.—Demy 4to, cloth gilt and gilt edges, with
83 characteristic Portraits, 315. 62.

Maclise’s Gallery of Illustrious Literary

Characters. With Notes by Dr. MaGINN. Edited, with copious
Additional Notes, by WILLIAM BATEs, B.A.
One of the most interesting volumes of this year’s literature.’ —T1MEs,

“ Deserves a place on every drawing-room table, and may not unjitly be removed
trom the drawing-room to the library.” SPECTATOR.

‘“CHAT10 & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 19

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 25. 6d.

Madre Naturavy.The Moloch of Fashion.

By Luke LimNerR. With 32 Illustrations by the Author.

FourtuH EDITION, revised and enlarged.
“Apreeably written and amusingly illustrated. Common sense and erudition
are brotght to bear on the subjects discussed in it.” —LANCET,

Handsomely printed in facsimile, price 5s.

Magna Charta.

An exact Facsimile of the Original Document in the British
Museum, printed on fine plate paper, nearly 3 feet long by 2 feet
wide, with the Arms and Seals of the Barons emblazoned in Gold
and Colours.

*,* A full Translation, with Notes, on a large sheet, 6d.

. Small 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d. ;

Mark Twatn’sA dventures of Tom Sawyer
With One Hundred Illustrations.

“* The earlier part oe, the book is to our thinking the most thing Mark
Twain has written. The humour is not always uproarious, but it ts always
and “most pathetic.” —ATHENAUM.
§€ 4 book ta be read. There is a certain freshness and novelty about it, a prac-
tically romantic character, so to speak, which will make it very attractive.”—
SPECTATOR.

&

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Mark Twain’s Choice Works.

Revised and Corrected throughout by the Author. With Life,
Portrait, and numerous Illustrations.

Post Bv0, illustrated boards, 2s.

Mark Twain’s Pleasure Trip on the

Continent of Europe. i ‘*The Innocents Abroad,” and ‘‘ The
New Pilgrim’s Progress.”)

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 8s. . '
Marston’s (Philip B.) Allin All;

Poems and Sonnets.,

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 85.

Marston’s (Philip B.) Song Tide,
And other.Poems. Second Edition.

“ This is a first work of extraordinary performance and or still more extraor-
dinary promise. The youngest school of English h poetry has received an important
accession to its ranks in Philip Bourke Marston,”— EXAMINER,

20 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Two Vols. crown 8vo, cloth extra, 18s.

Marston’s (Dr. Westland) Dramatic
and Poetical Works. Collected Library Edition.

‘* The ‘ Patrician’s Daughter’ is an oasis in the desert of modern dramatic
iiterature, areal emanation of mind. We do not recollect any modern workin
which states of thought are so freely developed, except the ‘ Torquato Tasso’ of
Goethe. The play is a work of artin the same sense that a play of Sophocles t. 1s @
work of art ; tt is one simple idea in a state of gradual development. . * The
Favourite of Fortune’ is one of the most important additions to the stock of
English prose comedy that has been made during the present century,” —T1mxs.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, gilt edges, 7s. 6d.

Muses of Mayfair :

Vers de Société of the Nineteenth Century. Including Selections
from TENNYSON, BROWNING, SWINBURNE, ROSSETTI, JEAN
INGELOW, LockER, INGOLDsBy, Hoon, Lytron, C. S. C.,

Lanpor, AusTIN Dosson, &c.

Edited by H. C. PENNELL.

Demy 8vo, uniform with ‘‘ Academy Notes,” Is.

National Gallery, Pictorial Notes of the.

(THE BRITISH SCHOOL.) With upwards of 100 Illustrations of
the principal Pictures at Trafalgar Square. Edited by HENRY

BLACKBURN.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Vignette Portraits, price 6s. per Vol.

The Old Dramatists ;

Ben Fonson’s Works.
With Notes, Critical and Ex-
planatory, and a Biographical
Memoir by WILLIAM GIFFORD.
Edited by Col. CUNNINGHAM.
Three Vols.

