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It lay bleating and moaning on the ground, stretching out its little hands, with movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. The female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move. She howled most hideously when I approached the little one.

"We must be off," said Rogers, "or the whole Gorilla race may be down upon us." "The little one is only shot in the leg," I said. "I'll bind the limb up, and we will carry the beast with us on board."

The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, and looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay quite still whilst I looked for and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged up the wound. I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly heard Rogers cry, "Run! run!" and when I looked up

When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever heard a roar? ten thousand roars -a whirling army of dark beings rushed by me. Rogers, who had bullied me so frightfully during the voyage, and who had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own I owed him 1,500 dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand pieces; and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but that the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours). And when an immense gray Gorilla, with hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a gollyboshtree about sixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little one squeaked out something plaintive, which, of course, I could not understand; on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, squatted down on his huge hams by the side of the little patient, and began to bellow and weep.

And now, do you see whom I had rescued? I had rescued the young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out

walking with his nurse and footman. The footman had run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw a footman run quicker. The wholo army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue their prince, and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion was great, fancy what the queen's must have been when she came up! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled branches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, a prince of three weeks old.

My little protégé, with the wounded leg, still persisted in hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned that they are longer than those of men in general), and as the poor little brute was immensely heavy, and the Gorillas go at a prodigious pace, a litter was made for us likewise; and my thirst much refreshed by a footman (the same domestic who had given the alarm) running hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the rinds off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me the fresh milk in its cup. My little patient partook of a little, stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with which, or with its hand, a Gorilla can help itself indiscriminately. Relays of large Gorillas relieved each other at the litters at intervals of twenty minutes, as I calculated by my watch, one of Jones and Bates's, of Boston, Mass., though I have been unable to this day to ascertain how these animals calculate time with such surprising accuracy. We slept for that night under

And now, you see, we arrive at really the most interesting part of my travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. the manners and habits of the Gorillas chez eux. I give the heads of this narrative only, the full account being suppressed for a reason which shall presently be given. The heads, then, of the chapters, are briefly as follows:

The author's arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geographical position. Lodgings assigned to him up a gum-tree. Constant attachment of the little prince.

rilla." O horror! And now you see why I can't play off this joke myself, and moralize on the fable, as it has been narrated already de me.

A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE.

His royal highness's gratitude. Anecdotes of his wit, playfulness, and extraordinary precocity. Am offered a portion of poor Larkins for my supper, but decline with horror. Footman brings me a young crocodile: fishy but very palatable. Old crocodiles too tough: ditto rhinoceros. Visit the queen mother - an enormous old Gorilla, quite white. Prescribe for her majesty. Meeting of THIS group *of dusky children of Gorillas at what appears a parliament the captivity is copied out of a amongst them: presided over by old Go- little sketch-book which I carried in rilla in cocoa-nut fibre wig. Their sports. many a roundabout journey, and will Their customs. A privileged class point a moral as well as any other amongst them. Extraordinary likeness sketch in the volume. Yonder drawof Gorillas to people at home, both at ing was made in a country where Charleston, S.C., my native place; and there was such hospitality, friendship, London, England, which I have visited. kindness shown to the humble deFlat-nosed Gorillas and blue-nosed Go-signer, that his eyes do not care to rillas; their hatred, and wars between them. In a part of the country (its geographical position described) I see several negroes under Gorilla domination. Well treated by their masters. Frog-eating Gorillas across the Salt Lake. Bull-headed Gorillas their mutual hostility. Green Island Gorillas. More quarrelsome than the Bull-heads, and howl much louder. I am called to attend one of the princesses. Evident partiality of H.R.H. for me. Jealousy and rage of large red-headed Gorilla. How shall I escape? Ay, how indeed? Do you wish to know? Is your curiosity excited Well, I do know how I escaped. I could tell the most extraordinary adventures that happened to me. I could show you resemblances to people at home, that would make them blue with rage and you crack your sides with laughter. . And what is the reason I cannot write this having all the facts before me? The reason is, that walking down St. James Street yesterday, I met a friend who says to me, “ Roundabout, my boy, have you seen your picture? Here it is!" And he pulls out a portrait, executed in photography, of your humble servant, as an immense and most unpleasant-featured baboon, with long hairy hands, and called by companied this paper when it first ap* Alluding to the woodcut which acthe waggish artist "A Literary Go-peared.

