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see what was going on. But the enemy were on the alert, and a few shots which wounded two of our number damped our curiosity, and forced us again into our recumbent position. At last, after more than half an hour's waiting, the word was given to retire, and setting spurs to our steeds, we started off, wounded and all, at a breakneck gallop, which lasted till we reached the first barricade on our way back. A few shots were fired after us, but without effect, and we arrived at Belleville, after four hours' absence, only to recommence our previous occupation of sleeping in our saddles. This we did for two hours more, at the end of which we rode forth again on the same duty but in another direction, unknown to me, and were finally released and sent to our stables at halfpast six in the morning of Saturday, May 27th.

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The excitement of the crowd was intense; as we rode slowly down the streets, questions were showered on us as to their numbers, where they had been taken, and where they were to be confined. Women came out from their hiding-places in the cellars, and called on God to bless us, the children pointed with their tiny hands at the coquins de Versaillais, and shouted Vive la Commune!" while every one said to his neighbour, "Tout va bien." While waiting outside the church as the long procession filed in, a mounted officer of my acquaintance, in plain clothes, caine to me and called me aside. He was followed by two other men, one like the captain, for such was his rank, dressed en civile, the other wearing an artillery uniform. We rode through many streets, stopping now at one barricade, now at another, till we reached a marchand de vins in a totally deserted street. Here the officer stopped, and ordering us to dismount said to the artilleryman and myself,

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Sleep was out of the question; there was forage to be requisitioned and carried to our quarters, then the horses to feed, to say nothing of our own rations, which You must manage to exchange your unientailed an attendance of two or three form for plain clothes, as my work requires hours at the Mairie in order to get the men to be dressed as civilians; here are order signed and stamped, a delay all the fifteen francs, do what you can; we will more aggravating from the probability wait for you here." Wondering greatly that after all these formalities there would at this curious order, we walked into anbe nothing forthcoming. We were not, other street, where we had noticed a however, destined to this fate, for we re- group standing, and advancing towards it ceived a goodly store of bread and bacon, asked if any one had clothes to sell in exwhich had been brought to the Mairie change for our uniforms. "Mais volonduring the night, and with these we made tiers, mes pauvres enfants," answered a our soup in the yard, an occupation which stout man in a blouse; "follow me, and helped to pass the time, and very good it you shall have some." He took us into a tasted when it was ready. There was lit-house close by, and we were soon equipped, tle enough of it, but we "filled up the I in a jacket of some thin blue material, corners" with bread, and congratulated ourselves on our good fortune in having any at all.

Between one and two there was a cry raised at our gates that 1,500 linesmen, who had been taken prisoners at the barricades while fighting against us, were passing. That they were there was true, and believing for the moment that there might yet be a chance for us, we rode out to escort them to the church opposite the Mairie, where they were to be confined. That they had been actually taken during the last two days, no one doubted; and I was greatly surprised at hearing afterwards, that they were soldiers of the regular army who had refused to serve the Commune, and had in consequence been detained in the different barracks of Paris, and finally paraded through the streets as prisoners of war just captured, in order, if possible, to raise the drooping spirits of the insurgents.

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coarse and like a towel in texture, and black cap, which was all I required, my companion in a complete suit of workman's clothes, which as he was a little man gave him a most rid culous appearance.

Having paid our money, we returned to the marchand de vins where we had left our companions, but found that they had departed, leaving word for us to folo v them to the Mairie, as they were tired of waiting. To the Mairie we accordingly proceeded, but found to our amazement that nothing had been seen of them. Sɔ we agreed that the best thing to do was to return to our quarters. But we had been absent for more than five hours, and the daylight was beginning to wane, so that when we arrived at the first post we were challenged by the sentry, and ordered to give the countersign. It was in vain to say that, having been detained, we were only returning to our regiments; we were arrested and escorted to the Mairie. Wo

