Chapter I: Part 1

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 126.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.

Since the famous Tichborne trial brought ‘The Claimant’ so prominently before the reading public, the general use of a term which accurately described his position without seeming to prejudge his case has given it universal currency as a convenient designation in similar cases of disputed or doubtful identity. For instance, the newspapers have recently announced a ‘Napoleonic Claimant,’ who makes his appearance in the most unromantic manner, by presenting himself before a magistrate at a police station in Paris, and asking for money to pay his passage to England. He claimed to be the Prince Imperial, the legitimate son of the Emperor Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie. The announcement of his death in Zululand was a mistake: he was not killed, but captured by the Zulus. After some time, he effected his escape, and having traversed Africa from south to north, he crossed the Mediterranean and landed at Marseilles. His poverty and his dignity prevented him from presenting himself before his mother, and so he stayed and worked in Marseilles incognito for several years. But he met the Empress once: it was at Vienna, at the tomb of Maximilian. So violent was his emotion, that he swooned away. The Empress herself raised him and tended him; but when he became conscious, she had gone. He wished now to go to her, but he was penniless. Would the magistrate grant him the sum necessary; and his mother, the Empress, would repay the loan? When asked to show his papers, he produced a book in which was entered the name of Pollak, a journeyman clockmaker of Vienna. It had been lent to him to enable him to maintain his incognito.

When he found that his story was not to be credited, he accused the magistrate of yielding to pressure put upon him by the Princes Victor and Louis, whose interest it was to supplant the rightful heir. He spoke in the language of a well-educated man; and when examined with a view to determine his mental condition, he betrayed no symptom of derangement.

The methods of all Claimants have a certain similarity, though some have been more audacious and successful than others. This is perhaps the most audacious of modern instances. But there are many examples of Claimants more or less notorious in the history of past times, whose pretensions are quite as difficult to reconcile with recorded facts. In most of these historical instances the Claimants have advanced pretensions to the name and station of a deceased member of some reigning family, and much obscurity has thus been thrown around historical events, whose incidental details have been confused and complicated by the conflicting statements of contemporary or nearly contemporary records.

Perhaps the least known, but not the least curious and tragical story of a Claimant is that of the woman who, in the first year of the fourteenth century, attempted to personate the Maid of Norway, heiress to the crown of Scotland, and presumptive heiress also to that of Norway.—It had been given out that the Maid of Norway had died on her voyage to Scotland; but that, it was now alleged, was a mistake; she did not die; but she was ‘sold’ or betrayed by those who had charge of her, and carried away to an obscure hiding-place on the continent. She had at last found means to escape, and coming from Lübeck to Bergen—the very same port from which she had sailed for Scotland ten years before—she there presented herself to the people of Norway as the Princess Margaret. Although her father, King Eirik, was now dead, and her uncle Hakon possessed the throne, her right of succession to the crowns of Norway and of Scotland had been secured by the marriage contract of Norburgh, by which her father had espoused her mother Margaret, the daughter of Alexander III., king of Scotland. The Claimant appeared old for her years, and was white-haired; but sorrow brings gray hairs more surely than age. She was a married woman; and her husband came with her to Norway, and subsequently shared her tragic fate. King Hakon himself was present at her trial in Bergen, of which, unfortunately, no record exists. But we learn from the _Iceland Annals_ that she was burned to death as an impostor at Nordness, and her husband beheaded. When she was being taken through the Kongsgaard Port to the place of execution, she said; ‘I remember well when I, as a child, was taken through this self-same gate to be carried into Scotland; there was then in the High Church of the Apostles an Iceland priest, Haflidi by name, who was chaplain to my father, King Eirik; and when the clergy ceased singing, Sir Haflidi began the hymn _Veni Creator_, and that hymn was sung out to the end, just as I was taken on board the ship.’

Haflidi Steinsson, the priest here mentioned, had long since gone back to Iceland, where he died parish priest of Breidabolstad; and in chronicling his death, the annalist adds that ‘he was King Eirik’s chaplain at the time that his daughter Margaret was taken to Scotland, as she herself afterwards bore witness when she was being carried to execution at Nordness.’ Indeed, so prevalent was the belief in the personal identity of the Claimant with the daughter of King Eirik who died on the voyage to Orkney in 1290, that the place of her execution became a resort of pilgrims; and many of the priesthood having countenanced the popular belief in her martyrdom, a chapel was built on the spot where she suffered; and though uncanonised, and reprobated by the dignitaries of the church, her memory was held in reverence till the Reformation as St Maritte (Margaret), the Martyr of Nordness. In 1320, the number of pilgrimages to this irregular shrine had become so numerous that Bishop Audfinn of Bergen issued an official interdict against them, an interference which was resented by his canons, some of whom were bold enough to protest against its promulgation.

Nothing is known of the Claimant’s previous history, except that the contemporary annalist states that she came to Bergen in a ship from Lübeck. Absolom Pedersen asserts that she came from Scotland, but gives no authority for the statement, and there is sufficient evidence in the records to render this highly improbable. But it is a very remarkable circumstance that Wyntoun, the popular historian of his time, gave currency in Scotland to the statement—which we must assume to have been then the popular belief—that the Maid of Norway was put to death in her own country by martyrdom. After giving circumstantial details of the sending of the Scottish embassy to Norway, consisting of Sir David of the Wemyss and Michael Scot of Balwearie, he adds, that when they arrived—

Dead then was that Maiden fair,
That of law suld have been heir,
And appearëd til have been
By the law of Norway Queen;
But that Maiden sweet for-thi [_therefore_]
Was put to death by martyry.