Chapman’s Works.
Now First Collected. Complete
in Three Vols. Vol. I. contains
the Plays complete, including the
doubtful ones; Vol. II. the
Poems and Minor Translations,
with an Introductory Essay by

ALGERNON CHARLES SWIN-
BURNE ; Vol. III. the Transla-
tions of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Marlowe’s Works.

Including his Translations. Edit-
ed, with Notes and Introduction,
by Col. CUNNINGHAM. One Vol.

Massinger’s Plays.
From the Text of WILLIAM
GIFFORD. With the addition of
the Tragedy of ‘‘ Believe as you
List.” Edited by Col, Cun-
NINGHAM. One Vol.

Fcap. 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
O’Shaughnessy’s (Arthur) An Epic of

Women, and other Poems. Second Edition.

t

CHATTO & WINDUS, FICCADILLY. aI

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, ros. 6d.

O’ Shaughnessy’s Lays of France.

_ (Founded on the ‘‘ Lays of Marie.”) Second Edition.

Feap. 8vo, cloth extra, 75. 6d.

O’Shaughnessy’s Music and Moonlight :

Poems and Songs.

Crown 8vo, carefully printed on creamy paper, and pantetally?
bound in cloth for the Library, price 6s. each.

The Piccadilly Novels ;

POPULAR STORIES BY THE BEST AUTHORS.

Antonina. By WILKIE COLLINS,
Illustrated by Sir J, GILBERT and ALFRED CONCANEN.

Basil. By WILKIE CoLLins,
Illustrated by Sir Joun GILBERT and J. MAHONEY.

Hide and Seek. By WILKIE CoLLins.
Illustrated by Sir JOHN GILBERT and J. MAHONEY.

The Dead Secret. By WILKIE CoLLins.
Illustrated by Sir JOHN GILBERT and H. Furniss.

Queen of Hearts. By WILKIE CoLLins,
Illustrated by Sir J. GILBERT and A. CONCANEN.

My Miscellanies. By WILKIE CoLiins.
With Steel Portrait, and Illustrations by A. CONCANEN.

The Woman in White. By WILKIE CoLLins.
Illustrated by Sir J. GILBERT and F, A. FRASER,

The Moonstone. By WILKIE CoLLins,
Illustrated by G. Du MAURIER and F, A. FRASER,

Man and Wife, By WILKIE CoLuins,
Illustrated by WILLIAM SMALL.

Poor Miss Finch, By Witre Conus,
Illustrated by G. Du MAURIER and EpwArD HUGHEs.

Miss or Mrs. ? By WILKIE CoLLins,
Illustrated by S. L. FrupEs and HENrRy Woops,

The New Magdalen. By WILKIE Couns.

Illustrated by G. Du MAURIER and C. S. RANDs,

22 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

THE PICCADILLY NOVELS—continued,

The Frozen Deep. By WILKIE CoLuins,
Illustrated by G. Du MAURIER and J. MAHONEY.
The Law and the Lady. By WILKIE CoLLins.

Illustrated by S. L. FILDES and SYDNEY HALL.
*,* Also a POPULAR EDITION of WILKIE COLLINS’S
NOVELS, post 8vo, Illustrated boards, 2s. each.

Felicia. By M, BETHAM-EDWARDS.
With a Frontispiece by W. BOWLEs.

“A noble novel, Its teaching is elevated, its story is sympathetic, and the kind
of feeling its perusal leaves behind is that more ordinarily derived from music or
poetry than from prose fiction. Few worksin modern fiction stand as high in our
estimation as this,”—SuNDayY TIMES,

Patricia Kemball. By E, Lynn Linton.
With Frontispiece by G. Du MAuRIER. i

‘A very clever and well-constructed story, original and striking, interesting
all through, A novel abounding in thought and power and interest.” —TIMES.

“ Displays genuine humour, as well as keen social observation. Enough graphic
portraiture and witty observation to furnish materials for half-a-dozen novels of
the ordinary kind.”—SATURDAY REVIEW. ,

The Atonement of Leam Dundas. By E. Lynn Linton.
With a Frontispiece by HENRY Woons. |

“Inher narrowness and her depth, in her boundless loyalty, her self-orgetting
passion, that exclusiveness of love which is akin to cruelty, and the fierce
humility which is vicarious pride, Leam Dundas is a striking figure. In one

uality the authoress has in some measure surpassed herself.”—PALL MALL

AZETTE,

The-Evil Eye,and other Stories. py KatHarine S.MAcQuor.
Illustrated by THomas R. MacquorD and Percy MAcQuorD.

