Chapter I: Part 1

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 135.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

HYGEIA IN THE DOG-DAYS.

Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, receives many rebuffs. She has numbers of followers, who pretend to listen to her teachings, but who do not quite understand her. She is a very simple and sweet goddess, and it would do us all good to put ourselves under her gentle training for a few of the hot weeks of summer. She would be pleased with our patronage, although she is a reputed Pagan goddess. She is no worse for that, as long as she is practical and poetical and teaches us how to make ourselves comfortable. Oh, these reeking hot days of July! I fear we break the commandments of the goddess by feeding too largely upon them. I am ashamed to own that I have been regaling myself not wisely but too well upon some of the hottest foods within reach, merely because I liked them. I have dined, and am growing hotter and hotter, in consequence of the dishes which appetite and not reason selected.

Whilst ruminating over a pipe on the evening of one of the dog-days, the thermometer being above eighty degrees in the shade, I have wondered what the goddess Hygeia would have done, and what she would have recommended, under the circumstances, for purposes of health and comfort. She wouldn’t have eaten roast duck, I know; but how would she have combated the fierce heat, by way of keeping herself cool? Would she have swallowed haggis and cockaleekie in North Britain, ham and beef in Yorkshire, and tripe and onions in London? Not a bit of it. Hygeia had too much respect for herself as a goddess to indulge in such plebeian and delusive dainties in hot weather.

I can just see her in a scornful attitude, on the top of a marble column such as Alma Tadema loves to paint—she waves her hand over the smoking viands our good cooks are sending up for our delectation. She preaches abstention in a way that makes one feel creepy, as her words seem to come down from the cold marble. She is commanding her followers to keep cool with milk and water, and grapes and strawberries, and to leave all the alcohol and wine and beer for other occasions. I beg Hygeia’s pardon, and shall renounce heat-producers on hot days in future, although they are very good, and like everything else, unfortunately, what dyspeptics like best.

What a dinner for a broiling day!—hot roast ducks and fowls, hot vegetables, a pint of heating stout, hot fish and roast beef and soups and plumpuddings, hot omelets, and a dozen more hot things, all washed down with port wine and whisky toddy, as a nightcap, with hot tea at intervals between! What would Hygeia say? She would say: Abandon all hope of keeping cool, if you put such things into your receptacles. There is only one thing unmentioned—a hot poker—and probably your punch has been stirred up with it. Such is an average Englishman’s food on the sweltering days of July and August. And yet the French say we can’t cook! Only imagine the plethora-producing power of an ordinary dog-days dinner.

As I know something about Hygeia, I may state that she will always hold aloof from people who feed on hot meats and beverages such as I have described. As for herself, she has (or had) an internal Limited Liability Company, which contents itself with rice-puddings and other innocent sustenance free from fats and sugars. She is, or was, a very plain and wholesome and abstemious feeder, seldom aspiring to anything beyond the regulation cup of tea, or a drink from the pump or pail, or now and then a seltzer, potass or soda, varied with a dash of claret or sherry or champagne. There is some use in these goddesses after all. Hygeia promises (we are getting somewhat mixed with past and present) that she will befriend any one in the dog-days who follows her rôle, lives simply, eats the fruits of the season, and gives up a portion of carbonaceous food, which adds fuel to the internal fires. She will even bring Morpheus in her train, and tuck up a fellow who obeys her, and give him happy rest and sweet dreams, without a headache in the morning. In the night-watches, she will keep him cool as a frog or a cucumber, without the fires of Vesuvius to make him kick against unknown quantities, and wrestle with demons and dragons and other enemies of sleep.

But if, like humble children, we would benefit by the goddess to the full, there are other things to attend to besides food and drink to make us comfortable in the dog-days. We are nearly all astray in the kind of raiment we wear, both in weight and colour and quality and substance. We draw down the divine caloric by dark, heat-producing clothes in a way which shocks Hygeia. Why not take to nankeen and cotton, and please the dear soul, and comfort ourselves as well? She never wore funereal black in hot summers. She never had a hot chimney-pot on her head; she was never seen in ebony coloured trousers or a villainous hot mantle. She believes in white apparel, as angels ought to do—white window blinds and knickerbockers, white wide-awakes and sun-shades, white fish, white bread, white pulpy fruit, or as near that colour as possible, and white curtains and covers.

