as I was sensible these reflections would answer no end, they did not last long. I got up, and marking a great tree, I there deposited my load, not being able to carry it any farther;" and then"The hardy tar pursued,

Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued."

After some hours he rejoined his companions; but, struck to the heart by their total want of compassion for his disaster, and by their reproaches for the loss of his burden, "I got up," he says, "and struck into the wood, and walked back at least five miles to the tree I had marked, and returned just in time to deliver it before my companions embarked with the Indians upon a great lake.”

This zeal however won him very little favour from the Indians, to whom he had thus returned. They forbade his embarking with them, and left him to "wait for some other Indians," not even leaving a morsel of the putrid seal which he had suffered so much for. How much is contained in his simple words :-"I was left alone upon the beach, and night was at hand ** I kept my eyes upon the boat as long as I could distinguish them, and then returned into the wood, and sat myself down upon the root of a tree, having eat nothing the whole day but the stem of a plant** Quite worn out with fatigue, I soon fell asleep."

He was saved by some Indians. He travelled northward with them, but they gave him scarce any food or shelter. One dark night he slept alone on the beach half in the water, until awakened in agonies of cramp. At last, having again met the captain and officers, and passed

"O'er many a cliff sublime, He found a warmer world, a milder clime."

The wanderers were now Spanish prisoners of war, and thrown into a condemned hole, containing nothing but a heap of lime, swarming with fleas. Whilst here they suffered from a dreadful shock of an earthquake. But at last, in St Jago, the four who remained of the crew of the Wager found

"A home to rest, a shelter to defend ;

Peace and repose,—a Briton and a friend;"

this friend being a good Scotch physician, who kept them two years in his house, and treated them as brothers. The prisoners were now put on board a French vessel, and, after more adventures, Byron lived to receive the joyful welcome of his family in England. Stories from History.'

1. Mermaid is a hybrid word. Mer being from the French, and maid, English. It denotes the sea-woman of fable and poetry, being said to resemble a woman in the upper parts of the body,

and a fish in the lower part. The mail is called merman.

2. Quagmire, this is quake-mire, soft wet land, which has a surface firm enough to bear a person, but which shakes or yields under the feet.

COMMODORE BYRON.

FRIEND of the brave! in peril's darkest hour,
Intrepid Virtue looks to thee for power;
To thee the heart its trembling homage yields
On stormy floods and carnage-covered fields,
When front to front the bannered hosts combine,
Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line.
When all is still on Death's devoted soil,
The march-worn soldier mingles for the toil!
As rings his glittering tube, he lifts on high
The dauntless brow, and spirit-speaking eye,
Hails in his heart the triumph yet to come,
And hears thy stormy music in the drum!
And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore
The hardy Byron to his native shore-
In horrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep
Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep;
"Twas his to mourn Misfortune's rudest shock,
Scourged by the winds, and cradled on the rock,
To wake each joyless morn and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men ;
Whose race, unyielding as their storm,
Knew not a trace of Nature but the form;
Yet, at thy call, the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued,
Pierced the deep woods, and hailing from afar
The moon's pale planet and the northern star,
Paused at each dreary cry unheard before,
Hyænas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;
Till, led by thee, o'er, many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, a shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend!

CAMPBELL.

Conference.
Fragments.

A DREARY NIGHT AT SEA.

Region.
Vibration.

Incessant.
Clamorous.

Constancy.
Unfathomable.

A DARK and dreary night; the people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment, One!' The earth covered with a sable pall as for

the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers waving sadly to and fro; all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows like a savage on the trail. Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If like guilty spirits they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what wild region do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport? Here! Free from that cramped prison called the earth, and out upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all night long.

Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns of the coast of that small island sleeping a thousand miles away so quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush the blasts from unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the fury of their unchecked liberty, they storm and buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up in ravings mightier than theirs, and the scene is whirling madness. On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space, roll the long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggle, ending in a spouting up of foam that whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in nothing, but eternal strife; on, on, on, they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm "A ship."

Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury; and every storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, "A ship!" Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up against each other's hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, as far as the mariners on her deck can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar; and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled anger: still she comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her

all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.-DICKENS's 'Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.' 1. The scene is in the Atlantic, and the "small island" referred to is Britain.

THE SHIPWRECK.

THEN rose from sea to sky the wild farewell,
Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave;
Then some leaped overboard, with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;

And the sea yawned round her like a hell,

And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.
And first a universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remoresless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek; the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

NAVAL IMPROVEMENTS.

BYRON.

IN nothing naval has there been a more remarkable advance than in the signals used on board Her Majesty's ships. On this subject it may be enough to say that, whenever two ships are in sight of one another, they are no longer left, as in former times, to the mercy of a few vague, general signals, often of the most ambiguous import. Any two ships, or any number of ships, can now communicate with one another as fully and correctly, and almost as rapidly, as if they were within hail. The telegraph, indeed, as the word implies, gives to vessels at sea, literally, the

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power of writing at a distance, in the air, with their flags, just as the Chinese often do in conversation, with their fans.

It would lead me beyond my limits were I to go into further detail, in order to point out the various minor improvements which have been introduced into the practice of navigation; though I feel strongly tempted to describe the scientific remedies, for example, which have been applied to the steering compass by Professor Barlow, to correct the local attraction caused by the great additional quantity of iron that has lately been put on board all ships. For a similar reason I must omit all mention of the new methods of constructing ships, stowing their holds, making their masts, and generally the improved mode of rigging, fitting out, and working ships. These details being all parts of the same course of improvement, would enter naturally into an express treatise on seamanship, but are much too voluminous for a mere sketch.

There are two topics, however, on which I must be allowed to touch for a moment. One is the improved discipline of the British navy, and the consequent amelioration in the character of all the seamen of the country. The other is the change in the armament of the ships of war, and the superior training of our seamen to the duties required by this change. Both of these points have so material an influence on the prosperity of the country, and have become so completely part and parcel of the seamanship upon which its glory as a nation depends, that on this occasion I cannot pass them over in silence. There can be no good seamanship without discipline; for it is as essential to the correct working of a ship that there should be a well-understood subordination established on board, as it is to the correct going of a clock that all its wheels and pinions should be made to fit, and be so placed as to work properly into one another. To carry on this illustration, it may be said, that whilst the mainspring of naval discipline is a sense of duty, even this strong motive would not be enough to produce the desired effects, without the intermediate agency of an organized system of discipline, the object of which is, to assign to each person on board a specific set of duties, all which shall contribute to the main purpose; and thus, as far as may be possible, to arrange and condense the energies of the whole into one course of uniform action, subject to the will of a supreme directing authority, who is responsible to the country at large.

In strictness, this well-defined system of discipline belongs only to the naval department of seamanship; but in a great measure it also applies, by transmission, to the merchant service, where it works by the joint agency of custom, example, and the