Each little hillock that we mount, and every little slope we descend, only serves to increase our admiration and surprise at the vast extent and beauty of Glugur. The trees are all parcelled off into different fields or divisions, of which those nearest the mansion contain the oldest and most fruitful: the trees have been planted in perfect straight lines, and a distance of about four yards in every direction intervenes between each tree. None of the nutmeg trees attain to a great height; they are generally about the size of an ordinary nectarine, but the branches spread out a good deal, and are very thickly interwoven: the leaves clinging so closely together, as to cause a shelter under the trees almost impervious to rain. The foliage is of a deep green; the leaves are thick and deeply marked with fibres, and the tree, when at the height of the season, presents on the whole a very handsome appearance. The bright brown of the trunk and the branches, the deep green of the foliage, the light green of the unripe fruit, the golden tinge of those verging on maturity, the beautiful bloom on the ripe fruit, the rosy incision where it is about to burst, the deep scarlet and yellow of the mace that discovers itself in those partly opened, and, in addition to these, such parts of the nutmeg as become visible through the tightly-adhering mace in those fruit that have arrived at perfect maturity, and are hourly dropping on the soft grass beneath, there to lie till gathered by the careful spice collectors, who go their rounds three several times during the day. What wealth! what incredible richness and variety in one solitary species of the many various fruityielding trees of the earth! for, in addition to the nutmeg tree yielding two separate costly spices, the fruit itself, when perfectly ripe, makes a delicious preserve, not only agreeable in flavour, but considered an excellent stomachic, and one even rivalling the far-famed China ginger. I forget now exactly the quantity that each tree, when healthy and in full growth, produced annually, but it was something prodigious.

The further we rode on in our tour round the plantation the smaller and younger the trees became, till at length we reached those which were for the first time yielding fruit: here such as were connoisseurs paused to examine the crop, and, according to them, the young trees promised a rich harvest.

After leaving these we came upon the nursery; where seedlings are carefully tended and nurtured for the first three years, after which they are ready for transplanting, being sufficiently strong to resist the greater heats of the hottest season and the heavy winds and rains. The nursery, which was very extensive, contained abundant young plants all thickly clustered together, as it is only when transplanted that a measured distance between each tree is allotted. The whole of the plants are covered over with a platform made of dried rushes, supported by a number of poles, and at an elevation of about four or four feet and a half off the ground: under this platform the milder rays of the morning and evening sun penetrate, imparting congenial warmth to the young plants, which are protected from the meridional heat of the sun and from the force of heavy showers of rain. The occupations of a nutmeg planter, and those under him, are evidently no sinecure, however great the reward of successful labour. The young plant requires as much care and attention as a feeble sickly infant; and even with all this, on an average, about thirty trees only out of a hundred ever come to maturity and yield fruit.

With the nursery our survey was completed; and, on our return to the mansion, we took a different and a shorter road home, passing through the

farmyard and numerous stablings and other outhouses. The farmyard was as compact as, and in perfect keeping with, the rest of the establishment; long rows of cleanly-kept, neatly-built sties were densely inhabited by fat China sows, and their roastable offsprings. In condemned cells, apart from the rest, and undergoing the process of being stall fed, were a certain number of young and old pigs, and an endless variety of cages containing turkeys, geese, capons, &c., all in a more or less advanced state of stoutness: there were some few empty, evidently the tenements of such as had undergone sentence that morning, victims to our voracious appetites; the sheep and the cows and the goats, except a few upon the sick-list, were absent under the charge of a Malay Tityrus, grazing on some of the adjacent downs, but a legion of calves and kids were at home, bleating and moaning for their maternal parents.

There were buildings set apart for eggs undergoing the hatching process, trellissed-worked establishments for small chickens and turkeys, little cisterns covered in with netting for goslings and young ducks, and the poultry-yard itself was overrun with all kinds of domestic fowl. Here a ruffianly band of turkey-cocks might be seen performing a species of cannibal waltz round some unfortunate old dunghill cock, grown blind and useless in the service; further on a brood of guinea-fowls were giving open combat to a hissing gander and his harem of geese; Muscovy ducks, China bantams, hens, turkeys, ducks, chickens of a maturer growth, geese, were all full of life and bustle and noise, quacking, crowing, squabbling, hissing, cackling, gobbling, flying, jumping, running, and screaming with alarm, as the shadow of some lofty flying vulture swept across their path, and ever and anon joining in a hurdle race after some unhappy grasshopper that had incautiously ventured within the pale of their society. In addition to all these there were a great variety of beautiful and rare pigeons; and at the further end of the enclosure, firmly chained to a pole some twenty feet high, on the top of which rested a little wooden sleeping-room, with a door and windows, a malicious monkey, whose chief delight consisted in hiding behind the pole to watch the unwary approach of some stray fowl or other, the feathers of whose tail inevitably paid the forfeit of their temerity.

