previous lawless life, as a sort of ranging Cow-Boys of the sea, which had dissolved within them the whole moral man, so that they were ready to concrete in the first offered mould of baseness now; rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an inferior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravos.

Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artificial claws and fangs, tied on like false spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat, Oberlus, czar of the isle, gaffles his four subjects; that is, with intent of glory, puts four rusty cutlasses into their hands. Like any other autocrat, he had a noble army now.

It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue. Arms in the hands of trodden slaves? how indiscreet of Emperors, Oberlus! Nay, they had but cutlasses sad old scythes enough-he a blunderbuss, which by its blind scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers and other scoria would annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot. Besides, at first he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid sunset, for a time, he might have been seen wending his way among the riven mountains, there to secret himself till dawn in some sulphurous pitfall, undiscoverable to his gang; but finding this at last too troublesome, he now each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks, shut to the door, and lying down before it, beneath a rude shed lately added, slept out the night, blunderbuss in hand.

It is supposed that not content with daily parading over a cindery solitude at the head of his fine army, Oberlus now meditated the most active mischief; his probable object being to surprise some passing ship touching at his dominions, massacre the crew, and run away with her to parts unknown. While these plans were simmering in his head, two ships touch in company at the isle, on the opposite side to his; when his designs undergo a sudden change.

The ships are in want of vegetables, which Oberlus promises in great abundance, provided they send their boats round to his landing, so that the crews may bring the vegetables from his garden; informing the two captains, at the same time, that his rascals-slaves and soldiers

-had become so abominably lazy and good-for-nothing of late, that he could not make them work by ordinary inducements, and did not have the heart to be severe with them.

The arrangement was agreed to, and the boats were sent and hauled upon the beach. The crews went to the lava hut; but to their surprise nobody was there. After waiting till their patience was exhausted, they returned to the shore, when lo, some stranger-not the Good Samaritan either-seems to have very recently passed that way. Three of the boats were broken in a thousand pieces, and the fourth was missing. By hard toil over the mountains and through the clinkers, some of the strangers succeeded in returning to that side of the isle where the ships lay, when fresh boats are sent to the relief of the rest of the hapless party.

However amazed at the treachery of Oberlus, the two captains afraid of new and still more mysterious atrocities,-and indeed, half imputing such strange events to the enchantments associated with these isles, perceive no security but in instant flight; leaving Oberlus and his army quiet possession of the stolen boat.

in

On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a keg, giving the Pacific Ocean intelligence of the affair, and moored the keg in the bay. Some time subsequent, the keg was opened by another captain chancing to anchor there, but not until after he had dispatched a boat round' to Oberlus's Landing. As may be readily surmised, he felt no little inquietude till the boat's return; when another letter was handed him, giving Oberlus's version of the affair. This precious document had been found pinned half-mildewed to the clinker wall of the sulphurous and deserted hut. It ran as follows; showing that Oberlus was at least an accomplished writer, and no mere boor; and what is more, was capable of the most tristful eloquence.

"Sir: I am the most unfortunate illtreated gentleman that lives. I am a patriot, exiled from country by the cruel hand of tyranny.

"Banished to these Enchanted Isles, I have again and again besought captains of ships to sell me a boat, but always have been refused, though I offered the handsomest prices in Mexican dollars. At length an opportunity presented of possessing myself of one, and I did not let it slip.

"I have been long endeavoring by hard labor and much solitary suffering to accumulate something to make myself comfortable in a virtuous though unhappy

old age; but at various times have been robbed and beaten by men professing to be Christians.

"To-day I sail from the Enchanted group in the good boat Charity bound to the Feejee Isles.

"FATHERLESS OBERLUS.

"P. S.-Behind the clinkers, nigh the oven, you will find the old fowl. Do not kill it; be patient; I leave it setting; if it shall have any chicks, I hereby bequeathe them to you, whoever you may be. But don't count your chicks before they are hatched."

The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced to a sitting posture by sheer debility.

Oberlus declares that he was bound to the Feejee Isles; but this was only to throw pursuers on a false scent. For after a long time he arrived, alone in his open boat, at Guayaquil. As his miscreants were never again beheld on Hood's Isle, it is supposed, either that they perished for want of water on the passage to Guayaquil, or, what is quite as probable, were thrown overboard by Oberlus, when he found the water growing

scarce.