And Hygeia is right. Why should we keep such big fires and jets of lambent gas in the dog-days, consuming the life-giving oxygen, and yet complain of being overheated? He would be a plucky man who dare ride through public streets with white unmentionables, coat and vest, and white umbrella, on a white horse. He would look cool, however, and feel so; and if we could prevail upon ourselves to be a little lighter and whiter on saddle, or rail or steamboat, Hygeia says we should derive great joy thereby in July and August. At all events, we might make some approach to it in our dishabille. We need not be mere blocks for tailors and milliners to hang dresses upon, obliging us to be tight and uncomfortable because Fashion wills it. We require loose, lightly fitting garments, if we would keep cool.

Moreover, now that we are hobnobbing with goddesses and know their ways and philosophies, let us inquire why we open our windows and let in the broiling summer heat; and having let it in, why we do not allow it to go out again by the chimney or the roof. Limp, flabby girls, familiar to us all through Du Maurier’s pencil, spend much time in stuffing our grates with lilies and peacocks’ feathers and sunflowers. They fill the chimney with sacking and make the outside very pretty; thus no air makes its exit by the chimney flue. Hygeia says the young ladies are all wrong; and she doesn’t care a fig for sunflowers, if they prevent the operations of nature. Hot air should ascend, and cool air come into a house. ‘Dear girls,’ says Hygeia, ‘let these fads alone; pull out all the stuffing, and be natural. You are hot; cool yourselves. Why do you cram chimneys with flowers? It is not a festival. Make room for the king—for air, light, and comfort. Perish the peacock plumes; down with the gaudy flowers; and away with the fernery in front of them! Out with the sooty sacking. Give air, and plenty of it, in the dog-days.’

Hygeia says we don’t make ourselves comfortable by the windows. We ought to have more green and white sun-blinds. We open our morning sashes and let in the bright heat all day, to make our bedrooms unbearable at night. Nevertheless, everybody does it. Cottagers in the country open their lattices amongst honeysuckles, roses, and stocks; palaces are open amongst vines and trellises of wisteria and orange. Never mind, says our authority. Let me teach you to close all windows as closely as if they were glued, and let them remain so till the sun begins to wester in the heavens. We might do much by way of cooling our houses, if we attended to such sensible arrangements as closing in a southerly aspect, and opening in a northern one, always opening opposite the sun, and also by having free ventilation through the attics.

Directly the sun begins to decline, let every maiden and housewife, and man and woman and child, with an eye for the picturesque, and a feeling for health and beauty, throw up the Venetian or Parisian blinds. Open your rooms to the glories of the evening; throw up, and pull down the sashes; open wide all your doors. Let cool breezes enter into corridor and cellar and garret and room; let the ‘caller’ air circulate through every inch of the house hour after hour, whilst you are getting your evening meal, whilst you say your prayers, whilst you think of others after the toils of the day. If it be your priceless lot to dwell apart from city life, and have outside your cottage or villa or mansion, flowers, those lovely gifts of Dame Nature, let scents of rose and thyme come in at every gap in the hedge, at every rift of the wall, at every cranny of the house—scents of rosemary and mignonette, and lavender and bergamot, and lily and elderberry. Welcome the delicate perfume on its cooling, refreshing, healthy mission. It is Hygeia’s gift—a superlative boon for the dog-days.

Strawberries are waiting to be plucked in all the hot months. If we have the possibility of enjoying a holiday, what can be better than a strawberry garden and plenty of cream? whilst larks aloft, and cuckoos in the shade, are singing in the plenitude of their full hearts, and whilst nimble fingers are spreading the white tablecloth on the grass to receive the dainty fruit.

Talk of lotos-eaters—we prefer strawberry gatherers. An old divine said he believed the joys of paradise would consist of eating strawberries to the sounds of a trumpet. We rejoice to think that we can have this transcendental pastime nearer home. We have the strawberries in full force, and there is generally a brass band round the corner to supply, for a small gratuity, the trumpet. Unluckily, doctors have decided that many of us derive no advantage from the strawberry; and alas! and alack-a-day! even claret-cup and champagne and iced cream are occasionally proscribed! When boys, we ate more ices than we could afford; in maturity, we have the pocket-money—without the digestion. A lady in France thought that if strawberry ices were only _sinful_, no pleasure could exceed that which is to be enjoyed in the consumption of the pleasant fruit. In the eyes of some people, eating strawberries _has_ become almost sinful, so the French lady will be able to satisfy her conscience, perhaps, on that score. Nevertheless, the old parson that Izaak Walton speaks of was right: ‘Certainly, God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but certainly, God never did.’ So let us enjoy this heaven-sent fruit in the dog-days.