In accordance with the usage of the period, the expression of the chronicler describing the manner of her death would be universally understood to mean burning at the stake; and the evident anachronism, as well as the inherent improbability of the narrative, is accounted for by the fact that it quite accurately describes the death of the Claimant, but assigns it to the time of the death of the Princess. The reason given by Wyntoun for the ‘martyrdom’ is, that the Norwegians—though their law allowed—could not brook the idea of a woman succeeding to the crown; and this also may be accounted for by the fact that the woman who suffered was a pretender to the crown.

No incident in Scottish history is more pathetic than that of the untimely death of the young Princess on her voyage to Orkney; and no single event in the whole course of that history has exercised a more important influence on the destinies of the nation. In these circumstances, we cannot cease to wonder how it came to pass that there is no authentic record of its details in the contemporary or nearly contemporary chronicles of Scottish or Norwegian history. The only contemporary document in Scottish record which notices her death is the letter of the Bishop of St Andrews to Edward I., dated at Leuchars the 7th of October 1290, in which the bishop states that there was a rumour of her death; but that he had heard subsequently that she ‘had recovered of her sickness, but was still weak.’ It was plain, however, that the bishop did not believe the rumour of her recovery, for he concludes his letter by praying King Edward to approach the Borders with his army to prevent bloodshed, seeing that Sir Robert Bruce had come to Perth and Mar and Athole were collecting their forces. On the Norwegian side, there is a total absence of authentic contemporary record of the time and manner of the death of the Princess; and there would have been absolutely nothing known of the details of her decease, if it had not been for the appearance ten years later of the Claimant, whom Munch, the historian of Norway, following Bishop Audfinn, has no hesitation in designating ‘The False Margaret.’

In his official interdict of 1320, forbidding the people ‘any longer to invoke that woman with great vows and worship as if she had been one of God’s martyrs,’ the bishop states that he has deemed it his duty to declare the truth as to her case; ‘She said, indeed, that she was the child and lawful heir of King Eirik; but when she came from Lübeck to Bergen she was gray-haired and white in the head, and was proved to be twenty years older than the time of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret of Scotland. He was then only thirteen winters old, and consequently, could not have been the father of a person of her years. And then he had no other child than one daughter by Queen Margaret. This only child of King Eirik and Queen Margaret was on her journey to Scotland, when she died in Orkney between the hands of Bishop Narve of Bergen, and in the presence of the best men of the land, who had attended her from Norway; and the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson and others brought back her corpse to Bergen, where her father had the coffin opened and narrowly examined the body, and himself acknowledged that it was his daughter’s corpse, and buried her beside the queen her mother, in the stone wall on the north side of the choir of the cathedral church of Bergen.’

Although we owe these details of the Princess’s death and burial, meagre as they are, to the bishop’s anxiety to confute the pretensions of the Claimant, there can be no room for doubt as to their strict truth. And yet it was possible, ten years after the event, for a Claimant so to influence the popular belief, that, although burned to death as a traitorous impostor, she was regarded by many of the priesthood as a martyr; and by the common people was not only worshipped as a saint in the church erected to her memory on the spot where she suffered, but celebrated in songs which long continued to be handed down among them. Even to this day, the precise date of the death of the Princess Margaret remains unknown; and until quite recently, it was generally believed that she had been buried in Kirkwall Cathedral, as is indeed stated by the Danish archæologist Worsaae in his account of that edifice given in his work on _The Danes and Northmen in England_. No _History of Scotland_, until the issue of the last edition of Dr John Hill Burton’s, has noticed the curious episode of the False Margaret, a knowledge of which is necessary in order to account for the fact that, in Wyntoun’s time, it was the popular belief in Scotland that the Maid of Norway had suffered martyrdom at the hands of her own countrymen.

It is curious that in connection with the history of Scotland, and before the close of the fourteenth century, we find the story of another Claimant not less audacious in his pretensions, but much more fortunate in his patrons, by whom he was maintained till his death as a state pensioner, and buried in one of the churches of Stirling under the royal name and regal title to which he had laid claim. There was this strange element in his case that he was the second personator of the same dead king. Readers of English history are familiar with the incidents of the revolution which placed Henry of Lancaster on the throne, and consigned ‘the good King Richard’ to a perpetual prison in Pontefract Castle. But the subsequent events in the life of the imprisoned monarch, and the date and manner of his death, are shrouded in an impenetrable obscurity. One of the ablest of our Scottish historians, Patrick Fraser Tytler, has even declared, after an elaborate investigation of the whole available evidence, that this second Claimant, whose story we are about to notice, was Richard II. in reality.

It is well known that shortly after the king’s imprisonment, there was a conspiracy to replace him on the throne. The conspirators attempted to attract the people to their cause by spreading abroad the rumour of his escape from Pontefract; and, as is stated by a contemporary chronicler, ‘to make this the more credible, they brought into the field with them a chaplain called Father Maudelain, who so exactly resembled good King Richard in face and person, in form and speech, that every one who saw him declared that he was their former king.’ The conspiracy failed; and those most deeply concerned in it, among whom was the first personator, Father Maudelain, were beheaded.

