tator, were any test of the efficacy of these terrible contrivances, many of the carliest and rudest would claim our preference. We might look with respect upon that expedient which an old traveller, Carpini, attributes to the fabulous hero and monarch, Prester John. "This Prester John (whom he places somewhere in India) caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. At the first onset of the battle these mounted figures were set forward to the charge; the men who rode behind them set fire to the combustibles, and then blew strongly with the bellows. Immediately the Mongul men and horses were burned with wildfire, and the air was darkened with smoke. Then the Indians fell upon the Monguls, who were thrown into confusion by this new mode of warfare, and routed them with great slaughter."(Maritime and Inland Discovery, vol. i. p. 258.) These fiery cavaliers must have been fearful enough to look upon, darting flames from eyes and mouth like so many Apollyons; but it must also have been a fearful business to act as faithful squire to one of these combustible knights; and, after all, a single piece of artillery, one long black cylinder of iron with its sooty charge, were worth a whole regiment of them. It is worthy of remark how few of these schemes for the wholesale destruction of an enemy, or his fleet, have ever succeeded." They have raised great expectations on one side, and great alarm on the other, but have generally ended in some very paltry result. Even in modern times, when the use of explosive materials is so much better understood, fire-ships, and the like inventions, have proved of little efficacy: The means of destruction are great, but they are not sufficiently under the control of those who would use them. In the late war, in order to destroy the flotilla at Boulogne, we despatched four fire-ships in succession" catamarans" as they were called, horribly stuffed with gunpowder and all sorts of inflammable 1 matter. They exploded one after the other with a terrible noise, but effected nothing. Those who have read Cooper's History of the American Navy, will remember the disastrous issue of that "floating mine" which was to destroy the fleet and arsenal at Tripoli. This "infernal," as it was called, was filled with a hundred barrels of gunpowder, a hundred and fifty shells, a large quantity of shot, great and small, and all manner of fragments of iron. In the dead of night it was to sail unperceived into the harbour of Tripoli, and the officer and men who had the charge of it, after having lit the fuse, were to return in their boats to the frigate Nautilus from which they had proceeded. The men on board the frigate, watched the "Infernal" till its dim sail was lost in a pitch-dark night. Then came a fierce and sudden blaze-a torrent of fire like the great eruption of Vesuvius, and a concussion that made the vessel tremble from its keel to its topmost spar. Tenfold night succeeded-and silence; and every eye was vigilant to discover the returning boats. Some leaned over the sides of the vessel, holding lights to guide them; others placed their ears near the water, to detect the sound of their oars. never reappeared; not a single man of them returned. By some unexplained accident, all had perished in the explosion; and the morning dawned, and the enemy was untouched and uninjured. They Amongst the many subjects which Sir Harris Nicolas has occasion to treat in the course of his naval history, none is more curious than that of the law of wreck. A rude and barbarous people concluded that what was thrown by the tempest on their coast was a sort of godsend, and the property of the first finder. The king, as general finder of all lost treasure, was not long before he put in his paramount claim; and the common law-sanctioned it, proceeding, we are told, upon the principle, that by the loss of the ship all property had passed away from the original owner. With equal gravity it might have sanctioned any species of theft or spoliation, by promulgating the principle, that when a man can no longer keep possession of his goods, "all property has passed In away from the original owner.” This compensation or revenge he could was indeed " adding sorrow to sorrow, from the fellow-countrymen of the and injustice to misfortune." Henry I. person who had injured him. has the merit of having first mitigate 1 such cases, his government granted this cruelty of the common law. him letters of marque — "license to " He ordained that if any person mark, retain, and appropriate," the escaped alive from the ship, it should men and goods of such foreign pation. not be considered a wreck :" on the Even on land the creditor of one principle, we suppose-for the law loves foreigner, who could not get paid, what it calls a principle, and if it might attach the goods of any other partakes of the nature of a fiction foreigner-of the same nation, we preloves it the more-that the person who sume. It had to be enacted by Staescaped might be considered as an tute i. West. c. 23., that “no stranger agent for the merchant or proprietor, who is of this realm shall be disretaining in his name a possession of trained in any town or market for a the goods and the ship. But the next debt wherein he is neither principal step in this humane course of legisla- nor security."* Sir Harris Nicolas tion was still more singular. A sta- mentions a curious case at p. 235, tute of Edward I. enacts -- Con- which shows how rooted this idea cerning wrecks of the sea, it is agreed must have been in the general mind, that when a man, a dog, or a cat, that the goods of all foreigners were escape quick out of the ship, that liable for the debt of any one of them. neither such ship or barge, nor any One Richard de Canne had captured thing within them, shall be adjudged a ship in Brittany, and Helen, widow wreck.” Here the dog or the cat, of Richard Clark, had lost a ship in which was so fortunate as to escape, Brittany; whereupon widow Helen must, in the eye of the law, we pre- laid claim to Richard's ship, and got sume, have been clothed with the possession of it. But the king recharacter of an agent, and looked versed the sentence of the justiciary upon, for the time being, as the ser- of Ireland — "forasmuch that it does vant of the hapless merchant. Such, not appear to us to be just that the we suppose, must have been the legal said Richard