“Cameos delicately, if not very minutely or vividly, wrought, and quite finished
enough to give a pleasurable sense of artistic ease and faculty. A word of com-
mendation ts merited by the illustrations.” ACADEMY. ‘

Numbex Seventeen. By HENRY KINGSLEY.

Oakshott Castle, ' By HEnRY KINGSLEY,
With a Frontispiece by SHIRLEY Hopson.
“A brisk and clear north wind of sentiment—sentiment that braces instead of

enervating—blows through all his works, and makes all their readers at once
healthier and more glad.” —SPECTATOR.

Open! Sesame ! By FLORENCE MARRYAT,
Tllustrated by F. A. FRASER.

“A story which arouses and sustains the reader's interest to a higher di
than, perhaps, any of its authors former works. . . A coe vai is
story.” —GRAPHIC,

W, hiteladies. ; . By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
With Illustrations by A. Hopkins and H. Woops.

“Is really a pleasant and readable book, written with practical ease and
grace,” —TIMES,

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY, 23

THE PICCADILLY NOVELS— continued.

The Best of Husbands. By JAMES PAYN.
Illustrated by J. MoyR SMITH.

Walter’s Word. By JAMES PAYN.
Illustrated by J. MoYR SMITH.

Halves. _ By JAmes Payn.

With a Frontispiece by J. MAHONEY.

“ His novels ave always commendable in the sense of art. They also possess
another distinct claim to our liking: the girls in them' are remarkably charm-
ing and true to nature, as most people, we believe, have the good fortune to
observe nature represented by girls.”—SPECTATOR. :

The Way we Live Now. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
With Illustrations.

“ Mr, Trollope has a true artist’s idea of tone, of colour, of harmony: his
pictures are one, and seldom out of drawing; he never strains after effect, ts
Fidelity itself in expressing English life, is never guilty of caricature.” —
FortNIGHTLY Revizw.

Diamond Cut Diamond. : By T. A. TROLLOPE.

“ Full of life, of interest, of close observation, and sympathy. - « . When,
Mr. Trollope paints a scene it is sure to be a scene worth painting.” —SATUR-
pax REVIEW. . Hy

Bound to the Wheel. By Joun SAUNDERg.
Guy Waterman. ; _ . By Joan SAUNDERS.
One Against the World. By JOHN SAUNDERS. .
The Lion in the Path. By JouN SAUNDERs.

© 4 carefully written and beautiful story—a' story of goodness and truth,
which is yet as interesting as though it déalt with the opposite qualities. .
The author of this really clever story has been at great pains to work out all
its details with elaborate consciextiousness, and the result is avery vivid picture
of the ways of life and habits of thought of a hundred and fifty years ago.
a Certainly a very interesting book.” —TimEs, ‘CE
The Golden Butterfly. Authors of ‘ READY-MONEY MoRTIBOY.”
With a Frontispiece by F. S. WALKER.

“6° The Golden Butterfly’ will certainly add to the happiness of mankind, for we

defy anybody to read tt with a gloomy countenance.”—TIMES.

My Little Girl. Authors of ‘‘READY-MoNEY Mortisoy.”
Case of Mr. Lucraft, Authors of '‘ Reapy-MonEy Mortinoy.”
This Sun of Vulcan, Authors of “‘READY-MoNEY Mortisoy."
With Harp & Crown, Authors of ‘(READY-MoNEY Morqizoy.”

24 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Crown 8vo, red cloth, extra, 5s. each.

Ouida’s Novels.—Uniform Edition.

Folle Farine. By Ourva. | Pascarel, By OumDA.
Ldalia. By Ourpa. Puck. By Ourpa.
Chandos. By Ouwa. | Dog of Flanders. By Oura.
Under Two Flags. By Ouwa. | Strathmore. By OuIDA.
Tricotrin. By Ouwa. | 220 Little Wooden
Cecil Castlemaine's moe nest
Gage. By Ourpa. Signa. By Ourpa.
Feld in Bondage. py ouwa. | [1 @ Winter City. By ouwa.