Shortly afterwards, it was given out that King Richard had died in Pontefract Castle, on or about the 14th of February 1399. Rumour, indeed, spoke freely of the suspicion, that if he were dead, he had surely been murdered by his enemies, and with the connivance of the reigning king. It was not till nearly a month after the alleged date of his death that, in order to silence the popular rumours, King Henry caused the body to be brought publicly to London ‘with the face exposed,’ and laid in state for two days in the church of St Paul, ‘that the people might believe for certain that he was dead.’ ‘But,’ says the old chronicler formerly quoted, ‘I certainly do not believe that it was the king, but I think it was Maudelain, his chaplain,’ who had been beheaded little more than a month previously.

There were many who shared this unbelief; and in 1402, the rumours that King Richard was yet alive became so persistent and circumstantial, that King Henry dealt with them by putting to death a number of persons, principally priests and friars, for spreading such treasonable reports. The cause of the revival of these rumours at this time is revealed in a document issued by King Henry, requiring the sheriffs to arrest all persons guilty of spreading the report that King Richard was alive, which had arisen from a person calling himself King Richard having appeared in Scotland in company with one William Serle, who had been groom of the robes to Richard, and had possessed himself of his signet.

As the scene thus shifts to Scotland, we naturally turn to the Scottish chronicles and records for the further elucidation of the mystery. Wyntoun and Bower—each writing of events which happened within his own lifetime—narrate the story of this second Claimant in much the same manner. He came from the out-isles of Scotland, having been discovered in the kitchen of Donald, Lord of the Isles, by persons who had seen King Richard, and recognised his likeness. He was sent in charge of Lord Montgomery to Robert III. of Scotland, by whom he was well received, and assigned a pension of one hundred merks yearly. After King Robert’s death, the pension was continued by the Regent Albany. The Scottish Chamberlain, in charging his accounts with these annual payments, has entered them as paid to ‘King Richard of England.’ Finally, we learn from an old Scottish chronicle that when he died at Stirling in 1419, his body was buried on the north side of the high-altar of the Church of the Preaching Friars, and a long Latin epitaph graven over his tomb informed the reader that ‘Here lies buried King Richard of England.’ Yet it has been established as clearly as any such question can now be established by evidence, that this second personator of King Richard was an adventurer named Thomas Ward, or Thomas of Trumpington, who, with his confederate William Serle, is exempted by name from the general amnesty granted to political offenders by Henry IV. in 1403.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Meanwhile, Harry Noel himself was quite unconsciously riding round to the Hawthorns’ cottage, to perform the whole social duty of man by Edward and Marian.

‘So you’ve come out to look after your father’s estates in Barbadoes, have you, Mr Noel?’ Marian inquired with a quiet smile, after the first greetings and talk about the voyage were well over.

Harry laughed. ‘Well, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said confidentially, ‘my father’s estates there seem to have looked after themselves pretty comfortably for the last twenty years, or at least been looked after vicariously by a rascally local Scotch agent; and I’ve no doubt they’d have continued to look after themselves for the next twenty years without my intervention, if nothing particular had occurred otherwise to bring me out here.’

‘But something particular did occur—eh, Mr Noel?’

‘No, nothing occurred,’ Harry Noel answered, with a distinct stress upon the significant verb. ‘But I had reasons of my own which made me anxious to visit Trinidad; and I thought Barbadoes would be an excellent excuse to supply to Sir Walter for the expenses of the journey. The old gentleman jumped at it—positively jumped at it. There’s nothing loosens Sir Walter’s pursestrings like a devotion to business; and he declared to me on leaving, with tears in his eyes almost, that it was the first time he ever remembered to have seen me show any proper interest whatsoever in the family property.’

‘And what were the reasons that made you so very anxious, then, to visit Trinidad?’

‘Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn’t I naturally desirous of seeing you and Edward once more after a year’s absence?’

Marian coughed a little dry cough. ‘Friendship is a very powerfully attractive magnet, isn’t it, Edward?’ she said with an arch smile to her husband. ‘It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me, dear—now, wasn’t it?’

‘So very good,’ Edward answered, laughing, ‘that I should almost be inclined myself (as a lawyer) to suspect some other underlying motive.’

‘Well, she _is_ a very dear little girl,’ Marian went on reflectively.

‘She is, certainly,’ her husband echoed.

Harry laughed. ‘I see you’ve found me out,’ he answered, not altogether unpleased. ‘Well, yes, I may as well make a clean breast of it, Mrs Hawthorn. I’ve come across on purpose to ask her; and I won’t go back either, till I can take her with me. I’ve waited for twelve months, to make quite sure I knew my own heart and wasn’t mistaken about it. Every day, her image has remained there clearer and clearer than before, and I _will_ win her, or else stop here for ever.’

‘When a man says that and really means it,’ Marian replied encouragingly, ‘I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has set his heart upon.’

‘But I suppose you know,’ Edward interrupted, ‘that her father has already made up his mind that she’s to marry a cousin of hers at Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact publicly to half Trinidad?’

‘Not Mr Tom Dupuy?’ Harry cried in amazement.

‘Yes, Tom Dupuy—the very man. Then you’ve met him already?’

‘He lunched with us to-day at Orange Grove!’ Harry answered, puckering his brow a little. ‘And her father actually wants her to marry that fellow! By Jove, what a desecration!’

