The difference between the texture of old paint, that is of the good age,

both Italian and Flemish, and that which modern practice had exhibited,

was too manifest to be overlooked; and we never could bring ourselves to

believe that the meguilp in use, by itself, ever had or ever would produce

that solid brilliancy or _substantial_ transparency which was and is the

great charm in the genuine works of the good old time of the art. And we

believe still that all experience is against it, and that the era of its

adoption is marked in the history of art by the visible deterioration in

the quality of the painted surfaces. Bad as we conceive the use of mastic

always to have been, it was not, until comparatively modern times,

employed in the most injurious manner. The Flemish and Italian recipes

incorporated it with the oil, together, generally, with other substances,

by heat, and not, according to the subsequent modern practice, merely

dissolved in turpentine and added to the oil. Of all varnishes mastic is

the softest, most liable to decomposition, most readily affected by

atmospheric changes, having no protection or medium of incorporation,

being merely liquified with turpentine, which, evaporating, leaves the

mastic to the injuries of air and moisture. Oil varnishes are, however, of

another character, and we are converted to their use by historic evidence,

and authorities which cannot be doubted. We do not assert that the exact

recipes and formulae, for the compositions of the true oleo-resinous

vehicles are not now in possession of the public. We are inclined to think

they are; but, as we are promised by Mr Eastlake another volume, chiefly

upon the Italian practice, which, too, we presume to think was the best,

we in some degree force ourselves to suspend our judgment, resting our

hope for what is to come upon the undeniable value of what has been

already given us.

When we formerly treated of this subject, we mentioned the great reliance

we placed upon the results of the accurate research and experiments of a

friend, P. Rainier, Esq., M.D. of the Albany. It is greatly to be

regretted that, at his death, his papers were not properly collected and

arranged for use; they are, it is to be feared, lost. We well remember his

assertion, that the paint of the old masters invariably vitrified by fire.

In proof, he scraped off some paint from an old picture, (it was in the

shadow part of back-ground, and not very thick, and where there was not,

apparently, any white-lead). He laid it on some platina, and subjected it

to the heat of the blow-pipe. The oil first exploded, and the paint was

vitrified. Hence, originated the borax medium--remarkable property of

which was its capability of being used with water as a diluent or with

oil,--thus being a kind of union of the earlier temperas and the oil

medium. This borax-glass vehicle was certainly a discovery, or

rediscovery, as he was inclined to think it, of our highly valued friend,

P. Rainier. We say re-discovery, remembering his playful assumption of a

motto, "Veterem revocavit artem." He was probably led to this use of a

glass composed of borax, by the vitrification of the pigments; and we

still suspect that, in some of the old Italian recipes, glass, with borax

as an ingredient, will be found. "_A peculiar kind of Venetian glass_,"

says Mr Eastlake, "used, when pulverised, as a dryer, contained a

considerable portion of lead; and if it acted chemically, may have derived

its siccative quality from that ingredient." The question here naturally

suggests itself, Why was a peculiar glass used for this purpose, when it

was perfectly well known that lead of itself would have been sufficient?

Again, in page 358, from the Mayerne MS., as quoting the authority of

Mytens; "This oil (mancop) does not dry of itself easily, but it is

usually ground with Venetian glass, and thus to the sun in a glass bottle.

This should be shaken every four days for three or four weeks: it should

then be carefully decanted for use, leaving the sediment with the glass."

It is a question if the glass was here solely used to facilitate the

sediment.

Vitrification would not depend upon the introduction of glass

only,--calcined bones, which, it is now known, were much used in vehicles,

will produce the same result. In a note, page 345, Mr Eastlake says that

he requested Mr Marris Dimsdale to analyse a fragment of a picture by

Cariani of Bergamo, (a contemporary and scholar, or imitator of

Giorgione;)--the result being, that "one portion ran fairly into a

vitrified state. Hypothetically," adds Mr Dimsdale, "I should say it had

burned bones in it." And again, "Every colour mixed with phosphate of

lime, (calcined bones,) vitrifies when exposed to strong heat. As Venetian

pigments vitrify, might not phosphate of lime have been used as a dryer?"

We cannot but suspect any medium under which the pigments will not

vitrify. The publication of Mr Eastlake's most important and valuable

volume, rather strengthens our reliance upon the various communications

made to us by Mr Rainier. For instance, many years ago, we used, at his

recommendation, sandarach, dissolved in spike oil, and then mixed with the

oil heated. It may not be amiss here, as sandarach is now so strongly

recommended, and shown at least to have formed a part of one of the

precious vehicles, to state the result of its use some twenty years ago. A

picture we then painted with it, is still without a crack, extremely hard,

and though by no means well painted, is good in texture, and resembles in

the quality of the pigments very much that of the old schools. Though for

some years shut up in a portfolio, the colours do not appear to have

undergone any change.

Although it will not probably be found that borax was used in the good

recipes by name, it may have been in the Venetian glass--at all events,

though we are now rather in search of what _was_ in use, than what may be

useful and good in itself, as it were _de novo_, it may be worth while to

remember the double facility it offers of use with oil or water, both or

either; and it may be added that the experience of some years shows

nothing against it and much in its favour. We have thought it to be a

preservative of colours. In our review of M. Merimee, we threw out a

conjecture that it might have been the Gummi Fornis in the recipe of

Theophilus--and which M. Merimee believed to be copal. But we are quite

convinced of our error by the arguments--we might say proofs--adduced by

Mrs Merrifield, contained in a note, in her admirable and most useful

volume, "Cennino Cennini." That it was sandarach there can be no doubt;

and we were in consequence induced to try the making the vehicle according

to the recipe of Theophilus, and perfectly succeeded. It has a pleasant

lustre, not that somewhat disagreeable shine which is often visible in

pictures painted with copal. For the quality of sandarach Mrs Merrifield

quotes Raffael Borghini, from his "Reposo"--"If you would have your

varnish very brilliant, use much sandarach."

Mr Eastlake has shown that Mrs Merrifield was not quite so fortunate in

her remark against M. Merimee's conjecture that the "Gummi Fornis" was

copal. "As that is brought from America, it could not possibly have been

known to Theophilus, who lived between three and four hundred years

previous to the discovery of that country." The name copal, as that of

Brazil, is not indigenous to America. Both that gum and dye were African,

and transferred to the similar productions of the New World. It is curious

that a distinction made between "vernice," and "vernice liquida" should be

the means of ascertaining the gum given in the recipe of Theophilus which

M Merimee believed to be copal. Vernice was the _name_ of sandarach, and

was in common use in its dry state, as pounce, but when made into a

varnish with oil, it was called vernice liquida.

To those who delight in etymologies, it will afford amusement to learn

that the word varnish is with much reason conjectured to be derived from

the name of a daughter of one of the Ptolemies, celebrated for her

amber-coloured hair,--the heroine of the poem of Callimachus of which we

have only the translation by Catullus, the "Coma Berenices." Eustathius,

the commentator on Homer of the twelfth century, states that amber

([Greek: elektron]) in his day was called [Greek: beronike]. Salmasius

spells it [Greek: bereniki]. "Even during the classic ages of Greece

[Greek: b] represented [Greek: ph] in certain dialects." Veronica, in the

Lucca M.S., (eighth century,) more than once occurs among the ingredients

of varnishes. "And it is remarkable," adds Mr Eastlake, "that in the

copies of the same recipes in the Mappae Clavicula (twelfth century) the

word is spelt in the genitive--Verenicis and Vernicis," and thus we come

by very legitimate derivation to the English word varnish. Sandarach,

however, becoming in process of time the common substitute for amber, took

the name: and to distinguish this oleo-resinous varnish from that of the

real amber, the latter is called "Vernice liquida gentile." The "Mappae

Clavicula," spoken of above, is a very curious publication, in the last

No. of the Archaeologia, vol. xxxii. part 1, of a MS. treatise on the

preparation of pigments during the middle ages. Speaking of the vernice

liquida, Mr Eastlake says:--

"The amber varnish had been adopted in its stead by the early Flemish

painters, and though often represented by[13] copal, had never been

entirely laid aside; it had even returned to the north from Italy in the

hands of Gentileschi. Rembrandt, from motives of economy, may have

employed the scarcely less durable common "vernix" or sandarac oil

varnish; and for certain effects may have reckoned on its tint. Either

this, or the rapidly drying Venice amber before described, was in all

probability used by him freely."

Mr Eastlake thinks that the darkness of the vehicle had been allowed to

increase (and the darker the thicker it would be) with the darkness of the

colour employed. That this was the case, we might conjecture, not only

from the works of Rembrandt, but we think it may be so seen in some of the

back-grounds of Correggio. "The influence of the colour of the vehicle on

the quantity and depth of shadow is indeed plainly to be traced in the

general style of oil painting, as compared with tempera and other

methods." In a note on this passage we are told that "Sandrart relates, it

is to be hoped on no good authority, that Rubens induced Jordaens to paint

some works in tempera for tapestries, in the hope that his rival, by being

accustomed to the light style of colouring suitable to tempera, might lose

his characteristic force in oil. The biographer even adds that the scheme

answered."

Now we make this quotation, which is not creditable to Sandrart, to remove

if we may its sting: for who would wish this moral stigma to rest upon the

character of so great a man as Rubens? We have no doubt the advice was

conscientiously given, and with a true accurate judgment of the powers of

Jordaens. We can easily imagine that the heavy handling, the somewhat

muddy loading of the colour in every part of the pictures of Jordaens,

must have been offensive to Rubens, who so delighted in the freer,

fresher, and more variable colouring and handling. And such is the

judgment which the present day passes upon Jordaens, to the depreciation

of his works, and in vindication of the advice of Rubens.

As both amber and sandarac had a tendency to darken the colours, "a

lighter treatment," Mr Eastlake adds, "has rarely been successful without

a modification of the vehicle itself." In treating more fully of the

Italian methods, we shall probably have many recipes for this purpose. We

are, however, in possession of a recipe of this kind described by Armenini

of Faenga about the middle of the sixteenth century, as used by Correggio

and Parmigiano. His authorities, he informs us, for so designating it were

the immediate scholars of those masters; and he states that he had himself

witnessed its general use throughout Lombardy by the best painters. His

description is as follows. "Some took clear fir turpentine, dissolved it

in a pipkin on a very moderate fire; when it was dissolved, they added an

equal quantity of petroleum, (naptha,) throwing it in immediately on

removing the liquified turpentine." A long note is appended upon this

varnish or 'olio d'abezzo,' with a very interesting note by an Italian

writer of the present century, who attributes the preservation of

Corregio's pictures to its use. He adds also his own experience. Having

applied this varnish to four old pictures, he proceeds:--

"After an interval of more than thirty years, those pictures have not only

retained their freshness, but it seems that the colours, and especially

the whites, have become more agreeable to the eye, exhibiting, not indeed

the lustre of glass, but a clearness like that of a recently painted

picture, and without yellowing in the least. I also applied the varnish

on the head of all Academy figure, painted by me about five-and-twenty

years since. On the rest of the figure I made experiments with other

varnishes and glazings. This head surpasses all the other portions in a

very striking manner; it appears freshly painted, and still moist with

oil, retaining its tints perfectly. The coat of varnish is extremely thin,

yet, on gently washing the surface, it has not suffered. The lustre is

uniform; it is not the gloss of enamel or glass, but precisely that degree

of shine which is most desirable in a picture."