‘ Keen poetic insight, an intense love of nature, a deep admiration of the
beautiful in form and colour, are the gifts of Ouida.”—MoRNING Post.

Three Vols. crown 8vo, 315. 6d.

Fuliet’s Guardian.

By Mrs. H. Lovett CAMERON.

Two Vols. crown 8vo, 215.
The New Republic ;

or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House.

T. A. TROLLOPE’s New Novet.—Three Vols. crown 8vo, 315. 6d.

A Family Party in the Piazza of

St. Peter. By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

New Nove. BY JAMES GREENWOOD.—3 Vols. crown 8vo, 315. 6d.

Dick Temple.

By JAMES GREENWOOD,

Three Vols. crown 8vo, 315. 64.

Fohn Lexley’s Troubles.

By C. W. Barpsiry, M.A.

Three Vols. crown 8vo, 315. 6d.

Lost Rose;

and other Stories. By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

“ Mrs. Macquoid ts one of the few novelists whose books seem to us distinctly to
have a value."—PALL MALt GAZETTE.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.

Crown 8vo, illustrated boards, price 2s,

Ready-Money Mortiboy : 4
A Matter-of-fact Story. By the Authors of ‘‘The Golden
Butterfly.” .

Two Vols. 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 10s. 6d.

Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men.

Translated from the Greek, with Notes Critical and Historical,
and a Life of Plutarch, by JoHN and WILLIAM LANGHORNE.
New Edition, with Medallion Portraits.

Crown 8vo, cloth’extra, with Portrait and Illustrations, 75. 62.

Poe’s Choice Prose and Poetical Works.

With BAUDELAIRE’S ‘‘ Essay.”

“ Poe stands as much alone among verse-writers as Salvator Rosa among
painters.” —SPECTATOR, a ‘3

Small 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 3s. 6d.

The Prince of Argolis :
A Story of the Old Greek Fairy Time. By J. Moyr SmitH.
With 130 Illustrations by the Author.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Portrait and Facsimile, 12s. 6d.

The Final Reliques of Father Prout.

Collected and Edited, from MSS. supplied by the family of the
Rev. FRANCIS MAHONY, by BLANCHARD JERROLD.

~ “We heartily commend this handsome volume toall lovers of sound wit, genuine
humour, and manly sense.”’—SPECTATOR.

x

_ In Two Series, small,4to, blue and gold, gilt edges, 65. each.

Puntana ;
or, Thoughts Wise and Other-Why's. A New Collection of
Riddles, Conundrums, Jokes, Sells, &c. In Two Series,: each
containing 3000 of the best Riddles, 10,000 most outrageous Puns,
and upwards of Fifty beautifully executed Drawings by the Editor,
the Hon. HucH Row ey. Each Series is complete in itself.

© 4 witty, droll, and most amusing work, profusely and elegantly illustrated.”
—STANDARD. é

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 75, 6d.

The Pursuivant of Arms ;

or, Heraldry founded upon Facts. ..A Popular Guide to the
Science of Heraldry. By J. R. PLANcHE, Esq., Somerset
Herald. To which are added, Essays on the BADGES OF THE
Houses oF LANCASTER AND YORK. With Coloured Frontis-
piece, five full-page Plates, and about 200 Illustrations,

26 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7s, 6d.

Rabelais Works,

Faithfully Translated from the French, with variorum Notes, and
numerous Characteristic Illustrations by GUSTAVE Dork.

Handsomely printed, price 5s.

The Roll of Battle Abbey ;

or, A List of the Principal Warriors who came over from Nor-
mandy with William the Conqueror, and Settled in this Country,
A.D, 1066-7. Printed on fine plate paper, nearly three feet by
two, with the principal Arms emblazoned in Gold and Colours.

In,4to, very handsomely printed, extra gold cloth, 12s.

The Roll of Caerlaverock.

The Oldest Heraldic Roll ; including the Original Anglo-Norman
Poem, and an English Translation of the MS. in the British
Museum. By THoMAS WRIGHT, M.A. The Arms emblazoned
in Gold and Colours.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 75. 6d.