should lose the aforesaid reasoning; but perhaps some preju- ship, which he acquired in a land at dice of an ignorant people, which we war with us, on account of fa ship cannot now follow or define, was in which the said Helen afterwards lost reality taken advantage of by the in the same hostile land." legislation of those days; and a rude The present volume of Sir H. selfishness, which would have been Nicolas's history carries us no furdeaf to reason or humanity, was ther than the reign of Edward II. assailed by the aid of some superstition We shall watch its future progress as rude as itself. However, after such with interest. Hitherto we have to a law, we hope no ship set sail with- familiarise the imagination with ships out having a supply of dogs and cats or boats of very small dimensions, on board. and their very limited exploits. And The extent to which piratical it is singular what an effort of the habits, and indeed all manner of rob. imagination it requires here to reduce bing and violence, prevailed in these sufficiently the scale of things. How early periods, is very well known ; but complete is the contrast of that Saxon the reader will find some curious and ship, with its one sail held by the startling instances in the work before hand, its few oars, its paddle at the us. Between foreign countries there quarter, and its sea-captain showing was generally a species of private war his dexterity in walking upon the being carried on; for it was an under- oars while in motion, and throwing, stood custom, that when a native of like a conjuror, three darts in the air one country was injured by a native at once—with the stately man-of-war, of another, and could get no redress, and its calm and intelligent comhe was justified in obtaining what . mander ! Nothing can exhibit more * Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 397. 1847.] Sir H. Nicolas's History of the Navy. strikingly than this contrast the gradual improvements which age after age may make and transmit. Mast has been added to mast, and sail to sail, and rope to rope; and in the hull, tier after tier of guns have been raised, till the ship has become the hugest and most complicated piece of mechanism the world has ever seen. Who has not in his time gazed with wonder on those floating castles which the citizen of England from time to time sees hovering on his coast, the watchful and moving fortresses of his island home? You are a dweller in cities-you are lying, in some holiday and summer month, listlessly upon the beach-the great ocean is spread before you, illimitable -and it almost terrifies the imagination to think of men passing out there, in that wild waste of waters, given up to the two unthinking and gigantic powers of wind and wave, that have no more respect for man or his structures than if they were still in the liberty of chaos. That men do go forth to the uttermost ends of the world seems a thing almost fabulous -incredible. You have eaten of the lotus leaf: why should they go?-go from the firm and sheltering earth, to lay their lives upon the winds? But now comes in sight a sail; the extended wing floats unfluttered; the tall tapering masts are visible; it moves imperturbable, like a god upon And look at that tongue the waters. of flame drawn back with a serpent's swiftness, and that wreath of whitest. vapour that steals out from its side so soft and graceful!-is that the deadly Where now are the great waters that swallowed up all enterprise, and sea is ours!--we live, we revel, we smote the heart with despair? The fight, we conquer on it. The ship casts anchor, and you rush you enter a skiff, which will take you with many others upon the shore, and off to a nearer survey of this great visitor. You approach, and mount You look the sides of this floating arsenal. Is That this the thing you saw moving light as a bird upon the horizon? down as from a house-top. yacht which bore its pennon so gallantly in the air, and which is now moored under the stern, can just lay are walking. Look down-you are its fluttering flag on the solid deck you giddy with the height; look up-and for there rises the enormous mast, you are again level with the waters; piercing the sky, laying its steady its acre-broad canvass, that makes the spars against the blue ether, bearing vast hull with all its iron stores, bound over the surface of the wave. Clas merdin!-thou "sea-defended green spot,"-such, and so great, is the sacrifice thou art called to offer up upon the deep to the god of war! ever untouched by the invader! May it avail to keep thy homes for EVENINGS AT SEA. It has often been a matter of sur- ever meet any one so dull as to be prise that we should owe so little of incapable of affording us some amusethe contents of our treasury of ment, or so ignorant that we can deliterature to officers of the navy while rive no instruction from their conactually employed at sea. The abun- versation. The fact is, that we are dant leisure at their disposal, the end- sure to be thrown into communication less variety of places visited, of with many men who have travelled events witnessed, of perils shared in, much, who have seen many countries, which their noble and important pro- and tried many pursuits, of which we fession forces upon them, would ap- have known but little, and of which pear to give every facility to those it must be always desirable that our who are gifted with descriptive or information should be increased. imaginative powers, and to be almost During our voyage, we usually ascapable of creating such where they sembled, in the fine calm evenings of do not originally exist. a southern latitude, on the poop of But any one who has himself been the vessel, guarded from the evils for a long time on the desert of waters of the dewy air by a tent - like can no longer regard this with as- ta kulin attached to the mizentonishment; he will have felt the mast overhead, with the friendly glass difficulty of bringing the mind into and the pipe or cigar to aid our social. active and continued exertion in pur chat. After a little time our conversuits unconnected with passing events. sation often lapsed into narrative. Though the physical functions may be As the thread of our discourse twisted stimulated into unusual vigour by the through the various textures of our bracing air and healthful life on different minds, a subject would at