Mr Eastlake enters upon a dissertation on the Italian and Flemish modes of

painting, discriminating the transparency by glazing, and the transparency

by preserving the light grounds. The ground does not appear throughout the

pictures of Correggio, universally so in those of Rubens and most of the

Flemish and Dutch schools. Both methods have their peculiar value. We

should be sorry to see the substantial richness of Correggio, with his

pearly grays seen under a body of transparent colouring, exchanged even

for the free first sketchy getting in of the subject by Rubens. On this

part of the subject it is scarcely wise to give a decided opinion. Every

artist will adapt either method to his own power, his own conceptions, and

intentions. Rembrandt struck out a method strictly belonging to neither

system, with a partial use of each. He would be unwise who would attempt

to limit the power of the palette--we speak here only of its materials.

At the end of the volume are extracts from the notes of Sir Joshua

Reynolds. They are extremely interesting, both from their examples of

success, and warnings by failure. We cannot help reflecting, on reading

these notes, upon the great importance of such a work as Mr Eastlake's.

Had Sir Joshua Reynolds been in possession of such a volume, how many of

his pictures, now perished and perishing, would have been preserved for

immortality! and how much better might even the best have been by the

certainty of means which would have been within his reach! and we should

not have had to regret, as we often do in looking at some of his best

pictures, that somewhat heavy labouring after a brilliancy and a power not

always compatible, and perhaps not then attainable, which shows that his

mind was thoroughly imbued with a full sense of the excellency of the

great masters, but that he wanted such a work as the learning, the

research, and discriminating judgment of Mr Eastlake now offers for the

study and practice of every professor of the art. To these notes are added

some interesting remarks by our author upon the effects of the recipes

with which the pictures were painted, as they are now visible in the works

themselves.

This book could not have appeared at a more fit time. The English school

is becoming of too great importance to waste any of its powers any longer

in the perishing and weak materials of our various meguilps; and the

German school may be arrested by it in their backward progress to the old,

quaint, dry method which the old masters themselves quitted as soon as the

improvements of the Van Eycks, and the modifications of those improvements

by their successors, established upon a basis for immortality painting in

oil.

We must forbear, lest our readers may be wearied with the name of varnish,

and may think we resemble that unfortunate painter, who, bewildering his

wits upon the subject, became deranged, and varnished his clothes with

turpentine varnish, and went in this state shining through the streets.

LE PREMIER PAS.

There appears to be something pedantical in criticising a popular

proverb--something vexatious in calling in question the sort of ancestral

wisdom it is supposed to contain--in disputing a truth, which has been

formalised and accepted by the general assent and perpetual iteration, at

all hours of the day, by all sorts of talkers. Besides, who knows not that

a proverb is not a logical statement? It is always a one-sided view of the

matter, so that the most opposite of proverbs may be equally true; it

gains its currency, and its very force and pungency, by a bold exclusion

at once of all that qualification, and exception, and limitation, which

your exact thinkers require. We will not, therefore, enter into any

profane or captious dispute of one of the most current of the whole family

of proverbs, that which assigns so great a value to the _premier pas_, to

the first step, in any enterprise or career of life, so that this once

accomplished, all the rest is easy, all the rest is done, _ce n'est que le

premier pas qui conte_. We will not criticise, nor qualify, nor except;

only this we _will_ say, that many a first step has been made that led

nowhere,--to nothing; that a multitude of professional and other aspirants

would allow, if they reflected on it a moment, that they had, all their

lives long, at certain intervals, been making first steps, and never made

any other. More glory, doubtless, is due to them for having overcome so

many successive difficulties. Whilst, on the other hand, many who have

advanced to eminence in their chosen career, would find it hard to

distinguish, in that gradual progress which toil and talent had together

commanded, any one first step, or stride, which set them going on their

prosperous path, any step a jot more extraordinary than the rest, or that

did more towards the completion of the journey than the first step one

makes in walking from Edinburgh to Leith. They would have as much

difficulty in describing the _premier pas_ which started them on the road

to fortune, as many a good Christian, well brought up from youth to

manhood, would feel if called upon to answer a Whitfield or a Wesley, as

to the precise day and hour of his conversion. The truth is, we apprehend,

that in this popular proverb, two several matters are confused together

under one name, thus giving to it a greater force than it should

legitimately possess; the _premier pas_ not only signifies that first step

one takes on any of the high roads which conduct to wealth or honours, but

under the same title is also included, we suspect, those startling turns

and tricks of fortune, on which no human wit can calculate, and which

raise a man suddenly into some new and unexpected position in the world.

All kinds of fortunate starting points are mingled together in one view,

and under one title; an thus, the _first step_ becomes magnified into half

the journey, as indeed it is sometimes the whole of it.

For instance--a Meinherr Tettenborn was passing the weary, half-employed

hours at a merchant's desk, kicking his heels, probably, on one of those

tall uneasy stools which, with strange mockery of disproportion, raise the

lowest functionary to the highest footing, but which nevertheless

contribute to preserve the due distinctions of society, by inflicting all

possible discomfort on the elevated sitter. Perhaps there was some

association of ideas between the military profession, and the equestrian

position he occasionally found it convenient to assume; however that may

be, Meinherr Tettenborn suddenly bethought him, that he would bestride a

high-trotting horse instead of his tall black stool. He threw away the pen

for the sword. At this time all Europe was up in arms against Napoleon; so

that, although he entered the Service of the Emperor of Russia, he was

still but enlisting in the common cause, in which his own Germany was more

interested than may other country. He entered, as may be supposed, in the

lowest rank of officers; and, as cornet, or with some such title, you may

picture him at the head of a small troop of horse, despatched for forage

or some ordinary service of the like kind. As he was thus conducting his

little troop, he spied "something black" lying in a field by the side of

the road. He cantered up to it. The something black was nothing less than

a small park of artillery, sixteen guns, which the enemy had left behind

them, perhaps in some false alarm, or for want of horses to draw them, but

apparently for the very purpose of being captured by Meinherr Tettenborn.

He ordered up his little troop, harnessed their horses to the guns, and

rode back triumphant to the camp. The Emperor himself was present. News

was speedily brought him of the capture of a park of artillery, and the

illustrious victor was introduced. Many questions were not asked of the

how, or the when, or the where; the guns happened to be particularly

welcome; the Emperor took from his own neck the order of the Iron Cross,

and suspended it round the neck of the fortunate young soldier, greeting

him, at the same time, with the title of General Tettenborn! The general

was a brave man, was equal to his new position, captured other guns in

another manner, and rose, we will not venture to say how high in the

Imperial service.

Now this very anecdote we have heard cited as an example, illustrating the

proverb, _ce n'est que le premier pas_, &c. Yet this finding something

black lying quietly in the green fields, which proved to be a park of

artillery waiting to be captured, cannot certainly be set down amongst the

early steps of a military career, is not known amongst the means or stages

of promotion, but is manifestly one of those joyous caprices which Fortune

occasionally indulges in, for the express purpose, we presume, that

castle-building in the air may never go quite out of fashion.

In a very amusing collection of anecdotes, entitled, _Fetes et Souvenirs

du Congres Vienne, par le Comte A. de la Garde_, there is a good story

told of one of these capricious visitations of Fortune, which came,--where

Fortune does not often play her more amiable tricks,--to a miserable poet,

releasing him at once from poverty and his jaded muse. We regret to be

obliged to tell the story from memory. We ought to have preserved the

book, if only out of gratitude--for it was the most pleasant travelling

companion, the best fellowship for a diligence or a steam-boat, we

remember to have encountered. But the market price of the small

paper-bound volumes (such was the shape in which it came to us) was so

little--it being one of those editions which the journalists on the

Continent often print to distribute gratis to the subscribers to their

journal--that no pains were taken to preserve it. Very absurd! We print

books so cheap, that the book loses half its value: it is bought and not

read; or read once, and thrown aside, or destroyed.

Poor Dubois was one of that unhappy class, which we are given to

understand is dying out of Europe, (we hope for the sake of suffering

humanity that this is true); of that class, which we in England used to

call Grub Street poets. He _flourished_ at the time of the Empire, and had

been flourishing during the whole of the eventful period that preceded the

elevation of Napoleon. Poor Dubois had alternately applauded and satirised

all parties, and written songs for all sentiments; but had extracted very

little either of praise or pocket-money from any of the reigning powers,

whether republican or imperial. He was quite in despair. Still young in

years, but with worn-out rhymes, he was lamenting one day to his sister

his melancholy and hopeless fate. This damsel was in the service of

Pauline the sister of Napoleon. "Write me a sonnet," said she, "about

Pauline, and about beauty, and let me try what I can do." A beautiful

sonnet, and a sonnet about beauty, are two very different things. Dubois

made nothing of his task, but did it out of hand: his sister took the

sonnet with her.

It was not long before she had an opportunity, in her capacity of _femme

de chambre_, of speaking to Pauline about her brother the poet. She

produced her sonnet about beauty. Pauline did not exactly read it; no one

but the writer, and a few afflicted friends, and those heroic souls who do

things to say they have done them, ever do read sonnets; but she glanced

her eye down the rhymes, and saw her own name in harmonious connexion with

some very sweet epithets. Therefore she asked what she could do for the

poet--what it was he wanted? Alas! every thing! was the prompt and candid

reply,--some little post, some modest appointment.

Now it happened that Fouche at that time was doing his best to conciliate

the fair Pauline, who with or without reason, had shown a little humour

against the minister of police. He had frequently entreated her to make

use of his power in favour of any of her friends. "Well," said the

good-natured Pauline, "this Fouche is always plaguing me to ask for

something; give me a desk."

A lady's pen upon the smooth vellum--you know how fleetly it runs, and

what pretty exaggeration of phrase must necessarily flow from it. The

style, the very elegance of the note, demands it. Dubois was in an

instant, and most charmingly converted into a man of neglected genius and

unmerited distress. What was the happy turn of expression is lost to us

for ever: but as Fouche read the note, he understood that there was a man

of talent to be assisted, and, what was still more to the purpose, an

opportunity of showing his gallantry to Pauline.

The next day the minister rode forth in state accompanied by four mounted

_gens-d'armes_. Following the address which had been given him, he found

himself in one of the least inviting parts of Paris, far better known to

his own myrmidons of police than to himself. But, arrived before the

enormous pile of building, which was said to enclose our poet amidst its

swarm of tenants, he made vain inquiries for Monsieur Dubois. At last an

old crone came to his assistance: she remembered him; she had washed for

him, and had never been paid. If you do not wish to be forgotten by all

the world, take care there is some one living to whom you are in debt.

Meanwhile Dubois, from his aerial habitation, had heard his own name

pronounced, and looking out at window caught sight of the _gens-d'armes_.

For which of his satires or libels he was to undergo the honour of

prosecution, he could not divine; but that his poetical effusions were at

last to bring him into hapless notoriety, was the only conclusion he could

arrive at. That he was still perfectly safe, inasmuch as write what he

would nobody read, was the last idea likely to suggest itself to the poet.

He would have rushed down stairs, but steps were heard ascending. So much

furniture as a cupboard may stand for, the bare walls of his solitary room

did not display. There was nothing for it but to leap into what he called

his bed, and hide beneath the blankets, always presuming they were long

enough to cover both extremities at once. The minister, undeterred by the

difficulties of the ascent, and animated by his gallantry towards Pauline,

continued to mount, and at length entered the poet's retreat. Great are

the eccentricities of genius, and lamentable the resources of pride and

poverty, thought Fouche, as he gently drew the blankets down, and

discovered the dismayed Dubois. Some conciliatory words soon relieved him

of his terror. The awful visit of the minister of police had

terminated--could it be credited!--in an invitation to breakfast with him

next morning.

Judge if he failed in his appointment; judge if he was not surprised

beyond all measure of astonishment, when the minister politely asked him

whether he would accept so trifling a post as that of Commissaire-general

of Police of the Isle of Elba, with we know not how many hundreds of

francs per annum, with half-a-year's salary in advance, and all travelling

expenses paid. The little condition was added that he must quit Paris

directly, for the post had been too long vacant, and there were reasons

which demanded his immediate presence at Elba. How he contrived to accept

with any gravity, without a broad grin upon his face, can never be known.

