sail set immediately. The chiefs gave some orders to their own people, and the canoe was paddled away; and in less than half an hour the ship was under full sail, standing out of the Bay before the land-breeze.

Shortly before dark the next day, we reached the spot indicated by the chief, who pointed out the entrance of a narrow winding river, in which, he said, the messenger who had crossed overland, declared that the slavers were lying. It was necessary to cut the vessels out by means of a night-attack with boats, or to await their coming out of the river and capture them; but then, in the latter case, they would be sure to hear of our presence, and to come out without slaves, and probably laden with some trifling cargo, like honest traders, in which case we could do nothing with them; so, though the former plan was hazardous, it was decided upon.

As soon as darkness set fairly in, the pinnace and first-cutter were armed and manned and despatched up the river, one of the chiefs accompanying each boat. The river was very winding, and so narrow that there was often hardly room to pull the oars. It was evident that the vessels must be small and of light draught, and must have been towed up the river, if they were really there, which we began to doubt. The night was very dark. The shores were marshy in some places, in others lined with dense forest, and as we pulled silently along, the muffled oars making no noise, and no one speaking, save when the officers gave some order in a scarcely audible whisper, while the night-wind sighed mournfully amidst the trees, the scene was dismal enough. For a full hour we had pulled in this fashion, hoping, at every fresh bend in the river, to discover the vessels of which we were in search, yet seeing nothing; and at last the officer in command was inclined to return.

"They have never been here, or they are gone,' he whispered.

'Pull lilly bit more, sah, you catch 'em,' replied the chief.

'I think I see a vessel's masts, sir-there, just against that streak of light in the sky,' whispered the bow-oar's-man, who had been ordered to look

out.

forty or fifty yards. The stars had made their appearance in the hitherto gloomy sky, and we could clearly discern the slave pens and huts on shore.

'Hist! hark! What is that?' whispered the lieutenant. 'By Jove! they see us! Look! There is a light on board the starboard vessel. On, my lads! Dash in, with a cheer!' he cried aloud. 'Huzza for prize-money!'

Hardly had he spoken the words, when there came a blinding flash, followed by the simultaneous report of at least a dozen muskets. We heard the bullets plash in the water, like heavy rain; but no one appeared to have been hit. 'On, my lads! No secrecy now. No quarter till they surrender!' cried the lieutenant.

In a few moments both boats were alongside the schooners, and the sailors sprang, cutlass in hand, on to their decks.

'Surrender, in the Queen's name!' cried the lieutenant in command.

'We surrender!' answered a voice, in broken English, which, however, to my fancy, had a very Yankified accent. There was no further attempt at resistance, which, in fact, had been madness, for they well knew the boats would not have made the attack unless they were well supported outside, and resistance to a ship-of-war was punishable by death, while otherwise, the vessels only would be seized.

The prizes were ours; and they were sent to St Helena for adjudication, where they were very profitably sold for the benefit of the captors. The slaves, four hundred and thirty in number, were in the pens on shore, and they were sent to Liberia, and there released, to become denizens of that then new republic.

'How dared you fire at Her Majesty's boats at all?' demanded the lieutenant.

'It was not I, but the fool of an officer on deck,' replied the captain, who, though I veritably believe he was an American, professed to be a Portuguese.

'Lucky for you, no harm was done,' was the reply.

The cutter was in the rear. The pinnace lay by till she came up, and the same orders were repeated to the officer in charge.

Silently we pulled round the point. Every man held his breath, though he panted with excitement. Five minutes more, and we descried the hulls and spars of two long low schooners, scarcely a hundred yards before us. The boats appeared to be unseen and unheard.

They don't see or hear us,' whispered the lieutenant. 'We'll pull softly up, and board them in the dark. They've no idea that there's a man-of-war on the coast, and we will catch the scoundrels sleeping.'

We were not fifty yards from the vessels, which lay side by side, in a sort of basin in the river, which widened in this spot to a breadth of

one. That one was the second chief, who had never stirred from his seat in the pinnace. There he still sat, in his white garb, erect and silent.

'Come up out of the boat!' repeated the officer.

Still the chief never stirred.