were led upstairs and brought before a member of the Commune, who was sitting at the head of a table covered with papers, and surrounded by men in uniform of all ranks busily writing. We explained what had happened, but upon my speaking he said to me in excellent English, “What are you doing here, an Englishman, and in plain clothes?" I answered, "Yes, I am English, and have been compelled to serve in your army. I don't know who you are, or what your name is, but I request that you give me a paper to allow me to quit Paris without farther molestation." I was almost choked with passion: the manner in which I had been treated had exasperated me beyond measure, and my wrath was not allayed by the cool manner in which my interrogator smiled and shook his head as he answered, "There's only one thing to do with you, my friend. Sergent, par ici." He wrote something on a bit of paper and handed it to the sergeant, who ordered us to follow him. We were conducted into the guardroom, where we underwent a thorough examination; everything of value was taken from me, my watch, 180 francs in money that still remained to me, and, what I regret the most, my papers and note-book.

I had a gold ring on my finger, the gift of my mother, which nearly cost me my finger, for it was exceedingly difficult to get off, and they proposed an amputation as the only means of obtaining the object of their desires.

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This wholesale robbery being completed, we were conducted before the court-martial, where after a few minutes I had the melancholy satisfaction of hearing that I was to be shot the next morning at nine o'clock, for having refused to serve the Commune. I had been asked no questions, nor was any evidence produced, either for the defence or prosecution. Five men sat at a table strewn with papers, and after conversing together in a low tone for a few minutes, one of them said: Citoyens Vous serezfusillés demain matin à neuf heures, pour la crime d'avoir réfusés de servir la Commune." That was all, and then we were conducted to the black-hole. There we found nine others, all of whom were to suffer the same fate as ourselves. I was too tired to do anything but throw myself on a filthy mattress, and in a few minutes was sleeping what I then thought was my last sleep on earth.

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THE DUKE OF ORMOND.- Under the title of that it may be enacted that the said Earl Cow"Earl Cowper's Restitution, 1871," there has per may be hereby enabled to make claim to just been passed "An Act (34 and 35 Vict., and to establish his right to the titles of Lord Session 1871) to relieve Francis Thomas de Dingwall, in the peerage of Scotland, and Lord Grey, Earl Cowper, K.G., and the heirs for the Butler, of Moore Park, in the peerage of Engtime being of the body of Richard, Earl of Des-land, with all rights, privileges, and pre-emimond, in the peerage of Ireland, and Lord Ding-nence thereto belonging, to which he would be wall, in the peerage of Scotlan 1, and the heirs for the time being of the boly of Tho nas, Earl of Ossory, in the peerage of Ireland, and Lord Butler, of Moore Park, in the peerage of England, from the effect of the attainder of James, second Duke of Ormond." The Act, which has been printed, is very brief, consisting of a brief preamble: "Whereas, James, second Duke of Ormond, was, by Act of Parliament, attainted of high treason in the first year of the reign of George I.," &c.; "and whereas, Earl Cowper, K.G., claims to be the heir of the body of the same nobleman, but such claims are barrel at present by the attainder of the said James, Duke of Ormond; " and "whereas, the said Francis Thomas de Grey, Earl Cowper, has always conducted himself loyally and dutifully towards your Majesty;" it proceeds" May it therefore please your Most Excellent Majesty

entitled or which he could claim in case the said James, Duke of Ormond, had not been attainted of high treason; notwithstanding the said attainder, and notwithstanding the said Act of Parliament, or any judgment, statute, record, conviction, sentence, cause, or matter to the contrary." It should be added to the account of the Dingwall and Butler peerages which has already appeared that, since the completion and printing of Lord Cowper's case, it has been shown that the Duke did not surrender himself, and therefore did suffer attainder; but that her Majesty has been graciously pleased to reverse such attainder. The fact of his Grace's non-surrender is duly certified in the journals of the House of Lords, Die Mercurii, September 14, 1714. The Act reversing the above attainder received the Royal assent on the last day of July.