He would certainly have bounded to the ceiling; but by good fortune, or

happy instinct, he had convulsively clasped his chair with both hands, and

so anchored himself to the ground.

Off he started the very next day, happier than Sancho Panza, to the

government of his island; for his post virtually constituted him the

governor of Elba. Nor was the stream of his good fortune half exhausted.

For immediately on his arrival he was appealed to for a decision, between

two rich and rival capitalists, both desirous of undertaking to work

certain mines lately discovered in the island. One offered him a large

share in the future profits; the other a large sum of ready money. Our

governor decided for the ready money.

When a gallant man renders a service, he does not run and proclaim it

immediately. Fouche allowed a few days to transpire before he waited on

Pauline. He then alluded to the appointment he had made; he hoped she was

content with the manner in which he had provided for her client, Dubois.

"Dubois! Dubois!" said the lady, "I know of no Dubois."

The whole affair had entirely escaped her memory. Fouche assisted in

recalling it.

"Oh, true!" she said, "the brother of my chambermaid; well, did you give

him any little employment? What did you make of him?"

Fouche saw his error, bit his lips, and let the subject pass.

That very evening a messenger was despatched to recall Dubois--and home he

came; but "with money in both pockets"--a little capital of solid francs.

Poet as he was, the man had sense; he did not spend, but invested it, and

the revenue enabled him to assume the life and bearing of a gentleman. We

leave him prospering, and to prosper.

It is said, that Fouche did all he could to keep this story secret. But

Pauline discovered the truth, and was malicious enough to disclose it to

Napoleon, who more than once jested his minister on his governor of Elba.

There is a sort of _premier pas_ known, we believe, amongst gamesters--at

least trusted to very implicitly, we remember, amongst schoolboy

gamesters--that which commences a run of good luck. When the cards, or the

dice, have been cruelly against us, if the tide _once_ turn, it will flow

steadily for some time in its new and happier direction. In the palace of

a certain Russian prince, whose name of course it is impossible to

remember, for it is one of those names you do not think of attempting to

pronounce even to yourself--you _look_ at it merely, and use it as the

Chinese their more learned combinations of characters, where they pass at

once from the visible sign to the idea, without any intermediate oral

stage. In the palace of this prince, you are surprised to see in the most

splendid of its splendid suite of apartments, suspended behind a glass

case--a set of harness!--common harness for a couple of coach horses, such

as you may see in any gentleman's stable. Of course, it attracts more

attention than all the pictures, and statues, and marble tables with their

porphyry vases and gold clocks.

"The thing you know is neither rich nor rare,

But wonder how the devil it got there!"

You inquire, and are told the following story.

The Prince of -------- was one night led into deep and desperate play. He

had staked estate after estate, and lost them; he had staked his plate,

his pictures, his jewels, the furniture of his house, and lost them; his

mansion itself, and lost it. The luck would not turn. His carriage and

horses had been long waiting for him at the door, he staked them and lost!

He had nothing more; he threw up the window, and leant out of it in utter

despair. There stood his carriage and horses, the subject of his last

wager. He had now nothing left. Yes! There was the _harness_! Nothing had

been said of the harness. The carriage and the horses were lost, but not

the harness. His opponent agreed to this interpretation of the wager. They

played for the harness. He won! They played for the carriage and

horses,--he won. They played for the palace, for the plate, the pictures,

the furniture,--he won. They played for estate after estate,--he still

won. He won all back again, and rose from that table the same rich man he

had sat down to it. Had he not good reason to suspend that harness in his

very best saloon?

There is such a thing as a _first step_ most fortunately _adverse_, in

whose failure there is salvation. There are some well-known instances

where wealthy young noblemen have been rescued from the pernicious habit

of gaming by a first loss, which, though it partly crippled them, sent

them back from what might otherwise have proved the road to utter ruin.

When a man would tamper with any species of vice, a happy misadventure,

thoroughly disgusting him with his experiment, is the most precious lesson

he can receive. In the collection of anecdotes we have before alluded to,

there was one of this kind which struck us very forcibly. It is all

admirable instance of the _biter bit_; but here the young man who wished

to be _nibbling_ at roguery, (who in this instance happens also to be a

Russian nobleman,) got so excellent and so salutary a lesson, that we

almost forgive the old and consummate rogue who gave it.

The first Congress of Vienna had collected together all manner of Jew and

Gentile--all who could in any way contribute to pleasure, which seemed the

great object of the assembly; for balls, fetes, concerts, parties of every

description were following in endless succession, till one fine morning

news came that the lion was loose again. Napoleon had broke from Elba--and

every one scampered to his own home. Amongst the rest was a clever Jew and

a rich, who, being very magnificently apparelled, and having that to lend

which many desired to borrow, had found no difficulty in edging himself

amongst the grandees of the society. This man wore upon his finger a

superb diamond ring. The Count of ---- was struck with admiration at it,

and as a matter of pure curiosity, inquired what might be the value of so

magnificent a stone. The Hebrew gentleman, with the most charming candour

in the world, confessed it was _not_ a stone--it was merely an imitation.

A real diamond of the same magnitude, he said, would indeed be of great

value, but this, although a very clever imitation, and as such highly

prized by himself, was nothing better than paste. The Count requested to

look at it closer, to take it in his hand and examine it; he flattered

himself that he knew something of precious stones; he protested that it

was a real diamond. The Hebrew smiled a courteous denial. The Count grew

interested in the question, and asked permission to show it to a friend.

This was granted without hesitation, and the Count carried the ring to a

jeweller, whose opinion upon such a matter he knew must be decisive. Was

it a diamond or not? It _was_ a diamond, said the jeweller, and of the

very purest water. Had he any doubt of it? None at all. Would he purchase

it? Why--humph--he could not pretend to give the full value for such a

stone--it might lie on his hands for some time--he would give 80,000

rubles for it. You will give 80,000 rubles for this ring? I will, said the

jeweller. At that moment, the spirit of covetousness and of trickery

entered into the soul of the young nobleman. Back he went to his Hebrew

acquaintance, whom he found seated at the whist table. Restoring him the

ring, he said that he was more persuaded than ever that it was a real

diamond, and that he would give him 50,000 rubles for it on the spot. (A

pretty profit, he thought, of 30,000 rubles.) The Jew, quietly replacing

the ring on his finger, protested he would by no means rob the gentleman,

as he knew that it was _not_ a diamond. The Count urged the matter. At

length, after much insistance on the one part, and reluctance on the

other, the proprietor of the ring appealed to his partners in the game of

whist. "You see, gentleman," said he, "how it is--the Count is so

confident in his connoisseurship that he insists upon giving me 50,000

rubles for my ring, which I declare to be paste." "And I declare it to be

a diamond," said the Count, "and, taking all risk upon myself, will give

you 50,000 rubles for it." The bargain was concluded, and the ring and the

money changed hands.

The Count flew to the jeweller. "Here is the ring--let me have the 80,000

rubles." "For this! Pooh! it is paste--not worth so many sous--worth

nothing."

Th Jew had _two_ rings exactly alike, with the little difference, that in

the one was a real stone, in the other an imitation. By dexterously

changing the one for the other, he had contrived to give this beneficial

lesson to the young, nobleman, which, it is to be hoped, prevented him,

for ever after, from entering the list with sharpers, or trying by

unworthy means to over-reach his neighbours.

But to return to what is more generally alluded to as the _premier

pas_--that first success which starts the aspirant on his road to fortune

or to fame. It is the barrister and the physician who, amongst all

professional men, have most frequently to record some happy chance or

adventure that came to the aid of their skill, knowledge, and industry;

and of the first brief, or of the first patient, the history is not

unfrequently told with singular delight. The story we have to tell, and to

which the above remarks and anecdotes may be considered by the reader, if

he will, as a sort of preamble, regards the _first patient_ of one who,

commencing under great difficulties, rose ultimately to the head of his

profession. It belongs to both those classes which, we observed in the

commencement, are often mingled indiscriminately together. It has in it

something of the marvellous, and yet afforded but a fair opening to

genuine talent; it was a first step which the fairies presided over, and

yet it was a step on the firm earth, and the first of a series which only

true genius and worth could have completed. We are fortunate here in

having the words before us of the French author from whom we quote, and we

have but to render the anecdote--biography, or romance, whichever it may

be--in whatever of the lively style of M. Felix Tournachon our pen can

catch, or, under the necessity we are to abridge, we can hope to transfer

to our pages.

THE FIRST PATIENT

...He was not then the great doctor that you know him now. At that time

he was neither officer of the Legion of Honour, nor professor of the

Faculty of Paris. Hardly was he known to some few companions of his

studies. The horses that drew his carriage were not then born; the pole of

his landau was flourishing green in the forest.

He had obtained his title of physician, and lived in a poor garret--as one

says--as if there were any garrets that are rich; and to accomplish this

miserable result, to have his painted bed-stead, his table of sham

mahogany, two chairs wretchedly stuffed, and his books--what efforts had

it not cost him!

He was so poor!

Have you ever known any of these indefatigable young students, born in the

humblest ranks, who spend upon their arid labour their ten, their twenty

best years of life, without a thought or a care for the pleasures of their

age or the passing day?--youthful stoics who march with firm step, and

alone, towards an end which, alas! all do not attain!

You have wept at that old drama, that old eternal scene which is recounted

every day--yet not so old, it is renewed also every day:--the bare

chamber, no better than a loft--the truckle-bed--the broken pitcher--the

heap of straw--the sentimental lithographist will not forget the guttering

candle stuck into the neck of a bottle. Thus much for the accessories,

then for the persons of the scene; a workman, the father who expects to

die in the hospital--his four children--always four--who have not broken

their fast that day--and the mother is lying-in with her fifth--and it is

winter, for these poor people choose winter always for their lying-in.

Oh! all this is very true and piteous--I weep with you at the cry of those

suffering children--at the sobs of their mother. Yet there is another

poverty which you know not, which it is never intended that you should

know. A silent poverty that goes dressed in its black coat, polished, it

is true, where polish should not come, and with a slaty hue--produced by

the frequent application of ink to its threadbare surface. It is a

courageous poverty which resists all aid--even from that fictitious fund,

a debt--which dresses itself as you would dress, if your coat were ten

years old--which invites no sympathy--which may be seen in the sombre

evening stopping a moment before the baker's shop, or the wired windows of

the money-changer, but passing on again without a sigh heard. Oh, this

poverty in a black coat! And then it enters into its cold and solitary

chamber, without even the sad consolation of weeping with another. No Lady

Bountiful comes here. In the picture just now described, she would be seen

in the background, entering in at the door, her servant behind loaded with

raiment and provisions. What should she here? What brings you here, madam?

Who could have sent you here? We are rich! If we were poor should we not

sell these books?--all these books are ours; madam, we want nothing. Carry

your amiable charity elsewhere.

Our young doctor had installed himself in the fifth floor of that historic

street, _La Cloitre-Saint-Mery_,--a quarter of the town, poor,

disinherited, sad as himself. Where else, indeed, could he have carried

his mutilated furniture,--which in other quarters would have only excited

distrust? There was he waiting for fortune--not, be it understood, in his

bed, but following science laboriously, uninterruptedly. His life was so

retired--so modest--so silent, that hardly was he known in the house. On

the day of his arrival, he had said to the porter, or rather porteress,

"Madam, I am a doctor--if any one should want me." This was all the

publicity of the new doctor--his sole announcement, his only

advertisement. As his fellow lodgers could gather nothing of him to

gratify or excite curiosity--as his unfrequented door was always strictly

closed, they soon ceased to concern themselves about him. His name even

was forgotten; they simply called him _the doctor_--and with this title

our readers also must be contented, unless their own ingenuity should

enable them to discover another.