The

'Ask the fellow why he does not come out of the boat!' said the officer to one of the sailors. The man shook him roughly by the shoulder, and told him to mount to the deck. hitherto erect body fell over on its side. 'Ah, sir, the nigger's shot dead,' said the sailor. "There's blood runnin' from his breast, and stainin' his white dress.'

'Is it possible?' exclaimed the lieutenant, hastening into the boat.

A very cursory examination told that such

possession of people whose particular fancy it is to establish private museums of different things. It is curious to note that the snuff-box, so frequently placed in the hands of their dramatis persone by the playwrights of the last century, and to which they make constant verbal allusion, has but a poor successor in the pipe, cigar, or other accessory of nicotine worship, in the favour of modern writers. The fact is, the use of the box by a skilful actor might be variously rendered playful, cynical, sly, graceful, or statuesque-might, in fact, be employed to interpret many emotions; while the amusing contretemps to be extracted from it were innumerable.

Smoking, on the other hand, admits of much fewer phases of expression; and if there is any situation in which the most dignified of mankind appears at a greater disadvantage than when looking in the glass at himself while shaving, it is in the act of lighting a pipe or cigar and squinting at the match. At the same time we can hardly think that the pipe will ever fall out of fashion among smokers, as the medium through which they derive comfort from their favourite weed; though great changes in form and material may take place. Cigars, also, it may be remarked, are daily coming into vogue to a greater extent than ever. Nor is this gradual increase confined to England alone. Germany and Turkey consume more cigarettes and cigars every year; and a large exporter of meerschaum from the former country assures us that the trade in expensive pipes has decreased nearly one-half during the last ten years, while wood and clay still hold their ground.

The tobacco-trade, possibly, has more mysteries than any other in this age of commercial immorality. It is almost as difficult to purchase a good cigar promiscuously in Havana as it is in London; unless you know the right shop to go to, you are as likely to buy Whitechapel and Bremen abominations, exported from Europe for the purpose, and put up in the most orthodox 'Habana' boxes. In Vera Cruz, you may buy cigars for five shillings a hundred, which the vendors for a few cents extra will pack and label with the name of some famous brand. So they will in Porto Plata or San Domingo. So they used in Brazil; but Bahian and other Brazilian cigars have now made their own name, and have established an honourable claim to be considered amongst the best cheap cigars in the world. It is impossible to get an inexpensive good cigar in Cuba itself; the best brands are never exported, for few people here would care to give half-a-crown or three shillings apiece for their 'smokes,' which the wealthy Cuban-who consumes them soft and green, wrapping them in oiled silk to preserve the flavour-pays on the spot. There is much in a name. Thousands of really excellent weeds are made yearly both in England and Germany from good raw tobacco imported for the purpose; but it would never do to offer them for sale as British or German produce. What a charm lies in the words 'Vuelta Abajo,' to be read on your cigarboxes! Vuelta Abajo is a small district between Havana and Santiago, consisting of a few acres of land only, now in the possession of two or three of the richest planters in the island; and probably not an atom of the tobacco-noted for its richness-which is grown there finds its way

beyond their own air-tight bladder cigar-pouches, or those of their intimate friends.

Throughout the whole of South and Central America, the Southern States, and in many other parts of the globe, it may safely be averred that the majority of the male population of all classes have a cigarette between their lips during the greater part of their waking existence from childhood upwards. The senator smokes in the Chamber of Debates; the servant smokes as he waits upon you; the shopman does not trouble himself to remove the smouldering rice-paper from his mouth as he answers your queries; the coachman who drives you, the halfclad nigger who blacks your boots, the hunter on the prairie or pampa, and the Indian in the backwoods who rolls his morsel of tobacco in a maize-leaf-all smoke cigarettes. We visited one huge manufactory in Havana which stands out into the bay like an immense mahogany cigarbox itself, where over a million cigarettes are turned out daily. We entered our names in a book, on admission; and when we had completed the tour of the factory, were each presented with an elegant case of cigarettes, every bundle of which bore our respective names, the date, and a complimentary sentence in Spanish, printed in different styles on beautifully embossed labels. There can be no doubt that the introduction of tobacco in this form has greatly increased its consumption in this country. A cigarette is a thing that can be lighted or tossed aside at any time, and often serves to fill up odd intervals of a few minutes; while a pipe, as a rule, demands premeditation, and is indulged in only at regular periods; and a cigar-especially a good one-is rarely commenced by one who can appreciate it, except under circumstances favourable for its full enjoyment and completion.