‘Then you don’t like what you’ve seen so far of Mr Tom?’ Marian asked with a smile.

Harry rose and leaned against the piazza pillar with his hands behind him. ‘The man’s a cad,’ he answered briefly.

‘If we were in Piccadilly again,’ Edward Hawthorn said quietly, ‘I should say that was probably a piece of pure class prejudice, Noel; but as we are in Trinidad, and as I happen to know Mr Tom Dupuy by two or three pieces of personal adventure, I don’t mind telling you in strict confidence, I cordially agree with you.’

‘Ah!’ Harry Noel cried with much amusement, clapping him heartily on his broad shoulder. ‘So coming to Trinidad has knocked some of that radical humbug and nonsense clean out of you, has it, Teddy? I knew it would, my dear fellow; I knew you’d get rid of it!’

‘On the contrary, Mr Noel,’ Marian answered with quiet dignity, ‘I think it has really made us a great deal more confirmed in our own opinions than we were to begin with. We have suffered a great deal ourselves, you know, since we came to Trinidad.’

Harry flushed in the face a little. ‘You needn’t tell me all about it, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ve heard something about the matter already from the two Dupuys, and all I can say is, I never heard before such a foolish, ridiculous, nonsensical, cock-and-bull prejudice as the one they told me about, in the whole course of my precious existence. If it hadn’t been for Nora’s sake—I mean for Miss Dupuy’s’—and he checked himself suddenly—‘upon my word, I really think I should have knocked the fellow down in his uncle’s dining-room the very first moment he began to speak about it.’

‘Mr Noel,’ Marian said, ‘I know how absurd it must seem to you, but you can’t imagine how much Edward and I have suffered about it since we’ve been in this island.’

‘I can,’ Harry answered. ‘I can understand it easily. I had a specimen of it myself from those fellows at lunch this morning. I kept as calm as I could outwardly; but, by Jove, Mrs Hawthorn, it made my blood boil over within me to hear the way they spoke of your husband.—Upon my honour, if it weren’t for—for Miss Dupuy,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t stop now a single night to accept that man’s hospitality after the way he spoke about you.’

‘No, no; do stop,’ Marian answered simply. ‘We want you so much to marry Nora; and we want to save her from that horrid man her father has chosen for her.’

And then they began unburdening their hearts to Harry Noel with the long arrears of twelve months’ continuous confidences. It was such a relief to get a little fresh external sympathy, to be able to talk about it all to somebody just come from England, and entirely free from the taint of West Indian prejudice. They told Harry everything, without reserve; and Harry listened, growing more and more indignant every minute, to the long story of petty slights and undeserved insults. At last he could restrain his wrath no longer. ‘It’s preposterous,’ he cried, walking up and down the piazza angrily, by way of giving vent to his suppressed emotion; ‘it’s abominable! it’s outrageous! it’s not to be borne with! The idea of these people, these hole-and-corner nobodies, these miserable, stupid, ignorant noodles, with no more education or manners than an English ploughboy—O yes, my dear fellow, I know what they are—I’ve seen them in Barbadoes—setting themselves up to be better than you are—there, upon my word I’ve really no patience with it. I shall flog some of them soundly, some day, before I’ve done with them; I know I shall. I can’t avoid it. But what on earth can have induced you to stop here, my dear Teddy, when you might have gone back again comfortably to England, and have mixed properly in the sort of society you’re naturally fitted for?’

‘_I_ did,’ Marian answered firmly; ‘I induced him, Mr Noel. I wouldn’t let him run away from these miserable people. And besides, you know, he’s been able to do such a lot of good here. All the negroes love him dearly, because he’s protected them from so much injustice. He’s the most popular man in the island with the black people; he’s been so good to them, and so useful to them, and such a help against the planters, who are always trying their hardest to oppress them. And isn’t that something worth staying for, in spite of everything?’

Harry Noel paused and hesitated. ‘Tastes differ, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he answered more soberly. ‘For my part, I can’t say I feel myself very profoundly interested in the eternal nigger question; though, if a man feels it’s his duty to stop and see the thing out to the bitter end, why, of course he ought in that case to stop and see it. But what does rile me is the idea that these wretched Dupuy people should venture to talk in the way they do about such a man as your husband—confound them!’

Tea interrupted his flow of indignation.

But when Harry Noel had ridden away again towards Orange Grove on Mr Dupuy’s pony, Hawthorn and his wife stood looking at one another in dubious silence for a few minutes. Neither of them liked to utter the thought that had been uppermost in both their minds from the first moment they saw him in Trinidad.

At last Edward broke the ominous stillness. ‘Harry Noel’s awfully dark, isn’t he, Marian?’ he said uneasily.

‘Very,’ Marian answered in as unconcerned a voice as she could well summon up. ‘And so extremely handsome, too, Edward,’ she added after a moment’s faint pause, as if to turn the current of the conversation.

Neither of them had ever observed in England how exceedingly olive-coloured Harry Noel’s complexion really was—in England, to be as dark as a gipsy is of no importance; but now in Trinidad, girt round by all that curiously suspicious and genealogically inquiring society, they couldn’t help noticing to themselves what a very dark skin and what curly hair he happened to have inherited.

‘And his mother’s a Barbadian lady,’ Edward went on uncomfortably, pretending to play with a book and a paper-knife.

