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tiger, with a body too long, with limbs too short, with a head uncovered, and with eyes ghastly and haggard, has no characteristics, but those of the basest and most insatiable cruelty. For instinct he has nothing but a uniform rage, a blind fury; so blind indeed, so undistinguishing, that he frequently devours his own progeny, and, if she offered to defend them, he tears in pieces the dame herself. The tiger is found in Malabar, in Siam, in Bengal, and in all the countries which are inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros. Dellon, in his travels, assures us, that there is no country in India in which tigers so much abound as Malabar; that there the species are numerous, but that the largest of all is that which the Portuguese call the royal tiger, which is very rare, and is as large as a horse.

The species of the tiger has always been much rarer, and much less generally diffused than that of the lion. Like the lioness, however, the tigress produces four or five young ones at a birth. From her nature she is fierce at all times; but when surrounded with her infant progeny, and in the smallest danger of losing them, her rage and fury become extravagant. To oppose the daring invaders of her den, she pursues the spoiler with an enmity the most inveterate; and he, contented to lose a part in order to save a part, is frequently obliged to drop one of the cubs. With this she immediately returns to her den, and again pursues him he then drops another; and by the time she has returned with that, he generally

escapes with the remainder. Should her young be torn from her entirely, with hideous cries she expresses her agony, her despair, and follows the captor to the very town or ship in which he may have taken refuge, and dares him, as it were, to come forth.

AIKMAN'S ANIMAL KINGDOM.

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I ONCE sailed through the Canary Islands, and passed in view of the far-famed Peak of Teneriffe. It had been in sight during the afternoon of the preceding day, at a distance of more than one hundred miles, disappointing general expectation, by appearing then only as an ordinary distant hill rising out of the ocean; but next morning, when the ship had arrived within about twenty miles of it, and while another ship of the fleet, holding her course six miles nearer to the land, served as a measure, it stood displayed as one of the most stupendous single objects, which on earth, and at one view, human vision can command. The ship in question, whose side, showing its tiers of cannon,

equalled in extent the fronts of ten large houses in a street, and whose masts shot up like lofty steeples, still appeared but as a speck rising from the sea, when compared with the huge prominence beyond it, towering sublimely to heaven, and around which the mass of cloud, although as lofty as those which sail over the fields of Britain, seemed still to be hanging low on its sides. Teneriffe alone, of very high mountains, rises directly and steeply out of the bosom of the ocean, to an elevation of 13,000 feet, and as an object of contemplation, therefore, is more impressive than even the still loftier summits of Chimborazo, or the Himalayas, which rise on elevated plains, and in the midst of surrounding hills.

ARNOTT.

LESSON XXII.

THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.

IN sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown,

A wanderer proudly stood

Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,

Of Egypt's awful flood;

The cradle of that mighty birth,

So long a hidden thing to earth!

He heard its life's first murmuring sound,

A low, mysterious tone;

A music sought, but never found

By kings and warriors gone;

He listen'd-and his heart beat high-
That was the song of victory!

The rapture of a conqueror's mood
Rush'd burning through his frame,-
The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame;

Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile.

Night came with stars:-across his soul
There swept a sudden change;
E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal,
A shadow dark and strange,
Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall
O'er triumph's hour-and is this all?

No more than this!-what seem'd it now
First by that spring to stand?
A thousand streams of lovelier flow
Bathed his own mountain land!

Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track,
Their wild, sweet voices call'd him back.

They call'd him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,

Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanced away;

They call'd him, with their sounding waves,
Back to his father's hills and graves.

But, darkly mingling with the thought
Of each familiar scene,

Rose up a fearful vision, fraught

With all that lay between;

The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,

The whirling sands, the red simoom!

Where was the glow of power and pride?

The spirit born to roam?

His alter'd heart within him died
With yearnings for his home!
All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.

He wept the stars of Afric's heaven
Beheld his bursting tears,

E'en on that spot where fate had given

The meed of toiling years!

Oh, happiness! how far we flee

Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!

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ON the top of a ridge of mountains in Portugal, called Estrella, there are two lakes of great extent and depth, especially one of them, which is said to be unfathomable. What is chiefly remarkable in them is, that they are calm when the sea is so, and rough when that is stormy. It is, therefore, probable, that they have a subterraneous communication with the ocean; and this seems to be con

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