One night our doctor heard unaccustomed noises in the house, doors

slamming, people walking to and fro. Presently some one knocked at his

door--verily at _his_ door. What was it? Was the patient come at

last--that first patient, so anxiously expected? He was dressed in an

instant.

"The Countess is dying!" some one cried through the door. "Come,

directly!"

He was at her bedside in a minute.

The Countess! Such was the title given in derision to precisely the

poorest and most miserable old woman in the house. She had been at one

period of her life in the service of a noble family as _femme-de-chambre_;

and as a woman who had seen something of the great world, she held

unqualified strangers at a certain distance, and, to use a common phrase,

kept herself to herself. This had procured her the ill-will and

ill-opinion of several other old crones inhabiting the same house, who

made her the subject of their perpetual scandal. Without doubt, she had

poisoned her last master, and could not look a Christian in the face; or

at very least she had robbed him. Did you ask for proofs? She had a

treasure stitched into a mattress. But she was nearly dying with hunger?

Yes--the niggard! She starved herself, she could not spend her treasure.

Monstrous inventions! The poverty of the Countess, as they called her in

mockery, was complete. Niggard she was, and had good reason to be so, in

order to subsist on the little annuity she had contrived, in the days of

her service, to scrape together. For the rest, as we have no wish to

disguise the truth, the Countess was by no means an amiable person--bitter

and selfish, hostile to all the world, as venomous as her detractors, and

without pity for others, as those so often are who have suffered much

themselves.

She was now stretched motionless on her bed. The old crones had come about

her less from humanity than to discover the secrets of her _den_, the

access to which she had hitherto strictly defended. She held in her left

hand a small packet wrapped up in half a pocket-handkerchief, which she

clutched convulsively. It was the _treasure_, they all exclaimed.

Her case was a grave one--a congestion of the brain. The doctor bled her,

and then wrote his prescription--his first! The bleeding brought the

Countess to herself. When she heard him tell one of the bystanders to go

to the chemist and get the potion,--

"Potion!" she exclaimed, laying hold of the paper, "I want no potion--I am

not ill. Do you think I have money to pay for your drugs? Go away!--all of

you--go!"

She crumpled the prescription in her hand, and was about to throw it on

the floor, when something in the paper apparently arrested her. She read

the prescription, and, turning to the doctor with a manner quite changed

and subdued, asked how much it would cost? She then opened the little

packet she had held till then so jealously in her hand. All the old crones

stretched forward. A few franc-pieces and some great sous were all the

_treasure_ it contained.

That first client, so long looked for, was come at last. Our doctor had

his patient--that first patient whom one pets and caresses, to whom one is

nurse as well as physician. No uncertain diagnostics _there_--no retarded

visits, no hasty prescriptions. If this one die, it is verily his fault.

He devoted himself, body and soul, to the old woman. Certainly the fees

would not be very brilliant, nor would the cure spread his reputation very

widely. He thought not of this--but save her he must! He absolutely loved

this unamiable Countess. He assembled the _ban et arriere-ban_ of science,

and armed himself _cap-a-pie_ in knowledge for her defence.

The object of all this solicitude received his attentions, however, with

an increasing ill-humour, for each fresh medicine made a fresh demand upon

her purse. "How long will this last?" she said one day; "I must go out--I

have no more money--I must go out this very day."

"Do not disturb yourself," began the Doctor.

"Not disturb myself!" she interrupted; "easy to say! Instead of giving me

these drinks and draughts, give me something that will put a little

strength into me--for I must go out."

"Listen to me! remain tranquil a few days"--She turned round from him with

impatience.

"To leave your chamber now would be to expose your life. Give me but four

days; and if you have no more money, I will charge myself with the

medicines."

"You!" cried the Countess, looking up with astonishment.

"And why not me?" said the young Doctor. "You shall return it to me some

time--when you will."

"You! who have not often a dinner for yourself!"

"Who says that?" asked the Doctor, blushing involuntarily.

"All the house says it."

"Miserable stuff!" he replied; "will you accept what I offer? If I

promise, you may be sure I can perform."

The old woman looked at him with surprise, and at length consented to

accept his offer and take his remedies.

The young Doctor hastened to his chamber, shut fast the door, and looked

round him, with his arms folded--"What is there here," said he, "that I

can sell?"

What he found to sell I do not know. Enough that he supplied the Countess

with a sum sufficient to procure her the necessary medicines, and to

relieve her from care as to the wants of life for some short time. The

case proceeded favourably.

At night, as he was returning from one of those solitary walks in which he

was accustomed to exhale his sadness, and also to gather fresh resolution

for the struggle he had undertaken with destiny, and was slowly mounting

the long, dark, dilapidated staircase that led up to that fifth floor on

which he resided, he stumbled over some obstacle, and, on looking closer,

found it was the body of a woman lying outstretched upon the stairs. It

was the Countess. In spite of solicitations and her own promise, she had

gone out; but her strength had failed her. She had fallen, and now lay

insensible.

Our young Doctor, braving all malicious interpretations, carried her to

his own room, which was the nearest place of refuge, and there, by the

aid of some cordials he administered, restored her to her senses. She

opened her eyes, looked around her, and understanding in whose room she

was, she said, with a scrutinising air, "You are miserably lodged here."

It was the only observation his amiable patient made, and she repeated it

several times--"You must be miserably off." Even when she had returned to

her own room, and he had left her for the night, she still said nothing

but--"You are miserably lodged!"

The next morning, when the Doctor visited his patient--and you may be sure

his visit was an early one--to his surprise, she was on foot, with sleeves

tucked up, sweeping, dusting, and _putting to rights_ her little abode. He

was astonished. The shock which she had received the day before, instead

of injuring her, had apparently aided in her restoration. She was quite

gay.

"You are resolved to kill yourself, then?" said the Doctor.

"I was never better in my life," she answered.

"Do not be too confident," was his reply. "You must keep your room two or

three days; and this time," he added, with a smile, "I shall keep guard

over you myself."

The Countess consented with a most childlike docility. She would do what

he pleased; only yesterday she was obliged to go out--it was absolutely

necessary. There was so much gentleness in her altered manner, that the

Doctor was disposed to regard this as an alarming symptom in her case.

However, it, was not so. Her health, day by day, improved, and the

relation between the patient and her medical attendant became more

amicable. She proposed, by way of some return, to assist him in his

bachelor housekeeping. It would give her no trouble. An hour in the

morning, when he was at his lectures, some of which he still followed; and

then she could cook, and she could mend. These offers the young Doctor

declined with a sort of alarm. Who but himself could readjust those

habiliments, whose strong and whose weak points he so very well knew? What

needle could, on this ground, be half so skilful as his own? And cooking!

Cooking with him! Cook what? _On_ what? _In_ what? It was in vain that the

Countess insisted; he would hear of no such thing. He kept his poverty

veiled--it was his sacred territory.

Some few days after the Countess's health might be said to be quite

re-established, our young Doctor, on entering his room, was surprised to

see a letter lying on his table. Correspondence, for the mere sake of

letter-writing, he had quite foregone as a pure waste of time; and he had

no relatives who interested themselves in his fate, or who could have any

thing to communicate. Nevertheless, there the letter was, addressed duly

to himself. He looked at it with an uncomfortable foreboding, assured that

it must bring him some new care, or report some strange disaster.

He sat down, and tore open the envelope. He bounded from his seat again

with surprise--the letter enclosed fifteen notes of the Bank of France! It

is no fairy tale, but simple history; fifteen good notes of one thousand

francs each.

Inside the envelope was written:--"This treasure belongs to you as your

property. Use it without scruple. The hand that transmits it does but

accomplish a legitimate restitution. May the gifts of Fortune conduct you

to the Temple of Happiness!" There was no signature.

"Why, it is a dream, a hallucination. Am I growing light-headed?" said the

Doctor. But no--it was no dream; there they were--before him--on the

little table--those, fifteen miraculous pieces of paper. He turned his

head away from them; but when he looked again, there they were--in the

same place--in the same order--motionless. I leave you to guess his

agitation and his many mingled emotions. From whom could this godsend have

come? He read and reread, and turned the letter in every direction. He

racked his brain to no purpose to discover his anonymous benefactor. He

knew, and was known to, scarcely any one. He strode about his chamber--as

well as he could stride in it--inventing the wildest suppositions, which

were rejected as soon as made. Suddenly he stopped--struck his forehead as

a new thought occurred to him--"Bah!" he cried; "absurd!--impossible!--and

yet----"

In a moment he was at the door of the Countess. He paused a moment before

he knocked. There was from the landing-place a window at right angles to

that of the old woman's apartment and if her window-curtain happened to be

drawn aside, which, however, was rarely the case, it was easy to see from

it into her room. On the present occasion, not only was the curtain drawn

aside, but her window was open, and the Doctor could see this fairy,

accused of lavishing banknotes of a thousand francs, kneeling before a

wretched stove, striving with her feeble breath to rekindle a few bits of

charcoal, on which there stood some indescribable culinary vessel,

containing an odious sort of porridge, at once her dinner and her

breakfast!

The Doctor shook his head--it could not be the Countess. Yet, completely

to satisfy himself, he entered. She gave him her ordinary welcome, neither

more nor less--talked, as usual, of her former masters, of the dreadful

price of bread, and the wicked scandal of her neighbours. But what most

completely set all suspicion at rest was the manner in which she spoke of

the debt which she owed him. "I cannot yet repay you what you advanced for

my medicines," she said, with all the natural embarrassment of an honest

debtor speaking to a creditor. "You will be wanting it, perhaps. Now don't

be angry at what I say--one is always in want of one's little money. In a

few days I will try and give you at least something on account."

"No," said the Doctor, when he was alone: "I can make nothing of it. Away

with all guesses!" He resolved to profit by the good fortune, be the giver

whom it might. And he hoped so to manage matters, that if, at a future

day, an opportunity for its restoration should occur, he should be able to

avail himself of it.

He was soon installed in a more convenient apartment, better furnished,

and supplied, above all, with a more abundant library. The young Doctor

was radiant with hope. Yet he did not quit his old quarter of the town. It

need not be said that he took formal leave of his first patient the

Countess.

From this time every thing prospered with him. As it generally happens,

the first difficulty conquered, every thing succeeded to his wish. It is

the first turn of the wheel which costs so much; once out of the rut, and

the carriage rolls. By degrees a little circle of clients was formed,

which augmented necessarily every day. His name began to spread. Even from

his old residence, where he led so solitary a life, the reputation had

followed him of a severe and laborious student, and the cure of the

Countess was a known proof of his skill.

Like the generality of the profession, he now divided his day into two

portions; the morning he devoted to his visits, the afternoon to the

reception of his patients. Returning to his home one day a little before

the accustomed hour, he perceived a crowd of persons collected in the

street through which he was passing. Perhaps some accident had happened,

and his presence might be useful. He made his way, therefore, through the

crowd. Yet he nowhere discovered any object which could have collected it.

He was merely surrounded on every side by groups engaged in earnest yet

subdued conversation. The greater part were women, and both men and women

were generally of a mature age, and of that sort of physiognomy which one

can only describe as _odd_--faces ready made for the pencil of the

caricaturist. The Doctor, who had no idle time, was about to make his

escape, when a general movement took place in the crowd, and he found

himself borne along irresistibly with the rest through a large door, which

it seemed had just opened, into a spacious hall or amphitheatre. At the

upper end was a stage; on the stage a large, strangely-fashioned wheel was

placed; and by the side of the wheel stood a little child, dressed in a

sky-blue tunic, with a red girdle round its waist, its hair curled and

lying upon its shoulders, and a bandage across its eyes. The wheel and the

child formed together a sort of mythological representation of Fortune.

