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a slight noise at the front of the house. I held my pistols with a firmer grasp-another minute elapsed, when to my dismay the shutter was drawn aside, and the figure which at my approaching the house, I had seen in the same window, filled the opening. My pistol was raised to its head; but the idea of murdering a fellow creature without a certainty of his guilty designs made me pause. I might have mistaken the rough and unseemly visage of the honest woodsman, for the demoniac features of the robber and assassin. I was not skilled in physiognomy; and life once taken could not be recalled. These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind, my arm was irresistibly drawn back. I could not fire. The purport of his visit, however could not long be doubted. With his face fixed on a counterfeit which I had placed in the bed, the murderer entered the room. His hand was thrust in his girdle; and a long knife gleamed in the waning light of the moon! It was an awful moment "Villain!" cried I, "recieve the doom your perfidy prepared for another." With a horrid yell he sprang to within a few feet of me, and fell to the ground. I rushed to him, the blood was streaming from his neck, I shall never forget the look of savage hate he cast on me. 'Tis strange what contrary emotions can be engendered in the human heart. When I thought of the horrid deed the monster had planned, when I saw the steel that lay beside him, I could hardly refrain from plunging it in his heart and ridding the earth of the pollution. I had but little time for reflection. A quick step was on the stairs. I must engage in a very unequal struggle, or escape on the instant. I reached the window, but the means by which the villain entered the apartment had been removed. To spring to the ground and mount my horse was soon accomplished, and I had just turned from this abode of iniquity, when a shot whistled past my ear. This hint was not to be disregarded, and looking back, I saw Jose mounting another horse that had been grazing near mine. Are you for a ride" shouted I?" Ay, ay, and for every drop of claret which Cambi has shed, you shall drop twain." I have another of those arguments to spare which has so lowered the tone of your virtuous friend," said I, following his example in putting my horse to his utmost speed. As there was no choice, I struck into the depths of the forest, followed closely by a powerful adversary. For a while the chase seemed a doubtful one; but as we gradually emerged into a less woody part where the superior qualities of my horse could have full scope, it was easy for me to distance him." Will it please you to cast anchor there?" cried I. With a tremen dous oath the wretch complied, declaring that if they could have anticipated such a chase, they would have taken better care. "But, said he, if it's any pleasure for you to know it, you are the first land lubber that has escaped us. Letting day-light through a

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fellow's sheets, is so small a matter that we have become careless: and besides my head has been strangely addled by the rum we took from the Jamaica schooner a month since. I might tell a good tale of the capture of the vessel, the murder of the crew, and the sale of the cargo in our little Port Deposit at New Orleans; but that d-d lead of yours will keep our gallant commander under the weather this week or two, and detain our little schooner still longer in her moorings. The crew will mutiny, and then there'll be another stringing up; but we must have our run of ill luck too, I s'pose. We'll always beat yo at sea, and as to our land cabin yonder, if you choose to send any in search of it, you may; they'll not be apt to find it, and if they do, we have more haunts than one. Hark'ye, for my last counsel; beware of coming in future so near a coast where jolly fellows like Vincent Cambi, and Jose Spanillo, are thick as gulls in a storm. One word more, that you may'nt forget what I've told you, I'll just give you a salute a l'Espagnol." He set his horse in motion towards the latter part of his speech, and discharged a second shot which though it missed me, wounded the noble animal that had borne me so gallantly through the chase; who now reared and plunged, and set off at an ungovernable pace, and continued in this gait, for a long time before I could bring him under any kind of command. The sun had now tinged the clouds, and I went on at a slow and cautious pace, and though the continued agitation of my spirits required repose, I determined not to venture another nap for some time. Taking a small compass for my guide, I journeyed on until the morning was far advanced, when to my joyful surprise, I found myself on a road similar to the one I had traversed the day before. This, thought I, will surely lead to some human habitation and end my troubles. The sun was sitting in magnificence behind a pile of gorgeous clouds, when I observed something that had the appearance of vapour curling in fantastic forms; and mixing gradually with the clear atmosphere, dissolved away. I suppose I need not specify that this was nothing more nor less than smoke! A few minutes more brought me in sight of several neat cottages dispersed over a fertile and gently undulating country. I doubt if the sight of the fane at Mecca, ever gave greater pleasure to a wearied devotee, than the neatly painted mansions of the little town of did to me. I was

soon standing on the unassuming portal of Monsieur Jean Baptiste Le Guerrier, whose name upon further acquaintance, I found, went by the rule of contraries; for he seemed to possess none of the fiery spirit of his countrymen, and was particularly meek and submissive, under a kind of government very aptly expressed by a word which from its frequent use will not bear repetition. The ball of the pirate had gone through VOL. I.-No. v.

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the lower part of my horse's ear, from which the blood had flowed copiously. This circumstance, and my disordered appaTel, would at any place have drawn a crowd together: but here, the arrival of a stranger was sufficient. Half the village collected in a few minutes. my tale was soon told: none had heard of the place I described, but all had heard of the execrable Cambi. Every one had some tale to tell of his cruelties, and the kindest congratulations were expressed for my escape.

