hauling the whole thing under the ship with ropes. The pressure of the water upon the leaks forced in the thick mass of oakum, wool, and canvas, and so reduced the inflow from the sea that the water within the ship could be kept down easily by one pump instead of calling for the labour of three. As soon as a suitable harbour was found, which was a week later, the Endeavour was put aground on the top of the tide, and her bottom examined at low water. It was then that the providential rock, caulking the worst of the leaks, was discovered. The hole into which it had been thrust and in which it had broken off was large enough to have sunk the ship even with eight pumps constantly at work. The damage suffered by the Endeavour had been very great whole planks of her outer sheathing had been planed off smooth, and Cook, in the resourceful fashion of the old mariners, was preprepared to break her up and build a pinnace out of her materials, if he could not get the ship herself in safety to the East Indies. But with his skilled smiths and carpenters, aided by a portable forge, repairs were put through which made a continuation of the voyage possible. These repairs occupied six weeks, and by 4th August, Cook was able to take to the sea again, and struggle northwards out of the last tentacles of the Barrier. He had six days more of creeping and sounding the last lap of

more than a thousand miles of entangling reefs-and then met a new peril when he faced the swell of the open Pacific which surges between Cape York and New Guinea. Many of the names which Cook bestowed upon the capes, islands, and bays which he surveyed have a perfunctory flavour-he required a big dictionary to keep pace with his job as godfather-but no one can be unconscious of the human touch about Cape Tribulation, where all had seemed lost, and Providential Channel, through which he scraped into Endeavour Strait between the Cape York Peninsula and the Prince of Wales's Islands. Cook had now discovered a way round the extreme north of what had been New Holland, leading from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, and exercised the rights which his perilous and so nearly fatal exploration of the eastern mainland had won for him and his country. Going ashore, he displayed the Union Flag, and claimed the whole coast for the British king under the name of New South Wales. In his report to the Secretary of the Admiralty, after describing in half a dozen brief sentences the northern voyage and his shipwreck, 66 'the most dangerous navigation that ever perhaps ship was in," Cook writes: "Although the discoveries made in this voyage are not great, I flatter myself they are such as may merit the attention of their Lordships. Although I have failed in dis

covering the so much talked of southern continent, which perhaps does not exist, and which I myself have much at heart, yet I am confident no part of the failure of such discovery can be laid to my charge; had we been so fortunate not to have run ashore, much more would have been done in the latter part of the voyage than what was; but as it is, I presume this voyage will be found as complete as any before made to the South Seas on the same account. The plans I have drawn of the places where I have been at were made with all the care and accuracy that time and circumstances would admit of; for I am certain that the latitude and longitude of few parts of the world are better settled than these. In justice to the officers and the whole crew, I must say they have gone through the fatigues and dangers of the whole voyage with that cheerfulness and alertness that will always do honour to British

...

seamen, and I have the satisfaction to say that I have not lost one man by sickness during the whole voyage." Many good English captains before Cook have made of their command a happy ship and been served with cheerfulness and alertness, but none before him had by their own cheerfulness, alertness, and resourceful intelligence successfully stood between their men and all deaths from sickness.

Cook hobbled along in his crippled ship to the Dutch settlement of Batavia, where the Governor, in the true spirit of maritime sportsmanship, gave instructions that he should be advanced all the money that he needed for repairs out of the treasury of the Dutch East India Company. And then it was discovered that the bottom of the Endeavour, which had been patched up near Cape Tribulation and had held out all the way to Java, was in several parts no thicker "than the sole of a shoe."

"CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS" was the more tempting title, but there were two grave objections to it. The first, that it had been used before, as the title of the best book ever written on the subject,1 a masterly analysis of Chinese character as well worth study today as it was when first published some thirty-five years ago. The second, that it would be untrue, as descriptive of the article contemplated.

The late Mr Lafcadio Hearn --than whom there has been no more sympathetic or deeplyunderstanding writer on Japan -confessed towards the end of his long life in that country that he was still unable to fathom the Oriental mind; and an "Old China Hand has laid it down as an axiom that professed "knowledge of the Chinese" is usually in inverse ratio to the length of the professor's stay in the country. The new-comer is positive, the man of some fifteen years' residence doubtful, while the "old stager" knows that he knows nothing at all.

In face of this, one who must, alas! regard himself as belonging to the third category would

hardly presume to have an opinion as to what are and what are not Chinese characteristics"; still less would he venture to express it. All, therefore, that he will now attempt will be to set out certain actual facts that have come, at first or second hand, within his experience, leaving them to speak.

There is a general impression amongst foreigners who have lived in China that the Chinese are physically cowardly. Instances can easily be recalled, perhaps, of hostile crowds scattering like sheep at the first resolute step towards them of the solitary foreigner, armed only with a riding-whip and his prestige. It may be remembered, too, how, at the battle of the Yalu, when the Chinese flagship Ting Yuen was being pounded by the Japanese quick-firers, the late General von Hanneken had to go down to the engine-room, revolver in hand, to attempt to drive the "combatant " officers back to their duty on deck, in charge of the guns; and how, being unsuccessful in this, he and two other foreigners had to fight the guns unaided,

one of them being severely wounded, another killed, and the third rendered deaf for life.

But it will also be recalled that, while the officers-mostly Foochow men and Cantoneseskulked in the engine-room, the gun-crews-from Shantung -fought with the utmost gallantry.

Then, too, the conduct of the sailor gunners in the island fort of Liu Kung Tao, as described by a foreign eye-witness, will not be forgotten. It was during the siege of Wei Hai Wei, when the Japanese attack was becoming overwhelming. Owing to neglect, the periscopic apparatus and the hydraulic disappearing gear of the heavy guns mounted in the fort were out of order; and, in the teeth of the accurate Japanese fire, the gunners had therefore to expose themselves fully when firing. Many had thus been killed and wounded, but the reduced guncrews carried on with stolid cheerfulness. At noon they declared that they must knock off for dinner; and, sure enough, surrounded by dead and dying and themselves under heavy fire, the survivors squatted down and ate their accustomed rice.

Again, it was the black year in Hong-Kong. The bubonic plague was raging, and hundreds of Chinese had already succumbed. There was no known cure. Once the symptoms-fever, bubo in the arm

pit, &c.-had declared themselves, a fatal issue within three days was regarded as inevitable. Under these conditions a friend of mine, a young Ulsterman, volunteering his services, was detailed for certain duties in a building set apart for native, and necessarily hopeless, cases. On his first morning, during a round of inspection, he entered a room where, to his amazement, he found a circle of Chinese seated on the floor, laughing, joking, smoking, drinking tea, and playing cards. "Are you not plague patients!" he inquired. Yes," was the reply. "But," he stammered,

66

you seem merry, you seem to be enjoying yourselves." Oh, yes,' was the astounding reply, "but then, you see, we don't die till to-morrow."

1

Courage of the highest quality, or Oriental fatalismwho shall decide? Grish Chunder, perhaps, when Kipling makes him say, "I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God!

you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions."

Another general impression is that the Chinese are a kind, gentle, good-hearted race; and who can doubt that this is wellfounded when he recalls their tenderness to the very young