‘She is,’ Marian answered, hardly daring to look up at her husband’s face in her natural confusion. ‘He—he always seems so very fond of his mother, Edward, darling.’

Edward went on cutting the pages of his newly-arrived magazine in grim silence for a few minutes longer; then he said: ‘I wish to goodness he could get engaged and married offhand to Nora Dupuy very soon, Marian, and then clear out at once and for ever from this detestable island as quickly as possible.’

‘It would be better if he could, perhaps,’ Marian answered, sighing deeply. ‘Poor dear Nora! I wish she’d take him. She could never be happy with that horrid Dupuy man.’

They didn’t dare to speak, one to the other, the doubt that was agitating them; but they both agreed in that half-unspoken fashion that it would be well if Harry pressed his suit soon, before any sudden thunderbolt had time to fall unexpectedly upon his head and mar his chance with poor little Nora.

As Harry Noel rode back to Orange Grove alone, along the level bridle-path, he chanced to drop his short riding-whip at a turn of the road by a broad canepiece. A tall negro was hoeing vigorously among the luxuriant rows of cane close by. The young Englishman called out to him carelessly, as he would have done to a labourer at home: ‘Here you, hi, sir, come and pick up my whip, will you!’

The tall negro turned and stared at him. ‘Who you callin’ to come an’ pick up your whip, me fren’?’ he answered somewhat savagely.

Noel glanced back at the man with an angry glare. ‘You!’ he said, pointing with an imperious gesture to the whip on the ground. ‘I called you to pick it up for me. Don’t you understand English?’

‘You is rude gentleman for true,’ the old negro responded quietly, continuing his task of hoeing in the canepiece, without any attempt to pick up the whip for the unrecognised stranger. ‘If you want de whip picked up, what for you doan’t speak to naygur decently? Ole-time folk has proverb, “Please am a good dog, an’ him keep doan’t cost nuffin.” Get down yourself, sah, an’ pick up your own whip for you-self if you want him.’

Harry was just on the point of dismounting and following the old negro’s advice, with some remote idea of applying the whip immediately after to the back of his adviser, when a younger black man, stepping out hastily from behind a row of canes that had hitherto concealed him, took up the whip and handed it back to him with a respectful salutation. The old man looked on disdainfully while Harry took it; then, as the rider went on with a parting angry glance, he muttered sulkily: ‘Who dat man dat you gib de whip to? An’ what for you want to gib it him dere, Peter?’

The younger man answered apologetically: ‘Dat Mr Noel, buckra from Englan’; him come to stop at Orange Grobe along ob de massa.’

‘Buckra from Englan’!’ Louis Delgado cried incredulously. ‘Him doan’t no buckra from Englan’, I tellin’ you, me brudder; him Trinidad brown man as sure as de gospel. You doan’t see him is brown man, Peter, de minnit you look at him?’

Peter shook his head and grinned solemnly. ‘No, Mistah Delgado, him doan’t no brown man,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Him is dark for true, but still him real buckra. Him stoppin’ up at house along ob de massa!’

Delgado turned to his work once more, doggedly. ‘If him buckra, an’ if him stoppin’ up wit dem Dupuy,’ he said half aloud, but so that the wondering Peter could easily overhear it, ‘when de great an’ terrible day come, he will be cut off wit all de household. An’ de day doan’t gwine to be delayed long now, neider.’ A mumbled Arabic sentence, which Peter of course could not understand, gave point and terror to this last prediction. Peter turned away, thinking to himself that Louis Delgado was a terrible obeah man and sorcerer for certain, and that whoever crossed his path, had better think twice before he offended so powerful an antagonist.

Meanwhile, Harry Noel was still riding on to Orange Grove. As he reached the garden gate, Tom Dupuy met him, out for a walk in the cool of the evening with big Slot, his great Cuban bloodhound. As Harry drew near, Slot burst away suddenly with a leap from his master, and before Harry could foresee what was going to happen, the huge brute had sprung up at him fiercely, and was attacking him with his mighty teeth and paws, as though about to drag him from his seat forcibly with his slobbering canines. Harry hit out at the beast a vicious blow from the butt-end of his riding-whip, and at the same moment Tom Dupuy, sauntering up somewhat more lazily than politeness or even common humanity perhaps demanded, caught the dog steadily by the neck and held him back by main force, still struggling vehemently and pulling at the collar. His great slobbering jaws opened hungrily towards the angry Englishman, and his eyes gleamed with the fierce light of a starving carnivore in sight and smell of his natural prey.

‘Precious vicious dog you keep, Mr Dupuy,’ Harry exclaimed, not over good-humouredly, for the brute had made its teeth meet through the flap of his coat lappets: ‘you oughtn’t to let him go at large, I fancy.’

Tom Dupuy stooped and patted his huge favourite lovingly on the head with very little hypocritical show of penitence or apology. ‘He don’t often go off this way,’ he answered coolly. ‘He’s a Cuban bloodhound, Slot is; pure-blooded—the same kind we used to train in the good old days to hunt up the runaway niggers; and they often go at a black man or a brown man—that’s what they’re meant for. The moment they smell African blood, they’re after it, like a greyhound after a hare, as quick as lightning. But I never knew Slot before go for a white man! It’s very singular—ex-cessively singular. I never before knew him go for a real white man.’

