Title: Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 122, vol. III, May 1, 1886
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 122, vol. III, May 1, 1886" ***
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 122, VOL. III, MAY 1,
1886 ***



[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 122.—VOL. III.      SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1886.      PRICE 1½_d._]



SMUGGLING, PAST AND PRESENT.

BY AN EXAMINING OFFICER.


In a recently issued, readable little volume by Mr W. D. Chester,
H.M. Customs, London, entitled _Chronicles of the Customs_, there
occurs a chapter on the tricks of smugglers, which suggests an
interesting comparison of past and present methods of smuggling. The
volume referred to treats of many matters connected with Customs’ work
besides the prevention of smuggling; but we must confine our remarks to
smuggling pure and simple, with a few examples of clever evasions of
the Customs’ laws.

From the days of Ethelred, when it was enacted that ‘every smaller boat
arriving at Billingsgate should pay for toll or custom one halfpenny, a
larger boat with sails one penny,’ those who have had to carry out the
collection of the revenue have been disliked by everybody who had to
submit to taxation. It is not easy to understand this dislike. People
who use coal, gas, water, or any of the necessities of existence do
not, as a rule, view with very great disfavour the people whom they
pay to supply these commodities. Why they should dislike those whose
business it is to collect the funds which provide government with the
wherewithal to insure protection for life, property, and trade, is an
anomaly which it is difficult to comprehend. In olden days, the bold
and daring smuggler was the darling of the coast, and the officers
who endeavoured to prevent his depredations the most disliked of all
government officials. Yellow-backed novels have portrayed his prowess
in the most glowing colours. The word-pictures which represent him
as a free-and-easy, good-natured soul, with gentlemanly manners and
genteel exterior, have been read and admired wherever English novels
of a seafaring type have been circulated; and no exciting ocean tale
is considered sufficiently spicy unless a chapter or two is devoted to
the daring thief who defies his country’s laws, and is rewarded with
admiration for doing so; while ordinary thieves are spoken of with
contempt, and obtain a far from acceptable recompense in the shape of
jail ‘skilly.’

No longer ago than 1883, an amusing case, illustrative of this feeling,
occurred in the neighbourhood of Sunderland. A party of officers had
been away at Hull attending a departmental examination. On their
return journey in the train, they met with a seafaring man, who,
not knowing the profession of his fellow-passengers, entered into a
long conversation on the comparatively easy methods by which he—the
sailor—evaded detection. Growing eloquent on this theme, he further
explained the _modus operandi_ of his proceedings, and informed the
officers that he had in his chest an ingeniously concealed receptacle
for the very purpose of smuggling, and that he then had in it several
pounds of foreign tobacco. Great was his consternation to find, on
his arrival at Sunderland, that his fellow-passengers were Customs’
officers, who at once seized the man’s chest and confiscated the
tobacco found therein, for the possession of which the loquacious
seaman was subsequently fined. The moral of the story rests in the
fact, that no sooner was the affair made known, than the local press
went ablaze with denunciations of the unfortunate officers who had
prevented the country’s pockets being pilfered of the amount of duty
leviable on the quantity of tobacco found. The incident is one which
proves that among a certain class of people the smuggler is a hero
still. With the audience in a police court the smuggler is no end of
a favourite. Only a few months ago, a case occurred at Whitby where a
couple of fishermen were charged with smuggling about forty-four pounds
of tobacco, the highest penalty for which being £42 with alternative
imprisonment. The Bench, however, let the prisoners off with the
mitigated fine of £30, and yet, on the announcement of the merciful
decision, ‘there were,’ says the police-court reporter, ‘expressions
of disapprobation in the crowded court.’

In contradistinction to the sympathising feeling which in the olden
time and at the present day was and is extended to the smuggler,
it is satisfactory to find that his nefarious transactions do not
always shield him from ridicule. Not long ago, a friend of mine was
crossing from the continent to one of the eastern English ports, and
on the voyage was applied to by another passenger as to how he—the
passenger—could most successfully evade paying the duty on two or three
boxes of cigars which he had in his possession. My friend, who knew
something of Custom House strictness, and had, besides, a conscientious
respect for the laws of his country, advised his fellow-voyager either
to throw the cigars overboard, or to ‘declare’ and pay duty upon them
when he landed. This, it subsequently transpired, the passenger did not
do, but rolled up the cigars in some soiled linen and placed the lot in
a portmanteau. When it came to declaring baggage at the landing-stage
or railway station, the smuggler, like many of his class, grew timid,
and left his portmanteau in the hands of the Customs’ officials without
owning it as his property. My friend declares that the scared look of
the gentleman-smuggler as he hid back in the railway carriage while
a Customs’ boatman walked up and down the platform with the unlucky
portmanteau, and calling out stentoriously, ‘Claim your luggage! claim
your luggage!’ was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. The
unfortunate passenger of course lost his portmanteau, clothes, and
cigars.

In order to present to the reader the unromantic aspect of present-day
smuggling in a comparative light, the writer is induced to quote one
or two cases mentioned by Mr Chester. By perusing these selected
instances, and comparing them with the methods adopted in our own
day, it will be seen that smuggling in former times was surrounded
with an adventurous atmosphere which certainly does not obtain in a
matter-of-fact age like the present. One of the cases quoted by Mr
Chester is a characteristic one. It occurred at the time when duties
were levied on laces, silks, gloves, &c. These were mostly French
manufactures, and, consequently, Dover and other southern ports were
the most convenient localities in which the smuggling fraternity
exercised their calling. At that time, well-horsed spring vans were
used to convey the goods from Dover to London, and at intervals on the
journey, particular houses were used as storage places for the booty
until it could be safely conveyed to the metropolis. ‘On one occasion,’
says Mr Chester, ‘the Customs’ officers at Dover were sent on a fool’s
errand. A van loaded with silk and lace left the town at night; and to
insure it a successful journey, an accomplice informed the officers
of its departure, the venture being suspected. Forthwith they went in
pursuit in a postchaise. The parties in the van, after going about four
miles, drew into a side-road, extinguished the lights, and remained
quiet. The officers soon rushed by in hot haste; and when they had
passed, the smugglers betook themselves in another direction, and got
safely off with their booty.’

At a time when goods were subjected to _ad valorem_ duties, there
were no end of tricks practised by which an importer, whose goods were
seized, obtained his own importations for the veriest trifle, and
thus made a handsome profit by his cleverness. Mr Chester relates an
instance of an importer, more shrewd than honest, who imported into
Folkestone a case of gloves on which he declined to pay duty. The
goods, of course, were seized. Into London, the same gentleman imported
a similar case with a like result. When the goods were offered for sale
at the two places, it was found that the Folkestone case contained all
right-hand gloves, while those in London were all left-hand gloves.
Being considered valueless, they were knocked down to the buyer for a
mere trifle. It is needless to add that the buyer in each case was the
importer, who paired the gloves and pocketed a respectable profit by
the transaction.

Another instance from the same authority illustrates the stratagems
which were resorted to for the purpose of evading Customs’ duties on
watches, when such imports were in vogue. A foreigner, it appears,
had made up his mind to realise a small fortune at the expense of his
comfort; so, taking a passage from Holland, he secreted a large number
of watches round his body in leathern receptacles. The weight was so
great that the unfortunate smuggler was unable to lie down. He had
calculated on a voyage of twenty-four hours, but, being a foreigner, he
little knew the density or the stopping powers of a Thames fog. The fog
detained the ship for another twenty-four hours; and when the vessel
arrived in London, the strain on the smuggler’s system had been so
enormous that he was completely exhausted; his courage oozed out with
his strength; and at last he gave himself up to the Customs’ officials,
who had had a watchful eye on his suspiciously distressed-looking
features.

Since the so-called ‘good old days’ of the novelist, smuggling has
lost much of its attractiveness. The abolition of duty on watches,
silks, lace, gloves, &c., has done a great deal to lessen an illicit
traffic, and wholesale attempts at smuggling are now of comparatively
rare occurrence. Of course, now and again a case crops up in which the
old spirit seems to have revived; but such cases are comparatively
few. Yet, though petty smuggling is, in the main, the special offence
with which Customs’ officers have now to deal, wholesale smuggling
has not yet become a thing of the past. In 1881, a daring attempt to
defraud the revenue took place in London. The writer happened to be
stationed there at the time, and can well remember the excitement
caused in official circles by the discovery, and can recollect the
crowds of officers who used daily to visit the quayage front of the
Custom House, where lay a pair of marine boilers in which five tons of
tobacco had been conveyed to this country from Rotterdam. The history
of the attempted fraud is an interesting one. An anonymous writer, it
appears, had been giving continuous hints to the officials in London
that extensive smuggling was being carried on between Rotterdam and
England. Such anonymous communications being far from uncommon in Lower
Thames Street, but little attention was paid to them, till at last the
writer grew so persistent in his efforts, and gave such plausible and
detailed information, that a detective officer was sent to Rotterdam to
watch the ingenious proceedings.

Taking advantage of the information given by the informer, the
officer occupied a room from which a view of a large boiler-foundry
was obtainable. Keeping strict watch, he saw large quantities of
tobacco being packed, by means of hydraulic pressure, into a couple of
marine boilers, which, when the packing was completed, were placed on
board a steamer for conveyance, if I remember aright, to Newcastle.
Unfortunately, however, for the parties concerned in the smuggling
transaction, a telegram arrived before the boilers. These were not
seized at Newcastle, but were allowed to be placed on the railway and
reach King’s Cross, London, without interference, the authorities
wishing to take the principal participators red-handed. At King’s
Cross they duly arrived, and remained unclaimed for several days. At
last, one was taken to a railway arch at Stepney, where it was watched
day and night until the smugglers came to claim it, when they were of
course arrested. The other boiler, which had remained at King’s Cross,
was—through a telegraphic error, which caused the police to relax
their watchfulness—removed from that locality without their knowledge.
But the conveyance on which it was removed broke down under the heavy
weight, and through this unlooked-for casualty, it was at last secured.
The smugglers were mulcted in a fine of nearly five thousand pounds,
and being unable to pay it, were sent to jail. The writer remembers
well inspecting the boilers when they were lying at the Custom House,
and to those who had the opportunity of seeing them, their construction
gave ample evidence that smuggling as a science was not yet entirely
extinct. The boilers were simply ‘dummies.’ The iron used in their
construction was too thin to resist steam-pressure, and they had
evidently been made for the express purpose of conveying tobacco to
this country. It is not at all improbable, either, that the ‘dummy’
boilers had made more than one trip to England, and had put a good
many pounds sterling in the pockets of their ingenious but dishonest
designers.