From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta; and there, with that nameless witchery peculiar to some of the ugliest animals, wound himself into the affections of a tawny damsel; prevailing_upon her to accompany him back to his Enchanted Isle; which doubtless he painted as a Paradise of flowers, not a Tartarus of clinkers.

But unfortunately for the colonization of Hood's Isle with a choice variety of animated nature, the extraordinary and devilish aspect of Oberlus made him to be regarded in Payta as a highly suspicious character. So that being found concealed one night, with matches in his pocket, under the hull of a small vessel just ready to be launched, he was seized and thrown into jail.

The jails in most South American towns are generally of the least wholesome sort. Built of huge cakes of sunburnt brick, and containing but one room, without windows or yard, and but one door heavily grated with wooden bars, they present both within and without the grimmest aspect. As public edifices they conspicuously stand upon the hot and dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the gratings, their villanous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of tragic squalor. And here, for a long time Oberlus was seen; the central figure of a mongrel and assassin band; a creature

whom it is religion to detest, since it is philanthropy to hate a misanthrope.

Note. They who may be disposed to question tho possibility of the character abovo depicted, are referred to the 2d vol. of Porter's Voyage into the Pacific, where they will recognize many sentences, for expedition's sake derived verbatim from thence, and incorporated here; the main difference-save a few passing reflections-between the two accounts being, that the present writer has added to Porter's facts accessory ones picked up in the Pacific from reliable sources; and where facts conflict, has naturally preferred his own authorities to Porter's. As, for instance, his authorities place Oberlus on Hood's Isle: Porter's, on Charles's Isle. The letter found in the hut is also somewhat different, for while at the Encantadas he was informed that not only did it evince a certain clerkliness, but was full of the strangest satiric effrontery which does not adequately appear in Porter's version. I accordingly altered it to suit the general character of its author.

SKETCH ELEVENTH.

RUNAWAYS, CASTAWAYS, SOLITARIES, GRAVESTONES, ETC.

"And all about old stocks and stubs of trees, Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen, Did hang upon the ragged knotty knees,

On which had many wretches hanged been." SOME relics of the hut of Oberlus partially remain to this day at the head of the clinkered valley. Nor does the stranger wandering among other of the Enchanted Isles fail to stumble upon still other solitary abodes, long abandoned to the tortoise and the lizard. Probably few parts of earth have in modern times sheltered so many solitaries. The reason is, that these isles are situated in a distant sea, and the vessels which occasionally visit them are mostly all whalers, or ships bound on dreary and protracted voyages, exempting them in a good degree from both the oversight and the memory of human law. Such is the character of some commanders and some seamen, that under these untoward circumstances, it is quite impossible but that scenes of unpleasantness and discord should occur between them. A sullen hatred of the tyrannic ship will seize the sailor, and he gladly exchanges it for isles, which though blighted as by a continual sirocco and burning breeze, still offer him in their labyrinthine interior, a retreat beyond the possibility of capture. To flee the ship in any Peruvian or Chilian port, even the smallest and most rustical, is not unattended with great risk of apprehension, not to speak of jaguars. A reward of five pesos sends fifty dastardly Spaniards into

the woods, who with long knives scour them day and night in eager hopes of securing their prey. Neither is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present the same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports. The advanced natives being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent, as the retrograde Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all Europeans lie in the minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to hear aught of them, to desert the ship among primitive Polynesians, is, in most cases, a hope not unforlorn. Hence the Enchanted Isles become the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of refugees; some of whom too sadly experience the fact that flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Moreover, it has not seldom happened that hermits have been made upon the isles by the accidents incident to tortoisehunting. The interior of most of them is tangled and difficult of passage beyond description; the air is sultry and stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked, for which no running stream offers its kind relief. In a few hours, under an equatorial sun, reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion, woe betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles! Their extent is such as to forbid an adequate search unless weeks are devoted to it. The impatient ship waits a day or two; when the missing man remaining undiscovered, up goes a stake on the beach, with a letter of regret, and a keg of crackers and another of water tied to it, and away sails the craft.

Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhumanity of some captains has led them to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who have given their caprice or pride some singular offence. Thrust ashore upon the scorching marl, such mariners are abandoned to perish outright, unless by solitary labors they succeed in discovering some precious dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock or stagnant in a mountain pool.

I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost upon the Isle of Narborough, was brought to such extremes by thirst, that at last he only saved his life by taking that of another being. A large hair-seal came upon the beach. He rushed upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and then throwing himself upon the panting body quaffed at the living wound; the palpitations of the creature's dying heart injecting life into the drinker.