Not that we are at a loss for juicy fruits as long as we have our pine-apples and melons and tomatoes, our peaches and jargonelles, grapes and nectarines, and plums and apricots, a very paradisiacal melange, born of our glorious summer; all which indicates that providence nurtured them for the dog-days that we may eat and be satisfied. We may be sure that the sugar in fruits is modified by other elements, wisely elaborated by a Beneficent chemistry.

After the dog-days comes ‘St Luke’s little summer,’ beginning on the 18th of October and lasting for an octave. Horses and cows feel the heat, dogs whine, and cats show distress, birds sip the morning dew on the leaves for refreshment, even our trees and flowers hang their branches languidly. The Italians twit us by saying that only dogs and Englishmen walk in the sun. Well, it is so little of it we get, that we may be excused if we make the best of it, although we know we may suffer for our imprudence, and go home with colds or neuralgia from too free exposure and rapid cooling. Young dancing and gamboling Sylphs and Cupids in gauze, like so many butterflies in the sunbeams, had better be aware that they may get too much of it, although not often, and we must have an administrative check upon them, so that they do not fly into the heat and scorch their wings.

We are not an eminently sunny people; our fruit has not the rich orange tints of sunnier climes, where warmth is perennial and perpetual; and then dog-days come at last, and we go out to bask like lizards amongst the sand of our shores, or to splash amongst salt water at our bathing resorts. Our hot days ought to be an enjoyment, which they would be if we prepared ourselves for them and attended to the changes of temperature. We are not to throw off all our wraps in one grand effort to be free, still less to court chills by foolishly hanging about damp places merely to get cool, and losing our animal heat quicker than we can replace it. Hygeia is the last person in the world to tolerate such errors. She requires us to use common-sense, and not to use an erroneous dietary; and if we obeyed her implicitly, our summers would leave us not so relaxed and overdone and dull and full of languor as they often do. If we will have heating food and heavy raiment, we resist the precepts of Hygeia, and we shall fail to win her smile when she draws the curtain for the season.

We must not tempt malaria by walking too late in dewy grass, when the moon is up, and all nature looks bright and beautiful, and only the nightingale sings or the willow-wren warbles amongst the osiers. We may stay out too late, by way of getting cool, until we get quite hot, and feverish with a cough that won’t let us sleep; and as blackbirds and thrushes call upon us with dulcet notes about three o’clock A.M., we cannot answer the polite and musical invitation, if our throats suffer from the evening fog.

Young folk will pardon this dog-day talk, as it perhaps may benefit them. It is very pleasant to see them enjoying themselves, wild with the shimmering sunshine. We were all young once, ‘before Decay’s effacing fingers had swept the lines where beauty lingers,’ and before rheumatism caught us in its horrible grip. Long may they enjoy themselves—and ourselves too enjoy our rollicking fun and nonsense amongst wild-birds and flowers and hayricks, amongst the scents of new-mown hay and clover and bean fields. What a lot of joy middle-aged people have to renounce, and yet we can still appreciate our dog-days!