We got home again about one P.M., much delighted and refreshed by our ride, and by no means unprepared to do justice to the ready-laid and waiting tiffin. On our return we found our already large number considerably augmented by a party of officers of the Native Infantry, who brought with them some of the lieutenants, mates, and middies of the manof-war that morning anchored. Sans cérémonie was the order of the day at Glugur, and the excellent-hearted brothers were sincerely glad to see ever so numerous a company, provided always that the hours of their advent gave the old butler time to provide ample fare for the party; and this was generally an understood thing at Penang, so that seldom or ever did strangers make their appearance at Glugur after the hour of mid-day, unless, indeed, they had been invited, or due notice was given of their intentions.

After lunch we were introduced into the workshops of the establishment: here a large number of men, women, and children were busily employed picking, sorting, and preparing the nutmegs for exportation; huge baskets of freshly-gathered fruits, which scented the air far and wide with aromatic odours, were piled up in the centre of the yard, and women and children were busily occupied detaching the shell or fruit from the

nutmeg and the mace; others again separated the mace from the outer shell, whilst the shells themselves, which contain the nutmegs, were being carefully heated in ovens, and then detached and left to dry in the air. The mace was spread out upon gigantic mats, all in different stages of being cured, as was evinced by the various colours of that spice, from the deep red of the freshly gathered, to the brown tinge of that ready for exportation; then came the packers, and then the markers, marking the ready-packed cases in an inch and a half character. Near to this place are the workshops of some half-dozen Chinese carpenters, who, from sunrise till sunset, are perpetually hard at work, sawing, cutting, hammering, nailing, and finishing the requisite cases for the nutmeg and mace, their long tails being a source of continual annoyance to themselves, now getting nailed by mistake, now entangled in the saw, and not unfrequently winding them up to such a desperate state of wildness as to cause a temporary suspension of labour, when they sit down, with arms akimbo, the picture of despair and rage, and showering forth unintelligible Chinese epithets, to the great amusement and delight of the other workmen.

The annual profit accruing from the Glugur property, nett of all expenses and losses, was several thousands of good English pounds sterling-the exact amount I know, but I imagine it would not be acting fair to dive so far into the private affairs of worthy and excellent gentlemen; suffice it to say, that it yields a princely income, and that, were it ten times as much, it could not fall into better hands, or more hospitable, humane, and charitable men than its present noble-hearted proprietors.

All this brings us pretty well to the close of the day. We enjoy the delightful freshness of the evening, seated in front of the house, out in the open air.

We had some excellent music from the instrument up-stairs, calling to mind past days, and then we had some songs, and one of the middies delighted us with the freshest importations from England; and then it was ten o'clock, fine weather, and a moonlight night; and so the shigrampos were put into requisition again, and we started on our way homeward, singing snatches of songs the first quarter of a mile, talking the second, dozing the third, and sound asleep the rest of the journey.

Hallo! who's that? what? it is a tremendous jolt, and some one shaking us. Oh! I see; we've got home at last; all right; pleasant day, wasn't it? Very. Good night; bye, bye; and so to bed. Such was the beginning, and such the end of every successive jaunt to Glugur for a day's pleasure.

NATIONAL DEBT.

THE interest on the permanent debt for the year ending January 5, 1853, was 23,637,9967.; to this must be added the interest on Exchequer bills, which at the present rate would increase the former sum by not less than 500,000l. Against the increase, we may set off the reductions arising from the surplus revenue; and this being done, we shall come to the conclusion that the money necessary at the end of 1853 to pay the interest of the debts of the nation is 24,000,0007.

ANCIENT LONDON.-No. VI.

THE progress of surface accumulation, together with the débris of the many conflagrations to which London--during the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries, comprising its historical existence-is known to have been subject, and especially the operations which succeeded the great fire of 1666, have given to the modern city an elevation, rising in many parts to a difference of twenty feet and upwards. Under this artificial level lie buried the roots of the Roman city-temples, palaces, courts of justice, theatres, baths, and other appurtenances proper to an opulent establishment of the (then) empire of the world.