Another famous instance of present-day smuggling was brought to light
in the Queen’s Bench division in 1883. From the evidence then given,
it appeared that the smugglers had inaugurated a systematic method of
conveying tobacco from Rotterdam, and that, by no means content with
the old-fashioned practice of having a single buyer and seller, they
had regularly appointed agents, whom they stationed at different ports
in the United Kingdom. On the arrival of the tobacco, the agent or
agents communicated by telegraph with the principals in the affair, and
by means of an arranged cipher, gave information as to when the goods
arrived and when they had passed the Customs’ officers undetected.
The principal was an Irishman, who carried on business as a tobacco
merchant. He had a brother who traded in flax-seed. It occurred to the
former that importations of tobacco which had evaded the duty would be
much more profitable than duty-paid importations, and what more natural
than that his brother’s barrels of flax-seed would form a not easily
detected mode of conveyance? The course adopted then was this: a large
quantity of flax-seed was purchased at Rotterdam, and also a quantity
of tobacco. Sixty pounds-weight of the tobacco was rammed firmly down
into the bottom of a cask, which was then filled up with flax-seed;
and the casks so filled were shipped to this country, and reported and
entered as containing flax-seed only. On one occasion, four hundred
casks containing tobacco stowed in this way escaped detection; and in
April 1882, fourteen hundred pounds of tobacco were smuggled into the
country in twenty-five casks, each containing half a hundredweight of
tobacco. Later on in the same month, two thousand pounds of tobacco
followed their predecessors, and further consignments occurred in May.

At last the crisis came. Somebody, in smuggling parlance, ‘split;’
the officers boarded a ship from Rotterdam, opened the casks, and the
nefarious consignment was at last laid bare. Despite the discovery,
the Attorney-general, who conducted the case for the Crown, had no
little difficulty in bringing the guilt home to the proper parties. The
concealed tobacco had all been addressed to fictitious consignees, but
the evidence of an accomplice exposed such a state of affairs that the
defendant consented to a verdict being entered against him for over six
thousand pounds, being treble the value of the goods, of which penalty,
however, only one-third was eventually enforced.

But this was by no means the end of the history of one of the most
daring attempts in the annals of modern smuggling. Some few months
later, an action was brought against a tenant farmer in Ireland
to recover £1731, 12s. 6d., being treble the value of nearly two
thousand pounds of tobacco found on his premises. The discovery, as
in most cases of the sort, was brought about by information. A police
constable, ‘from information received,’ reported his suspicions to his
superiors. A search was then instituted among the outhouses of the
defendant’s premises. In the first story of one of the outhouses were
a piggery and carthouse, the loft being reached by a ladder. One of
the constables mounted the ladder, and peering through a chink in the
locked door, perceived a bag lying on the floor with tobacco protruding
from it. The door having been forced, fourteen bags of tobacco were
found, with flax-seed scattered over them, the latter naturally
suggesting the quarter from which the tobacco was obtained. The farmer
when questioned denied all knowledge of the tobacco, asserting that
he had let the loft at a weekly rental to a man whom he did not know.
Evidence, however, was stronger than assertion. It was proved that the
farmer, subsequent to the flax-seed seizure mentioned above, frequently
brought bags and bales of cake and leaf-tobacco to the tobacco
merchant’s premises about six o’clock in the morning, and that it was
spun during the night. The jury were inclined to think that the farmer
was not so innocent as he pretended to be, and found a verdict for the
Crown in the full amount claimed.

We have now, perhaps, given sufficient instances of wholesale smuggling
to warrant the opinion that illicit traffic in dutiable articles is
not yet confined to the sailor or fireman who ekes out a scanty wage
by bringing a couple or three pounds of tobacco or a few bottles
of spirits to dispose of at the end of a short continental voyage.
We will, then, before bringing this paper to a conclusion, give a
brief description of the methods of concealment now pursued in petty
smuggling cases. One system, now happily on the wane, is known as
that of ‘Coopering,’ and the method is as follows. For some years
past, a number of Dutch vessels had taken up positions along the
eastern coast just outside the ‘three-mile limit.’ Their object was to
provide tobacco, spirits, and even obscene pictures to the fishermen
who frequent the locality. The tobacco was of the vilest description;
and the fiery, so-called brandy viler still. The fishermen, thinking
that the Customs’ officers did not suspect, grew bold in their
transactions, and bought tobacco and spirits right and left from the
Dutch ‘Coopers.’ Suspicion was aroused, however, and a raid was made
on the fishing-boats. Only a small quantity of dutiable articles was
discovered; but, as it subsequently transpired that a fishing coble
had slipped off to give warning of the raid to the vessels that were
still coming in, and that suspicious parcels and stone bottles of
foreign manufacture were thrown by many of these craft into the sea
in full view of the people on the shore, the quantity discovered was
by no means a criterion of the extent of the illicit traffic. It has
been calculated that during the fishing season five hundred pounds of
smuggled tobacco per week were consumed by the fishing population of
a small port on the eastern coast, and that in a seaport fishing-town
in the same district, of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand
inhabitants, the revenue was defrauded to the extent of from four
thousand to five thousand pounds per annum.

The smuggler’s present methods of concealment, notwithstanding
frequent detections, give evidence that if not so inventive as his
more courageous predecessors, he still retains their faculty of hiding
his contraband goods in places where they will probably be least
suspected. A case occurred at Hull, in December 1883, which proves that
perseverance at least is still an attribute possessed by the smuggler.
On the arrival of a steamer at that port, the officers discovered in
the donkey-engine boiler twenty-one pounds of tobacco. To effect the
seizure, the officers were compelled to unscrew the manhole lid of the
boiler; and on a consulting engineer being called to give evidence, he
stated that it must have taken at least a couple of hours to stow the
tobacco away. Another case of a similar nature occurred at Sunderland
some time ago, when an engineer on board a steamer had a large tin made
exactly to fit the manhole of a water-tank. The water-tight tin was
packed with tobacco and sunk in the tank, so that the smuggler had to
strip to get at it. With amusing candour, the prisoner explained, when
brought before the magistrates, that ‘of course it was no use putting
the can where the officers would easily find it.’ False-bottomed
drawers and chests were formerly a favourite hiding-place for
contraband goods; but the trick is now too well known to be safe.

Another method much in vogue in the old days of smuggling, but seldom
practised now, was to conceal tobacco in loaves of bread specially
baked for the purpose. This particular trick has not been lost sight
of altogether. At Hull, in March 1884, on a Customs’ officer rummaging
the firemen’s quarters on board a steamer, he found two loaves of bread
baked in the German fashion. Taking them in his hand, he suspected
the weight as being excessive, and cutting one in two with his knife,
found four pounds of tobacco inside. The packages had been firmly tied
together, and a thin crust baked over them.

An ingenious place of concealment was discovered by the officers at
Hull in January 1883, when, on boarding a vessel from the continent,
they found seventeen boxes of cigars concealed in the hollow of the
port and starboard rails which surmounted the bulwarks. Underneath
firewood, buried in ballast, hidden in chain lockers, beneath
oilcloths, in the stuffing of sofa-pillows, behind cabin panels,
in the empty interior of an innocent-looking cabin clock, in these
and a thousand other places have the officers, from time to time,
discovered the contraband of the smuggler; while it is known that the
ropes apparently constituting the upper rigging of small craft have
occasionally consisted of tobacco twisted into a resemblance of cordage!

From what we have written, it would appear that though smuggling on
an extensive scale belongs more to past than to present days, yet
the same spirit still exists among people, otherwise honest enough,
whose education and social position ought to free them from thieving
propensities. It is almost against human nature to expect that revenue
frauds will ever be thoroughly eradicated while the present high
duties on special commodities are maintained. The duty on tobacco,
for instance, amounting to five times its value, makes it one of the
greatest temptations to seamen. Most strenuous efforts on the part of
the Customs’ authorities and shipowners have been made to eradicate the
traffic, yet every now and then a successful detection—which represents
three or four successful evasions—occurs, which shows that the spirit
of smuggling is difficult to conquer.



IN ALL SHADES.

BY GRANT ALLEN,

AUTHOR OF ‘BABYLON,’ ‘STRANGE STORIES,’ ETC. ETC.


CHAPTER XXIII.

The governor’s dance was the great event of the Trinidad season—the
occasion to which every girl in the whole island looked forward for
months with the intensest interest. And it was also a great event to
Dr Whitaker; for it was the one time and place, except the Hawthorns’
drawing-room, where he could now meet Nora Dupuy on momentary terms of
seeming equality. In the eye of the law, even in Trinidad, white men,
black men, and brown men are all equal; and under the governor’s roof,
as became the representative of law and order in the little island,
there were no invidious distinctions of persons between European
and negro. Every well-to-do inhabitant, irrespective of cuticular
peculiarities, was duly bidden to the governor’s table: ebony and ivory
mingled freely together once in a moon at the governor’s At Homes and
dances. And Dr Whitaker had made up his mind that on that one solitary
possible occasion he would venture on his sole despairing appeal to
Nora Dupuy, and stand or fall by her final answer.

It was not without serious misgivings that the mulatto doctor had
at last decided upon thus tempting Providence. He was weary of the
terrible disillusion that had come upon him on his return to the home
of his fathers; weary of the painfully vulgar and narrow world into
which he had been cast by unrelenting circumstances. He could not live
any longer in Trinidad. Let him fight it out as he would for the sake
of his youthful ideals, the battle had clearly gone against him, and
there was nothing left for him now but to give it up in despair and fly
to England. He had talked the matter over with Edward Hawthorn—not,
indeed, the question of proposing to Nora Dupuy, for that he held
too sacred for any other ear, but the question of remaining in the
island and fighting down the unconquerable prejudice—and even Edward
had counselled him to go; for he felt how vastly different were the
circumstances of the struggle in his own case and in those of the poor
young mulatto doctor. He himself had only to fight against the social
prejudices of men his real inferiors in intellect and culture and moral
standing. Dr Whitaker had to face as well the utterly uncongenial
brown society into which he had been rudely pitchforked by fate, like
a gentleman into the midst of a pot-house company. It was best for
them all that Dr Whitaker should take himself away to a more fitting
environment; and Edward had himself warmly advised him to return once
more to free England.