An old proverb says, ‘Every dog has his day;’ but there are only forty dog-days in the calendar according to modern almanacs. They begin on the 3d of July, and end on the 11th of August. Bailey, the dictionary-maker of 1755, says the dog-days are ‘certain days in July and August, commonly from the 24th of the former to the 28th of the latter, so called from the star Canis or Dog-star, which then rises and sets with the sun, and greatly increases the heat.’ This was published three years after the introduction of new style, which took the place of old style in 1752. Another authority, more recent, says: ‘The canicular or dog-days denote a certain number of days preceding and ensuing the heliacal rising of the Canicula or the Dog-star in the morning. Almanac-makers usually mark the beginning of the dog-days from about the end of July, and end them about their first week in September.’ Most people are accustomed to connect these days with mad dogs and hydrophobia generally, and they begin to think of M. Pasteur and his experiments at such times. There is evident confusion as to the time they begin and end. One thing is plain—they indicate the hotter portion of our year: some of them are so hot that we perspire if we stand still, though an Arab would freeze. What are we to do at such times? Simply, let us sit quietly if we can, and enjoy our siesta in a rather darkened room, with a pretty girl at the piano to sing for us, whilst we have our ‘hubble-bubble’ and rose-water or fragrant cigar and a pleasant book, till the cool of the evening. A considerable number of the dog-days are anything but hot; they are dashed by rain, as picnic parties know to their sorrow. St Swithin, of pluvial notoriety, bids us put up our umbrellas on the 15th of July, whilst he assuages the heat, and acts the part of Aquarius for the good of the world, spoiling all the custards and junkets and cheese-cakes, and taking out the stiffening of the ladies’ curls and collars in a remarkably disagreeable manner, by a sudden downpour, that often continues for many hours together. What an ungallant, heartless, and stingy old saint he must be!

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Mr Dupuy was seated quietly at dinner in his own dining-room, with Nora at the opposite end of the table, and Uncle ’Zekiel, the butler, in red plush waistcoat as usual, standing solemnly behind his chair. Mr Dupuy was in excellent spirits, in spite of the little affair of the previous night, for the sugar-cane had cut very heavy, and the boiling was progressing in the most admirable manner. He sipped his glass of St Emilion (as imported) with the slow, easy air of a person at peace with himself and with all creation. The world at large seemed just that moment to suit him excellently. ‘Nora, my dear,’ he drawled out lazily, with the unctuous deliberateness of the full-blooded man well fed, ‘this is a capital pine-apple certainly—a Ripley, I perceive; far superior in flavour, Ripleys, to the cheap common black sugar-pines: always insist upon getting Ripleys.—I think, if you please, I’ll take another piece of that pine-apple.’

Nora cut him a good thick slice from the centre of the fruit—it is only in England that people commit the atrocity of cutting pine in thin layers—and laid down the knife with a stifled yawn upon the tall dessert dish. She was evidently bored—very deeply bored indeed. Orange Grove without Harry Noel began to seem a trifle dull; and it must be confessed that to live for months together with an old gentleman of Mr Dupuy’s sluggish temperament was scarcely a lively mode of life for a pretty, volatile, laughter-loving girl of twenty, like little Nora. ‘What’s this, papa,’ she asked languidly, just by way of keeping up the conversation, ‘about the negroes here in Westmoreland being so dreadfully discontented? Somebody was telling me’—Nora prudently suppressed Marian Hawthorn’s name, for fear of an explosion—‘that there’s a great deal of stir and ferment among the plantation hands. What are they bothering and worrying about now, I wonder?’

Mr Dupuy rolled the remainder of his glassful of claret on his discriminative palate, very reflectively, for half a minute or so, and then answered in his most leisurely fashion: ‘Lies, lies—a pack of lies, the whole lot of it, Nora. I know who you heard that from, though you won’t tell me so. You heard it from some of your fine coloured friends there, over at Mulberry.—Now, don’t deny it, for I won’t believe you. When I say a thing, you know I mean it. You heard it, I say, from some of these wretched, disaffected coloured people. And there isn’t a word of truth in the whole story—not a syllable—not a shadow—not a grain—not a penumbra. Absolute falsehood, the entire lot of it, got up by these designing radical coloured people, to serve their own private purposes. I assure you, Nora, there isn’t in the whole world a finer, better paid, better fed, better treated, or more happy and contented peasantry than our own comfortable West Indian negroes. For my part, I can’t conceive what on earth they’ve ever got to be discontented about.’

‘But, papa, they _do_ say there’s a great chance of a regular rising.’

‘Rising, my dear!—rising! Did you say a rising? Ho, ho! that’s really too ridiculous! What, these niggers rise in revolt against the white people! Why, my dear child, they’d never dare to do it. A pack of cowardly, miserable, quaking and quavering nigger blackguards. Rise, indeed! I’d like to see them try it! O no; nothing of the sort. Somebody’s been imposing on you. They’re too afraid of us, my dear, ever to think of venturing upon a regular rising. Show me a nigger, I always say to anybody who talks that sort of nonsense to me, and I’ll show you a coward, and a thief too, and a liar, and a vagabond.—’Zekiel, you rascal, pour me out another glass of claret, sir, this minute!’