They were drawing the lottery.

After amusing himself for some time with the novelty of the spectacle, the

Doctor began to make serious efforts to extricate himself. As he was

threading his way through the crowd, and looking this way and that to

detect the easiest mode of egress, he saw, underneath a small gallery at

the side of the amphitheatre, in a place which seemed to be reserved for

the more favoured or more constant worshippers in that temple of Fortune,

a face, the last he should have expected to find there. It was no other

than the Countess. She was seated there with all the gravity in the world,

inclining with a courteous attention to an old man with gray hairs and

smooth brown coat, who was very deferentially addressing her.

Having disengaged himself from the throng, and returned to his own house,

this appearance of the Countess recurred very forcibly to his mind. "After

all," thought he, "it _was_ the Countess!--it was none but she who sent

those notes." The enigma was solved. He had made his fortune in the

lottery, and without knowing it. He determined to visit his old patient

the next morning.

That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in

brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He

came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame ----,

giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story

to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the

wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had

been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late.

She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time

had proved fatal.

There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.

"Ah!" said the same old gentleman, as he stood moralising by his side,

"the same luck never comes _twice_--she should have tried other numbers."

The Doctor saw immediately that the old gentleman had been in the

confidence of the deceased. He questioned him. There was a look of

significance, which betrayed plainly that _he knew all_. He was in fact

one of those who earn their subsistence by writing letters for those who

are deficient in the skill of penmanship or epistolary composition. He had

written _the very letter itself_; to his pen was owing that sort of

_copy-book_ phrase, "May the gifts of Fortune conduct to the Temple of

Happiness!" The Doctor had in truth, as he often said when alluding to the

subject, made his fortune in the lottery.

We wish we could leave the story here, and let the reader suppose that

gratitude alone had induced the old woman to act so generous a part. But

the whole truth should be honestly told. There was a mixture of

superstition in the case. It was _his number_ that had won the prize, and

she considered it, as expressed in the letter which accompanied the notes,

in the light of his property. In all countries where a lottery has been

long established, the strangest superstitions grow up concerning what are

called lucky numbers. In Italy, where this manner of increasing the public

revenue is still resorted to, not only is any number which has presented

itself under peculiar circumstances sure to be propitious, but there is a

well-known book, of acknowledged authority we believe, containing a list

of words, with a special number attached to each word, by the aid of which

you can convert into a lucky number any extraordinary event which has

occurred to you. Let any thing happen of public or private interest--let

any thing have been dreamt, or even talked of that was at all surprising,

you have only to look in this dictionary for the word which may be

supposed to contain the essence of the matter; as, for instance, fire,

death, birth--and the number that is opposite that word will assuredly win

your fortune. When the Countess first saw the prescription of the young

Doctor, she was going to throw it angrily on the floor; but her eye was

suddenly riveted by the _numbers_ in it--the numbers of the grains and

_ozs._ in the cabalistic writing--and she felt assured that in these lucky

numbers her fortune was made. The first stake she played she played for

_him_; and, singularly enough, she won! But, as the old gentleman in the

brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She

should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial

she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her

death.

COULTER'S CRUISE.[14]

Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of

water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to

Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written,

free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the

countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have

had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr

Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would

have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat

sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the

difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous

competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After

the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able

seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat

and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. OMOO

would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had

combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean

during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's

book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr

Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without

interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we

would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes--rarely,

it is true--meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn,

so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress

us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had

being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their

creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We

should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such

persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an

imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a

poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous

idiot, and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and

skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we

avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and

honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a

notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we

have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr

Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was

with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr

Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily

exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he

had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores

of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and

other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the

"Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more

spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It

would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of

the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian

reminiscences, on the shadowy _souvenir_ of those happy days when he fed

on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he dreamed of

cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little

Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John

Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but

middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been

somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of

Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of

the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very

different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter.

Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary

though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our

optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this

number of the _Magazine_ reaches his hands--and reach them it assuredly

will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland--a

detailed and _bona fide_ history of his Life and Adventures, from the day

he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last

sheet of his valuable autobiography. And we pledge ourselves to bestow

upon his book what Aaron Bang calls an amber immortalisation, by embalming

it in a review; treating him tenderly, as one we dearly cherish.

Neither pleasant recollections of Omoo, nor equally agreeable

anticipations of Longghost's lucubrations, shall prevent our doing full

justice to Coulter. Mr Melville made a charming book out of most slender

materials. What had he to write about? Literally next to nothing. The

fag-end of a cruise, and a few weeks' residence on an island, whose

aspect, inhabitants, and all pertaining to it, had already been minutely

and well described by Kotzebue and other voyagers. But he has found more

to say that is worth reading, about what he saw in his very limited sphere

of observation, than Dr Coulter has concerning his extensive voyages and

travels "on the Western Coast of South America, and the interior of

California, including a narrative of incidents at the Kingsmill Islands,

New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and other islands in the Pacific

Ocean." And with respect to the manner of saying it, the Yankee has it

hollow. Dr Coulter's style is careless, often feeble, and defaced by

grammatical errors, so glaring that one marvels they escaped correction at

the very printers' hands. It says much, therefore, for the fertility of

the subject, for the novelty and curiosity of the scenes visited and

incidents encountered by the adventurous doctor of medicine, that his

book, although devoid of the graces of composition, is upon the whole both

instructive and amusing.

To understand the desultory to-and-fro nature of Dr Coulter's cruise, it

is necessary to read his preface, where he gives some general information

concerning the singular and precarious commerce known as the Pacific

Trade. This is carried on between the ports on the western coast of North

and South America, the Pacific Islands, and the coasts of China, and is

very lucrative, but often dangerous. The articles of trade and barter are

exceedingly various. Europe contributes wines, brandy, hardware, and

sundry manufactured goods; California sends deals, corn, and furs; the

various islands furnish arrow-root, oil, pearls, dye-woods, tortoiseshell,

&c. The ships engaged in the traffic, and which are of many sizes and

countries, are usually owned, wholly or in part, by the captain or

supercargo, and consequently, wholly unfettered in their course, they

wander from port to port, according to the caprice of the hour, or the

chances of an advantageous market. For protection against pirates, and

against the attacks of the fierce and savage tribes with whom they

frequently come in collision, they are well armed and manned. The

precaution is no idle one, nor could it possibly be dispensed with. "Few

of these trading vessels ever return with their cargoes to the coast of

the Americas, China, the Sandwich Islands, or Australia, without having

frequent fights with the savages, and there are some of them, who have

reckless captains and crews on board, that never can end a trading

transaction with the natives without a row."

Whether reckless or not, fighting appears to be an every-day sport with

the warlike pearl-seekers of the Pacific--one which the meekest and most

amiable navigators cannot avoid sharing in. We infer this compelled

pugnacity from Dr Coulter's adventures when sailing in the Hound, a smart

brigantine commanded by the gallant Captain Trainer. For although the

doctor started as surgeon to the ship Stratford, and finally returned to

England in her, he was long an absentee from her state room, and cruising

on board the Hound. It happened thus. With a degree of thoughtlessness

hardly pardonable in one of his profession, he made a practice of sleeping

on deck, even when season and climate rendered such an exposed bed-place

highly insalubrious. The consequence was a severe attack of rheumatism,

and on making the coast of California he was fain to land, and take up his

abode in a Roman Catholic Mission-house. The ship was ready for sea, bound

to the far west for whales but the doctor was by no means in a like state

of preparation, and the captain, seeing his crippled condition, urged him

to remain on shore. Captain Lock was a sort of amateur medico, who prided

himself on his Esculapian skill, and, although sorry to lose his surgeon's

society, he evidently rather chuckled at the idea of having an opportunity

to exercise his accomplishments. So Doctor Coulter allowed himself to be

persuaded, and making an appointment to meet the Stratford, _Deo volente_,

at Tahiti in the month of November, he remained under the care of the

Spanish _padre_ at the Mission, much to his own satisfaction, but probably

not quite so much to that of any unlucky mariner upon whose fractured limb

or diseased body Captain Lock may subsequently have found it necessary to

practise. And even the doctor, although the motion of the ship was agony

to his aching bones, and the rough service she was proceeding on would

hardly have suited one in his crippled state, must surely have experienced

some regret in thus deserting the whaler, from whose decks he had

witnessed so many gallant contests with the oleaginous monster of the

deep. Whaling is indeed a glorious sport, as far superior to your salmon

fishing and fox hunting, as those diversions are to bobbing for gudgeon

and chasing rats with a terrier. And whilst the excitement it occasions

must, we apprehend, be the strongest possible to be known, short of that

of the battle-field, it has the advantage of being much less dangerous

than it looks. The ideas suggested to a landsman by the description of an

attack on a whale, are those of extreme peril to all engaged in it, a

peril from which the chances against their escaping alive are at least ten

to one. A few hardy fellows pull up to a creature that looks like a small

island on the surface of the sea, and one sweep of whose tail or flukes is

sufficient to knock their frail bark into splinters; they dash their

harpoons into his huge flanks, and submit to be towed through the waves by

the maddened monster at a rate that makes the water boil round their bows.

Such is the power of the fish, that if he came in contact with a ship,

during his headlong course, his weight and impetus would stave in her

sides. Sometimes he runs straightforward; at others in circles, with

irregular rapidity. Still the boat sticks to him, until the smart of his

hurt subsiding, or through fatigue, he slackens his speed, enabling his

enemies to approach and to pierce him with fresh wounds. At last, when the

waters around are reddened with his blood, comes the death-flurry. "Stern

all!" The boats stand clear, and the fish disappears in the cloud of spray

that he, dashes up in his dying agonies. His flukes quiver, he plunges

heavily, and all is over. Perhaps, and this frequently happens, in the

course of the contest a boat has been cut in two, or so far damaged as to

fill and sink. But the crew are seldom lost. They support themselves by

aid of the oars, until their comrades pick them up. Whaling seamen are

paid by shares in the profits of the voyage, which arrangement of course

contributes to render them zealous and daring.

Such are the scenes described in the early part of Dr Coulter's book,

some of them with tolerable spirit. The whale captured, next comes the

cutting in and boiling out of the blubber--the former a laborious and

often a dangerous process, the latter, anything but an odoriferous one.

The death of a whale is the signal for the arrival of a host of

sharks--blue, brown, and shovel-nosed--all eager to make a meal off the

defunct leviathan. "We were all day surrounded with sea-fowl of various

kinds--haglets, peterels, &c.--picking up floating particles of blubber as

it passed astern, and vast numbers of large blue sharks that kept

continually plunging on the fish, and rendered it very unsafe for the man

to go down and point the hook into the hole cut for it; indeed we were

frequently obliged to jerk him up off the whale out of their way by the

aid of the rope round him for that purpose." The carcass and head on

board, the fires are lighted, the kettle boils, and the ship speeds

merrily on her course--the crew reckoning their share of gain, and

listening anxiously for the welcome sound of "There he blows!"--the

look-out man's usual cry on sighting a whale.