‘If he was my dog,’ Harry Noel answered, walking his pony up to the door with a sharp lookout on the ugly mouth of the straining and quivering bloodhound, ‘he’d never have the chance again, I can tell you, to go for another. The brute’s most dangerous—a most bloodthirsty creature. And indeed, I’m not sentimental myself on the matter of niggers; but I don’t know that in a country where there are so many niggers knocking about casually everywhere, any man has got a right to keep a dog that darts straight at them as a greyhound darts at a hare, according to your own confession. It doesn’t seem to me exactly right or proper somehow.’

Tom Dupuy glanced carelessly at the struggling brute and answered with a coarse laugh: ‘I see, Mr Noel, you’ve been taking counsel already with your friend Hawthorn. Well, well, in my opinion, I expect there’s just about a pair of you!’

(_To be continued._)

TOBACCO CULTIVATION.

The question of the cultivation of tobacco has recently been brought within the range of practical agriculture. In both Houses of Parliament the government has announced that permission will be given to grow this plant, and cure it in proper manner, as experiments, in various parts of the country, and more especially in Ireland. The Council of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in the chair, determined to help the government in the matter, provided the government gave a grant towards the experiments. The subject thus becomes one of special moment. It is very doubtful, however, whether any experiments that can be made will give us much more information than we at present have regarding this crop. That it can be grown in this country is certain. To take up the first seed catalogue that comes to our hand—that of Messrs Carter & Co.—we find that for a long series of years past, the seed of no fewer than seven varieties of Nicotiana is announced as for sale. The plants are grown in many gardens, and the leaves are dried and used as fumigants against insects. In fact, so simple is the growth of the plant, that the only directions given are to ‘Sow on heat, and transplant to good, rich, loamy soil, or sow out of doors in May.’ That the plant can be grown is certain; but if grown on an agricultural scale, it will have to bear with the usual effects of climate, injurious insects, and the thousand-and-one ills which plant-life is heir to. That is, so far as the plant is concerned. The great difficulty in every country will begin with the curing, and is the cause of the tobacco crop being gradually given up.

So far as Europe is concerned, there has been a great decrease in tobacco cultivation during recent years. In the Netherlands, the acreage is at present something like half what it was ten or twelve years ago. In Belgium, the decrease in area has been considerable, but not to so great an extent. In Austro-Hungary the acreage under tobacco was in 1884 less by 8768 acres than two years previously. In Germany, the area of the crop fell from 1881 to 1883 by over 12,000 acres. Italy, with its magnificent climate, grows only 8202 acres; while in France, where the government purchase the crop, only 32,800 acres were grown last year. It is to America, however, that we must turn for our best information as to the growth of tobacco. In the last four census years, this crop was grown to the following extent: 1850, crop of 199,752,655 pounds; 1860, crop of 434,209,461 pounds; 1870, 262,735,341 pounds; and 1880, crop of 472,661,117 pounds, grown on 638,841 acres. Here we find that although there was a great decrease in the growth of this crop after the war, it gradually picked up again, and the crop is now as large as ever. In 1883, 451,545,641 pounds were grown on an area of 638,739 acres. Its total value was £8,091,072.

The method of cultivation adopted in the United States cannot fail to be of use to the English or Irish grower. In the first place, a word should be said upon the position of tobacco in crop rotations. Travellers in South America have often noticed the desolate appearance of some portions of the country. This is due to the exhaustion of the soil by continuous tobacco-growing. A very large proportion of what was known as tobacco land has thus been reduced to a condition of poverty, and has been left to itself, and is covered with weeds. A good authority declares that this fault can be easily remedied, and that by growing tobacco as a rotation crop. After two crops of tobacco have been taken from the land, and after this a crop of corn, and then a crop of clover or vetches, after the latter have been cut or fed off, the land may be again prepared for another crop of tobacco. A word may be said here also on manures. In the best tobacco plantations, two hundred pounds of nitrate of soda and two hundred and fifty pounds of superphosphate per acre are used—the former bringing up a heavier crop, and the latter improving its quality. Besides these, large applications of farmyard manure are made. Taking Wisconsin as the State more particularly to be treated of, we find that the seed-beds are burned lightly, and a liberal allowance of manure worked in, to the depth of six inches, with a hoe or spade. This work of preparation begins in July, when the manure is applied. The bed is reworked in August, and again in September, for the purpose of keeping down any weeds or grass that may spring up; and finally, in November, it is hoed and raked and prepared to receive the seed, which is either sown in the Fall or early in the succeeding spring. When sown in the Fall, the seed is not previously sprouted. After sowing, the bed is compacted by rolling, tramping, or clapping with a board. The plants are carefully nursed by liquid manuring and by weeding. The young plants are generally large enough for transplanting by the 1st of June.

The land for the main crop—that is, into which the plants are transplanted from the seed-bed—is ploughed in the Fall after the crop of the previous year, and twice in the spring—in May, and just before the 1st of June. Coarse and rough manures are applied with the autumn ploughing, and finer well-rotted sorts in May. After the last ploughing, the land is thoroughly pulverised by harrows or drags, and marked off for the plant. The varieties of tobacco grown are either the seed-leaf or the Spanish. If the former, the plants are placed two and a half feet by three feet apart; but if the latter, three feet by a foot and a half. Thus, if the seed-leaf variety, some five thousand five hundred plants are used to the acre; and if the Spanish, nine thousand six hundred. As soon as the soil is in proper condition to work after the plants have been set out, a cultivator with five teeth is run between the rows, and this is kept up once or twice a week, until the field has been gone over five or six times. The crop is hoed twice—once after the cultivator has been run through the first time. Very little earth is put round the plant, level cultivation being preferred. In some portions of the district, a horse-hoe is used in cultivating the crop; this implement, from its peculiar construction, enables the operator to go very near each plant and stir every portion of the soil. In very small patches, the cultivation is done entirely with the hoe, which is kept up every week until the plants are so large that they cannot be worked without breaking the leaves.