From The Cornhill Magazine.
OLIVER VAN NOORT.

stretch across to the Moluccas, and trade for spices. Make discoveries if they come THE Papal grants of all new lands to in your way, but waste no time in hunting Spain and Portugal originated the maxim, them up. Finally, maintain discipline, No peace beyond the line;" and the keep an eye to the profits, be as pious as fierce anti-Protestantism of Philip II., circumstances will allow, and God be with aided by the intrigues of the Jesuits, you. Amen."

stock of small wares, a still larger stock of arms, a little money, and unlimited powers over his crews. The last item was not at all unnecessary. In those days voyages round the world were desperate undertakings, and few but desperate characters engaged in them. Maritime discipline, therefore, stern as it always was in the good old times, was doubly stern in cases like the present. It comprehended the harsher rules of the old Northern seacodes, with occasional articles borrowed from the usages current in the Mediterranean; it multiplied offences to an astonishing extent; and it inflicted an endless variety of punishments many of them as cruel as they were singular. There was, for instance, plenty of keel-hauling and spread-eagling; there was an ugly custom of suspending a man by the arms, and loading his neck with weights, until, as Sir William Monson expresses it, "his back and his heart were ready to break; and there were gagging for the insolent, fasting for the obstinate, ducking for the sloven, and whipping at the capstan for the skulker. He who was detected in falsehood had to serve for a week as swabber's assistant, and the swearer was liable - but only under very Puritanic captains

nursed it into that strength of constitution To enable the commander to carry out which carried it through three centuries his instructions, he was provided with a of mot eventful life. The Calvinists of" consoler of the sick " (chaplain), a large Rochelle asserted it vigorously, and so did our own countrymen. But its most signal illustrators—that is, prior to the appearance of the Buccaneers- -were decidedly the Dutch mariners. And of this hardy race, as good a representative man as any was Oliver Van Noort. Oliver sailed from Holland on the 13th of September, 1598, with the ships Maurice and Frederick-Henry, of some 300 tons burden each, and the yachts Concord and Hope, of 50 to 60 tons apiece, the whole carrying 250 men. These vessels were excellent sea-boats in their way. They could bear a good deal of tossing and tumbling, and even take the ground occasionally without suffering any particular damage. But theif sailing qualities were not brilliant. They made, in fact, the minimum of headway when the wind was aft, and the maximum of leeway when it happened to be abeam. So it was no uncommon thing for the best Dutch pilots to find themselves erring in their reckoning by more than 100 leagues in the course of a moderately long voyage. The earlier Netherlandish attempts at circumnavigation were, therefore, curious enough, bearing no small resemblance to the performance of the Chinese junk which, steering straight for London, managed to reach New York. Indeed, considering their incomprehensible courses, their gropings in the dark, and their capacity for hitting every port but the right one, it would have been wonderful if that satire on their maritime achievements the legend of the Flying Dutchman had not been invented by the wits of the seventeenth century.

to have his tongue well scraped with a rusty piece of iron. Heavier crimes than these were visited with heavier penalties - such as marooning and death - the latter being inflicted in a great variety of ways.

The squadron called at Plymouth, on account of the English pilot, Mellish, a man who had already circumnavigated the globe with Cavendish. Next night, six men, disgusted with the discipline, crept

The character of Van Noort's expedition will be best explained by the instructions he received from his merchant-own-into a launch that was towing astern, ers, which ran substantially as follows:"You will enter the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan, and return to Europe round the Cape of Good Hope. Fill up, if you can, with Spanish treasure on the coast of Peru. If that be impossible,

Better navigators were often as much mistaken. Pisle de Corro. Nos pilotes croyoient être au dela

"Nous fumes bien étonnez de voir devant nous

de pres de cent lieues."- Jesuit Voyage to Siam.

and got clear off. Near the Berlings, a dangerous reef in the neighbourhood of Cape Rocca, all who had not previously passed the spot were triced up to one of the yard-arms, and dipped three times in the sea. That is, if common seamen; for an officer was always honoured with a fourth immersion and a gun. Ceremonies like this, though now confined to the tropic of Cancer, were observed in many places