Memoirs of the Sanson Family ;

Seven Generations of Executioners. By HENRI SANSON. Trans-
lated from the French, with Introduction, by CAMILLE BARRERE.
“4 faithful translation of this curious work, which will certainly repay perusal
—not on the ground 5 * being. Sul of horrors, jor the original author seems | to
be rather ash d of th nt aad of his profe , and ws
reticent as toits details, but b ins a lucid t of the most ee
causes célébres from the time of Louis AIV, toa period within the memory of
ersons still living. . . . Can scarcely fail to be extremely entertaining.” —
AILY TELEGRAPH.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, profusely Illustrated, 45, 6d. each.

The “ Secret Out” Series.

The Volumes are as follows :

The Art of Amusing:
A Collection of Graceful Arts,
Games, Tricks, Puzzles, and Cha-
rades. By FRANK BELLEW. 300
Illustrations.

Hanky-Panky :
Very Easy Tricks, Very Difficult
Tricks, White Magic, Sleight of
Hand. Edited by W. H. CRE-
MER. 200 Illustrations.

Magician's Own Book:
Performances with Cups and Balls,
Eggs, Hats, Handkerchiefs, &c.
All from Actual Experience.
Edited by W. H. CREMER. 200
Illustrations.

Magic No Mystery.
Tricks with Cards, Dice, Balls,
&c., with fully descriptive Direc-
tions ; the Art of Secret Writing ;
the Training of Performing Ani-
mals, &c. With Coloured Fron-
tispiece and many Illustrations.

The Merry Circle:
A Book of New Intellectual Games
and Amusements. By CLARA
BELLEW. Many Illustrations.

The Secret Out:
One Thousand Tricks with Cards,
and other Recreations ; with En-
tertaining Experiments in Draw-
ing-room or ‘‘ White Magi¢.” By
W. H. CREMER. 300 Engravings.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 27

Dycr’s SHAKESPEARE.—In 9 vols, 8vo, cloth extra, £4 10s.

The Works of Shakespeare.

Edited by the Rev. ALEXANDER Dyce. A New Edition, being
the Third, with Mr. Dycr’s Final Corrections. ‘
*4* This edition is not a mere reprint of that which appeared in 1857, but
Bresents a text very materially altered and amended from beginning to end, with
a large body of critical Notes almost entirely new, and a Glossary, in which the
language of the poet, his allusions to customs, &c., ave fully explained.
‘© The best text of Shakespeare which has yet appeared. Mr. Dyce’s edition isa
Pada sa worthy of his reputation, and for the present it contains the standard
‘ext,’ —TIMES, = i

In reduced facsimile, small 8vo, half Roxburghe, Ios. 6d.

The First Folio Shakespeare.

Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S Comedies, Histories, and Trage-
dies, Published according to the true Originall Copies. London,
Printed by IsAAc IAGGARD and Ep. BLOUNT, 1623.—An exact
Reproduction of the extremely rare original, in reduced facsimile
by a photographic process—ensuring the strictest accuracy in every
detail. 4 full prospectus will be sent upon application,

“To Messrs. Chatto and Windus belongs the merit of having done more to
facilitate the critical study of the text of our great dramatist than all the Shake-
speare clubs and societies put together. A complete facsimile of the celebrated
First Folio edition of 1623 for half-a-guinea is at once a miracle of cheapness and
enterprise. Being ina reduced form, the type is necessarily rather diminutive,
but it is as distinct as in a genuine copy of the original, and will be found to be as
useful and far more handy to the student than the latter." ATHENAUM.

Post 8vo, with Illustrations, cloth extra, gilt edges, 18s,

The Lansdowne Shakespeare.

Beautifully printed in red and black, in small but very clear type.
, With engraved facsimile of DRoESHOUT’s Portrait, and 37 beautiful
Steel Plates, after STOTHARD.

Two Vols. crown 8vo, cloth extra, 185.

The School of Shakespeare.