Another seaman thrust ashore in a boat upon an isle at which no ship ever touched, owing to its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it, and from which all other parts of the group were hidden; this man feeling that it was sure death to remain there, and that nothing worse than death menaced him in quitting it, killed two seals, and inflating their skins, made a float, upon which he transported himself to Charles's Island, and joined the republic there.

But men not endowed with courage equal to such desperate attempts, find their only resource in forthwith seeking for some watery place, however precarious or scanty; building a hut; catching tortoises and birds; and in all respects preparing for hermit life, till tide or time, or a passing ship arrives to float them off.

At the foot of precipices on many of the isles, small rude basins in the rocks are found, partly filled with rotted rubbish or vegetable decay, or overgrown with thickets, and sometimes a little moist; which, upon examination, reveal plain tokens of artificial instruments employed in hollowing them out, by some poor castaway or still more miserable runaway. These basins are made in places where it was supposed some scanty drops of dew might exude into them from the upper crevices.

The relics of hermitages and stone basins, are not the only signs of vanishing humanity to be found upon the isles. And curious to say, that spot which of all others in settled communities is most animated, at the Enchanted Isles presents the most dreary of aspects. And though it may seem very strange to talk of postoffices in this barren region, yet postoffices are occasionally to be found there. They consist of a stake and bottle. The letters being not only sealed, but corked. They are generally deposited by captains of Nantucketers for the benefit of passing fishermen; and contain statements as to what luck they had in whaling or tortoise-hunting. Frequently, however, long months and months, whole years glide by and no applicant appears. The stake rots and falls, presenting no very exhilarating object.

If now it be added that grave-stones, or rather grave-boards, are also discovered upon some of the isles, the picture will be complete.

Upon the beach of James's Isle for many years, was to be seen a rude finger-post pointing inland. And perhaps taking it for some signal of possible hospitality in this otherwise desolate spot-some good

hermit living there with his maple dishthe stranger would follow on in the path thus indicated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless nook, and find his only welcome, a dead man; his sole greeting the inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813, fell in a daybreak duel, a Lieutenant of the U. S. frigate Essex, aged twentyone: attaining his majority in death.

It is but fit that like those old monastic institutions of Europe, whose inmates go not out of their own walls to be inurned, but are entombed there where they die the Encantadas too should bury their ⚫wn dead, even as the great general monastery of earth does hers.

;

It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure necessity of sea-faring life, and that it is only done when land is far astern, and not clearly visible from the bow.

Hence to vessels cruising in the vicinity of the Enchanted Isles, they afford a convenient Potter's Field. The interment over, some good-natured forecastle poet and artist seizes his paint-brush, and inscribes a doggerel epitaph. When after a long lapse of time, other good-natured scamen chance to come upon the spot, they usually make a table of the mound, and quaff a friendly can to the poor soul's

repose.

As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the following, found in a bleak gorge of Chatham Isle:

"Oh Brother Jack, as yon pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
Just so game and just so gay,
But now, alack, they've stopped my pay.
No more I peep out of my blinkers,
Here I be-tucked in with clinkers!"

NE day, in Paris, a friend proposed

ONE

that we should make a call upon the famous Abbé de Lamennais, whose recent death restores the incident to my memory. As I had been a reader of his books, and to some extent an admirer of them, and knew the extraordinary vicissitudes through which the distinguished author, the earnest soldier of liberty, had passed, I readily consented to the proposal.

While we were walking across the Tuileries garden and up Rue de Rivoli, towards the Palais Royale, where Lamennais lodged, I had time to gather out of the conversation of my friend and my own readings, a few particulars of his life. And what a strange, struggling, sorrowful, earnest life it was! At first the infidel, dazzled by the flashing witticism of Voltaire, next the priest, almost bigoted in the defence of his order-then the Christian reformer thundering his anathemas against the abuses of his mother church,

-next the republican and socialist, striving to guide the wild spirits of a revolution, and, finally, the retired sage, saddened but not subdued by disappointment, and still uttering out of the shadows of the night that was fast approaching, such words of wisdom as had come to him in his long and weary seventy years of battle! There was surely enough in such a man to excite my curiosity to see him!