CHILD SONGS-THE LITTLE PRUDE. HERE she comes, her nut-brown eyes Downcast, but slily peeping.

Oh! beware;

Such a snare

Must never find you sleeping.

She puts her finger in a mouth Where butter would not melt away, With an air

As if she were

Much too shy for Yea' or 'Nay.'

"How do you do, my little maid?' (Her silence is so pretty). "To lose your tongue Is very wrong, And to my mind a pity,'

Up she comes to me quite close, Shoots a glance, that never misses, With a smile

All the while,

Whispers: There must be no kisses.'

T. P.

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Faternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

No. 983.-VOL. XIX.

THE RAIN-BAN D. THE spectroscope is one of the most distinctive of modern wonder-workers. In its essentials, it is based on a simple natural phenomenon. When a ray of daylight enters a darkened room through a small hole, it gives an image of the sun on the opposite wall. If a prism-or three-sided piece of glass-is placed, apex upwards, so as to intercept the ray of light between the aperture and the wall, the image of the sun disappears, but is replaced further down the wall by an elongated upright figure, termed the spectrum, and consisting of bands of different colours, beginning with red at the upper extremity, and ending with violet at the lower. These colour-bands are due to the fact that the original ray of white light in passing through the prism has been analysed into the different coloured rays of which such light consists. The spectroscope, therefore, is an instrument by the aid of which spectral phenomena, such as the above, may be studied. It consists essentially of, first, a narrow slit, through which the parallel rays of light pass; secondly, a prism or train of prisms, to separate the coloured or differently refrangible portions of these rays; and thirdly, a telescope, to form a magnified image of the spectrum produced. Newton effected a sevenfold division of the colours in the spectrum above described; and Wollaston and Fraunhofer, at a later period, made great advances in the use of the instrument, especially for chemical analysis, till now it is possible to tell, by the dark absorption lines which the instrument shows interspersed throughout the coloured band, the nature of the gases of which the luminous envelopes of the sun and even the stars consist.

Early in the present century, when Fraunhofer was studying these lines in the solar spectrum, which Wollaston had first observed, he made an important discovery. Examining the sunlight under various circumstances, he found a peculiarity in its spectrum when the sun is near the horizon. He detected the presence of

PRICE 1.

dark lines, in fact, which are absent in the spectrum of a mid-day sun. Now, a moment's reflection shows us that the sunlight has to pass through a thicker layer of atmosphere when the luminary is close to the horizon than when he is overhead. What more natural than to ascribe the extra lines to this additional thickness of air? Without knowing at that time anything of the nature or cause of the lines, scientific men regarded them as of atmospheric origin.

After the true interpretation of the dark (or absorption) lines had been indicated by various physicists, Brewster and Gladstone, in 1860, again took up the subject of these atmospheric lines-sometimes called the telluric lines, because of their terrestrial origin; and in order to demonstrate their existence, prepared a map of the solar spectrum containing more than two thousand of the dark lines. A considerable number of these apparently owed their presence to atmospheric influences. Professor Cooke, of America, next investigated the matter, and found that many of the lines are dependent upon the relative moistness of the air, being stronger when the air is humid than when it is dry. The indications of the hygrometer accordingly showed a marked agreement with the strength of the bands in the spectrum.

In 1864, Janssen revised the whole question. His interesting researches are thus described by Mr Proctor in his little book on The Spectroscope and its Work: 'Janssen, using a spectroscope with five prisms, succeeded in resolving the dark bands seen by Brewster and Gladstone into fine lines, and ascertained that these lines vary in strength. They are darkest at sunrise and sunset, and weakest-but never entirely absent-at noon. Observing next from the summit of the Faulhorn, about nine thousand feet above the sealevel, he found that these lines were still further reduced in strength. In order to ascertain whether they are entirely due to our atmosphere, he caused large pine-fires to be made at Geneva, about thirteen miles from the Faulhorn, and observed the spectrum of the flame. As he found that