Uncle ’Zekiel poured out the claret for his red-faced master with a countenance wholly unclouded by this violent denunciation of his own race; to say the truth, the old butler was too much accustomed to similar sentiments from Mr Dupuy’s lips ever to notice particularly what his master was saying. He smiled and grinned, and showed his own white teeth good-humouredly as he laid down the claret jug, exactly as though Mr Dupuy had been ascribing to the African race in general, and to himself in particular, all the virtues and excellences ever observed in the most abstractly perfect human character.

‘No,’ Mr Dupuy went on dogmatically, ‘they won’t rise: a pack of mean-spirited, cowardly, ignorant vagabonds as ever were born, the niggers, the whole lot of them. I never knew a nigger yet who had a single ounce of courage in him. You might walk over them, and trample them down in heavy riding-boots, and they wouldn’t so much as dare to raise a finger against you. And besides, what have they got to rise for? Haven’t they got everything they can ever expect to have? Haven’t they got their freedom and their cottages? But they’re always grumbling, always grumbling about something or other—a set of idle, lazy, discontented vagabonds as ever I set eyes on!’

‘I thought you said just now,’ Nora put in with a provoking smile, ‘they were the finest, happiest, and most contented peasantry to be found anywhere.’

There was nothing more annoying to Mr Dupuy than to have one of his frequent conversational inconsistencies ruthlessly brought home to him by his own daughter—the only person in the whole world who would ever have ventured upon taking such an unwarrantable liberty. So he laid down his glass of claret with a forced smile, and by way of changing the subject, said unconcernedly: ‘Bless my soul, what on earth can all that glare be over yonder? Upon my word, now I look at it, I fancy, Nora, it seems to come from the direction of the trash-houses.’

Uncle ’Zekiel, standing up behind his master’s chair, and gazing outward, could see more easily over the dining-table, and out through the open doorway of the room, to the hillside beyond, where the glare came from. In a moment, he realised the full meaning of the unwonted blaze, and cried out sharply, in his shrill old tones: ‘O sah, O sah! de naygurs hab risen, an’ dem burnin’ de trash-houses, dem burnin’ de trash-houses!’

Mr Dupuy, aghast with righteous anger and astonishment, could hardly believe his own ears at this unparalleled piece of nigger impertinence coming from so old a servant as Uncle ’Zekiel. He turned round upon his trusty butler slowly and solemnly, chair and all, and with his two hands planted firmly on his capacious knees, he said in his most awful voice: ‘’Zekiel, I’m quite at a loss to understand what you can mean by such conduct. Didn’t you hear me distinctly say to Miss Nora this very minute that the niggers don’t rise, won’t rise, can’t rise, and never have risen? How dare you, sir, how dare you contradict me to my very face in this disgraceful, unaccountable manner?’

But Uncle ’Zekiel, quite convinced in his own mind of the correctness of his own hasty inference, could only repeat, more and more energetically every minute: ‘It de trut’ I tellin’ you, sah; it de trut’ I tellin’ you. Naygur hab risen, runnin’ an’ shoutin’, kickin’ fire about, an’ burnin’ de trash-houses!’

Mr Dupuy rose from the table, pale but incredulous. Nora jumped up, white and terrified, but with a mute look of horror-struck appeal to Uncle ’Zekiel. ‘Doan’t you be afraid, missy,’ the old man whispered to her in a loud undertone; ‘we fight all de naygur in all Trinidad before we let dem hurt a single hair ob your sweet, pretty, white, little head, dearie.’

At that moment, for the first time, a loud shout burst suddenly upon their astonished ears, a mingled tumultuous yell of ‘Kill de buckra—kill de buckra!’ broken by deep African guttural mumblings, and the crackling noise of the wild flames among the dry cane-refuse. It was the shout that the negroes raised as Delgado called them back from the untimely fire to their proper work of bloodshed and massacre.

In her speechless terror, Nora flung herself upon her father’s arms, and gazed out upon the ever reddening glare beyond with unspeakable alarm.

Next minute, the cry from without rose again louder and louder: ‘Buckra country for us! Kill de buckra! Colour for colour! Kill dem—kill dem!’ And then, another deep negro voice, clearer and shriller far than all of them, broke the deathly stillness that succeeded for a second, with the perfectly audible and awful words: ‘Follow me! I gwine to lead you to kill de Dupuys an’ all de buckra!’