The governor’s dance was given, not at Government House in the Plains,
but at Banana Garden, the country bungalow, perched high up on a
solitary summit of the Westmoreland mountains. The big ballroom was
very crowded; and Nora Dupuy, in a pale, maize-coloured evening dress,
was universally recognised by black, brown, and white alike as the
belle of the evening. She danced almost every round with one partner
after another; and it was not till almost half the evening had passed
away that Dr Whitaker got the desired chance of even addressing her.
The chance came at last just before the fifth waltz, a dance that Nora
had purposely left vacant, in case she should happen to pick up in the
earlier part of the evening an exceptionally agreeable and promising
partner. She was sitting down to rest for a moment beside her chaperon
of the night, on a bench placed just outside the window in the tropical
garden, when the young mulatto, looking every inch a gentleman in his
evening dress—the first time Nora had ever seen him so attired—strolled
anxiously up to her, with ill-affected carelessness, and bowed a timid
bow to his former travelling companion. Pure opposition to Mr Dupuy,
and affection for the two Hawthorns, had made Nora exceptionally
gracious just that moment to all brown people; and, on purpose to
scandalise her ‘absurdly punctilious’ chaperon, she returned the
doctor’s hesitating salute with a pleasant smile of perfect cordiality.
‘Dr Whitaker!’ she cried, leaning over towards him in a kindly way,
which made the poor mulatto’s heart flutter terribly; ‘so here you are,
as you promised! I’m so glad you’ve come this evening.—And have you
brought Miss Whitaker with you?’

The mulatto hesitated and stammered. She could not possibly have asked
him a more _mal à propos_ question. The poor young man looked about him
feebly, and then answered in a low voice: ‘Yes; my father and sister
are here somewhere.’

‘Nora, my dear,’ her chaperon said in a tone of subdued feminine
thunder, ‘I didn’t know you had the pleasure of Miss Whitaker’s
acquaintance.’

‘Neither have I, Mrs Pereira; but perhaps Dr Whitaker will be good
enough to introduce me.—Not now, thank you, Dr Whitaker; I don’t want
you to run away this minute and fetch your sister. Some other time will
do as well. It’s so seldom, you know, we have the chance of a good talk
now, together.’

Dr Whitaker smiled and stammered. It was possible, of course, to accept
Nora’s reluctance in either of two senses: she might be anxious that he
should stop and talk to her; or she might merely wish indefinitely to
postpone the pleasure of making Miss Euphemia’s personal acquaintance;
but she flooded him so with the light of her eyes as she spoke, that he
chose to put the most flattering of the two alternative interpretations
upon her ambiguous sentence.

‘You are very good to say so,’ he answered, still timidly; and Nora
noticed how very different was his manner of speaking now from the
self-confident Dr Whitaker of the old _Severn_ days. Trinidad had
clearly crushed all the confidence as well as all the enthusiasm
clean out of him. ‘You are very good, indeed, Miss Dupuy; I wish the
opportunities for our meeting occurred oftener.’

He stood talking beside her for a minute or two longer, uttering the
mere polite commonplaces of ballroom conversation—the heat of the
evening, the shortcomings of the band, the beauty of the flowers—when
suddenly Nora gave a little jump and seized her programme with singular
discomposure. Dr Whitaker looked up at once, and divined by instinct
the cause of her hasty movement. Tom Dupuy, just fresh from the
cane-cutting, was looking about for her down the long corridor at the
opposite end of the inner garden. ‘Where’s my cousin? Have you seen my
cousin?’ he was asking everybody; for the seat where Nora was sitting
with Mrs Pereira stood under the shade of a big papaw tree, and so it
was impossible for him to discern her face, though she could see his
features quite distinctly.

‘I won’t dance with that horrid man, my cousin Tom!’ Nora said in her
most decided voice. ‘I’m quite sure he’s coming here this minute on
purpose to ask me.’

‘Is your programme full?’ Dr Whitaker inquired with a palpitating
heart.

‘No; not quite,’ she answered, and handed it to him encouragingly.
There was just one dance still left vacant—the next waltz. ‘I’m too
tired to dance it out,’ Nora cried pettishly. ‘The horrid man! I hope
he won’t see me.’

‘He’s coming this way, dear,’ Mrs Pereira put in with placid composure.
‘You’ll have to sit it out with him, now; there’s no help for it.’

‘Sit it out with him!—sit it out with Tom Dupuy! O no, Mrs Pereira; I
wouldn’t do it for a thousand guineas.’

‘What will you do, then?’ Dr Whitaker asked tremulously, still holding
the programme and pencil in his undecided hand. Dare he—dare he ask her
to dance just once with him?

‘What shall I do?—Why, nothing simpler. Have an engagement already, of
course, Dr Whitaker.’

She looked at him significantly. Tom Dupuy was just coming up. If Dr
Whitaker meant to ask her, there was no time to be lost. His knees gave
way beneath him, but he faltered out at last in some feeble fashion:
‘Then, Miss Dupuy, may I—may I—may I have the pleasure?’

To Mrs Pereira’s immense dismay, Nora immediately smiled and nodded.
‘I can’t dance it with you,’ she said with a hasty gesture—she shrank,
naturally, from that open confession of faith before the whole
assembled company—‘but if you’ll allow me, I’ll sit it out with you
here in the garden. You may put your name down for it, if you like.
Quickly, please—write it quickly; here’s Tom Dupuy just coming.’

The mulatto had hardly scratched his own name with shaky pencilled
letters on the little card, when Tom Dupuy swaggered up in his awkward,
loutish, confident manner, and with a contemptuous nod of condescending
half-recognition to the overjoyed mulatto, asked, in his insular West
Indian drawl, whether Nora could spare him a couple of dances.

‘Your canes seem to have delayed you too late, Tom Dupuy,’ Nora
answered coldly. ‘Dr Whitaker has just asked me for my last vacancy.
You should come earlier to a dance, you know, if you want to find a
good partner.’

Tom Dupuy stared hard at her face in puzzled astonishment. ‘Your last
vacancy!’ he cried incredulously. ‘Dr Whitaker! No more dances to
spare, Nora! No, no, I say; this won’t do, you know! You’ve done this
on purpose.—Let me have a squint at your programme, will you?’

‘If you don’t choose to take my word for the facts,’ Nora answered
haughtily, ‘you can see the names and numbers of my engagements for
yourself on my programme.—Dr Whitaker, have the kindness to hand my
cousin my programme, if you please.—Thank you.’

Tom Dupuy took the programme ungraciously, and glanced down it with
an angry eye. He read every name out aloud till he came to number
eleven, ‘Dr Whitaker.’ As he reached that name, his lip curled with
an ugly suddenness, and he handed the bit of cardboard back coldly to
his defiant cousin. ‘Very well, Miss Nora,’ he answered with a sneer.
‘You’re quite at liberty, of course, to choose your own company however
it pleases you. I see your programme’s quite full; but your list of
names is rather comprehensive than select, I fancy.—The last name was
written down as I was coming towards you. This is a plot to insult
me.—Dr Whitaker, we shall settle this little difference elsewhere,
probably—with the proper weapon—a horsewhip. Though your ancestors,
to be sure, were better accustomed, I believe, sir, to a good raw
cowhide.—Good-evening, Miss Nora.—Good-evening, Dr Whitaker.’

The mulatto’s eyes flashed fire, but he replied with a low and
stately bow, in suppressed accents: ‘I shall be ready to answer you
in this matter whenever you wish, Mr Dupuy—and with your own weapon.
Good-evening.’ And he held out his arm quietly to Nora.

Nora rose and took the mulatto’s proffered arm at once with a sweeping
air of utter indifference. ‘Shall we take a turn round the gardens,
Dr Whitaker?’ she asked calmly, reassuring herself at the same time
with a rapid glance that nobody except poor frightened Mrs Pereira had
overheard this short altercation.—‘How lovely the moon looks to-night!
What an exquisite undertone of green in the long shadows of those
columns in the portico!’

‘Undertone of green!’ Tom Dupuy exclaimed aloud in vulgar derision (he
was too much of a clod to see that his cue in the scene was fairly
past, and that dignity demanded of him now to keep perfectly silent).
‘Undertone of green, indeed, with her precious nigger!—Mrs Pereira,
this is your fault! A pretty sort of chaperon _you_ make, upon my word,
to let her go and engage herself to sit out a dance with a common
mulatto!—Where’s Uncle Theodore? Where is he, I tell you? I shall run
and fetch him this very minute. I always said that in the end that girl
Nora would go and marry a woolly-headed brown man.’


CHAPTER XXIV.

Nora and the mulatto walked across the garden in unbroken silence, past
the fountain in the centre of the courtyard; past the corridor by the
open supper-room; past the hanging lanterns on the outer shrubbery; and
down the big flight of stone steps to the gravelled Italian terrace
that overlooked the deep tropical gully. When they reached the foot of
the staircase, Nora said in as unconcerned a tone as she could muster
up: ‘Let us walk down here, away from the house, Dr Whitaker. Tom may
perhaps send papa out to look for me, and I’d rather not meet him till
the next dance is well over. Please take me along the terrace.’

Dr Whitaker turned with her silently along the path, and uttered
not a word till they reached the marble seat at the end of the
creeper-covered balustrade. Then he sat down moodily beside her, and
said in what seemed a perfectly unruffled voice: ‘Miss Dupuy, I am not
altogether sorry that this little incident has turned out just as it
has happened. It enables you to judge for yourself the sort of insult
that men of my colour are liable to meet with here in Trinidad.’

Nora fingered her fan nervously. ‘Tom Dupuy’s always an unendurably
rude fellow,’ she said, with affected carelessness. ‘He’s rude by
nature, you know, that’s the fact of it. He’s rude to me. He’s rude to
everybody. He’s a boor, Dr Whitaker; a boor at heart. You mustn’t take
any notice of what he says to you.’

‘Yes; he _is_ a boor, Miss Dupuy—and I shall venture to say so,
although he’s your own cousin—but in what other country in the world
would such a boor venture to believe himself able to look down upon
other men, his equals in everything except an accident of colour?’

‘Oh, Dr Whitaker, you make too much altogether of his rudeness. It
isn’t personal to you; it’s part of his nature.’