Years passed away, when one day in reading a newspaper "at home," my eye fell on the name of Cambi. I soon became arquainted with the intelligence the piece contained. After a long career of bloodshed and rapine, the wretch had met with his fate at last. He had been murdered by his crew.

GERYN.

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Where I in England now, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver: then would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

TEMPEST.

Woman, says Pananti, in his account of his residence in Algiers, is, in effect the smile of nature; supporting the two extremes of life, she forms the joy and happines of its intermediate space. An eastern poet assumes a more enthusiastic strain in addressing the daughters of men; "Ye are the graces of day, and the night loves you like the dew which it sheds on flowers. The infa it issues from your side, to fix on your lips and bosom. Made for love, you have words of magic to soothe every sor

row."

The Dutch embassador Van Braam, deprived, in the centre of China, of all female associations, feelingly exclaims, "Yes! I must pay them the tribute of this truth, that they are the soul of all social enjoyments, and that every thing languishes beyond the sphere of their delightful influence!" So much gallantry in a man of his kidney," for like Falstaff, he was "out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass," is the more to be admi red, as he might fairly have expected, in the course of his amours, to experience the fixed fatality of the unfortunate Gibbon.

But although the authorities in support of this immaculate character of woman, are as innumerable as the sands of Zara or of Cobi, it is proper to remark, that a vast majority of that portion of creation is far from possessing those divine attributes with which it is invested by poets, painters, novelists, school boys, and writers of the Bathos and Hyperbole. An inveterate Valentine might exclaim, with considerable pathos, and some sincerity,

"What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by ?

but would he not shrink from the embraces of the ladies of the court of Henry the Third, where royalty itself set the example of suspending a basket full of puppies, to a broad ribbon around the neck? Nor do I believe that he would elicit less repugnancein his advances to those ladies of Bayonne, who were accustomed to carry little sucking pigs, adorned with ribbons, in their arms, as the women of other countries carry lap-dogs, and who would not even part with their favourites when they went to a ball! much less could he endure the women of Naples, who suckled the dogs of people of quality, like their own children.

It would indeed sensibly derange the nervous system of those waiting gentlewomen, "whose strain of man's bred out into baboon and monkey," were I to enumerate the vast variety of curieus customs, the self-degradation, and dissolute depravity of the "sex divine." Feeling a strong desire to observe the effect which a slight developement would have upon a mind accustomed to consider the female sex by a partial or national standard, I lately selected the most enterprising among these Paphean votaries, and undertook an Asmodean excursion in search of the picturesque. But our researches were principally confined to remarkable traits of beauty, leaving the virtue and vices, the sufferings and degradation, the morals and intellect of the sex, as a subject of future examination.

It has been well remarked, that if every person judged exactly right of beauty, every man that was in love in a district would. be in love with the same woman; and that this universal right

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judgment of beauty would render the whole world one continued scene of blood-shed and misery. But now that fancy has more to do with beauty than judgment, there is an infinite number of tastes, and consequently an infinity of beauty; for, in the mind of the lover, supposed beauty is fully equal to real. Every body may now select what happens to hit his own turn or cast, from among those beauties which I am about to enumerate. Some may delight themselves in a black skin, and others in a white; some in a gentle natural rosiness of complexion, others in a high, exalted, artificial, red; some in waists disproportionably large, and others in waists as disproportionably small.

An author of the middle ages in Europe, has stated, that in woman, God made the eyes, cheeks, lips, et alia quæ sunt dulcia et amicabilia; sed de capite noluit se immiscere, sed permissit illud facere diabulo! But, in many cases, if causes may be judg ed from effects, the whole structure appears to have been confided to the latter personage: indeed the Mussulmen are so well convinced of this supposition, that they deny to them, the joys of Paradise; and it is settled that they are to remain at the door precisely as we have seen domestics thronging round those of a ball-room, to witness the mirth and happiness within. I do not believe that women were made "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer;" but, at the same time, they are neither goddesses nor angels: their claim to a station in the celestial hierarchy arises principally from the science of catoptrics, and the silliness of sycophants. I admit that they are "the last, best work of God's creation," as it regards the happiness of man in a civilized state; and such an admission ought to have satisfied Semiramis herself.

Proceeding on our disultory and aerial tour, we first visited the island of Ceylon, preparatory to the prosecution of our enterprise on the Continent of Asia. The Cingalese ladies are generally handsome and well made. The hair of an extraordinary beauty, in the gaudy language of the East, is volu minous, like the tail of the peacock:-long, reaching to the knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her eyebrows resemble the rainbow; her eyes, the blue sapphire, and the petals of the blue manilla-flower. Her nose is like the bill of the hawk; her lips, bright and red, like coral on the young leaf of the iron tree. Her teeth are small, regular, and closely set, and like jessamine buds; her neck large and round, resembling the borrigodea. The chest is capacious; the breasts firm and conical like the yellow cocoa-nut; and her waist small enough to be clasped by the hand. The hips are wide; the limbs tapering, the soles of the feet without any hollow; and the surface of the body in in general, soft, delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones and sinews.

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