Including ‘‘ The Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley,”
with a New Life of Stucley, from Unpublished Sources; “A
Warning for Fair Women,” with a Reprint of the Account of the
Murder ; ‘‘ Nobody and Somebody,” ‘‘ The Cobbler’s Prophecy,”
‘6 Histriomastix,” ‘‘The Prodigal Son,” &c. Edited, with In-
troductions and Notes, by RICHARD SIMPSON. [Ln the press.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 75. 6d. -

Signboards : ;
Their History. With Anecdotes of Famous Taverns and Re-
markable Characters. By JacoB Larwoop and JOHN CAMDEN

Hotten. With nearly 100 Illustrations. ies :
“< Even ifwe were ever so maliciously inclined, we could not pick out all Messrs.
Larwood and Hotten’s plums, because the good things are so numerous as to defy
the most wholesale depredation.” —T1MEs.

28 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with ro full-page Tinted
Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Sheridan's Complete Works,

with Life and Anecdotes. Including his Dramatic Writings,
printed from the Original Editions, his Works in Prose and
Poetry, Translations, Speeches, Jokes, Puns, &c.; with a Collec-
tion of Sheridaniana. i

“ The editor has aes together within a manageable compass not only the
seven plays by which Sheridan ts best known, but a collection also of his poetical
\ pieces which are less familiar to the public, sketches of unfinished dramas, selections
rom his reported witticisms, and extracts from his principal speeches. To these
ts prefixed a short but well-written memotr, giving the chief facts in Sheridan's
literary and political career ; so that, with this volume in his hand, the student
may consider himself tolerably well furnished with all that is necessary for a

general compreh of the subject of tt.”— PALL MALL GAzETTE.

4
Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 6s. 6d.

The Slang Dictionary :
Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal. An ENTIRELY NEW

EDITION, revised throughout, and considerably Enlarged.

“’ We are glad to see the Slang Dictionary reprinted and enlarged. Froma high
scientific point of view this book is not to be despised. Of course it cannot fail to
be amusing also. It contains the very vocabulary of unrestrained humour, and
oddity, and grotesqueness. Ina word, it provides valuable material both for the
student of language and the student of human nature.” —ACADEMY.

Exquisitely printed in miniature, cloth extra, gilt edges, 25. 64.

The Smoker’s Text-Book.

By J. Hamer, F.R.S.L.
Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 9s.

Stedman’s Victorian Poets:

Critical Essays. By EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

“ We ought to be thankful to those who do critical work with competent
and understanding, with honesty of purpose, and unith diligence and thoroughness
of execution. And Mr. Stedman, having chosen to work in this line, deserves the
thanks of English scholars by these quatitiesand by something more; . . » .
he is faithful, studious, and discerning.” —SATURDAY REVIEW.

Imperial 4to, containing 150 beautifully-finished full-page Engravings
and Nine Vignettes, all tinted, and some illuminated in gold and
colours, half-morocco, £9 9s.

Stothard’s Monumental Effigies of Great

Britain. With Historical Description and Introduction by JoHN
Kemp, F.S.A. A New EDITION, witha large body of Additional
Notes by JoHN HEwITT.

** A few Large Paper copies, royal folio, with the arms illuminated
in gold and colours, and the plates very carefully finished in body-colours,
heightened with gold in the very finest style, half-morocco, 415 15.

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 29

Large 8vo, half-Roxburghe, with Illustrations, price 9s.
’
Stow’s Survey of London.

Edited by W. J. THoms, F.S.A. A New Edition, with Copper-

plate Illustrations.

_ Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 75, 6d.

Swift's Choice Works,

in Prose and Verse.

With Memoir, Portrait, and Facsimiles of

the Maps in the Original Edition of ‘‘ Gulliver’s Trayels,”’

““ The ‘ Tale of a Tub’ is, in my apprehension, the

terpiece of Swift ;

certainly Rabelais has nothing superior, even in invention, nor anything so con-
densed, so pointed, so full of real weaning, of biting satire, of felicitous analogy.
The ‘ Battle of the Books’ 7s such an improvement on the similar combat in the
Lutrin, that we can hardly own it as an imitation.,—HALLaM, |

© Swift's reputation as a poet has been ina manner obscured by the greater splen-
dour, by the natural force and inventive genius, of his prose writings ; but, uf he
had never written either the ‘Tale of a Tub’ or ‘Gulliver's Travels,’ his name
merely as a poet would have come down to us, and have gone down to posterity,

with well-earned honours.” —HAzuitt.