The next operations are termed ‘topping’ and ‘suckering.’ In about forty-eight or fifty days after the plants are set, if the crop has been well cultivated and the weather seasonable, the flower-buds make their appearance, and are pinched out, leaving from fourteen to sixteen leaves on each plant. None of the bottom leaves are taken off, but all are left to mature, or dry up, serving as a protection against the dirt. Fields, however, are often seen in full blossom before the tobacco is topped, and this results in great damage to the crop. Tobacco is suckered twice—once in about a week after it is topped, and again just before it is cut, which is generally about two weeks after topping. ‘Suckering’ consists in the removal of young suckers, which at this time make their appearance in large numbers. As has been noted, tobacco is generally ready for harvesting in two weeks after being topped; but there is considerable variation in the time on various soils. On warm sandy loams, the plant will be as ripe in twelve days as it will be on heavy clayey soils in eighteen days. This is one of the reasons why sandy loams are preferred.

Harvesting commences early in August, and continues without intermission into September. The time preferred for cutting is from two o’clock in the afternoon until nearly sundown, because at that time tobacco is less liable to be blistered by the heat of the sun. The instrument used for cutting is a hatchet, the plants being cut off nearly on a level with the ground, and laid back on the rows to ‘wilt.’ After wilting, they are speared on laths. Of the large seed-leaf variety, only about six plants are put on a lath, but of the smaller Spanish (or Havana) variety, ten are not considered too many. After being speared on the laths, the latter are carefully put on a long wagon-frame, made for the purpose, and carried to the sheds, where they are arranged on the tier poles or racks, from six to ten inches apart, according to the size of the plant, but never so close as to permit them to touch each other. It requires six weeks to cure the Spanish variety perfectly, and two months to cure the seed-leaf. If the weather is dry, after the crop is out, the doors are kept closed during the day and opened at night; but extreme care must be taken not to cure too rapidly. In muggy, sultry weather, as much air as possible should be given, thorough ventilation being indispensable, to prevent ‘pole-sweat.’ Continuous damp weather and continuous dry weather are both to be feared. It is believed by many good growers that white veins are the result of a drought after the tobacco has been harvested, and it is said that no crop cured when there is plenty of rain is ever affected with them. Inferences of this kind, however, are too often drawn without considering a sufficient number of cases to warrant the enunciation of a general law. This is the view put forth by Mr Killebrew, in an able paper on Tobacco-culture written for the American government. He, however, further points out that it is a well-established truth, deduced from the universal experience of the cultivation of seed-leaf tobacco in every State, that a crop cannot be cured without the alternations of moist and dry atmospheres.

A few words may be said on the curing of tobacco generally. Three systems are adopted in the United States. It may be (1) air-dried; (2) dried by open-fire heat from charcoal or wood fires in the barn; or (3) by flues which convey heat from ovens and heaters built outside the barn. The last method is said to be the best, as a better control can be had over the temperature. No regular rule can be given, as the heat must be regulated according to circumstances, and must change with the weather. The main thing is to dry the tobacco gradually to secure a good colour, and to prevent mould. When the tobacco is dry, it must be kept so by gentle fires in wet or damp weather, and it is not touched for the purpose of ‘bulking’ until it has become soft and pliable. Artificial sweating is believed by some to be accompanied with less risk than sweating by the natural process; and second stories of warehouses are sometimes prepared as sweating chambers by being closely ceiled or plastered. These are heated by furnaces, and the temperature maintained at from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty degrees.

After curing, the tobacco is prepared for market. This consists of stripping the leaves from the stalks, tying them up in large bundles, and afterwards sorting them. After being sorted in ‘grades,’ these are tied up in ‘hands’ of from eighteen to twenty leaves, securely wrapped with a leaf at the butt-end, and ‘bulked’ in piles, with the heads out and the tails overlapping in the centre of the bulk. Here it remains until the ‘fatty stems’ are thoroughly cured, when it is sold to the dealers. These latter pack it in barrels and sweat the leaves still further; but into this subject we need not go, as it can have but little interest to the farmer who intends growing tobacco in this country.

So far as the cost of growing tobacco is concerned, a large and successful grower in Pennsylvania, some two years ago, published the following statement of cost and returns from a field of nine and a half acres: 215¾ days’ labour of men from preparing the seed-bed up to the hanging in the barn, £43; team-work, 38½ days, with feed for 42½ days, £30; curing, stripping, and marketing, £15: total, £88. The net receipts were £174; thus showing a profit of £86. This was in a fairly good year.

These few notes show us that tobacco is a crop requiring a great expenditure of labour and care, and that even in America the profits of thirty pounds per acre, about which we have heard so much, are not always realised. The probabilities, however, are so much against our getting really fine qualities of tobacco, that it is doubtful if the necessary capital will be put into the business.