Lamennais was born at St. Malo, about the year 1782, of parents who were not wealthy, but who had accumulated sufficient property in trade, to put it in their power to give him a good education. His taste for reading was so precocious that his father, abandoning his original intention of making a merchant of him, designed him for the church. But, unfortunately for this project, the reading which was then in the ascendant, was that which originated with Voltaire and the other brilliant skeptics of the eighteenth century. Clear, witty, audacious, seductive, and with just enough of science in it to give consistency to its frothy but piquant sentiment, it was the very thing to captivate the admiration of the ardent but shallow young student of Bretagne. He was,

therefore, quite carried away at first by its plausibilities, but being of a profoundly religious nature, at the same time, he soon began to feel the wants of the new literature. With all its smooth logic, and glowing sentiment, it did not, somehow or other, touch his heart. A deep void was there, which it did not fill up,-a yearning for something purer, nobler, higher, which it could not satisfy.

The truth was, that the word INFINITE was ringing through the chambers of Lamennais's heart, as it does so often ring through the hearts of all men who

honestly think,-and he felt that he was not a mere creature of time and sense; that life was an awful and eternal reality; that above and beyond the interests and policies of to-day, there was a world of spiritual truths, more active and lasting than nature; and that, therefore, no philosophy which looked no higher than nature, and a merely natural God, could solve the problems which he had raised about existence. He discarded the bantering, mocking, specious philosophy of the new school,-but, alas! had nowhere to fly. He was tormented with perplexities and doubts. He studied, he inquired, he thought, he consulted, he tried to hope, but a disastrous darkness seemed to settle more and more over the intellectual world, and he was about to relinquish thought in despair.

In this condition of mind, he was accosted by the idea of the Christian Church, which, in the deeply-moved and almost feverish state of his sensibilities, was received by him as a glory from the skies. It was an ideal of life so beautiful, so grand, so full of peace and good will, that it kindled in his mind all the ardor of devotion. A vast brotherhood, devoted irreclaimably to the love of God, and the love of man, sanctioned by the holiest remembrances and names of Christian antiquity, possessing through its councils a perpetual inspiration, mighty in its organization, and spreading itself over the whole world, in order to fuse the separated members of humanity into a great living unity, holding the same faith, worshipping in the same temple, anticipating the same heaven of harmony and happiness, was a conception so magnificent and touching that he longed to consecrate himself to its service. He plunged, therefore, at once, neck and heels, as the children say, into the Church of Rome.

Accepting a professorship of mathematics in the college of St. Malo, he partook of his first communion there, and began to prepare himself for the priesthood. In the interval, he published his first work, a translation of the old ascetic book of Louis Le Blois, called the Spiritual Guide, and the next year (1808) an original work, entitled Réflexions sur l'état de l'Eglise; or reflections upon the state of the Church. The latter shows to what height he had carried his ecclesiastical theories, for he condemns the vassalage to which he conceived the Church to have been reduced under the reign of Napoleon, and boldly asserted the doctrine of its rightful supremacy over the State. As the vicegerent of God upon earth, the

Church, he maintained, was an authority superior to any political body, which should never be made a mere political machine, and never subject itself to any civil laws, but on the contrary, give laws to the world. The vehemence, however, with which he assailed the despotism of the Emperor in behalf of the despotism of the clergy, caused his book to be suppressed by the government.

In the year 1811 he assumed the tonsure, but retained his place at the seminary, which was under the control of his brother, in conjunction with whom he wrote a book, on La tradition de l'Eglise sur l'institution des évèques, or the doctrine of the Church on the institution of bishops; displaying great learning and acuteness, and receiving the most unlimited applause from the ultramontane section of Catholics. It shows to what extent Lamennais had adopted the ancient theories, that he was earnestly in favor of the restoration of the Bourbons, and manifested his zeal so openly in their behalf, that when Napoleon returned, during the Hundred Days, he was compelled to fly to England, to escape the persecutions of the imperialists. There he lived in the greatest indigence and obscurity, for several months, earning a miserable pittance as an usher in a school kept for emigrants by the Abbé Rennes in London. It is related of him, that in the course of this exile he applied to the distinguished Lady Jerningham, a sister of Lord Stafford, for the place of tutor in her family, then vacant. He was small and thin in person; his face pale and emaciated, his look downcast and troubled, his gait awkward and shuffling, and his dress such as the dresses of those who have not a cent to get bread with, are apt to be. In other words, it was out at the elbows and seedy. The dignified lady gazed at him with surprise, not unmingled with contempt, and finally ejaculating that he looked too much like a fool to become a successful teacher," sent him away. Poor Lamennais, subsequently a power and glory in Paris, to be dismissed in this fashion by a fashionable lady!