Myr. Swinburne’s Works:

The Queen Mother and

Rosamond, Fcap. 8vo, 55.
Atalanta in Calydon.

A New Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Chastelard.

A Tragedy. Fcap. 8vo, 75.
Poems and Ballads.

-Feap. 8vo, 95.
Notes on “Poems and

Ballads." 8vo, 15.

William Blake:
A Critical Essay. With Facsimile
Paintings. Demy 8vo, 16s.

Songs before Sunrise.
Crown 8vo, tos. 6d.

Bothwell:

A Tragedy. Two Vols. crown
8vo, 125. 6d.

George Chapman:

An Essay. Crown 8vo, 75.

Songs of Two Nations.

Crown 8vo, 6s. :

Essays and Studies.

Crown 8vo, 125.
Evechtheus:

‘A Tragedy. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Note of an English Re-

publican on the Muscovite Cru-
sade. 8vo, Is.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Ilustrations, 73. 6d.

2

Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of the

People of England ; including the Rural and Domestic Recrea-
tions, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants,
and Pompous Spectacles, from the Earliest Period to the Presen*

Time.

With 140 Illustrations.

Edited by W1LL1AM Hone.

** A few Large Paper Copies, with an extra set of Copperplate
Illustrations, carefully coloured by hand, from the Originals, 50s,

30 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

; : Feap. 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. ; :
Rossettt’s(W.M.) Criticism upon Swin-

burne’s ** Poems and Ballads.”

Medium 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Dr. Syntax’s Three Tours,
in Search of the Picturesque, in Search of Consolation, and in
Search of a Wife. With the whole of RowLANDson’s droll page
Illustrations, in Colours, and Life of the Author by J. C. HoTren.

‘Large post 8vo, cloth, full gilt, gilt top, with Illustrations, 125. 6d.

Thackerayana:

Notes and Anecdotes. Tlustrated by a profusion of Sketches by
WILLIAM -MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, depicting Humorous Inci-
dents in his School-life, and Favourite Characters in the books of
his everyday reading. With Hundreds of Wood Engravings and
Five Coloured Plates, from Mr. Thackeray’s Original Drawings.
“Tt would have been a veal loss to bibliographical literature had copyright
difficulties deprived the general public of this very antusing collection. One of
Thackeray's habits, from his schoolboy days, was to ornament the margins and
blank pages of the books he had in use with caricature illustrations of their
contents, This gave special value to, the sale of his Library, and is almost cause
Jor regret that tt could not have been preserved in its integrity. Thackeray’s
place in literature is eminent enough to have made this an interest to future
generations. The anonymous editor has done the best that he could to compen-
sate for the lack of this. Itisan admirable addendum, not only to his collected
works, but also to any memoir of him that has been, or that is kkely to be,
written.’—BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Thomson's Seasons and Castle of In-

dolence. With a Biographical and Critical Introduction by ALLAN
CUNNINGHAM, and over 50 fine Illustrations on Steel and Wood.

Two Vols. crown 8vo, cloth boards,

Cyril Tourneur's Collected Works,

including a unique Poem, entitled ‘‘The Transformed Me-
tamorphosis;” and ‘Laugh and Lie Down; or, the World’s.
Folly.” Now first Collected, and Edited, with Critical Preface,
Introductions, and Notes, by J. CHURTON COLLINS. [Jx the press.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 75. 6d.

FM. W. Turner's Life and Correspona-

ence. Founded upon Letters and Papers furnished by his Friends
and fellow Academicians, By WALTER THORNBURY. A New
Edition, entirely rewritten and considerably enlarged. With
numerous Illustrations in colours, facsimiled from Turner’s
original Drawings.

st

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 31

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Timbs Clubs and Club Life in London. |

With Anecdotes of its. famous Coffee-houses, Hostelries, and
Taverns. By JoHN Timzs, F.S.A. With numerous Illustrations.
“ The book supplies a much-felt want. The club is the avenue to general
society of the present day, and Mr. Timbs gives the entrée to the club. The
scholar and antiquary will also find the work a repertory of information on
many disputed points of literary interest, and especially respecting various well-
tnown anecdotes, the value of which only increases with the lapse of time.”—
Morninc Post. ;

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 75. 6d.