When he left the Stratford, Dr Coulter bade adieu to the grand seasport of

whale-catching, in which he had taken the passive part of a spectator. But

his hand, if unskilled to hurl the harpoon, was familiar with rifle and

fowling-piece. Both of these, with an ample supply of lead, powder, and

shot, his kind friend, Captain Lock, left with him at the mission of Yerba

Buena, literally Good Grass, a Californian town in the bay of St

Francisco. And as soon as pure air, repose, and the use of the Temescal,

or hot-air bath, had restored the doctor's health, he scoured his

fire-arms and made ready for the chase. A looker-on at sea, on terra firma

he proved himself a perfect Nimrod. From that day forward nothing that

wore fur or feather could escape his sure eye and steady hand. From the

quail to the swan, from the frightened squirrel to the formidable grisly

bear, all birds and beasts felt his power, and fell before his unerring

rifle. Nor had he long to wait for opportunities of distributing his

bullets with fatal effect amongst foes whose form was human, although in

customs and civilisation they were but one degree above the brutes of the

forest. After some months' stay in California, taken up chiefly with

hunting and fishing excursions, but of which the doctor, anxious to get to

sea again, gives but a brief account, he began to consider how he should

best reach his rendezvous at Tahiti. He had plenty of time before him; but

the whaling season on the west coast of America being at an end, he could

hardly expect a westward bound English or American ship to touch at St

Francisco for a considerable time to come. He had some notion of

proceeding by a coasting vessel to a more southerly port, when one morning

a fine brigantine hove in sight under a cloud of snow-white sail, and came

to an anchor in the bay. Upon going on board, he recognised all old

acquaintance in the captain of the Hound, whom he had formerly met--the

doctor has been a great rover--at a seaport in Chili. Captain Trainer was

trading along the coast, buying furs; had come into port for fresh water

and repairs; was off for a cruise in the Indian archipelago; and

calculated on winding it up by a visit to the Society Islands. The

prospect of variety and adventure held out by such a voyage exactly chimed

in with the doctor's undecided and erratic mood, as its projected

termination did with his promise to rejoin his ship at Tahiti; so, without

more ado, he made terms with his friend Trainer, and took up a passenger's

berth on board the Hound.

The schooner answering to this canine appellation was a rakish,

fast-sailing craft of two hundred tons burden, fitted out expressly for

the Pacific trade. She carried four small carronades and a long

nine-pounder, a sufficiency of small arms, and a smart crew of sixteen

hands. Boarding-nettings she had, too, ready to be triced up in case of

need; and altogether she had no occasion to dread any enemy she was at all

likely to meet. Her captain was an Englishman born, frank and fearless,

and a thorough sailor. Dr Coulter represents him as a kind-hearted and

humane man, desirous to trade fairly and amicably with the savages, and

not, after the fashion of many desperado skippers in those latitudes, to

clench his bargains by blows and bloodshed. This admitted, it must be

confessed that the captain was unfortunate; for during the time Dr Coulter

sailed with him, we find him continually at loggerheads with the natives.

For the most part, however, the strife was brought on by the treachery and

robber-like propensities of the latter, who, whilst trading with their

European customers, seldom neglect an opportunity of boarding their ships

and cutting their throats. As soon as a vessel comes to anchor they

surround it with their canoes, and show great anxiety to get on board,

especially the women, whom many vessels admit, but whom Captain Trainer

managed to keep off by tabooing his ship. The vice and immorality

prevalent in most of the Pacific Islands is carried to a frightful pitch,

doubtless greatly encouraged by the example of the reckless and dissolute

mariners. Any stimulus of that kind was unnecessary to barbarians

originally cruel, treacherous, and licentious in a very high degree.

Cannibalism is prevalent amongst them. At Drummond's Island, one of the

Kingsmill group, the first land where the Hound made any stay after

leaving St Francisco, Dr Coulter had abundant proof of this. Except upon

the coast, where the disgust shown by Europeans had rendered them ashamed

of it, or at least anxious to conceal it, the natives did not deny the

practice. Some of the men wore necklaces composed of the bones of human

feet and hands, which clattered at each motion of the body. And other

human bones were to be seen in their houses. They eat only strangers and

enemies taken in battle; and as the occasional cutting off of a boats'

crew or straggling watering party from a European ship is insufficient to

keep their larders supplied, they get up constant wars with the natives of

other islands. Amongst themselves, too, they are very quarrelsome. Dr

Coulter, when at Drummond's Island, was present at a grand council, where,

after a certain amount of singing, stamping, and speech-making, the

warriors came from words to blows, and one of them was killed by a

spear-thrust. To satisfy the honour and appease the wrath of his followers

and partisans, a peace-offering was necessary. It consisted of six

fighting cocks, with which and with the corpse of their chief the warriors

took their departure, perfectly satisfied. Cock-fighting is a sport to

which most of the Pacific tribes are passionately addicted.

When the Kingsmill savages had got all they could out of Captain Trainer,

and trade was over, and the ship about to depart, they came out in their

true colours. Previously they had been amiable and affable enough,

contenting themselves with small pilferings, and with robbing Dr Coulter,

whose curiosity took him on shore, of his clothes, which they replaced

with a fish-skin cap and a war-mat. They now showed hostile

intentions--attacked a boat, killed one of the crew, and then made an open

attack on the schooner with a whole fleet of armed canoes. A shower of

grape played havoc amongst them, and sank or capsized several of their

craft; but they still persevered in their advance, and clung to the

vessel's sides and to the boarding-nettings until repelled by cutlass and

pistol. Thus began and ended most of the quarrels with the natives, who,

usually the aggressors, were invariably defeated, but not without hard

fighting and some loss on the part of the assailed. Captain Trainer,

however, was not always quite blameless in the provocation of quarrels,

which always terminated in heavy loss to the misguided savages. At New

Hanover a foolish jest, which his experience of the people he had to deal

with ought to have prevented him from indulging in, was cause of much

bloodshed, and nearly occasioned the loss of the vessel, and destruction

of the crew. Trade had gone on merrily and amicably for several days, when

Trainer expressed a desire for a remarkable necklace of shells and teeth

worn by one of the chiefs. The wearer was willing, and a bargain struck.

The necklace was tightly knotted, and the purchaser propose to cut it. By

way of a joke, "instead of cutting the cord, which he held in one hand, he

raised the knife in a threatening manner as if about to stab the man."

Practical jokes are always foolish and in bad taste,--_jeu de mains, jeu

de vilains_, as the French proverb says;--and the results of this one were

very serious. "The native took instant alarm, thought the captain was in

earnest, made a spring clear of him, which broke his necklace, and plunged

overboard. A few natives on deck at the time followed his example." A

fierce fight, in which several of the schooner's crew were wounded, and a

large number of the islanders killed, was the consequence of this

thoughtless act. And scarcely had the assailants been repelled when the

vessel was found to be on fire, ignited gun and pistol wadding having

fallen through an open hatch amongst inflammable dunnage. By great

exertion the flames were overcome, and the Hound sailed from the inlet

where these unpleasant occurrences had taken place.

From Dr Coulter's account, the islands of the Pacific are the scene of

continual acts of injustice, oppression, and insubordination. It

constantly happens that seamen, seduced by the prospect of a sensual and

idle life, and weary of hard work and uncertain pay on board traders and

whalers, desert their ships and settle amongst the savages. Sometimes they

are driven to this by ill-usage from their captains, often fierce and

hard-hearted men. When a vessel becomes short-handed, it is a common

practice to inveigle Indians on board; and if fair promises are

insufficient to induce them to serve as sailors, to take them away by

force. At Tacames, in Colombia, Dr Coulter fell in with a Californian who

had served for some time on board an American ship. Jack, so his Yankee

shipmates had christened him, had gone on board, in company with another

of his tribe, to sell furs, and had not been allowed to go ashore again.

His companion died of grief and ill-treatment on the coast of Japan, and

Jack, when his services were no longer needed, was left at Tacames, two or

three thousand miles from his native land. He belonged to a wandering

tribe who lived by bartering furs for powder, tobacco, and other Indian

necessaries, and, as an experienced and intrepid hunter, was invaluable to

Dr Coulter. The account of their expeditions in the South American forests

is highly interesting, and we are willing to believe unexaggerated,

although some portions of the doctor's venatorial adventures and

experiences, both in South America and elsewhere, do remind us a little of

the marvels recorded in a diverting and apocryphal book put forth a few

years ago by all ingenious nautical author. On the first day of their

sortie, Jack and his employer, after passing unharmed through jungles

peopled by gigantic monkeys of great boldness, who made various attempts

to purloin their caps and guns, but did not otherwise molest them, reached

a deep ravine, where the barking and howling of beasts were loud and

incessant. Presently a wild horse dashed past them, pursued by a brace of

tigers. The horse dropped from fatigue, the tigers sprang upon him, the

ambushed hunters fired. The doctor's tiger was killed on the spot; "my

shot, after passing through him, entered the horse's neck, and killed him

also." Jack's aim had been less deadly; his beast was wounded, but still

active and dangerous. Dr Coulter proposed giving him the contents of his

second barrel, but the guide preferred to use his knife. The account of

the hand-to-hand combat that ensued reminds us of those graphic records of

bruising matches that occasionally grace the columns of the weekly

newspapers. Pierce Egan himself could hardly recount the progress of a

"mill" between the "Tipton Slasher and the Paddington Pet" in terser and

more knowing style than that employed by John Coulter in narrating the

set-to between Jack and the tiger. "Jack went boldly up to him; the

infuriated animal grinned horridly and writhed rapidly about, throwing up

a good deal of dust from the dry ground. One plunge of the knife--a roar;

into him again--a hideous grin and a tumble about, some blood scattered on

the ground; at him again--a miss stroke of the knife; try once more--both

down and nearly covered with dust." Whereupon the bottle-holder felt

strongly inclined to fire, but was deterred by fear of hitting his own

man. "The tiger had now hold of either the Indian or his clothes, as both

rolled together; yet the knife was busily at work. At last his arm was

raised high up with the red dripping instrument; and after one more angry

plunge of it, the tiger turned on his back, his paws and whole frame

quivering, and with an attempt at a ghastly grin he fell over on his side

and died. Jack then stood up, covered with the animal's blood, and his

first ejaculation was '_un diablo_;' in English, 'one devil.'" A strong

term, but scarcely misapplied to this plucky and hilarious tiger, whom we

conclude, from his continual grinning, to have been a near relation of the

laughing hyena. He died game, with a smile on his lips. Jack escaped

punishment, barring "a faint bite on the shoulder, and a few tears of the

paws on his arms," of which the hardy fellow made little account, but,

after skinning the carrion, proceeded onward in triumph, through forests

whose impervious foliage allowed no glimpse of the sky, where the sunbeams

came with a mild green tint through the masses of impending leaves; down

rivers fringed with lofty trees, whose branches were alive with parrots

and kingfishers; where the monkey screamed, the tiger howled, and the

disgusting alligator, coated with slime and mud, crawled lazily away at

the paddle's splash. In this manner the brace of bold hunters reached the

small town of Tolo; and whilst abiding there, intelligence came of one of

those petty and partial revolutions so common in South American republics.

A malcontent colonel and a few hundred men, unpaid by the needy

government, were extorting their arrears by the strong hand from the towns

upon the coast. They made a determined attack on Tolo, which had been

hastily fortified, and was resolutely defended. The rebels were beaten

off; and as they retreated, a party of cavalry came up, killed many, and

made prisoners of the rest. Jack, whose shooting iron, as he styled his

gun, had made itself heard with great effect during the siege, joined in

pursuit, scrutinised the pockets of the fallen, and secured an amount of

specie that filled his heart with joy. To complete his contentment, Dr

Coulter interceded for him with the captain, who gave the poor fellow a

free passage back to his own country.