Of the subterranean city vestiges are found nearly as often as an excavation is carried sufficiently deep to touch the Roman soil; but in most instances so partially revealed, that in the total default of contemporary record, or guide to the topography of London as it appeared at that early period, an attempt to come to any kind of specific estimate of its various localities is a task little more practicable than that of recomposing the scattered tessera of a once richly-figured mosaic. In the absence of veritable record, tradition furnishes but little, even of its flickering light; and the references of the fabulous or questionable writers are conveyed so much in King Cambyses' vein that their shadowy heroes, with the monuments of their prowess, are no more tangible to comprehension than the giants and castles imagined by children in the changeful shapes of summer clouds. But as the localities distinguished by such associations come under notice, a sprinkling of those romantic ingredients may serve as a condiment to season or garnish the more homely fare of substantial fact or well-grounded speculation.

An extensive series of excavation, in connection with the sewerage and other improvements, carried on in the year 1834 and the two following years, laid open the level of Roman London through a considerable portion of the city. Of this channel, cut into the depths of old, Mr. A. J. Kemp and Mr. Charles Roach Smith may be said to have taken accurate soundings; and the pages of the ' Archæologia riched by a series of valuable observations by those gentlemen, of which communications the following is an abstract.

are en

The particulars described by Mr. Kemp relate to discoveries made in the excavation of a sewer of large dimensions, formed under the northern approaches to the new London Bridge.

A transverse section of the eminence which rises from Thames Street towards the heart of the city was commenced as deep as low-water markabout fifty feet below the present surface of the crest of the hill. As the excavations approached Eastcheap, quantities of Samian ware, and mortars of baked, whitish clay, varying from ten to fourteen inches in diameter; portions of bottles and fragments of amphora were found among party walls, composed of ragstone, belonging to buildings which had evidently aligned with the present street. These walls were covered with wood-ashes; and about them were found many portions of green molten glass and of the red Samian ware, discoloured by fire-evidences, among others, of an extensive conflagration, supposed to have occurred when

* A Letter communicated by Alfred John Kemp, Esq., F.S.A., Archæologia,' vol. xxiv. p. 190. A Letter communicated by Charles Roach Smith, Esq., F.S.A., Archæologia,' vol. xxvii. p. 150, and in continuation, vol. xxix. p. 154

London was ravaged by the Britons, under Boadicea, at which time the timber erections of the native inhabitants are presumed to have contributed, by their destruction, to the extensive remains of charred wood found in many parts of the city in connection with Roman vestiges. A further token of conflagration, due to a period about the rise of the Roman colony, appeared in the insertion of red ware, evidently discoloured by the action of fire, in the walls of some of the Roman buildings discovered in the course of excavation. On arriving at the street of Eastcheap the excavation crossed a raised bank of gravel, six feet in depth and eighteen feet wide. The crest of this bank rose to about five feet within the surface of the present pavement; and in width and other circumstances nearly accorded with the structure of the. Watling Street way, as described by Holinshed, into the line of which it must have fallen at London Stone.

1

At the north-east corner of Eastcheap the foundations of a Roman building appeared a little in advance of the line of modern houses. Into this wall (which was of ragstone, and two feet thick) was worked, at five feet from its base, a double course of Roman wall tiles, chiefly of white clay. A curious flue tile, with four apertures, was taken from the wall, into which it had been promiscuously built; and two coins of the Emperor Claudius were found. Some yards north of the building were two wells, neatly steened with squared stones. At Gracechurch Street the discoveries ceased, with the suspension of excavation in that direction. The author's deductions from indications which come under his notice are, that at an early period of Roman occupation the ground eastward of the site of St. Paul's had been thickly inhabited; and from the important remains which have been found at Lombard Street, the Bank, Cornhill, Leadenhall Street, and the precincts enclosed by the Tower walls, he hesitates to conclude that the immediate vicinity of St. Paul's was the original nucleus of the rising colony; but the discovery of sepulchral remains present strong evidence of precedence in that locality,

MORTAR, PESTLE, AMPHORA,
AND SEMPULE.

"In the year of grace one thousand five hundred thirty and one, the course thereof was found by a man that digged gravel thereof to mend the high way. It was in this place (St. Albans) eighteen foot broad. The yellow gravel that was brought thither in carts two thousand years past remained fresh and strong," &c.-Holinshed's 'Description of Britaine,' p. 112, folio edit.

+ The rude make of those tiles suggested the idea of the structure having been of British workmanship when beginning to adopt Roman arts and customs.-See Tacitus in Vit. Agricola.