And ye were duller far than me, II. (Written in 1847.) 66 Know ye my Second, the green and the beautiful, Weeping in sadness o'er children undutiful, "For skeleton famine is rapidly striding, Many a hovel his victims have died in, "Ah! my First from the heavens has darkly descended, Wrapping the earth in its gloom; The dying lie helpless by corpses extended, Sullenly waiting their doom. "And the living watch hopeless the dead and the dying, All gentler feelings have fled; They know not-an hour and they may be lying "To see their blank features so set and despairing, "Ah! the great and the wise! can no way be suggested By the mighty in power and in soul, To banish the curse that too long has rested A shade and a fear on my Whole?" III. "There stood by the stake a sable form, His grimy arms were bare, A heavy sledge on his shoulder swung "Open the way! Fall back! Fall back! To the mocking chant of the bigot priest They have tortured him long, but his spirit strong, "My First stepped forth and grasped his arm (He felt no muscle shake), And led him within the fatal ring; Nor then did his victim quake, When a chain was riveted to his waist, And round the fatal stake. "He had seen my Second red with blood He had looked on death in every form, The flames of my Whole were a terrible goal, IV. (August, 1849.) "She stood upon the scaffold With a firm, undaunted mien, But yesterday a Queen! She fearless gazes on my First "Where are the eyes that fearless gazed? Where is the tongue where hung the jest? The snowy neck she used to deck, The axe has left it red. "A ghastly sight it is to see My Second bleeding there, No art can dress that gory tress "This is a scene from history's page, The triumph of might and wrong; That barbarous age has passed away With the power of the proud and strong; To teach the erring throng. "To show our abhorrence of shedding blood Unfit, I ween, to meet his judge, To a last and awful goal. He who can draw good from such law SOLUTIONS OF THE ENIGMAS. 1. Donkey. 2. Ireland. 3. Smithfield. 4. Blockhead. CHAPTER XX IN LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE AMONG the letters preserved and kindly returned to me by Dr. Spruce is one partly written on board ship on my way home, giving an account of my somewhat adventurous voyage while it was fresh in my memory, and containing some details not given in the narrative in my "Travels on the Amazon." I will therefore print it here, as no part of it has yet been made public. "Brig Fordeson, N. Lat. 49° 30', W. Long. 20°. "MY DEAR FRIEND, "Having now some prospect of being home in a week or ten days, I will commence giving you an account of the peculiar circumstances which have already kept me at sea seventy days on a voyage which took us only twenty-nine days on our passage out. I hope you have received the letter sent you from Para, dated July 9 or 10, in which I informed you that I had taken my passage in a vessel bound for London, which was to sail in a few days. On Monday, July 12, I went on board with all my cargo, and some articles purchased or collected on my way down, with the remnant (about twenty) of my live stock.1 After being at sea about a week I had a slight attack of fever, and at first thought I had got the yellow fever after all. However, a little calomel 1 These consisted of numerous parrots and parrakeets, and several uncommon monkeys, a forest wild-dog, etc. set me right in a few days, but I remained rather weak, and spent most of my time reading in the cabin, which was very comfortable. On Friday, August 6, we were in N. Lat. 30° 30', W. Long. 52°, when, about nine in the morning, just after breakfast, Captain Turner, who was half-owner of the vessel, came into the cabin, and said, 'I'm afraid the ship's on fire. Come and see what you think of it.' Going on deck I found a thick smoke coming out of the forecastle, which we both thought more like the steam from heating vegetable matter than the smoke from a fire. The fore hatchway was immediately opened to try and ascertain the origin of the smoke, and a quantity of cargo was thrown out, but the smoke continuing without any perceptible increase, we went to the after hatchway, and after throwing out a quantity of piassaba, with which the upper part of the hold was filled, the smoke became so dense that the men could not stay in it. Most of them were then set to work throwing in buckets of water, and the rest proceeded to the cabin and opened the lazaretto or store-place beneath its floor, and found smoke issuing from the bulkhead separating it from the hold, which extended halfway under the fore part of the cabin. Attempts were then made to break down this bulkhead, but it resisted all efforts, the smoke being so suffocating as to prevent any one stopping in it more that a minute at a time. A hole was then cut in the cabin floor, and while the carpenter was doing this, the rest of the crew were employed getting out the boats, the captain looked after his chronometer, sextant, books, charts and compasses, and I got up a small tin box containing a few shirts, and put in it my drawings of fishes and palms, which were luckily at hand; also my watch and a purse with a few sovereigns. Most of my clothes were scattered about the cabin, and in the dense suffocating smoke it was impossible to look about after them. There were two boats, the long-boat and the captain's gig, and it took a good deal of time to get the merest necessaries collected and put into them, and to lower them into the water. Two casks of biscuit and a cask of water were got in, a lot of raw pork and some ham, a few tins of preserved meats and vegetables, and some |