Timbs Enghsh Eccentrics and : Ec-

centricities : Stories of Wealth and Fashion, Delusions, Impos-
tures, and Fanatic Missions, Strange Sights and Sporting Scenes,
Eccentric Artists, Theatrical Folks, Men of Letters, &c. By JOHN
Tims, F.S.A. With nearly 50 Illustrations,

“* The reader who would fain enjoy a harmless laugh in some very odd company

might do much worse than take an occasional dip into ‘ English Eccentrics.
The illustrations are admirably suited to the letterpress.” —GRAPHIC,

One Vol. crown 8vo, cloth extra.

Tom Taylor's Hlistorical Plays.
‘* Clancarty,” ‘‘Jeanne d’Arc,” ‘‘’Twixt Axe and Crown,” ‘‘ The
Fool’s Revenge,”’ &c. ' [ln the press.

Crown 4to, half-Roxburghe, 12s. 6d.

Vagabondiana ;
or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of
London ; with Portraits of the most Remarkable, drawn from the
Life by JoHN THoMAs SMITH, late Keeper of the Prints in the
British Museum. With Introduction by FRaNncis Douce, and
Descriptive Text. With the Woodcuts and the 32 Plates, from
the original Coppers.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Vignette Portrait, gs. '

Wells’ Foseph and his Brethren :

A Dramatic Poem. ByCHARLES WELLS. With an Introductory
Essay by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE,

“ The author of ‘Foseph and his Brethren’ will some day have to be acknow-
ledged among the memorable men of the second great period in our poetry, F
There are lines even in the overture of his poem which might, it seems to me,
more naturally be mistaken even by an expert in verse for the work of the young
Shakspeare, than any to be gathered elsewhere in the fields of English poetry.”—
SwINBURNE.

Carefully printed on paper to imitate the Original, 22 in. by 14 in., 2s,

The Warrant to E-xecute Charles TJ.

An exact Facsimile of this important Document, with the Fifty.
nine Signatures of the Regicides, and corresponding Seals,

32 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.

Beautifully printed on paper to imitate the Original MS., price 2s.

Warrant to Execute Mary Q. of Scots.

An exact Facsimile, including the Signature of Queen Elizabeth,
and a Facsimile of the Great Seal.

Large crown 8vo, cloth antique, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Walton and Cotton's Complete Angler ;

or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation: being a Discourse of
Rivers, Fishponds, Fish and Fishing, written by IzAAK WALTON ;
and Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a‘clear
Stream, by CHARLES COTTON. With Original Memoirs and
Notes by Sir Harris Nicouas,.K.C.M.G. With the 61 Plate
Illustrations, precisely as in Pickering’s two-volume Edition.

“ Among the reprints of the year, few will be more welcome than this edition of

the ‘Complete Angler, with Sir Harris Nicolas's Memoirs and Notes,and Stothard's
and Inskipp’s illustrations.” —SATURDAY REVIEW.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d.

Wright's Caricature Ffistory of the

Georges. ( The House of Hanover.) With 400 Pictures, Caricatures,
Squibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures, &c. By THOMAS WRIGHT,
Esq., M.A., F.S.A. 7

“ Emphatically one of the liveliest of books, as also one of the most interesting.
Has the twofold merit of being at once amusing and edifying.”—MorninG Post.

Large post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7s, 6d.

Wright's History of Caricature and of

the Grotesque in Art, Literature, Sculpture, and Painting, from
the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By THoMAsS WRIGHT,
M.A., F.S.A. Profusely illustrated by F. W. FarrHott, F.S. A.

“ A very amusing and instructive volume.’—SaTURDAY REVIEW.

OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C,

%

NN

vo"

x
x

N
WAY

SU oe
bee abe

Wis

gs

Mis,

Mig

Chie

Wy

WS

WS

anes
Soret