‘Miss Dupuy,’ the young mulatto burst out suddenly, after a moment’s
pause and internal struggle, ‘I’m not sorry for it, as I said before;
for it gives me the opportunity of saying something to you that I have
long been waiting to tell you.’

‘Well?’—frigidly.

‘Well, it is this: I mean at once to leave Trinidad.’

Nora started. It was not quite what she was expecting. ‘To leave
Trinidad, Dr Whitaker? And where to go? Back to England?’

‘Yes, back to England.—Miss Dupuy, for heaven’s sake, listen to me for
a moment. This dance won’t be very long. As soon as it’s over, I must
take you back to the ballroom. I have only these few short minutes to
speak to you. I have been waiting long for them—looking forward to
them; hoping for them; dreading them; foreseeing them. Don’t disappoint
me of my one chance of a hearing. Sit here and hear me out: I beg of
you—I implore you.’

Nora’s fingers trembled terribly, and she felt half inclined to rise
at once and go back to Mrs Pereira; but she could not find it in her
heart utterly to refuse that pleading tone of profound emotion, even
though it came from only a brown man. ‘Well, Dr Whitaker,’ she answered
tremulously, ‘say on whatever you have to say to me.’

‘I’m going to England, Miss Dupuy,’ the poor young mulatto went on
in broken accents; ‘I can stand no longer the shame and misery of my
own surroundings in this island. You know what they are. Picture them
to yourself for a moment. Forget you are a white woman, a member of
this old proud unforgiving aristocracy—“for they ne’er pardon who
have done the wrong:” forget it for once, and try to think how it
would feel to you, after your English up-bringing, with your tastes
and ideas and habits and sentiments, to be suddenly set down in the
midst of a society like that of the ignorant coloured class here in
Trinidad. On the one side, contempt and contumely from the most boorish
and unlettered whites; on the other side, utter uncongeniality with
one’s own poor miserable people. Picture it to yourself—how absolutely
unendurable!’

Nora bethought her silently of Tom Dupuy from both points of view, and
answered in a low tone: ‘Dr Whitaker, I recognise the truth of what you
say. I—I am sorry for you; I sympathise with you.’

It was a great deal for a daughter of the old slave-owning oligarchy to
say—how much, people in England can hardly realise; and Dr Whitaker
accepted it gratefully. ‘It’s very kind of you, Miss Dupuy,’ he went on
again, the tears rising quickly to his eyes, ‘very, very kind of you.
But the struggle is over; I can’t stand it any longer; I mean at once
to return to England.’

‘You will do wisely, I think,’ Nora answered, looking at him steadily.

‘I will do wisely,’ he repeated in a wandering tone. ‘Yes, I will do
wisely. But, Miss Dupuy, strange to say, there is one thing that still
binds me down to Trinidad.—Oh, for heaven’s sake, listen to me, and
don’t condemn me unheard.—No, no, I beg of you, don’t rise yet! I will
be brief. Hear me out, I implore of you, I implore of you! I am only a
mulatto, I know; but mulattoes have a heart as well as white men—better
than some, I do honestly believe. Miss Dupuy, from the very first
moment I saw you, I—I loved you! yes, I _will_ say it—I loved you!—I
loved you!’

Nora rose, and stood erect before him, proud but tremulous, in her
girlish beauty. ‘Dr Whitaker,’ she said, in a very calm tone, ‘I knew
it; I saw it. From the first moment you ever spoke to me, I knew it
perfectly.’

He drew a long breath to still the violent throbbing of his heart. ‘You
knew it,’ he said, almost joyously—‘you knew it! And you did not repel
me! Oh, Miss Dupuy, for one of your blood and birth, that was indeed a
great condescension!’

Nora hesitated. ‘I liked you, Dr Whitaker,’ she answered slowly—‘I
liked you, and I was sorry for you.’

‘Thank you, thank you. Whatever else you say, for that one word I
thank you earnestly. But oh, what more can I say to you? I love you;
I have always loved you. I shall always love you in future. Take me
or reject me, I shall always love you. And yet, how can I ask you?
But in England—in England, Miss Dupuy, the barrier would be less
absolute.—Yes, yes; I know how hopeless it is: but this once—this once
only! I _must_ ask you! Oh, for pity’s sake, in England—far away from
it all—in London—where nobody thinks of these things! Why, I know a
Hindu barrister—— But there! it’s not a matter for reasoning; it lies
between heart and heart! Oh, Miss Dupuy, tell me—tell me, tell me, is
there—is there any chance for me?’

Nora’s heart relented within her. ‘Dr Whitaker,’ she said slowly and
remorsefully, ‘you can’t tell how much I feel for you. I can see at
once what a dreadful position you are placed in. I can see, of course,
how impossible it is for you ever to think of marrying any—any lady of
your own colour—at least as they are brought up here in Trinidad. I can
see that you could only fall in love with—with a white lady, a person
fitted by education and manners to be a companion to you. I know how
clever you are, and I think I can see how good you are too. I know how
far all your tastes and ideas are above those of the people you must
mix with here, or, for that matter, above Tom Dupuy’s—or my own either.
I see it all; I know it all. And indeed, I like you—I admire you, and
I like you. I don’t want you to think me unkind and unappreciative.—Dr
Whitaker, I feel truly flattered that you should speak so to me this
evening—but’—— And she hesitated. The young mulatto felt that that
‘but’ was the very deathblow to his last faint hope and aspiration.
‘But—— Well, you know these things are something more than a mere
matter of liking and admiring. Let us still be friends, Dr Whitaker—let
us still be friends.—And there’s the band striking up the next waltz.
Will you kindly take me back to the ballroom? I—I am engaged to dance
it with Captain Castello.’

‘One second, Miss Dupuy—for God’s sake, one second! Is that final? Is
that irrevocable?’

‘Final, Dr Whitaker—quite final. I like you; I admire you; but I can
never, never—never accept you!’

The mulatto uttered a little low sharp piercing cry. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed
in an accent of terrible despair, ‘then it is all over—all, all over!’
Next instant he had drawn himself together with an effort again, and
offering Nora his arm with constrained calmness, he began to lead her
back towards the crowded ballroom. As he neared the steps, he paused
once more for a second, and almost whispered in her ear in a hollow
voice: ‘Thank you, thank you for ever for at least your sympathy!’



MAN-LIKE APES—AND MAN.


Man-like, or in scientific parlance, Anthropoid Apes, are distinguished
from others of the monkey tribe on account of their greater size
and their greater resemblance to the human species. Within the last
quarter of a century, they have, owing to the growing prominence of
the doctrine of evolution, been raised to a much higher place than
before as subjects of study for the naturalist, the scientist, the
philosopher. From being little other than mere curiosities in animal
life, they have become important objects of psychological inquiry,
and have taken their place as factors not to be overlooked in the
elevated regions of speculative thought. This is due almost solely to
the change that has passed over our methods of studying animal life. We
have ceased to regard the lower creatures as little better than pieces
of living mechanism, and have come to view them as vital steps in the
great ladder of progression which connects the higher with the lower
orders of organic existence. Hence it is not now a matter of wonder
that a whole volume of the ‘International Scientific Series’ should be
devoted to the study of Man-like Apes. The volume, _Anthropoid Apes_
(London: Kegan Paul & Co.), is from the pen of Professor Hartmann of
Berlin, and forms the fifty-third of the above valuable series of works.

On account, says the author, of their external bodily characteristics,
of their anatomical structure, and their highly developed intelligence,
Anthropoids not only stand first among apes, but they take a still
higher place, approximating to the human species. Their fossil remains
carry us into a far-back period of prehistoric time; and even within
historic times, we have them mentioned as early as 500 B.C. They were
then known to the Carthaginians, who call them ‘_gorillai_,’ and
describe them as hairy silvan creatures who replied to the attacks of
the seafarers by throwing stones at them.

The gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan, and the gibbon, are
the chief of the animals included under the title Anthropoid Apes.
They differ from each other and among themselves in external form
according to the age and sex, the difference between the sexes being
most strongly marked in the gorilla, and least apparent in the
gibbon. ‘When a young male gorilla is compared with an aged animal of
the same species, we are almost tempted to believe that we have to
do with two entirely different creatures.’ Into the distinguishing
physiological peculiarities of the external form of these creatures, we
cannot of course enter here, and must refer to the full and elaborate
investigations placed on record by Professor Hartmann.

Among the Anthropoids, the gorilla, the ‘prototype of the species,’
deserves our notice first. The aged male gorilla, in the full strength
of his bodily development, is a creature of terrible aspect. This
animal, when standing upright, is more than six feet in height. The
hinder part of the head is broader below than above, and the projecting
arches above the eyes give a peculiar prominence to this part of
the skull. ‘The dark eyes glow between the lids with a ferocious
expression.’ The neck is very powerful, almost like that of a bull,
and the shoulders are remarkable for their breadth. The arms are
very long, and of enormous strength; but the legs short and feeble
in proportion. The gorilla inhabits the forests of West Africa, and
is sometimes seen in large numbers on the sea-coast, probably driven
thither from the interior by a scarcity of food. The gorilla, moreover,
lives in a society consisting of male and female, with their young of
varying ages, and the family group inhabits the recesses of the forest.
According to one observer, they frequent the same sleeping-place not
more than three or four times consecutively, and usually spend the
night wherever they happen to be when night comes on. The male gorilla
chooses a suitable tree, not very high, and by twisting and bending
the branches, constructs a kind of rude bed or nest for his family.
He himself spends the night under the tree, and thus protects the
female and their young from the nocturnal attacks of leopards, which
are always ready to devour all species of apes. In the daytime, the
gorillas roam through the forest in search of the favourite leaves or
fruits which form their food.