paper,

look out for faults, or his pen to note them. How they sang! how they laughed and grinned! how they scraped, bowed, and complimented you and each other, those negroes of the cities of the Southern parts of the then United States! My business kept me in the towns; I was but in one negro-plantation village, and there were only women and little children, the men being out a-field. But there was plenty of cheerfulness in the huts, under the great trees- I speak of what I saw - and amidst the dusky bondsmen of the cities. I witnessed a curious gayety; heard amongst the black folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter; and saw on holidays black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendor and comfort as freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. What a grin and bow that dark gentleman performed, who was the porter at the colonel's, when he said, "You write your name, mas'r, else I will forgot.' I am not going into the slavery question, I am not an advocate for "the institution," as I know, madam, by that angry toss of your head, you are about to declare me to be. For domestic purposes, my dear lady, it seemed to me about

the dearest institution that can be de- |ern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillavised. In a house in a Southern city baisse than which a better was never you will find fifteen negroes doing eaten at Marseilles: and not the least the work which John, the cook, the headache in the morning, I give you housemaid, and the help, do perfectly my word; on the contrary, you only in your own comfortable London wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for house. And these fifteen negroes are claret and water. They say there is the pick of a family of some eighty fever there in the autumn: but not in or ninety. Twenty are too sick, or the spring-time, when the peach-blostoo old for work, let us say: twenty soms blush over the orchards, and the too clumsy twenty are too young, sweet herbs come to flavor the juleps. and have to be nursed and watched by ten more.* And master has to maintain the immense crew to do the work of half a dozen willing hands. No, no; let Mitchell, the exile from. poor dear enslaved Ireland, wish for a gang of "fat niggers; " I would as soon you should make me a present of a score of Bengal elephants, when I need but a single stout horse to pull my brougham.

I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis; and our walk was constantly on the Levee, whence we could see a hundred of those huge white Mississippi steamers at their moorings in the river: "Look," said my friend Lochlomond to me, as we stood one day on the quay - "look at that post! Look at that coffeehouse behind it! Sir, last year a, steamer blew up in the river yonder, just where you see those men pulling off in the boat. By that post where you are standing a mule was cut in

chinery, and a bit of the chimneystove in that first-floor window of the coffee-house killed a negro who was cleaning knives in the top-room!" I looked at the post, at the coffeehouse window, at the steamer in which I was going to embark, at my friend, with a pleasing interest not divested of melancholy. Yesterday, it was the mule, thinks I, who was cut in two: it may be cras mihi. Why, in the same little sketch-book, there is a drawing of an Alabama river steamer which blew up on the very next voyage after that in which your humble servant was on board! Had I but waited another week, I might have.

How hospitable they were, those Southern men! In the North itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who have eaten Northern and South-two by a fragment of the burst maern salt, can testify. As for New Orleans, in spring-time, just when the orchards were flushing over with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavor the juleps - it seemed to me the city of the world where you can eat and drink the most and suffer. the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It was all good- believe an expert Robert-from the half-dollar Médoc of the public hotel table, to the private gentleman's choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that gifted place at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the morning. It is good it is superabundant - and there is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill of such a country! When I do, pone me pigris campis: smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me! At that comfortable tav

*This was an account given by a gentleman at Richmond of his establishment. Six European servants would have kept his house and stables well. "His farm," he said, "barely sufficed to maintain the negroes residing on it."

These incidents give a queer zest to the voyage down the lifestream in America. When our huge, tall, white, paste-board castle of a steamer began to work up stream, every limb in her creaked and groaned, and quivered, so that you might fancy she would burst right off. Would she hold together, or would she split into ten million of shivers ? O my home and children! Would

your humble servant's body be cut in two across yonder chain on the Levee, or be precipitated into yonder firstfloor, so as to damage the chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window? The black man is safe for me, thank goodness. But you see the little accident might have happened. It has happened; and if to a mule, why not to a more docile animal? On our journey up the Mississippi, I give you my honor we were on fire three times, and burned our cook-room down. The deck at night was a great firework the chimney spouted myriads of stars, which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the deck, or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we labored the mighty yellow stream with all its

snags.