‘’Zekiel!’ Mr Dupuy said, coming to himself, and taking down his walking-stick with that calm unshaken courage in which the white West Indian has never been found lacking in the hour of danger—‘’Zekiel, come with me! I must go out at once and quell these rioters.’

Nora gazed at him in blank dismay. ‘Papa, papa!’ she cried breathlessly, ‘you’re not going out to them just with your stick, are you? You’re not going out alone to all these wretches without even so much as a gun or a pistol!’

‘My dear,’ Mr Dupuy answered, coolly and collectedly, disengaging himself from her arms not without some quiet natural tenderness, ‘don’t be alarmed. You don’t understand these people as well as I do. I’m a magistrate for the county: they’ll respect my position. The moment I come near, they’ll all disperse and grow as mild as babies.’

And even as he spoke, the confused shrieks of the women surged closer and closer upon their ears: ‘Kill dem—kill dem! De liquor—de liquor!’

‘Ah! I told you so,’ Mr Dupuy murmured, half to himself, very complacently, with a deep breath. ‘Only a foolish set of tipsy negresses, waking and rum-drinking, and kicking about firebrands.’

For another second, there was a slight pause again, while one might count twenty; and then the report of a pistol rang out clear and definite upon the startled air from the direction of the flaring trash-houses. It was Delgado’s pistol, shooting down the tipsy recalcitrant.

‘This means business!’ Mr Dupuy ejaculated, raising his voice, with a sidelong glance at poor trembling Nora.—‘Come along, ’Zekiel; come along all of you. We must go out at once and quiet them or disperse them.—Dick, Thomas, Emilius, Robert, Jo, Mark Antony! every one of you! come along with me, come along with me, and see to the trash-houses before these tipsy wretches have utterly destroyed them.’

(_To be continued._)

BEES AND HONEY.

The honey-bee has been an object of great interest from the very earliest ages; the most ancient historical records make frequent reference to it. ‘A little balm and a little honey’ formed part of the present which Jacob sent into Egypt to Joseph in the time of the great famine. The ‘busy bee’ figures also in Greek as well as Hebrew history. The little creature has given a name to many females of high degree. The Hebrew name of the bee (Deborah) was given to Rebecca’s nurse, as also to that magnanimous prophetess whose courage and patriotism inspired the flagging zeal and waning energies of her dispirited countrymen. The Greek name of the bee (Melissa) was given to one of the daughters of Melissus, king of Crete. It was she who, with her sister Amalthæa, is fabled to have fed Jupiter with the milk of goats. She is said, also, to have first discovered the means of collecting honey from the stores of the bees, from which some ancient writers inferred that she not only bore the name, but that she was actually changed into a bee.

Another Greek story tells of a woman of Corinth, also bearing the name of Melissa, who, having been admitted to officiate in the festivals of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, afterwards refused to initiate others, and was torn to pieces for her disobedience, a swarm of bees being made to rise from her body.

The old Greek name for the bee seems to have fallen into disuse in this country as a name given to females, though there can be no reason why its use should not be revived, for it is at least as melodious as the Hebrew name of the same significance, still applied to many a matron and maiden—a name which is expressive of honeyed sweetness, as also of unwearied energy and untiring industry.

Those who have had personal knowledge and experience of bee-culture will bear out the remark that bees are not particular as to the size or the position of the home in which they choose to dwell, so that it suffices for them to carry on with security their wonderful operations. In their wild state, cavities of rocks and hollow trees are alike available; and in their domestic conditions they have no preference for a straw skep over a wooden box, nor for the wooden house over the straw castle.