In walking, gorillas place the backs of their closed fingers on the
ground, or more rarely support themselves on the flat palm, while
the bent soles of the feet are also in contact with the ground.
Their gait is tottering; the movement of the body, which is never
in an upright position as in man, but bent forward, rolls to some
extent from one side to another. They are skilful climbers, and when
ranging from tree to tree, will go to their very tops. The gorilla is
regarded as a dreadful and very dangerous animal by the negroes who
inhabit the same country; though Professor Hartmann considers that Du
Chaillu’s descriptions are greatly exaggerated ‘for the benefit of
his readers.’ When the animal is scared by man, he generally takes
to flight screaming, and he only assumes the defensive if wounded or
driven into a corner. At such times his size, strength, and dexterity
combine to render him a formidable enemy. ‘He sends forth a kind of
howl or furious yelp, stands up on his hind-legs like an enraged bear,
advances with clumsy gait in this position and attacks his enemy. At
the same time the hair on his head and the nape of his neck stands
erect, his teeth are displayed, and his eyes flash with savage fury.
He beats his massive breast with his fists, or beats the air with
them. Koppenfels says that if no further provocation is given, and his
opponent gradually retreats before the animal’s rage has reached its
highest point, he does not return to the attack. In other cases he
parries the blow directed against him with the skill of a practised
fighter; and, as is also done by the bear, he grasps his opponent by
the arm and crunches it, or else throws the man down and rends him with
his terrible canine teeth.’

Enough of this silvan monster in his wild state. Let us turn to him
in captivity; and we can only take one out of several individuals
described. The one referred to was caught young, and gradually
accustomed to a mixed diet preparatory to his being brought from Africa
to Europe. While still with his first possessors, he was allowed to run
about as he chose, being only watched as little children are watched.
He clung to human companionship; showed no trace of mischievous,
malicious, or savage qualities, but was sometimes self-willed. He
expressed the ideas which occurred to him by different sounds, one of
which was the characteristic tone of importunate petition, while other
sounds expressed fright or horror, and in rare instances a sullen and
defiant growl might be heard. In moments of exuberant satisfaction, he
would raise himself on his hind-legs, rub his breast with both fists,
or, after quite a human fashion, clap his hands together—this an action
which no one had taught him. His dexterity in eating was particularly
remarkable. He took up a cup or glass with instinctive care, clasped
the vessel with both hands, and set it down again so softly and
carefully that the narrator cannot remember his breaking a single
article of household goods. ‘His behaviour at meal-times was quiet
and mannerly; he only took as much as he could hold with his thumb,
fore, and middle finger, and looked on with indifference when any of
the different forms of food heaped up before him were taken away.
If, however, nothing was given him, he growled impatiently, looked
narrowly at all the dishes from his place at table, and accompanied
every plate carried off by the negro boys with an angry snarl, or a
short resentful cough, and sometimes he sought to seize the arm of the
passer-by, in order to express his displeasure more plainly by a bite
or a blow. He drank by suction, stooping over the vessel, without even
putting his hands into it or upsetting it, and in the case of smaller
vessels, he carried them to his mouth.’ He was clever in manifesting
his wishes, and often expressed them in an urgent and caressing manner.
Child-like, he took a special pleasure in making a noise by beating on
hollow articles, and he seldom omitted an opportunity of drumming on
casks, dishes, or tin trays, whenever he passed by them. After being
brought to Berlin, however, he did not live long, dying of a ‘galloping
consumption.’

The second species of anthropoid apes is the chimpanzee. The full-grown
animal of this species is smaller than the adult gorilla. An aged male
chimpanzee has broad, rather rounded shoulders, a powerful chest, long
muscular arms reaching to the knees, and a long hand, which seems to be
very slender in comparison with that of the gorilla. Like the latter
animal, he is a denizen of forests, and subsists on wild fruits of
various kinds. He lives either in separate families or in small groups
of families. Where he inhabits the forest regions of Central Africa,
his habits are more arboreal than those of the gorilla; elsewhere,
as on the south-west coast, he seems to live more upon the ground.
His gait is weak and vacillating, and he can stand erect but a short
time. These animals send forth loud cries; and the horrible wails, the
furious shrieks and howls that may be heard morning and evening, and
often in the night, make these creatures truly hateful to travellers.
When chimpanzees are attacked, they strike the ground with their
hands, but they do not, as the gorilla does, beat their breasts with
their fists. As for the penthouses which Du Chaillu asserts these
animals build, Professor Hartmann is somewhat doubtful regarding
them. An illustration of this structure, as given by Du Chaillu, has
been imitated in London, but this, in Hartmann’s opinion, has been
embellished. ‘Koppenfels believes that the so-called penthouse is only
the family nest, under which the male places himself; while Reichenfels
thinks it possible that some parasitic growth, perhaps a _Loranthus_,
gave rise to the belief that such a penthouse is erected.’

A male chimpanzee, which was kept in the Berlin Aquarium in 1876,
was remarkable for his excessive liveliness, and was on particularly
friendly terms with a little two-year-old boy, the son of Dr Hermes,
the director of the aquarium. ‘When the child entered the room, the
chimpanzee ran to meet him, embraced and kissed him, seized his hand
and drew him to the sofa, that they might play together. The child was
often rough with his playfellow, pulling him by the mouth, pinching his
ears, or lying on him, yet the chimpanzee was never known to lose his
temper. He behaved very differently to boys between six and ten years
old. When a number of schoolboys visited the office, he ran towards
them, went from one to the other, shook one of them, bit the leg of
another, seized the jacket of a third with the right hand, jumped
up, and with the left gave him a sound box on the ear. In short, he
played the wildest pranks. It seemed as if he were infected with the
joyous excitement of youth, which induced him to riot with the troop of
schoolboys.’

One day when Dr Hermes gave his nine-year-old son a slight tap on
the head for some blunder in his arithmetic, the chimpanzee, who was
also sitting at the table, thought it his duty likewise to show his
displeasure, and gave the boy a sound box on the ear. If, again, Dr
Hermes pointed out to him that some one was staring or mocking at him,
and said: ‘Do not put up with it,’ the creature cried, ‘Oh! oh!’ and
rushed at the person in question in order to strike or bite him, or
express his displeasure in some other way. When he saw the director
was writing, he often seized a pen, dipped it in the inkstand, and
scrawled upon the paper. ‘He displayed a special talent for cleaning
the window-panes of the aquarium. It was amusing to see him squeezing
up the cloth, moistening the pane with his lips, and then rubbing it
hard, passing quickly from one place to another.’

Of a female chimpanzee, Massica by name, kept in the Dresden Zoological
Gardens, some extraordinary things are told. She was a remarkable
creature, not only in her external habits, but in her disposition. ‘At
one moment she would sit still with a brooding air, only occasionally
darting a mischievous, flashing glance at the spectators; at another
she took pleasure in feats of strength, or she roamed to and fro in her
spacious inclosure like an angry beast of prey.’ She would sometimes
rattle the bars of her cage with a violence that made the spectators
uneasy; at other times would claw at people who entered the vestibule
of her cage, and try to tear their clothes. She was fond of playing
with old hats, which she set upon her head, and if the top was quite
torn off, she drew it down upon her neck.

But Massica was frequently ungovernable. She hardly obeyed any one
except Schöpf, the director of the gardens; and when in good-humour she
would sit on his knee and put her muscular arms round his neck with a
caressing gesture. But, in spite of this, he was never quite secure
from her roguish tricks. She was able to use a spoon, though somewhat
awkwardly; and she could pour from larger vessels into smaller ones
without spilling the liquor. If she was left alone for any time, she
tried to open the lock of her cage; and she once succeeded in doing
so, but on that occasion she stole the key. It was kept hanging on
the wall; and she, observing it, took it down, hid it in her armpit,
and crept quietly back to her cage. When the occasion served her
purpose, with the key she easily opened the lock, and walked out. She
also knew how to use a gimlet, to wring out wet clothes, and to blow
her nose with a handkerchief. If allowed to do so, she would draw off
the keeper’s boots, then scramble with them up to some place out of
reach, and, when he asked for them, throw them at his head. She, like
the clever gorilla before described, died of consumption. When her
illness began, she became apathetic, and looked about with a vacant,
unobservant stare. Just before her death, she put her arms round
Schöpf’s neck when he came to visit her, looked at him placidly, kissed
him three times, stretched out her hands to him, and died. ‘The last
moments of Anthropoids,’ remarks our author, ‘have their tragic side!’

Did space permit, we might give many other details of a similar
character as to the habits of the orang-utan, the gibbon, and others
of the larger apes, both in their wild state and in captivity; but the
above are sufficient to illustrate the family to which they belong. A
much more interesting matter remains to be considered, namely, what
is called the ‘anthropomorphism’ of these creatures, that is, their
relation physically to the highest of all the mammalia, man.

Professor Hartmann observes that Huxley’s statement, that the lowest
apes are further removed from the highest apes than the latter are
from men, is, according to his experience, still perfectly valid. ‘It
cannot be denied that the highest order of the animal world is closely
connected with the highest created being.’ But it does not follow
therefrom that man is descended from apes, or is simply an improved
kind of ape. There is, we fear, still prevailing among large sections
of intelligent persons the belief that Darwin’s theory was intended
to prove that the monkey was the progenitor of man. Of course no one
who reads Darwin’s works for himself would ever go away with such a
misconception of the whole question. What Darwin’s hypothesis suggested
was, not that man was descended from the monkey, but that both man and
the monkey may be descendants of a common progenitor, a common type,
now extinct, and of which no indisputable traces have yet been found.
From this common type, or ground-form, so to speak, the process of
development may, according to Darwin, have resulted in two distinct
branches or offshoots—the one branch of development ending in the
monkey tribe, the other branch ending in man. It is, in the absence
of any certain traces of the extinct common type or progenitor, not a
subject on which to dogmatise, but is a theory or hypothesis which,
in the opinion of Darwin and many other scientists after him, best
accounts for the morphological development of man viewed merely from
the physical side.

Professor Hartmann admits that his investigations have not brought
the problem any nearer to a solution. A baby gorilla is much nearer
in physical constitution to a human baby, than the full-grown gorilla
is to the mature man; thus indicating that the process of development
within the lifetime of an Anthropoid is not in the direction of
improvement or further approximation to the human type, but is in the
direction of retrogression, or further removal from the human type. ‘A
great chasm,’ he says, ‘between Man and Anthropoids is constituted, as
I believe, by the fact that the human race is capable of education,
and is able to acquire the highest mental culture, while the most
intelligent Anthropoid can only receive a certain mechanical training.
And even to this training a limit is set by the surly temper displayed
by Anthropoids as they get older.’ So that it would seem as if the
development of the Anthropoids morally, if we may so use the word here,
is, like their physical development, not one of progress or improvement
_in the individual_. These larger apes, therefore, with all their
striking resemblances to the human form, are not moving nearer towards
Man, but merely remain Man-like.



SPIRITED AWAY.


IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

It was about eight o’clock on a certain November evening in the year
188-, that I found myself one of a number of passengers disgorged
from a train on the platform of the St Pancras Station. I was just
turned nineteen years of age, and this was the first time I had set
foot in London. My journey had been a long and tedious one, and I was
thoroughly chilled and worn out when I stepped out of the carriage. I
had started from home at six in the morning for a twelve miles’ walk to
the nearest station, and after that, had spent hour after hour, first
in one third-class carriage, and then in another, for my home was in a
remote district many miles from any main line to the metropolis. I may
just add that I had but lately recovered from a long illness, having
outgrown my strength—or so my friends averred—and to that fact some
portion of the weariness I now felt was no doubt attributable.

However, here I was at last, really and truly, in London—in the great
city. It was the consummation of the dreams of my youth, as it is of
the dreams of so many hundreds of ambitious, country-bred lads. I
had no luggage to detain me, the sole article I had brought with me
being a small handbag containing a few necessaries: my portmanteau was
to follow in the course of a couple of days. As I was making my way
towards the exit, I caught sight of the refreshment room. I had had
nothing to eat since morning but a few biscuits, and now the pangs of
hunger began to make themselves felt. I pushed open the swing-doors
of the restaurant, and going up to the counter, I asked for a cup of
coffee and a couple of sandwiches. While I was being served, I counted
over again the small amount of money in my purse and asked myself
whether I could afford to take a cab to my destination. Why not walk?
The night was young, and the street in which my friend lived, being
in the heart of London, could not be more than two or, at the most,
three miles away. Besides, there seemed a spice of adventure, something
that would serve me to talk about in time to come, in finding my way,
utter stranger as I was, alone and by night through the streets of
London—those streets about which I had read so much, and had so often
pictured in my thoughts. I decided that I would walk.

Here it becomes needful to mention that my destination was the lodgings
of a certain friend, whose name, for the purposes of this narrative,
shall be Gascoigne. I call him my friend, and such he was, although
he was four years older than myself. We were both natives of the
same small country town; his parents and mine were old friends; and
owing to the similarity of our tastes and pursuits, he and I had been
much thrown together up to the date of his leaving home to push his
fortunes in London. We had kept up an unbroken correspondence after
his departure; and now that my father had lighted on evil days, and it
became imperative that I should turn out into the world, Gascoigne had
at once come to the rescue. I must leave home, he wrote, and take up my
quarters with him till he should succeed in finding some situation that
would be likely to suit me, which he had little doubt about being able
to do in the course of a few weeks at the most. And thus it fell out
that here I was in London.

Outside the station, I found a policeman, from whom I inquired
my nearest way to the Strand, in a street off which thoroughfare
Gascoigne’s rooms were situated. The night was damp and raw, with a
sort of thin, wet mist in the atmosphere, which blurred the lamps
and the lights in the shops a little way off, and made the pavement
greasy and unpleasant to walk on. But little recked I about the
weather. I was pacing London streets, and to me, for the time being,
that was all-sufficient. The coffee had warmed me; the fatigue I had
felt previously was forgotten as I walked on and on in a sort of
waking dream. More than once I had to ask my way, and more than once
I wandered from the direct road; but at length, after about an hour’s
walking, I found the street I was in search of, and two minutes later
I knocked at the door of No. 16. My summons was responded to by a
middle-aged woman—Gascoigne’s landlady, as I afterwards found—who, in
answer to my inquiry, informed me that my friend had been called out of
town two days previously on important business, and was not expected
home till the morrow. I turned from the door with a sinking heart,
feeling more lost and lonely than I had ever felt before. I was in the
heart of the great Babylon, and knew not a single soul out of all the
teeming thousands around me. Presently, I found myself in the Strand
again, and there I came to a halt for a little while, gazing on a scene
so fresh and strange to me. The glare, the uproar, the interminable
tangle of vehicles, the hundreds of human beings, young and old, rich
and poor, passing ceaselessly to and fro, winding in and out without
touching each other, like midges dancing in the sun—all these affected
my spirits like a tonic, and in a very little while put all morbid
fancies to flight. What if I were alone in London without a creature
anywhere that I knew—there were thousands of others in a similar
plight. Gascoigne would be back on the morrow, and for this one night I
must make shift with a bed at some decent coffee-house or inexpensive
hotel. It was too early yet to think of turning in; it would be time
enough an hour hence to set about finding quarters for the night.

I wandered on, heedless whither my footsteps might lead me, my
weariness all but forgotten in the novelty of the scenes which met my
country-bred eyes at every turn. As the clocks were striking ten, I
found myself on one of the bridges, gazing over the parapet at the
black-flowing river as it washed and swirled through the arches under
my feet. A thick fog was slowly creeping up, and even while I was
gazing at the fringe of lamps on some other bridge, its dark mantle
closed round them, and shut them in as completely as though they had
never been. A few minutes later, the fog had reached the spot where I
was standing, and had caught me in a damp, sickly embrace, which in a
very little while sufficed to chill me to the marrow, and blotted out
as completely as with a wet sponge all the seething world around me.

When I began to move again after my halt, I realised for the first time
how thoroughly weary and dead-beat I was, and that I must no longer
delay seeking out a lodging for the night. The fog was thickening
fast, and it was impossible to see more than three or four yards in
any direction. In my bewilderment, instead of turning back towards
the Strand side of the bridge, as my intention was, I seem to have
unwittingly crossed to the Surrey side, seeing that, a few minutes
later, I found myself in a maze of narrow, tortuous streets, in which
gin palaces and fried-fish shops seemed to be the chief places of
entertainment.

I wandered on, turning from one thoroughfare into another, feeling in
that thick, black fog more utterly lost and bewildered, even in the
streets of London, than I should have done if set down at midnight
in the heart of Salisbury Plain with nothing but the stars to guide
me on my way. In the district in which I now found myself there
seemed to be no small hotels where a stranger might find cheap but
decent accommodation for the night—nothing but flaring taverns and
low coffee-shops. Three or four of these latter I passed which, even
dead-beat as I was, I could not summon up courage to enter—they looked
too unsavoury and repulsive to a youth of countrified tastes like
myself. At length I came to one which seemed more promising than any I
had yet seen—cleaner and neater in every way, as far as I could judge
by peering through the window. It was merely a coffee-shop, with some
cups and saucers and a few muffins, teacakes, and other comestibles in
the window; but what had more attraction for me than anything else was
the welcome legend, ‘Good Beds,’ painted in black letters on the lamp
over the door. I hesitated no longer, but pushed open the swing-doors
and entered.

My first glance round showed me that the place was one much frequented
by foreigners; and when the _cafetier_ himself came down the room to
inquire my pleasure, I saw at once that, whatever else his nationality
might be, he was certainly not an Englishman. My wants were simple—a
chop and some coffee. I put the question of bed aside for the present,
till I should have seen more of the place and its frequenters. The
_cafetier_ answered me with much politeness, but in very broken
English, that my requirements should be at once attended to, and that,
meanwhile—with a comprehensive wave of his hand—the newspapers, English
and foreign, were at the service of monsieur. He did not look much
like a coffee-house keeper, with his long grizzled hair, his high bald
forehead, his dark deep-set eyes, in each of which glowed a spark of
vivid fire, and his thin white hands; there seemed about him too much
of the air of a man of breeding and education for such an occupation.

He was still addressing himself to me, when there was a sudden
irruption into the room of a little black-eyed, short-haired,
bullet-headed waiter, French or Swiss most probably, in a black jacket
and short white apron, who, dancing up to me, took possession of me
at once, divined my wants in a moment, and pirouetted off to fetch
me my coffee, pending the cooking of my chop, leaving his master
extinguished, so to speak, both morally and physically. ‘Ah, Jean will
attend to monsieur,’ said the latter, putting his hands to his sides
and straightening his long thin back. ‘Jean, he is a good fellow, and
will make monsieur comfortable.’ And with that he lounged slowly away
to a small counter at the upper end of the room, behind which he seated
himself, and became at once immersed in the perusal of some foreign
journal.

I was still looking at him, sitting with my arms folded over the table,
when my eyelids closed unconsciously, and I dropped asleep as I sat—but
only for a few moments, for Jean was quickly at my side with the
coffee and a roll, flicking some imaginary crumbs off the table with
his _serviette_ as a polite way of arousing me. A draught of coffee
imparted new life to me for a time, and I could afford to look round
with some degree of curiosity. In all, there were about a dozen people
in the place. Two or three customers got up and went away, while others
came in and took their places. Others there were who seemed habitual
frequenters of the place, and sat playing draughts or dominoes, smoking
their cigarettes, and sipping at their coffee or chocolate between
times. Only one here and there was English; the rest of them were
unmistakable foreigners, of various types and nationalities, but all
readily recognisable as such even to my untutored eyes. Nimble-handed
Jean was equal to the requirements of each and all.

Seated at one of the narrow tables on the opposite side of the room,
and facing the door, was a man who took my attention more than any one
there, the _cafetier_ excepted. He was a full-cheeked, heavy-browed
man, not tall, but strongly built, and with something of that added
corpulence which so often comes with middle age. He had close-cropped
iron-gray hair, which stood out like a stiff stubble in every
direction; but his moustache and imperial were jet black, and therefore
presumably dyed. He had a rather thick aquiline nose, and he wore a
pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; but once or twice I caught a glance
from his eyes, which were steel-gray in colour, so keen and piercing,
that his assumption of artificial aid for them seemed somewhat of a
mockery. He was dressed in a tightly buttoned black frock-coat, and
wore a wisp of black ribbon round his neck, tied in a formal little
bow under his turn-down collar. His trousers were dark gray in colour,
and his feet were incased in a pair of broad-toed varnished boots. His
rather large plump hands were white and shapely, and his filbert nails
were carefully trimmed. He looked so superior to the general run of
the other frequenters of the coffee-shop whom I had hitherto seen,
that he had an air of being altogether out of place. He neither spoke
to nor was addressed by any one except Jean, who served him with his
chocolate, but seemed immersed in the contents first of one foreign
newspaper and then of another, several of which were spread on the
table in front of him. Still, notwithstanding his seeming indifference
to everything that was going on around him, an impression somehow got
possession of me that not a man entered or left the place without being
keenly scrutinised from behind those gold-rimmed spectacles, while more
than once I had an uneasy consciousness that I was the object who was
being photographed by that coldly penetrative gaze.