board, the power and energy of the times strike on the strong point or mind are far from being proportion- favourite idea of some one of our ately increased. party, and with a half passive, half Having just landed from a long interested attention, we would hear and tedious voyage, I feel in my own him to the end. experience a reproachful confirmation A few of these men had lived active of this accusation of idleness against a and adventurous lives, and witnessed life at sea. All the admirable resolu- stirring scenes ; indeed, there was tions of study and self-improvement, hardly one of them who had not some formed with the firmness of a Bru- experience of interest, wherewith to tus on the shore, melted away with contribute to the armoury with which the weakness of an Antony when I we waged war against time, that trusted myself to the faithless bosom enemy whose strength becomes alof the deep. most a tyranny on board ship. FreBut there is no place where the quently, on the following morning, I stores of memory are more brought used to endeavour to record the most into use in the way of narration, than striking of these narratives in the best on board ship; perhaps it is that those manner my memory permitted-but who are at all inclined to garrulity find I fear in a way which will prove but patient and idle listeners more readily a too strong evidence of the soundthan under any other circumstances. ness of the assertion I commenced by My fellow-passengers, though not putting forth, as to the difficulty of very numerous, were men of sundry any literary effort while at sea. The countries, characters, and pursuits, and first narrative which I find noted in their manners and conversation made my manuscript was related to us by up in their odd and discordant variety, the agent of an English mining comfor what they lacked in refinement pany in Peru: he was then on his way and intellectuality. It appears to me to London on business connected with always the wisest plan for a traveller his calling, and seemed a man of to join in the society of his fellow- quick intelligence, information, and passengers, whoever or whatever they kindly feelings. His description of may be. It is our own fault if we the golden and beautiful region whence he had come, and the ad- Cornish man-caught my attention far venturous and prosperous labours ofour more than any thing else, and added own countrymen in that distant land, another strong link to the chain of were highly interesting ; but a simple sympathy which binds my heart in story of the noble conduct of one of love and kindly feeling to my fellow his miners — a rude and illiterate beings. I give you his tale as I best can. EVENING FIRST.-TUE MINER. In the spring of the year 1838 a reconciled to both these arrangevessel sailed from Falmouth, with ments. thirty-two Cornish miners and arti- The young couple toiled on well sans on board, engaged by different enough through their hard life; the companies for Peru. They were alehouse was abandoned, and but priucipally young and adventurous that poor John was sometimes weak men, who were readily induced to and ailing and could not work, Polly change the certainty of hard work had no reason to regret her choice. and indifferent remuneration at home William, who lived with them, was not for the chances of a strange land. quite so steady as they could have Some of them took their families to wished: he often staid out all night, share their fate, others left them be- and they were not without suspicion hind, to await their return if unsuc- that the employment of these hours cessful, or to follow the next year if of darkness was scarcely reconcilefortune should befriend the emigrants. able with strict obedience to the very Among these latter was John Short, arbitrary game-laws. In short, he a man of about four-and-thirty years was “had up” several times, and of age ; his brother-in-law, William more indebted to good luck, than Wakeham, two or three years his either his innocence or any mild weakjunior, accompanied him : both were ness of legislation, that he did not beskilled and experienced miners. Mary come one of those whom we have Short, the wife of the former, re- driven forth from among ourselves mained with old V akeham, her father, to be the founders of that great who was a small farmer, living in the future empire, whose principal geoneighbourhood of Penzance. She graphical feature is Botany Bay. bad been married some twelve years But whenever his brother was too before this separation from her hus- ill to go down to the mines, he worked band, and had two surviving children, double tides ; and neither the heathery both of them young and helpless. moors nor shady coverts had charms Her father had been much angered enough to tempt him away, when his at her marriage ; as in those days her sister or her family wanted half the young husband bore no very steady loaf lis labour was to purchase. At character, and was better known in length hard times came upon the the tap-room of the alehouse than at neighbourhood : work was scarce and the labour-muster of the Captain of wages low; the consequence was the mine. Indeed, the father had that the game in the adjoining prethreatened to turn her out of doors for serves suffered considerably, and the persisting in keeping acquaintance with tap-room of the village alehouse the idle miner; and her brother, echoed with the voice of sedition and William Wakeham, a very robust discontent, instead of the coarse but and quick-tempered young man, had good-humoured gossip and song which beaten her lover severely in a drunken had formerly been wont to be heard quarrel, originating in the same cause. within its walls. This proved anexcelThe injuries were so severe that John lent opportunity for the mining agent Short was carried to an hospital, where to secure good workmen for some spehis kind-hearted but violent assail. culations then being entered upon in ant paid him the most careful and South America. Accordingly a anxious attention. A friendship was flaming advertisement in there formed which resulted in Wil. and blue letters was posted up all over . liam Wakeham becoming a miner and the country,—"Speedy fortune to be John marrying his sister. The father realised-gold mines of Peru-wanted was finally and with much difficulty some steady and experienced miners VOL. LXII.--NO. CCCLXXXI, ige red |