The tigers and patriots of Colombia, ugly customers though they be, are

far less formidable than the highwaymen and grisly bears abounding in

California. The robbers go about on horseback, well armed and provided

with lassos, which they throw over the heads of their victims. The usual

objects of their attack are travellers for trade or amusement--any one, in

short, who carries saddlebags--and sometimes even the hunter, toiling his

way to a seaport with a bundle of furs upon his back, is held worth

despoiling of his hard-earned burden. But Californian hunters, cautious

and keen-eyed, and deadly shots, seldom allow themselves to be surprised,

or give up their plunder without a tussle. The doctor tells us of one

fellow, a sort of Californian Natty Bumpo, with whom he passed some time,

and who had defeated and slain with his own hand a gang of six robbers,

making prize of their horses, arms, and accoutrements. In the woods and

prairies of those wild districts, men become inured to hardship and danger

of every kind. And to those who can dine by the bivouac fire and under the

shade of the forest as cheerfully and heartily as in gilded halls and off

polished mahogany, and who can sleep as soundly on fresh turf as in a

luxurious feather-bed, California is a paradise, realising those happy

hunting grounds to which the Indian warrior believes death a passage. The

lakes and rivers abound with fish and wild fowl--trout and salmon, swans,

geese, and ducks; the hazel-nut covers are alive with feathered game; the

forests and mountains with buffalo, deer, hares, and innumerable other

animals. Of beasts of prey, the principal are the jaguar or spotted

leopard, the puma or American lion, and bears--black, brown, and grisly.

These three specimens of the bruin family differ greatly in their habits

and degree of ferocity. The black and brown bears are peaceable,

well-behaved animals, whose principal occupation seems to consist in

furnishing amusement for the hunters by their comical antics. At night

they come round the fires; "but you need not trouble yourselves about a

dozen of them, as, in most instances, they will let you alone, and keep a

respectful distance, sitting on their haunches, scratching themselves with

their fore-paws, wondering what brought you there, and taking a look

round to ascertain whether you have any spare meat left for their supper."

The grisly bear is of far more formidable character. Swift of foot, very

powerful, and of enormous size, he jumps on the back of the largest

buffalo, and kills him with apparent ease. He walks out from behind a rock

or thicket, drives the hunters from their fire, and, if they have not left

him the materials of a hearty meal, follows them with alarming boldness

and rapidity. Dr Coulter relates a running fight he had with one of them,

who pursued him and his companion for nearly a mile, and fell only when he

had received fifteen rifle-balls in his head and body. They do not always

take so much shooting, one ball or two sometimes sufficing as a _quietus_;

but this fellow was unusually large and tenacious of life. "The hunter

said, when he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the brute, as he yet,

though blind with the shot, kept upon his haunches--'I'm of opinion,

grisly bear, you're the biggest and hardest critter of your kind to kill

ever I shot at.'" The Indians cut off the claws of these beasts, and wear

them on a string round their necks as trophies of bravery and prowess.

We have loitered on dry land, and deserted the Hound, whose vagabond

course led her, after quitting the Kingsmill group, to the distant shores

of New Ireland, one of the Australasian islands. Here the king of the

country came on board--a tall, coal-black man of commanding appearance, a

fine specimen of a savage, decorated with bones, shells, and red feathers.

Some of his front teeth were dyed red--a Papuan custom which Dr Coulter

assures us, and we readily believe, gives a demon-like finish to these

ferocious barbarians. His majesty was accompanied by an Englishman, one

Thomas Manners, who had been landed at his own request from a whale ship,

and had passed ten years amongst the savages, to whom in manners and

appearance he was considerably assimilated. He had married the king's

daughter, was a great chief, and perfectly contented with his condition.

There appear to be a vast number of these barbarised Europeans dwelling on

the various islands of the Pacific, some amongst the savages, over whom

they usually exercise considerable authority, others alone, in isolated

nooks, often with Indian wives and a numerous half-cast progeny. The

doctor scarcely touched anywhere without meeting with one or more of these

outcasts from civilisation, the adventures of most of whom would furnish

abundant materials for a Robinsonade. Some of them, deserters from ships

or runaway Australian convicts, kept out of the way; but others, bolder or

having a clearer conscience, gladly served as interpreters, and supplied

the voyagers with useful information. And on more than one occasion, the

crew of the Hound found themselves engaged as allies in the civil wars of

constant occurrence amongst the bellicose barbarians of the Pacific. Dr

Coulter, especially, greatly distinguished himself as an amateur warrior.

He is a most adventurous fellow, and assuredly made a mistake when he

devoted himself to the study of the healing art, instead of to some more

martial profession. His vocation was evidently to kill, not to cure. He

does not inform us whether his rifle aided in repelling the various

attacks on the Hound, but is less reserved concerning his achievements on

shore, and at New Ireland fairly comes out in a military capacity, as a

sort of British Auxiliary Legion to a scouting party of natives. The New

Irishmen, emulous of their brethren in the old country, are for ever in

hot water, squabbling amongst themselves, and keeping up a desultory

border warfare, varied by an occasional pitched battle, as a natural

sequel to which the slain are duly devoured by the victors, with or

without such sauce as their savage cookery book, or, more properly

speaking, their oral culinary traditions, may suggest. Dr Coulter was so

fascinated by the beautiful scenery and strange customs of the island, and

with the hospitable entertainment he found at the sign of the Three

Skulls--an Indian council house from whose roof three tall poles arose,

supporting human heads--that he resolved upon a lengthened excursion

amongst these interesting aborigines, and committed himself, after putting

on what he terms his go-ashore-among-savages suit, to the guidance of his

friend Rownaa, son and heir of the red-toothed monarch already described.

He had not far to go to become acquainted with the comforts of the

country. On reaching an outpost, he obtained a peep into a cannibal

larder. A party of the enemy had attempted a surprise, had been discovered

and repelled, with the loss of two of their number, who were forthwith

trussed for the spit. The _modus operandi_ was rather violent, as was

manifest to the doctor when he looked into the canoe where the bodies lay,

carefully covered up with leaves. "They had been fairly riddled with

arrows and spears, and their skulls were beaten flat with clubs. The legs

were amputated at the knees, hands off at the wrists, hair cut off the

head, &c., preparatory to cooking them." The doctor made bold to express

his disgust at this horrible sight, but the natives, by way of

extenuation, gave him to understand that it was "eatee for eatee," and

that if they fell into the hands of their enemies, they would be converted

into collops and forthwith dined upon. Four of them had been captured that

morning, and would soon, if not rescued, be in the hands of the cook. To

save them from this unpleasant alternative, twenty men advanced stealthily

into the hostile territory, accompanied by Rownaa and Dr Coulter. The

doctor was curious to see the fun, and thought himself safest with his

friend the prince. After a short march they fell in with the prisoners,

guarded by forty or fifty savages; a sharp fight ensued, in which the

doctor at first took no part, thinking, not without reason, that he had no

right to take the lives of men who had done him no injury. At last,

however, "a serious consideration for my personal safety, and the

necessity for self-defence, compelled me to fire both barrels of my gun

into the advancing crowd." The ice thus broken, the double-barrelled rifle

spoke out boldly and decided the day--the doctor celebrating his triumph

by a stentorian hurrah that completed the panic of the discomfited foe.

And thenceforward he shot savages at a handsome allowance. The apologetic

and deprecatory tone in which he records his exploits is amusing enough.

He pleads expediency and necessity, and tries to make it out justifiable

homicide; whilst he evidently has a lurking consciousness that he need not

have thrust himself into scenes and places where it became necessary or

advisable to shed blood. To return to his ship, he had to coast the

island, and to pass the territory of a tribe hostile to his friends.

Canoes came out to assail those on which Dr Coulter and his allies were

embarked. He was again compelled to smother humanity, prime, load, and

fire as fast as he could, although "it grieved me afterwards to think I

used such a death-dealing weapon with so much earnestness." Touching

repentance! Compassionate Coulter! But "his dander was up," he says, and

he thought no more, but acted. As anybody else would probably have done,

on finding himself assailed by a flotilla of howling savages, with

blood-coloured teeth, poisoned arrows, and a decided taste for the flesh

of a wholesome white man. What business the doctor had in such a

predicament, is altogether another question. "_Que diable allait-il faire

dans cette galere?_"

The New Irishmen have some queer customs. The night following the battle

was passed by Dr Coulter at one of their outposts, where he was prevented

sleeping by the strange torches kept burning in the house he lodged at.

They consisted of long sticks, with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre steeped

in rosin and twisted round the top. These were lighted, and held by naked

men, who relieved each other. The idols worshipped by these heathens are

of a peculiarly ludicrous description, ten feet high, made of polished

wood, with arms akimbo, oyster shells for eyes, and red pegs for teeth.

The expression of the face is one of grotesque laughter, irresistibly

provocative of mirth in the beholder. In one respect the example of these

savages might be followed with advantage by more civilised communities.

Their cemeteries are invariably remote from their dwellings, in lonely and

unfrequented spots.

The ship's company of the Hound had been long without seeing any but

savage faces, and it was with much satisfaction that on entering a bay on

the coast of Papua or New Guinea, they perceived a brig riding at anchor.

She hoisted the stars and stripes, and presently her captain paid a visit

to the Hound. A Scotch Highlander by birth, his name Stewart, he was a

daring and unscrupulous dog as ever fired a round of grape into a mob of

South Sea savages. He had the reputation of a tolerably fair dealer, but

some of his articles of traffic were extraordinary and disgusting. He was

once at Cook's Straits, New Zealand, when there was a great fight amongst

the tribes. A feast was to follow, and to save land-carriage, the

cannibals freighted Stewart's ship with the provisions for their horrible

banquet. "He took on board upwards of two hundred dead bodies, cut up and

well packed, with eighteen or twenty chiefs, sailed round, delivered his

cargo, and received in payment a large quantity of dressed flax, which he

afterwards brought to Sydney and sold at a satisfactory price." After

this, people looked askance at him, and held their noses when he passed;

but Stewart jingled his dollars, and said it was no one's business but his

own, admitting, however, that it was "a stinking cargo." Like the Roman

emperor, he denied that good coin could carry an evil smell. "Another

trifling affair," Dr Coulter writes, "blemished his character." Cargoes of

ebony, neither more nor less; slaves bought in Australasia, and sold to

the Dutch and Chinese. Human flesh, quick or dead, was a favourite article

of commerce with this respectable Highlandman. In those remote regions,

however, men cannot always pick their society, and Coulter and Trainer

were glad enough to meet this dealer in dead and live stock, who was an

old acquaintance of both of them. They went on board his vessel and dined

with him, and it was agreed that the brigand schooner should keep together

as long as circumstances permitted. After several days' profitable

trading, chiefly in ambergris, tortoiseshell, pearls, and birds of

Paradise, and which ended, wonderful to say, without a skirmish with the

natives, they coasted along the north shore of the island, and came to an

anchor in Gilvink's Bay, at its westernmost extremity, alongside the

"Eternal Safety," a Chinese trading junk. According to the custom of his

countrymen in those seas, the Chinese skipper had told the Papuans all

manner of lies about the Europeans, and had warned them against trading

with them. Stewart discovered this by means of an old acquaintance, a

Sandwich islander and expert cook, who gladly left the junk, where he

received a larger allowance of rattan than he liked, to officiate in the

caboose of the American brig. Once safe upon the Yankee's deck, Mr Sing

vented his indignation against his late master in a volley of abuse,

interspersed with comical and contemptuous gestures. The Chinaman actually

danced with rage, and at last levelled a matchlock at the object of his

fury; but on Stewart's opening a port, and disclosing the grim muzzle of a

carronade, he suspended, his warlike demonstrations. A supply of articles

for barter with the natives was obtained from his junk, and the same

afternoon a fresh breeze swept the European ships out of the bay.