As soon as I had finished my chop, Jean came to clear the table, upon
which I took the opportunity of saying to him: ‘I shall require a bed
here to-night. I suppose you can find room for me?’

He stared at me for a moment or two in open-eyed astonishment. Then he
said: ‘Monsieur is mistaken. We have no beds for strangers here.’

‘Then why have you the announcement of “Good Beds” painted up on the
lamp outside?’ I demanded a little hotly.

Jean shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ah, that is a mistake—all at once a
mistake,’ he answered with his strong French accent. ‘The Englishman
who had this place before Monsieur Karavich, used to let out beds; but
Monsieur Karavich, who has been here but two months, does not. No.’

At this juncture M. Karavich himself appeared on the scene. He had come
to ascertain what the discussion was about. He put a question to Jean
in French, and the latter answered him volubly in the same language.

‘Jean is right, monsieur,’ said the _cafetier_ to me in his broken
English, which I had some difficulty in comprehending, and with an air
of polite deprecation. ‘We do not let out beds to strangers. The lamp
shall be altered to-morrow. I am sorry—truly sorry, monsieur.’

‘So am I sorry,’ I answered stoutly. ‘I am an utter stranger in London,
never having set foot in it till three hours ago, and I know no more
where I am than the man in the moon. Besides, think of the fog! What
am I, a stranger, to do if turned out into the midst of it? You can
surely find me a bed somewhere. I don’t care how humble it is—and it’s
only for one night. Put your head outside the door, monsieur, and see
for yourself whether on such a night you would turn even a dog into the
streets.’

The _cafetier_ spoke to Jean in some language with which I had no
acquaintance. Jean replied volubly as usual. Then the _cafetier_ spoke
again, but this time his voice had an imperative tone in it such as I
had not noticed before. Jean turned pale, and replied, not in words,
but by turning out the palms of his hands and spreading wide his
fingers. It was an answer replete with significance. Turning to me, the
_cafetier_ said, in his slow, hesitating tones: ‘I will find monsieur a
bed. He is a stranger and an Englishman and claims my hospitality: that
is enough for Fedor Karavich.’

I did not fail to thank him. He smiled faintly, made me a little bow,
and went slowly back to his counter. When I turned my eyes on Jean, he
was scowling at me most unmistakably. What could I possibly have done
to annoy the sprightly little man?

The stranger with the gold spectacles pushed away his newspapers and
rose to go. Jean helped him on with his fur-lined overcoat, and as he
did so, a quick whisper passed between the two. Then Jean left him. The
stranger put on his hat, and coming down a pace or two till he stood
close by the end of my table, he proceeded to leisurely button up his
coat. I happened to look up, and our eyes met. The stranger smiled,
and said in a soft, pleasant voice, in which there was the faintest
perceptible trace of a foreign accent: ‘Pardon, but I think I heard
monsieur say just now that he was a stranger in London. Is that not so?’

‘Quite a stranger,’ I replied. ‘I only arrived here three hours ago,
and was never in London before.’

I was glad to have some one to speak to, were it only this
pleasant-voiced foreigner; it seemed in some measure to take off the
edge of my loneliness.

‘Again pardon,’ said the other; ‘but monsieur would naturally find the
fog outside rather bewildering? Ah, your English climate! He would
be puzzled, for instance, to find his way from this house to Charing
Cross, or even to the nearest bridge; is it not so?’

‘Faith, you’re right there,’ I answered with a laugh. ‘I have not the
slightest idea of the locality of this house, nor even on which side
the river it is situated. But daylight will solve my difficulties in
that respect.’

‘Ah, that daylight is a great tell-tale,’ answered the stranger with
the ghost of a shrug. ‘Bon soir, monsieur; I hope you will sleep well,
and have pleasant dreams.’

Again the same inscrutable smile flitted across his face. Raising his
hat slightly, he pushed open the swing-doors, and passed out into the
fog and darkness.

It was growing late by this time. Besides myself, there were only two
customers now left in the place, who seemed still as intent on their
game of dominoes as they had been when I went in. Summoning Jean, I
asked to be shown to my room.

I think the bedroom into which I was presently inducted was the very
smallest in which it was ever my lot to sleep, while the bed itself
was so short, that a tall lanky fellow such as I was might well wonder
how his length of limb was to be packed away in so small a compass.
On turning down the bedclothes, the sheets and pillow-cases, to my
countrified eyes, accustomed to the snowiest of linen, looked far too
dingy to be at all inviting. It seemed to me that they had not been
changed for a considerable period; but be that as it may, I had no
inclination to trust myself into too close contact with their dubious
purity. I was tired enough to sleep anywhere, and had there been
anything in the shape of an easy-chair in the room, I would have made
that my couch for the night. What I did was to take off my collar,
boots, and coat, lie down on the bed, turn up the counterpane over me
on both sides, and lay my coat over that. Thousands in London that
night had a far worse bed than mine. Leaving the end of candle which
Jean had given me to burn itself out, three minutes later I was in a
sound dreamless sleep.



FORTUNE.


By a deplorable limitation of the meaning of the word, it has come
about that the idea suggested to most minds by the expression ‘fortune’
or ‘a fortunate man’ is the accumulation of wealth. It would seem,
therefore, that, in the popular estimation, no man is fortunate who is
not in the possession of riches. A little thought, above all a little
experience of life, will soon convince us that this is not the case;
and so far is it from being true, that wealth will be found to be but
a small and solitary factor in those various accidents or providences
of our lives from which we derive our happiness. The sordid wooer in
the ballad, who asked, ‘What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’ knew
of no fortune beside that of riches. The pretty and witty maid knew
better. ‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said; and let in a flood of
unaccustomed light upon the benighted mind of her baffled suitor, to
whom it had never occurred that fortune might consist in beauty and the
qualities that win love and admiration.

It is doubtful whether a man who, by a stroke or two of the pen, can
flutter the innocent dovecots of the Exchange, is, by virtue of that
power, any happier than the humble farmer whose year’s income may be
straitened by one night’s rain. Far in advance of wealth, in estimating
what meed of fortune has fallen to any man’s lot, should be placed
health, upon the state of which our welfare so largely depends, and the
preservation of which is so nearly contingent upon the method of life
we adopt. Riches without health do not bring with them the capacity for
their enjoyment; and yet how many of us waste the latter in the pursuit
of the former! The merchant who rises early and toils till a late
hour at his desk in the sunless city office for the sake of amassing
money, has generally advanced far beyond middle age before his object
is attained, and finds then that he has lost the faculty of enjoyment.
Leisure has become a weariness to him; the pursuits for which he once
coveted it have lost their attraction for him; the studies he once
desired opportunities to follow up, have lost their interest; he has no
longer the robust health and bodily strength demanded for the sports
and pastimes which once seemed to him to make life worth living.
Without the accustomed occupation, the day is a blank; he must still
journey to the office, still add sovereign to sovereign, and take what
comfort is possible from the reflection that another may perhaps spend
them, and that they may serve to keep in ease and idleness one who
never worked for them—a poor and second-hand solace, indeed, for no man
yet ever started life with the intention of acquiring wealth for the
sole benefit of his successor. The proper image of such a man, wearing
out his days in the dull monotonous round of business, is the ass in
the great hollow wheel of the water-well in Carisbrooke Castle, which
walks for ever up-hill, but which never advances, and never rises, and
the end of whose labour is to draw water that others may drink it.

With numerically unimportant exceptions, we have all to toil for our
living; and it is probable that that man is most truly described as
fortunate who at the outset in life has chosen work in which he can
take pleasure. To labour during the best hours of the day in hatred or
contempt of the task, for the sake of the few hours of leisure that are
thereby earned, will in the long-run weaken the moral fibre and lower
the vitality; and those hours of leisure will probably be wasted when
won. But he who has been fortunate enough to find work for his hands to
do which will bring him food and shelter, and in which at the same time
his soul can rejoice, will lay aside his task with a spirit fresh for
a new study, a new enterprise, or with a zest for innocent and healthy
enjoyment.

The artist who labours to create forms, hues, and ideas of beauty;
the author who enriches the world with fresh treasures of thought;
the physician whose aim and whose reward is to relieve suffering; the
carpenter to whom his craft is a pride and a triumph; the labourer
in the field who loves the soil he tills, and delights to watch from
season to season the checkered success of his operations: these,
and such as these, are the truly fortunate men, into whose annual
money-winnings we have no need to inquire before pronouncing them
happy. Here, again, our lot is to a large extent in our own hands; for
though we have not all the professions and occupations of life offered
to our choice, yet some selection is open to us, and it behoves us to
choose both wisely and boldly, and it is an instance where boldness
is often wisdom. Even where the choice presented to us is so narrow
as seemingly to preclude all chance of satisfying our aspirations,
there is but little work in the world which we cannot ennoble by our
method of performing it and by the spirit in which we undertake it.
The ideal life which presents us with the spectacle of the Master
washing the feet of his disciples and kneading the common clay of the
ground, teaches us how to invest with dignity the meanest labour of
our hands. From the examples of Chaucer, whose pen ‘moved over bills
of lading,’ and of Burns, whose feet trod deep into the miry furrows
behind the plough he guided, we may learn that while a humble toil
cannot degrade the man, a man may infinitely ennoble the toil. Let us
but once recognise that it is necessary and right that any piece of
work should be done, and that it has fallen to our lot to do it, and
a genuine pleasure may be derived from its thorough performance. ‘The
manly part,’ says Emerson, ‘is to do with might and main what you can
do.’ Indifference as to the excellence of the work turned out, hurried
or perfunctory or slovenly execution, will result in lethargy and
self-dissatisfaction; while a right pride in a piece of good work well
done will leave the nerves braced and not relaxed, and the faculties
developed instead of diminished.

Fortunate, again, beyond the power of mishap to depress, is the man who
is endowed with such elasticity of spirit that he can shake off the
anxieties and wearinesses of the mind in the mere delight of existence;
to whom the fresh breath of morning as he rises, the sense of bodily
strength as he steps forth into the open air, the consciousness of
vigour as he performs his mid-day toil, the assurance of sound sleep
as he lays his head on the pillow at night, can bring oblivion of the
losses or the disappointments of yesterday. And, once more, a measure
of this good fortune is within the reach of most of us. The temper
that broods over trouble, that cries over spilt milk, and forebodes
unrealised ills, is one easy indeed to yield to, but one which can
be put to rout with a little fortitude and resolve; and, that once
achieved, the energies necessary for the retrieval of our position will
quickly reassert themselves.