How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall now be narrated. The excellent landlord of the "Saint Charles Hotel," when I was going away, begged me to accept two bottles of the very finest Cognac, with his compliments; and I found them in my state-room with my luggage. Lochlomond came to see me off, and as he squeezed my hand at parting, "Roundabout," says he, "the wine mayn't be very good on board, so I have brought a dozen-case of the Médoc which you liked; and we grasped together the hands of friendship and farewell. Whose boat is this pulling up to the ship? It is our friend Glenlivat, who gave us the dinner on Lake Pontchartrain. "Roundabout," says he, we have tried to do what we could for you, my boy; and it has been done de bon cœur (I detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he speaks). I say hem!- the athe wine isn't too good on board, so I've brought you a dozen of Médoc for your voyage, you know. And God bless you; and when I come to London in May shall come and see you. Hallo! here's Johnson come to see you off, too!"

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As I am a miserabie sinner, when Johnson grasped my hand, he said,

"Mr. Roundabout, you can't be sure of the wine on board these steamers, so I thought I would bring you a little case of that light claret which you liked at my house." Et de trois! No wonder I could face the Mississippi with so much courage supplied to me! Where are you, honest friends, who gave me of your kindness and your cheer? May I be considerably boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words of you. May claret turn sour ere I do!

Mounting the stream, it chanced that we had very few passengers. How far is the famous city of Memphis from New Orleans? I do not mean the Egyptian Memphis, but the American Memphis, from which to the American Cairo we slowly toiled up the river to the American Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we parted company from the boat, and from some famous and gifted fellowpassengers who joined us at Memphis, and whose pictures we had seen in many cities of the South. I do not give the names of these remarkable people, unless, by some wondrous chance, in inventing a name I should light upon that real one which some of them bore ; but if you please I will say that our fellow-passengers whom we took in at Memphis were no less personages than the Vermont Giant and the famous Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her son. Their pictures I had seen in many cities through which I travelled with my own little performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle taller in his pictures than he was in life (being represented in the former, as, at least, some two stories high) but the lady's prodigious beard received no more than justice at the hands of the painter; that portion of it which I saw being really most black, rich, and curlyII say the portion of beard, for this modest or prudent woman kept I don't know how much of the beard covered up with a red handkerchief, from which I suppose it only emerged

when she went to bed, or when she exhibited it professionally.

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The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have known gentlemen, not in the profession, better made, and I should say taller, than the Vermont gentleman. A strange feeling I used to have at meals; when, on looking round our little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lady of Kentucky, the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain (this I think; but at this distance of time I would not like to make the statement on affidavit), and the three other passengers, all with their knives in their mouths making play at the dinner a strange feeling I say it was, and as though I was in a castle fogres. But, after all, why so queamish? A few scores of years Jack, the finest gentlemen and ladies f Europe did the like. Belinda ate with her knife; and Saccharissa had Inly that weapon, or a two-pronged rk, or a spoon, for her pease. Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince of Wales, a languid voluptrary, retiring after his meal, and noted the toothpick which he uses? You are right, madam; I own that the subject is revolting and terrible. I will not pursue it. Only allow that a gentleman, in a shaky steamboat, on a dangerous river, in a far-off country, which caught fire three times during the voyage-(of course I mean the steamboat, not the country), seeing a giant, a voracious supercargo, a bearded lady, and a little boy not three years of age, with a chin already quite black and curly, all plying their victuals down their throats with their knives allow, madam, that in such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I don't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of people performing the same trick, but if you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in them which is dreadful.

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Apart from this usage, which they practise in common with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gentleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady - or did I say the reverse?—whichever you like, my dear sir- were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people. She sat working with her needle, if I remember right. He, suppose, slept in the great cabin, which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say, did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. Nay, this giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went forward and ate a sheep or two in private with his horrid knife — oh, the dreadful thought! - but in public, I say, he had quite a delicate appetite), and was also a tea-totaller. I don't remember to have heard the lady's voice, though I might, not unnaturally, have been curious to hear it. Was her voice a deep, rich, magnificent bass; or was it soft, fluty, and mild? I shall never know now. Even if she comes to this country, I shall never go and see her. I have seen her, and for nothing.

You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some halfdozen on board, she might have dispensed with her red handkerchief, and talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort: but in covering her chin there was a kind of modesty. That beard was her profession: that beard brought the public to see her out of her business she wished to put that beard aside as it were: as a barrister would wish to put off his wig. I know some who carry theirs into private life, and who mistake you and me for jury-boxes when they address us: but these are not your modest barristers, not your true gentlemen.

Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with which, her public business over, she retired into private life. She respected her life, and her beard. That beard having

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