fictitious history, but has the honour of ugliness attributed to him. Esop was a very ugly, little crouchback: uglier still was Socrates, not less a wit, and a man of humour, than a philosopher. The heroes of Rabelais were famous for personal ugliness. Sancho Panza, his master, and Rosinante were, in their several conditions, absolutely patterns of this interesting quali fication. Hudibras and Ralpho were still more conspicuously ugly. Falstaff, Bardolph, ancient Pistol, and almost every character of wit and humour in the whole drama of Shakspeare, were eminently ugly, Scarron, the favourite wit of France, was the most deformed little figure that ever a lovely woman allowed herself to be coupled to. What amusement is there not to be derived from any thing peculiar in the nose? Is your nose excessively long? Comfort yourself that you have fared as well as if you had been to the promontory of noses-it is the proboscis of the elephant-it is the suspensus nasus which the Romans held to be so remarkable an indication of acute delicacy in the perception of the ridiculous. A short nose is like every thing that is little, smart, and pretty; in any dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the face, a humble little nose is not much more exposed than your cheek or your chin. A pimple, a wart, a polypus by enlarging, only beautify it; it is ever brisk, alert, erect, and upon the qui vive; it affords a shortened passage to the brain, It is a perfection in nature to accomplish all her ends with the smallest possible means. Such noses are well known to have been much valued by the Romans, as a sure proof that the wearer was a person of shrewd discernment, and of a lively sarcastic wit. A prodigious deal of comfort in a hump-back! Who more chatty, who more conceited of his personal appearance, who more lively in wit and discernment than the little " my lords?" The hump appears to the little fellow who bears it as if it was a knapsack, in which be had bundled up all his cares, his follies, his absurdities, his ugliness, and cast them behind him. He who can earn nothing with his hands, may get a fortune by lending out his hump, if he has one, for a portable writing-desk. It is well known what wealth a little "my lord" got at Paris during the famous Mississippi rage, by putting his hump to advantageous use in this way. A peerage conferred by the king has, perhaps, nothing more gratifying in it than the address of my lord; but he whom nature has honoured with a humpback, needs no royal creation to enable him to have his ears constantly saluted with this high and flattering address. Polyphemus. THE GUAHIBI MOTHER. THE following affecting story is told by Humboldt: Where the Atabapo enters the Rio Temi, but before we reached its confluence, a granitic hummock, that rises on the western bank, near the mouth of the Guasacavi, is called the Rock of the Guahibi Woman, or the Rock of the Mother, Piedra de la Madre. We inquired the cause of so singular a denomination. Father Zea could not satisfy our curiosity; but some weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of this ecclesiastic, whom we found settled at San Fernando, as president of the missions, related to us an event which I recorded in my journal, and which excited in our minds the most painful feelings. If, in these solitary scenes, man scarcely leaves behind him any trace of his existence, it is doubly humiliating for an European to see perpetuated by the name of a rock, by one of those imperishable monuments of nature, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our species, and the contrast between the virtues of a savage, and the barbarism of civilised men. In 1797, the missionary of San Fernando had led his Indians to the banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile incursions which are prohibited alike by religion and the Spanish laws. They found in an Indian hut a Guahibi mother with three children, two of : whom were still infants. They were occupied in preparing the flour of Cassava. Resistance was impossible the father was gone to fish, and the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the savannah, when she was seized by the Indians of the mission, who go to hunt men, like the whites and the negroes in Africa. The mother and her children were bound and dragged to the bank of the river. The monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition of which he partook not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance, the Indians would have killed her; for every thing is permitted when they go to the conquest of souls, and it is children in particular they seek to capture, in order to treat them in the mission as poitos, or slaves of the christians. The prisoners were carried to San Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable to find her way back to her home by land. Far from those children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had been carried off, this unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest despair. She attempted to take back to her family the children who had been snatched away by the missionary, and fled with them repeatedly from the village of San Fernando, but the Indians never failed to seize her anew; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone toward the missions of the Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate that awaited her; but she judged, by the direction of the sun, that she was removed farther and farther from her hut and her native country. She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a shelf of rock which bears her name to this day. She landed, and took shelter in the woods; but the president of the missions ordered the Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahibi. In the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la Piedra de la Madre), a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with those straps of manatee leather, which serve for whips in that country, and with which the alcades are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her hands tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure, was then dragged to the mission of Javita. She was there thrown into one of the caravanseras that are called Casa del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. Forests, till then believed to be impenetrable, separated the mission of Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twentyfive leagues distant in a straight line. No other part is known than that of the rivers; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to another, were they only a few leagues apart. But such difficulties do not stop a mother who is separated from her children. Her children are at San Fernando de Atabapo; she must find them again, she must execute her project of delivering them from the hands of christians, of bringing them back to their father on the banks of the Guaviare. The Guahibi was carelessly guarded in the caravansera. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had loosened her bonds, unknown to the missionary and the alcades. She succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely; disappeared during the night; and, at the fourth rising sun, was seen at the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her children were confined. "What that woman performed," added the missionary who gave us this sad narrative," the most robust Indian would not have ventured to undertake. She traversed the woods at a season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds, and the sun during whole days appears but for a few minutes. Did the course of the waters direct her way, the inundations of the rivers forced her to go far from the banks of the main stream, through the midst of woods, where the movement of the waters is almost imperceptible. How often must slie have been stopped by the thorny lianas that form a net-work around the trunks they entwine! How often must she have swam across the rivulets that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was asked how she had sustained herself during the four days. She said, that, exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands to suspend on them their resinous nests!" We pressed the missionary to tell us whether the Guahibi had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of remaining with her children, and if any repentance had followed this excess of cruelty. He would not satisfy our curiosity; but at our return from the Rio Negro we learnt, that the Indian mother was not allowed time to cure her wounds, but was again separated from her children, and sent to one of the missions of the Upper Oroonoko. There she died, refusing all kind of nourishment, as the savages do in great calamities. Such is the remembrance annexed to this fatal rock, "Piedra de la Madre." Humboldt's Travels. DESPERATE COURAGE. THE following instance of enthusiastic valour and contempt of life is not exceeded by any thing which is recorded in history. It occurred in India, at the storming of the fortress of Bobilee, belonging to Rangarao, one of the Polygar rajahs. The attack, says the historian, commenced at day-break, on the 24th of January, with the field-pieces against the four towers; and the defenders, lest fire might catch the thatch of the rampart, had pulled it down. By nine o'clock, several of the battlements were broken, when all the leading parties of the four divisions advanced, at the same time, with scaling ladders; but after much endeavour for an hour, not a man had been able to get over the parapet, and many had fallen wounded; other parties followed with as little success, until all VOL. III. L |