Highly favoured, too, of fortune is the man who has been born with an
ear and a heart for Music, with an eye and a heart for Art and Nature,
and with a brain and a heart for Poetry; for veritably in these are to
be found the most inexhaustible riches, the most enduring delights,
the most exalting pleasures. But it would be unavailing to attempt to
capitulate the various gifts that birth or accident confers which are
worthy to be regarded as good fortune. A moment’s reflection is all
that is needed to prove that opulence is but a small and single item
among the infinite number of such gifts; and the sordid tendency of
the mind, and the liability of words to become restricted in their
meaning and debased in their application, is evinced in the narrowed
signification of opulence ascribed by common usage to the word
‘fortune.’ We live in a money-grasping age, and it is well to call to
mind from time to time that guineas are not the only counters with
which the game of life is played and won or lost, and that our banker
is not, after all, the best judge of our fortune.



THE IVORY TRADE.


There is no doubt in the world but that American trade is being
admirably served by American consuls in every part of the world.
The Reports which these gentlemen send are not only written in an
interesting manner, but embrace nearly every subject that can be of
service to the industrial occupations of any country. Among recent
Reports is one by Mr Consul Webster on ivory so far as it relates to
the Sheffield cutlery trade; and as his Report embraces nearly every
matter connected with this trade—though some of his figures are not
very new—the facts cannot fail to be of interest to this country also.
From the Report, it appears that in 1880 there were imported 13,435
cwt. of ivory from the following countries; British East Indies sent us
2972 cwt.; west coast of Africa, 2310 cwt.; Egypt, 2003 cwt.; British
possessions in South Africa, 1114 cwt.; the native states, east coast
of Africa, 1099 cwt.; Aden, 693 cwt.; France, 612 cwt.; Holland, 431
cwt.; Malta, 411 cwt.; Portuguese possessions, West Africa, 361 cwt.;
British possessions, West Africa, 162 cwt.; and all other countries,
1267 cwt.

Malta is the port of shipment to England of ivory that finds its way
to Tripoli and other points on the north coast of Africa. To Holland,
ivory is brought from her possessions on the coast of Africa. France
receives but little except what has been purchased in England,
portions of which are sometimes returned. The Bombay, Siam, and
Zanzibar ivory is bought for the making of piano keys, carvings, and
other expensive articles of luxury. All ivory from the east coast of
Africa, except the Cape, comes through Zanzibar, and pays a royalty
to the sultan. This is known to the trade by a mark—a rude figure of
an elephant—that is put upon it after the payment of this royalty. Mr
Webster calls attention to the fact that this mark is often erased from
tusks that are to be sent to the United States from the English sales,
and suggests that this is done to prevent identification, and evade
the extra duty chargeable on all ‘goods the produce of countries east
of the Cape of Good Hope, when imported from places west of the Cape
of Good Hope.’ It will be news to most of us in this country that the
United States thus tries to prohibit, where possible, the purchase of
raw material through the European markets.

Mammoth tusks of ivory occasionally come to this country from Siberia;
but as these have been lying exposed for centuries, and probably for
many thousands of years, and often buried in ice, the ‘nature’ has
gone out of them, and they are not fit for the cutler’s use. The teeth
of the walrus and hippopotamus are used in considerable quantity, and
being of suitable size, are used whole for making expensive carved
handles. Ivory of the best quality comes from the west coast of Africa,
under the names of Cameroon, Angola, and Gaboon ivory. This is brought
down from the interior, and retains a larger proportion of the ‘fat’
or gelatine, from the fact, probably, that it is more recently from
the animal. In this state it is called ‘green’ ivory. It is more
translucent, and not so white as the Egyptian and other kinds, called
‘white’ ivory, that have been lying a longer time and in a more sandy
region, and exposed to the heat of the sun until the animal matter
has disappeared. The excellence of the ‘green’ ivory consists in its
greater toughness and in its growing whiter by age, instead of yellow,
as is the case with the whiter varieties. Yet buyers of cutlery,
through ignorance of these qualities, usually prefer the whiter kinds,
which on that account are more in demand for the Sheffield trade,
and have more than doubled in price since 1879. The sales of ivory
occur every three months at London and Liverpool, and sales are also
held to a limited extent and at irregular intervals at Rotterdam. At
Liverpool, only ivory of the best quality, and from the west coast
of Africa, is offered. Buyers from Germany and France and agents of
American consumers attend these sales; and it is estimated that about
one quarter of the whole amount goes to Sheffield, another quarter to
London, and the other half to Germany, France, and the United States.

Turning from the sources and sale of ivory, we next have some very
interesting facts relating to its manufacture. The experienced eye
is quick to discern the value of a lot of ivory, when—which is
essential—it is guided by a knowledge of the country from which it
comes. It is also said that the electric light is beginning to be used
to test the soundness of the tusks. There is just now great anxiety as
to the future supply of ivory. The stocks in public warehouses are
smaller than for many years past, and the rapid increase in prices is
causing great anxiety to manufacturers. At a recent sale at Liverpool,
the best African ivory sold by the ton at over twelve shillings and
sixpence per pound. This will explain the fact that the principal
factor in the value of the best table cutlery is the handle. When the
ivory comes into the hands of the cutler, much skill is required to
make the most of the precious material, and every scrap is turned to
account. After cutting out the scales of all sizes for pocket-knives,
and the solid handles for table cutlery, the small pieces are usually
sold to the button-makers, or maybe made into ‘pearls.’ These latter
are the small pieces of ivory, pearl, or horn inserted into the handles
of tea and coffee pots as non-conductors of heat, and are so called
because they were originally made of pearl. The fine sawdust is sold
for fertilising purposes, for the manufacture of gelatine, and for
making a fine white sizing used in the manufacture of lace curtains and
other fabrics. The refuse still remaining goes to the makers of ivory
black. The proportion of this residuum is about fifteen pounds to the
hundredweight, and sells at from sixteen to twenty pounds per ton. Many
efforts have been made to devise some method for the solidification
of ivory dust, but as yet without success. Great skill is required
in the cutting of ivory, as of wood, to bring out the beauty of the
grain. The saw of the cutter occasionally reveals a rifle-ball that
has been lodged in the tusk, and that has been completely covered over
by subsequent growth. About one-third the length of the tusk, where
it enters the head of the elephant, is hollow. This hollow, when the
tusk is in place upon the live animal, is filled with a soft pulp or
core, which supplies the growth of the tusk. A ball lodged in this
core will in time be imbedded in the solid ivory. This hollow portion
is cut off and sold separately, except the thinnest portion, as bangle
ivory, and is in great demand for bangles or ornamental rings for the
ankles and arms of Indian and African women. That portion of the tusk
towards the point is usually more solid and of finer grain. This is cut
off and sold by itself at high prices under the name of billiard-ball
points. Small teeth of from ten to fifteen pounds-weight are called
in the trade ‘scrivelloes.’ The points of these small tusks are used
in their natural state for making handles for expensive carving sets
and for other articles of luxury. The large proportion of very small
tusks which are now brought to market annually is a sure indication
of the increasing number of elephants that die young. To show to what
size these tusks might attain, the American consul states that there
was in a Sheffield showroom an African elephant’s tusk nine feet long,
twenty-one inches in girth, and weighing one hundred and sixty pounds.
The value of the tusk was one hundred and thirty pounds, and it is said
that an animal large enough and strong enough to carry such a pair
would attract far more attention than Jumbo did. In the nine years
which ended with 1881, there were 5286 tons of ivory imported into
Great Britain, and as the number of tusks is known, the average weight
of pairs of tusks can be ascertained. It is a little under forty pounds
each pair. At this rate, these imports represent 296,016 pairs, and
consequently the same number of elephants have either died long ago,
or have been recently slaughtered, to supply the demands of luxury in
nine years alone. ‘At this rate of destruction,’ says Mr Webster, ‘it
will be seen how rapidly this noble animal must disappear, and how
surely ivory will become a thing of the past. There are, doubtless,
large quantities of ivory still remaining in the interior of the
African continent; but with the rapid advance of civilised man, and the
temptation of increasing high prices, these will soon be discovered and
exhausted.’



SPOKEN IN ANGER.


    ’Twas but a little word in anger spoken,
      While proud eyes flashed through bitter burning tears;
    But oh, I felt that fatal word had broken
      The cord of love that bound our hearts for years.
    Thy tortured face, that long wild look of sorrow,
      Like some pale ghost, must haunt me while I live;
    And yet, how bright, how full of joy the morrow,
      Had I but breathed one simple word—‘Forgive!’

    I did not hear thy tender voice appealing,
      Nor marked thy anguish when I cried, ‘Depart!’
    Too blind to see thy pitying glance, revealing
      The generous promptings of thy noble heart.
    How could I know that faithful heart was yearning,
      Though crushed and wounded to its inmost core,
    To take me back, like weary bird returning
      In fear and trembling, when the storm is o’er!

    ‘Remember, love, that it may be for ever;
      To see my face no more by night or day.
    Be calm, rash heart, think well before we sever;
      Recall the angry word, and bid me stay.’
    Dead silence fell; the song-birds hushed their singing.
      ‘Enough,’ I proudly cried; ‘I choose my fate.’
    While ever through my maddened brain kept ringing
      The death-knell of my love—too late, too late!

    ‘Forgive, forgive!’ I wailed, the wild tears streaming,
      As, ’mid the moaning trees, I stood alone;
    ‘Love, let thy kisses wake me from my dreaming.’
      Thy pleading voice, thy tortured face, was gone.
    That angry word, I may recall it never;
      For o’er thy narrow grave, rank weeds have grown.
    ‘Remember, love, that it may be for ever.’
      Ah, words prophetic! love, had I but known!

    My locks are gray, my eyes are dim with weeping,
      The face once loved by thee, no longer fair;
    Beneath the daisies, thou art calmly sleeping:
      There, a lone woman often kneels in prayer.
    Ah, sweetheart mine, thou art so lowly lying,
      Thou canst not hear the tearful voice above,
    That with the night-wind evermore is sighing:
      ‘I spoke in anger! oh, forgive me, love!’

            FANNY FORRESTER.

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 122, vol. III, May 1, 1886" ***


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