The last place to which we shall accompany Dr Coulter is a district on the

south coast of New Guinea, inhabited by the warlike and ferocious tribe of

the Horraforas, who, at the period of his visit, lived happily under the

paternal rule of King Connel the First. Terence Connel was a County Kerry

boy, who had gone through many strange adventures in his own country and

elsewhere. A deserter from a regiment of the line, he had served for some

time under Captain Starlight's banner, and had distinguished himself by

his intrepidity and zeal in house-burning, cattle-houghing, and other

nocturnal amusements peculiar to the "first flower of the sea." After a

couple of years of this praiseworthy career, he had been captured, tried,

and transported to Australia. He escaped, with ten fellow-convicts, and,

after various adventures, reached Papua. Nine of their number were slain

by the Horraforas, who spared the two others and made them serve against a

hostile tribe. Connel's companion was killed in a fight, but Connel

greatly distinguished himself, and became head-chief, or king. Under his

guidance and protection, we find Captain Trainer, four of his crew, and

the indefatigable Coulter, wandering in the Horrafora territory, through

magnificent tropical scenery, where snakes abounded, rats were as big as

ordinary cats, the mosquitos flew about in dense clouds, huge bats flapped

their mirky wings beneath the branches of gigantic trees, and immense

saucer-eyed owls glared from out the gloom. Hog-hunting was the principal

sport here; but the Horraforas were at war, as usual, and Dr Coulter's

services were again put in requisition. Fighting is the business of life

with these savages, and with an Irish king at their head, their combative

propensity was not likely to be weakened. They have scouts out

continually, and but for this precaution, as Connel explained, "one tribe

would break in on top of t'other, be murdherin' man, woman, and child, and

carrying off the rest to sell to the Chinese for slaves, all through

divilment, or fair divarsion." To guard against surprise, the natives live

in trees, amongst whose branches they construct commodious sleeping

apartments. They ascend and descend by a notched pole, drawn up at night,

and take their meals on the ground below.

The party from the schooner soon found they had got themselves into

trouble, being cut off from their vessel by the Whitepaints, a race of

savages thus named by Dr Coulter from their habit of disguising their

dusky complexion with a ghastly coating of white. A battle was inevitable,

and Connel disposed his forces with all the tact of an experienced

general. About a thousand of the enemy were opposed to eight hundred and

fifty Horraforas, but the latter had the Englishmen to help them, and

especially Dr Coulter, who, with his terrible rifle, was a host in

himself. The Whitepaints came on to within about four hundred yards of

their foe, and halted, their chief still advancing and yelling defiance,

in hopes of drawing the Horraforas from their cover on the verge of a

forest. His appearance was any thing but prepossessing. He was "a giant of

a man, hair and beard powdered with chalk, face painted black, and body

white all over!" Connel implored his allies to render him a great service

by picking off this ugly heathen, and inquired who was the best shot.

Trainer named the doctor, who "had really no wish to pull a trigger,

except in actual self-defence." But Trainer and Connel pressed him to

fire, and at last overcame his scruples. With charming modesty, he avoids

naming himself as the man who made the huge Papuan magpie bite the dust.

"Thus urged by Connel," he says, "_one of our party_ rested his gun on the

lower branch of a tree, took deliberate aim, and fired!" This "one of our

party" was of course the doctor, the sailors being armed with short

muskets, incapable of carrying so far. The shot took effect. Whitepaint

ceased his capering, "stood fixed and upright like a daubed statue," and

"was about receiving another shot (from the doctor's second barrel, we

presume) when he fell heavily forward and lay motionless." Whereupon the

Whitepaints advanced, and the six Englishmen "set to work in real earnest

popping" off the cannibals. And soon becoming "madly excited by the scene,

we continued to load and fire as fast as we could, accompanying almost

every shot or volley with a Hurra! nearly as wild as the savage yell." Dr

Coulter had got rid of his scruples, and Trainer and the seamen appear

never to have had any. The latter "were eager to run down the mound for

the purpose of enjoying a bayoneting match; but Trainer would not permit

such folly, and told them to amuse themselves firing at them from where we

were, which they did with great perseverance." The unfortunate Whitepaints

were totally defeated, their tribe cut up root and branch, their women

taken to wife by the victors, and themselves slung upon poles like rabbits

and carried off to be buried, as Connel expressed it, in "the infernal

stomachs" of their cannibal conquerors. The doctor and his companions

being by no means anxious to witness the abominable feast, moved on with

Connel, and, after a visit to the Whitepaint town, or rather rookery, the

houses being built in trees, like those of the Horraforas, paddled down a

river, through beautiful scenery, which Dr Coulter indicates, rather than

describes. He is a poor hand at description, the worthy doctor, although

evidently not devoid of a certain feeling for the glories of a tropical

landscape. But he lacks words, and his attempts at a pen-and-ink picture

are painfully meagre and unsatisfactory. After shooting a rapid, where the

river falls about fourteen feet, and down which the natives conducted

their canoes with singular dexterity, the country became more open, and

the mast-heads of the brig and schooner appeared in the distance. "Sail

ho!" bellowed Trainer, rejoiced at the sight of his floating home. And in

his exhilaration, he resolved to "take a rise" out of Stewart. Concealing

himself and men in the bottom of the canoe, he gave the hint to Connel,

whose savage subjects forthwith set up a hideous war-whoop, which very

nearly procured the incorrigible joker a volley of grape from his own

ship. This final and unnecessary danger over, Dr Coulter, to his

considerable satisfaction, once more found himself safely housed in the

cabin of the Hound, relieved from all apprehension of becoming a corner

dish at a cannibal dinner. In which snug quarters and comfortable security

he will be found by those curious farther to pursue the thread of his

adventures.

THREE MONTHS AT GAZA.

After quitting the Arab chiefs,[15] Sidney rode slowly and silently

towards the little town of Gaza. He was seized with a strange fit of

melancholy, and this sudden revulsion of feeling proceeded from no

perceptible cause. He cared very little about parting either with Aali or

Sheikh Salem. Lascelles Hamilton was a much more amusing companion than

either of the Moslems. But from some inexplicable train of thought,

Sidney's mind was filled with fancies, which followed one another like the

phantasms of a fever, and produced a depression of spirits alarming to

himself. He was naturally so little addicted to low spirits, or

melancholy, that he felt convinced the present fit must be the forerunner

of some serious malady, and that the mysterious warning given him by

Sheikh Salem, not to delay long at Gaza, arose from the sagacious Arab

perceiving the traces of incipient fever marked on his forehead. At last

he succeeded, by reproaching himself with his own pusillanimity, in

rousing his mind, and directing his attention to the scenery around, and

to the view of the town before him.

That view was well calculated to dispel blue devils. It was picturesque,

gay, and luxuriantly green; and the contrast it offered to the parched

desert behind, and the memory of the sandy fog of the Khamsin, made its

contemplation a physical enjoyment. On each side of the lane along which

the travellers proceeded, a tall fence of cactus separated them from

verdant plantations of mulberry trees, orchards, and gardens. The creaking

of water wheels, and the splashing of the water from the revolving

buckets, were sounds which, if not musical to the ear, were delightful to

the sense of hearing, from the ideas of coolness and cleanliness they

suggested. Those only who have wandered in the desert under a burning sun,

or sailed for days and nights in a crowded Levantine caick, can conceive

the exquisite sensation that the sight of an old black bucket of fresh

water conveys to the human soul. The sense of coolness indicated by the

dark stain of constant immersion, and the liberality of wealth testified

by the leaky stream flowing from the ill connected staves, have given many

a traveller in the "gorgeous east" greater pleasure than he could have

derived from an invitation to a banquet with Lucullus.

Beyond the wave of the corn fields the verdure of the gardens, and the

shade of the trees, rose the little city of Gaza,--a small and picturesque

spot, with a few minarets and towers, and ruined walls rising above the

houses. It crowns a moderate elevation, once occupied by a strong citadel,

so well fortified by nature and art as to have merited emphatically the

appellation of "the strong." It stands a monument of the glory of the

Israelite warrior Sampson, and a proof of the ease with which heroic

valour, in a petty fortress commanded by a Persian eunuch, could arrest

the progress of the Macedonian hero, Alexander the Great. At the entrance

of the town our travellers stumbled over some ruins, which they were

gravely informed marked the remains of the gateway from which Sampson had

carried away the gates. Beside it, a small building with a low dome has

been constructed by the Mohammedans, and is shown as the tomb of Sampson.

Before this tomb, a considerable number of people, and a guard of Albanian

soldiers, was now stationed. They soon brought our travellers to a halt,

and compelled them to dismount in order to undergo an examination as long

and inquisitorial as that to which poor foreigners are subjected at the

police office of Vienna. Their motives for visiting Gaza, were inquired

into, and particularly their connexion with the party they had just

quitted. The result of the examination did not appear to be perfectly

satisfactory, though Sidney told very frankly that Sheikh Salem and his

son were of the party, truly declaring at the same time, that as they had

crossed the desert disguised in female apparel, and surrounded by their

own attendants, he had no knowledge of their presence until the party was

joined by the Sheikh of Hebron that day. An Osmanlee secretary of the

governor of Gaza, one of those Mamaluke custom-house officers, or revenue

collectors of Mohammed Ali, to whom the statesmen of France looked for the

foundation of an Arabic empire in Egypt and Syria, now made his

appearance, to decide on the fate of the English spies, for such they were

evidently considered.

After a second examination, it was decided that the party must undergo a

quarantine of observation until their companions should arrive. It was in

vain to oppose this decision; so Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet

were marched through the middle of the town of Gaza, and lodged in a tower

near the centre of the barracks, in order to preserve the place from the

danger of contagion. Two Albanian soldiers were appointed to act as

guardians or sentinels to the prisoners, who were also allowed to hire a

cook. The guards kept up, a constant communication with their friends, and

the cook walked himself to the market to make his purchases, so that the

quarantine was very evidently rather a police than a sanatory measure.

The tower in which the travellers were lodged was within the circuit of

the remains of a noble building, constructed by the templars, or the

knights of St John, who long defended this bulwark of the kingdom of

Jerusalem against the infidel soldans of Egypt. The first morning of

quarantine was spent walking and smoking on the terraced roof of a large

arched hall, once a dormitory, or a hospital of the Christian soldiery,

now tenanted by a small body of irregular cavalry. As Mohammed Ali was,

according to the established system of his Arabic empire, cheating them

out of their pay, they were eager to hire their horses to our travellers

for the journey to Jerusalem. There captain, aspiring to the profits of a

muleteer, contrasted with the fierce templar of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe as

the trading monarch, Mohammed Ali, forms an antithesis to the generous

Saladin. The terrace overlooked a delightful country, and Sidney felt

positively pleased that the restraint of quarantine compelled him to be

idle. Before him was spread a rich cultivated plain, closely covered with

olive trees, and bounded by a range of hills, crowned by the peak of

Sampson's mount, rising prominent over the rest of the chain. The long

waving branches of palm trees scattered about in every direction, the

trains of loaded camels arriving and departing, and the active population

in constant movement round the town, gave Gaza the air of a flourishing

place.

But though Sidney found great pleasure in contemplating this scene, seated

on his carpet, pipe in hand, and Achmet expressed in a variety of

languages his delight at smoking the pipe of repose, after quitting the

saddle of fatigue, neither the scene nor the repose appeared to produce a

tranquillising effect on the mind of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. That

gentleman displayed the extreme of impatience at his confinement, and

spent hour after hour in vain exhortations to Sidney, to make some

endeavours to be released from imprisonment. Failing with Sidney, he had

even attempted to move Achmet. It was all useless: Sidney had not gazed on

green trees, gardens, and human beings for some days, nor had Achmet

smoked a pipe of repose since he had quitted the valley of the Nile; so

the one could do nothing but contemplate, and the other nothing but smoke.