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by medieval shipmen, there being hardly | various headlands, and treated him to a a shoal or promontory notorious for ship- volley of arrows whenever he tacked withwreck in Western Europe that was not in range. But even savage endurance thus respected. The rites too were little has its limits, and these gentle Christians if at all farcical, but gave sufficient evi- paused at length, exhausted and bedence of their origin in those pagan times, wildered, toward sunset of the second when every dreaded locality was supposed day. Van Noort seized the opportunity, to be haunted by a demon whom it was anchored suddenly abreast of a rivulet, necessary thus to propitiate. The custom, and threw thirty men ashore, who soon indeed, had lost its religious character raised a tolerable entrenchment. It was long previous to the sixteenth century. It midnight before the natives discovered was sufficiently continued, however, to be kept up as the the work, and then they mustered and asmarine equivalent for the forms with which sailed it. The scene artisans were made free of their respective striking. Here the black ships rocked on guilds no seaman being accounted mas- the glittering sea, for the moon was at ter of his craft, and fitted to take office on the full; there the hillock spouted forth its lightnings; and yonder the dense shipboard, until he had undergone it. Of course the squadron could not trav- woods disgorged a crowd of shrieking erse the Atlantic without making a few phantoms. The assault encountered a halts by the way. Accordingly, on the sharp repulse; it was not repeated; and 10th of December we find it in sight of the water casks of the squadron were Prince's Island, at the head of the Bight filled at leisure. When this was done, of Biafra. This was a Portuguse settle- Van Noort put himself at the head of ment, but not a very important one, as it 150 men, and advanced into the island. contained merely a small fort, a sugar- On the way he beat up an ambuscade mill, a few European soldiers, and several with considerable loss to those who lay Jesuits. The natives, however, were nu- in wait therein. He then burnt the sugarmerous, and completely under the control of the missionaries. Van Noort therefore received from them just such treatment as the Jesuit converts of that day were in the habit of according to heretical visitors. Being greatly in want of water, he sent a party ashore with a flag of truce. The natives met it under a similar banner, and behaved very amicably until they had decoyed four of the officers into the fort, and thrown the rest of the company off They reached that point on Christmas their guard. They then assailed both parties, kiiling three of the officers, in- Day, and there one of their pilots, a native cluding the Englishman Mellish, and two of Heligoland, who had been convicted of of the seamen, and driving the rest off to offences "too numerous to mention," was - that is, sent ashore with a the ships. In retaliation Van Noort laid marooned the Concord close under the fort, and musket, a few charges, and a bag of bread. landed 120 picked men to take it in the This marooning was a very uncertain sort rear. The assailants, however, were over- of punishment. Besides being inflicted matched at all points, and compelled to for a variety of misdeeds great and small, retreat with the loss of one man killed the rule of the sea laid it down that it and fourteen wounded. The squadron was to take place on the first land eninstantly made sail and stood away, amid countered after the passing of the sentence. the exulting yells of the Jesuit neophytes. It need hardly be remarked, then, that it Rut this rejoicing was a little premature. bore very unequally on crime and crimiLike another of the name, Oliver was not nals. It might place a comparatively inthe man to put up with a defeat - so long nocent man on a barren rock, or among as there was a chance of turning it into "the anthropophagi who do each other a victory. Instead then, of showing his eat" only when they cannot procure a stern to the islanders, he manoeuvred stranger to devour; and it might deposit along the coast for the next thirty-six an accomplished scoundrel in positive hours. A mob of negroes in full war- safety. costume followed his movements with questionably a scoundrel, was not exactly much pertinacity and more clamour. They one of the fortunate victims of marooning. indulged in a variety of war-dances on the Cape Lopez is fearfully pestilential.

mills, and did as much other mischief as he conveniently could before he returned to his shlps. The squadron hovered about the place for four days longer, landing frequently, killing the natives wherever they met them, and pillaging and destroying their villages. At length having glutted their vengeance, and laid up a plentiful stock of annoyance for the next comers, the Dutch made sail, on the 17th of December, for Cape Lopez.