‘WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.’

I write these pages as a warning. I don’t suppose any one will profit by it. From the time of Cassandra downwards, nobody has ever paid attention to warnings. But that is not my affair.

A London newspaper, some years ago, gave up several columns of its valuable space to the question: ‘What shall we do with our Boys?’ I perused the correspondence with a strong personal interest, for I myself am the proprietor of a boy—several boys, in point of fact; but I refer more particularly to my eldest, aged nineteen, as to whom I felt that it was time something was settled. I have a great belief—partly derived from the before-mentioned correspondence, and partly from my own observation—in studying a boy’s natural bent, and finding him an occupation in accordance with it. Such being the case, I began to study Augustus with a view to finding out his special aptitude; but, unless a really remarkable faculty of outgrowing his trousers may be so regarded, I could not for some time discover that he had any. By dint, however, of careful observation and cross-examination of the household, I elicited that he was addicted to making extremely offensive smells in the back kitchen with chemicals, and that he had what he called a ‘collection’ of beetles and other unpleasant insects stuck on pins in a box in his bedroom. It appeared, therefore, that his proclivities were scientific, and I ultimately decided to make an analyst of him. Accordingly, after disposing of sundry painful but presumably necessary arrangements as to premium, Augustus was duly articled to a Public Analyst. I use capital letters, because I observed that Mr Scrutin himself always did so. Why, I cannot say. Possibly, a public analyst—without capitals—would not command the same amount of public confidence. On consideration, I don’t suppose he would.

Augustus’ first demand on taking up his new occupation was a microscope. ‘And while you’re about it,’ he suggested, ‘it had better be a good one.’ At first, I was inclined to suspect that this was an artful device for the further indulgence of his entomological vices, and that the implement would be devoted to post-mortem examinations of deceased caterpillars or other kindred abominations. He assured me, however, that such was not the case, and that the microscope was nowadays ‘the very sheet-anchor of analytical science.’ The ‘sheet-anchor’ completely took the wind out of my sails. (I feel that there is rather a confusion of metaphor here, but, not being a nautical person, I don’t feel competent to set it right.) I surrendered, humbly remarking that I supposed a five-pound note would cover it. The youthful analyst laughed me to scorn. The very least, he assured me, that a good working microscope could be got for would be ten or twelve pounds. Ultimately, I agreed to purchase one at ten guineas, and congratulated myself that at anyrate _that_ was done with. On the contrary, it was only just begun. No sooner had my analyst secured his microscope, than he began to insist upon the purchase of a number of auxiliary appliances, which, it appeared, no respectable microscope would be seen without. He broke them to me by degrees. At first he only mentioned, if I remember right, an ‘achromatic condenser,’ at two guineas. Next came a ‘double nosepiece’ (why ‘double,’ I don’t know); then a polarising apparatus and a camera lucida (four pounds ten); then a micrometer and a microtome (three guineas more); then somebody’s prism, at one pound five; and somebody else’s microspectroscope, at I don’t know how much. Here, however, I put my foot down. _I_ am compelled to regard the sordid consideration of price, though science doesn’t.

The microscope and its subsidiary apparatus were duly delivered; but my analyst appeared to be in no particular hurry to convey them to the laboratory where he was studying. On my making a remark to this effect, he replied: ‘Haven’t taken them to the laboratory? No; and I’m not going to. Mr Scrutin has got a precious sight better microscope than mine—cost sixty guineas without the little extra articles, and they were about thirty more. _He_’s got a microspectroscope, if you like!’

I refrained from arguing the point, and mildly remarked that in that case he might have used Mr Scrutin’s microscope, and saved me some twenty guineas. But he rejected the idea with scorn, and explained that _his_ microscope was not for laboratory use, but for ‘private study.’

So far as my observation went, my analyst’s private study had hitherto been confined to a short pipe and the last number of some penny dreadful; but I did not think it wise to check his new-born ardour; I contented myself by observing that I only hoped he would ‘stick to it.’

‘No fear of that,’ he rejoined, as indignantly as a limpet might have done in answer to the same observation. ‘Why, microscopy is the most fascinating study out.—Just take a squint at _that_, now.’

I looked down the tube, but couldn’t see anything at all, and made a remark to that effect.

‘Oh, that’s because you haven’t got the focus.—_Now_, try again.’

I tried again, and saw a sort of network of red fibre.

‘I’ll bet sixpence you can’t tell me what _that_ is!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

I owned the soft impeachment.

‘That’s the maxillary gland of a rat.’

‘Dear me!’ I said.

‘Yes. Isn’t it lovely? Here’s another.—Now, just look at that.’ (A queer granular-looking object.) ‘You don’t know what that is?’

‘Give it up,’ I said.

‘That’s a section of the epidermis of the great toe.’

‘Great toe!’ I exclaimed in disgust. ‘What on earth have analysts got to do with great toes?’

‘Oh, nothing particular,’ he said airily. ‘But we like to have as much variety as possible. I should like to have a section of everything, if I could get it.—Here’s another pretty slide; that is the section of a diseased potato; and this one is a bit of a frog’s leg.’

‘Very instructive, I daresay,’ I remarked; ‘but I hope you haven’t made me spend twenty pounds merely to improve your acquaintance with frogs’ legs and diseased potatoes. Mr Scrutin surely doesn’t analyse such things as these?’