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thought to see the place of payment.”

To cut the Colonel’s story short, the voyage lasted for forty days longer, the discomforts increasing in arithmetical progression. The ship from the first had been infested by rats: now they had their revenge on these troublesome rodents, and a full-sized rat fetched sixteen to twenty shillings in open market. They would have been in sore straits for water, had it not been for the steady rainfall. All the Colonel’s dreams were of cellars and of taps of old wines and ale running down his throat. And all the time they were drifting back to the eastward, and despondency was turning to despair. At last in a blessed moment the wind shifted, and after days of disappointment and baffled hopes, the colour of the water changed, and they were able to take soundings. “The hopes of touching land was food and raiment to us.” But even when they had set foot on shore and returned grateful thanks to the Almighty, they were only beginning another stage of their sufferings. With one or two exceptions only the sick had been landed, and the Colonel had elected to stay with them. Thanks to treachery or some unhappy misunderstanding, to their horror the ship deserted them. After solemn prayer and anxious consultation, the Colonel was put in charge of the forlorn little band, on the understanding that he was to do his best for them. Unless the ship came back, nothing could be more hopeless than the situation. They knew not where they were, and the crippled party was unable to travel. One hut was built for the women: another and a larger one for the men. Fortunately they were fairly well supplied with powder and shot, and so long as the cool weather lasted, there were plenty of geese and other wild-fowl. But when these migrants passed away, they could only keep body and soul together on sea-weed, roots, and shell-fish. We scarcely recollect a more terribly suggestive or pathetic passage than one which casually occurs in the matter-of-fact chronicle: “About this time, of the three weak women before mentioned, one had the envied happiness to die; and it was my advice to the survivors, who were following her apace, to endeavour their own preservation, by converting her dead carcass into food, as they did to good effect. The same counsel was embraced by our sex: the living fed upon the dead; four of our company having the happiness to end their miserable lives on Sunday night.” Ultimately they were indebted for their rescue to the disinterested humanity of a band of wandering native fishermen, who literally took the forlorn castaways in and did for them, without coveting, or at least demanding, any of their wretched scraps of property. Afterwards the Colonel made the chief of the fishermen happy by presenting him with an old camlet coat. The first king I could call to mind,” he quaintly remarks, “that had ever showed any inclination to wear my old cloaths.” It is interesting, by the way, to note the inflated and exaggerated language in which the early adventurers almost invariably speak of the savages with whom they came in contact. The chief, with no earthly possessions besides his weapons, skin-garments, and war-paint, is styled a king, and sometimes an emperor; his dusky squaws are his queens or consorts; his wigwam of poles and boughs is a palace; and his braves in their breech-clouts are his ministers and nobles. It sounds strange