The pilot, however, though un

Moreover, the natives, then as now, be- The squadron steered southward for lieved that borrowing the words of one three weeks. But being obstructed by of their chiefs, "who kill shark-him contrary winds and harassed by frequent go dam; but who shark eat him go co- storms, they made little progress. A martable." And as they were in the habit council then decided that they should go of offering human sacrifices to these mon- northward again, since the lateness of the sters, it is highly probable that the Heli-season, their small stock of provisions, the golander closed his career by going "co-foulness of the ships, and the sickness of martable." the crews rendered it impossible for them to pass the straits before winter. Northward, accordingly, they steered for St. Helena. But after beating about for twenty days, they found that they could not make the island. They then went in search of the Martin Vas rocks, and missed them too. Afterwards they started in chase of a certain mythic island called Portuguese Ascension, which has long since disappeared from the charts of the Atlantic; but of course they never caught sight of it. During this uncertain navigation, disease spread fearfully among the crews, three or four of them, on an average, dying every day. At last they sighted land on the 21st of April. It was one of the Martin Vas rocks, but this they did not know. Its appearance, however, was

Sailing again on the 26th of December, they entered the harbour of Rio after a passage of forty-five days, which was not a bad performance. Rio was already a powerful settlement, and therefore a dangerous anchorage for so weak a squadron. Of this, however, the Dutch had small suspicion thanks to the obscurity in which the peninsular races delighted to shroud their trans-oceanic doings. The governor did not attack them- probably because they remained at anchor well out of range of his heavy batteries - but he refused to supply their wants, or indeed, to have anything at all to do with them in an amicable way. Nevertheless, they allowed an envoy from the shore to remain on board the Maurice, where he soon wormed himself completely into their con- so repulsive that they bore away to the fidence. Under his direction they at- westward, pursued by a troop of sharks. tempted a landing, and fell into an am- On the 30th they saw the mainland near buscade, from which they extricated them- the Rio Douce, and attempted to go ashore. selves with the loss of one man killed, two The Portuguese, however, mustered in taken prisoners, and eight wounded. force to oppose them; so they put to sea These last were subjected to a singular again, with heavy hearts. Two days later process, much in vogue among sea-goers, they reached an islet about a league in and known under the name of psalming. circuit, and as much from the continent. It was a very simple matter. The mis- It was not an inviting spot, containing sle was extracted, and the hurt annointed only a few palm-trees, a little herbage, while somebody read a psalm in St. and a scanty supply of water. But they Jerome's Latin, of course, -over the pa- had no alternative. So they anchored, tient. Strange to say, this remedy proved and hurried the sick ashore, several of quite as effectual as others more approved them dying on the way. The change of by the faculty. The captives were re-proved eminently beneficial. Within fifturned in a day or two with the view of teen days, all but five of the worst cases tempting the Dutch into some further im- were perfectly well. prudence. But by this time their eyes At this islet they dismantled, and burnt were somewhat opened, and the bait one of the yachts, which had become unfailed. Finding that no good was to be seaworthy. Here, too, a sailor of Vlissin gained by remaining in Rio, Van Noort gen, who had wounded the pilot of his dismissed his Portuguese adviser, whose ship with a knife, was subjected to the true character he does not seem to have lex talionis, his left hand being bound besuspected, and left the harbour. He hind him, and his right fastened over his cruised among the neighbouring islands head to the mainmast with the blade that for a fortnight longer- fowling, fishing, had dealt the blow. The weapon was gathering herbs, and collecting water. driven edge uppermost through the palm On the 27th of February, 1599, six men deep into the wood, and there the culprit paddled in a canoe to the mainland, where was to remain until he should muster they were attacked by a troop of Indians, nerve enough to wrench his hand clear who slew two and carried off the others, a punishment sickening to think of, but -probably to eat them. This loss Van for all that, of daily occurrence among anNoort seems to have regarded as a hint to cient mariners. take himself off, for he instantly made sail.

They sailed south again on the 21st of

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