The bee, which, while under proper control and management, is one of man’s best friends, proves, when assailed by him in any way, a terrible adversary. Allusion is made to this by Moses in his story of what befell the Israelites in their wilderness sojourn: ‘The Amorites came out against you, and chased you as bees do, and destroyed you.’ The strength and force of their sting is such as to enable them to pierce the skin of the horse and other large animals and kill them. Their ordinary speed when in flight, is from sixty to eighty miles an hour, and they have been known to fly past the windows of an express train when travelling at full speed in the same direction. Their manner of attack is to dash straight at the object aimed at; and commonly, when excited by the presence of some unknown spectator, and especially by the intermeddling of some undexterous or mischievous person, they will attack the face, aiming especially at the eyes. When, therefore, the thousands which inhabit a single hive are aroused by the sound of alarm, well understood by all the inmates, to repel an invader, they sally forth with a courage and determination which none can withstand, attacking their foes on every side with a fury it is impossible to resist. King David must have witnessed just such a scene, which he reproduces in his description of the fierce attacks, the determined onslaughts of his bitter and unrelenting foes: ‘All nations compassed me about ... they compassed me about like bees.’

Somewhat recently, the mishap of a porter in handling a box of bees in transit by railway created an amusing and rather alarming scene at the station. There was a general stampede of passengers and officials flying in every direction, chased by the infuriated bees. It was only when some one, skilled in the management of bees, catching the queen and placing her in the box, restored confidence and quiet, for, flocking loyally to her standard, the whole colony returned to the case, which was in due time forwarded to its destination. But even this was a small affair compared with what is related in ancient history of persons being driven from their habitations, and the inhabitants of an entire town being compelled to flee before myriads of bees. Ælianus, who flourished about 200 A.D., gives an instance of this in one of his seventeen books on animals. Mungo Park, too, the African traveller, mentions a modern instance which took place near Dooproo: ‘We had no sooner unloaded the asses than some of the people, being in search of honey, inopportunely disturbed a large swarm of bees. They came out in immense numbers, and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily, most of the asses were loose, and galloped up the valley; but the horses and people were very much stung, and obliged to scamper off in all directions. In fact, for half an hour the bees seemed to have put an end to our journey. In the evening, when they became less troublesome and we could venture to collect our cattle, we found many of them much stung and swelled about the head. Three asses were missing; one died in the evening, and another next morning. Our guide lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung about the head and face.’

The fierceness and unrelenting cruelty of the ancient Assyrians, and the terror with which their swarming multitudes filled the inhabitants of the lands they invaded, have caused them to be likened to bees in their much-dreaded attacks on such as have aroused their anger: ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall _hiss_ for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.’ The ‘hiss’ was simply a call, in allusion to the note of the queen bee, as she issues her royal mandate to her ever loyal subjects to prepare for action. It has also been supposed to allude to a custom prevailing in very ancient times in connection with bee-culture, or honey-raising in the neighbourhood of rivers. During the dry season, a number of hives would be placed on a flat-bottomed boat, in the charge of an attendant. Very early in the morning the boat would begin the day’s voyage, gently gliding down the river, the bees sallying forth with the sun to collect their golden stores and deposit them in their several hives, which they commonly know by some mark. The innumerable flowers on the banks of the rivers offered them a fine harvest-field. At the approach of evening, the well-known whistle or ‘hiss’ of the care-taker—a decent imitation of the queen’s own call—would bring them back to their hives in multitudes, when the boat would be paddled back to the farm or other place of rendezvous.

As an article of food, and as a much-valued and even royal luxury, honey has been used from the remotest ages. Nor was it much, if any, less in request as a healing medicine for both inward and outward application. And though it may have fallen somewhat into disuse in these days, when many good things are overlooked, and when the artificial too often supplants the real, it may be safely predicted that the wide and rapid spread of bee-culture will induce a return to some of the wiser uses and methods and forms of adaptation employed by our early forefathers, as well as stimulate to new applications and new developments of its wondrous powers.

When and by whom mead or metheglin was first made from honey, could not be easily determined. The two words are not unfrequently applied to the same liquor; but that is not correct, as they are dissimilar. Both, however, are made from honey, sometimes also from the refuse or washings of the comb. Queen Elizabeth had such fondness for metheglin as to prescribe carefully how it should be made and with what a variety of herbs it should be flavoured. In Wales, it long continued to be held in high esteem; and its various beneficial properties have been quaintly set forth in a letter addressed to Cliffe the historian by the learned Welshman, Rev. James Howells (born 1594), brother of Thomas Howells, some time Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. The uniqueness of the communication is the apology for its quotation in full:

SIR—To inaugurate a new and jovial new year unto you, I send you
a morning’s draught [namely, a bottle of metheglin]. Neither Sir
John Barleycorn nor Bacchus hath anything to do with it; but it is
the pure juice of the bee, the laborious bee, and king of insects.
The Druids and old British bards were wont to take a carouse hereof
before they entered into their speculations; and if you do so when
your fancy labours with anything, it will do you no hurt; and I
know your fancy to be very good. But this drink always carries a
kind of state with it, for it must be attended with a brown toast;
nor will it admit of but one good draught, and that in the morning;
if more, it will keep a-humming in the head, and so speak much
of the house it came from, I mean the hive, as I gave a caution
elsewhere; and because the bottle might make more haste, have made
it go upon these (poetic) feet:

_J. H. T. C. Salutem et Annum Platonicum._

The juice of bees, not Bacchus, here behold,
Which British bards were wont to quaff of old;
The berries of the grape with furies swell,
But in the honeycomb the graces dwell.

This alludes to a saying which the Turks have, that there lurks a
devil in every berry of the vine. So I wish you cordially as to me
an auspicious and joyful new year, because you know I am, &c.

Metheglin is no doubt a healthy beverage, containing an admixture of milk. Pallus Romulus, when he was a hundred years old, told Julius Cæsar that he had preserved the vigour of his mind and body by taking metheglin inwardly, and using oil outwardly. Metheglin and mead may be made very strong, and, of course, they both contain some amount of alcohol. In Virgil’s days, metheglin was used to qualify wine when harsh. He writes of

Huge heavy honeycombs, of golden juice,
Not only sweet, but pure, and fit for use;
To allay the strength and hardness of the wine,
And with old Bacchus new metheglin join.

Mead or metheglin was the nectar of the Scandinavian nations, which they expected to drink in heaven, using the skulls of their enemies as goblets. Thus we read in Penrose’s _Carousal of Odin_:

Fill the honeyed beverage high;
Fill the skulls, ’tis Odin’s cry!
Heard ye not the powerful call,
Thundering through the vaulted hall?
Fill the meathe, and spread the board,
Vassals of the grisly lord!—
The feast begins, the skull goes round,
Laughter shouts—the shouts resound.

In England at the present time, mead, like many other old and excellent domestic compounds, has passed almost entirely out of use. In very few houses could it now be found. Here and there in a farmhouse where old customs linger, it may still be had; and it is still used for colds and other complaints, both in the case of men and cattle.

The revival of bee-keeping and the conduct of the enterprise on scientific principles, will restore honey to its wonted place in the domestic economy; and if carefully studied and thriftily managed, the cultivation of bees and the product of honey may be made to form not only an important article of food and a considerable item of domestic revenue, but an ample source of amusement, and a means of recreation healthful alike to body and mind.

A GALLANT RESCUE.

Some six years ago I was staying in a little village about half a mile from the sea, on the south-east coast of Cornwall. I had just recovered from a severe attack of blood-poisoning, and had not yet entirely regained my strength. My two companions were Herbert B——, a medical student, and Sam W——, a midshipman in the royal navy, both of whom had lived the best part of their lives at the seaside, and had been accustomed from their boyhood to boating and yachting in all sorts of weather. The former, about six feet in height, was a paragon of herculean strength. The latter, four inches less, was slightly but firmly built, and in his eyes there was a look of boldness and audacity which was unmistakable, whilst his every action gave evidence of a catlike activity.

That part of the Cornish coast on which we were staying was bare and rocky; a long line of cliffs rearing themselves straight out of the water to a height of about two hundred feet, stretched half-a-dozen miles on either side of us, affording no shelter for boats of a large size. The only thing resembling a haven was a small bay about a mile from our cottage, running a hundred and fifty yards inland, and facing south-south-east. From each side of this bay a bold reef of rocks jutted straight out to sea for about seventy yards, acting as natural breakwaters, and preventing a surf in the bay even in the roughest weather. In this bay, which was very dangerous of approach to those who did not know the landmarks, we kept a fishing-boat, about twenty feet long by six feet and a half beam; long and somewhat narrow, being lightly built, and meant for rowing as well as sailing.

I was sitting alone in the dining-room of our cottage about eleven o’clock on the morning of October 25, 1879. The wind, which had been blowing fresh for the past three days, had increased during the night to a strong gale from the south-west, and my two friends had gone out about an hour before to watch the very rough sea, and to see if there were any ships or boats in distress. I felt rather unwell, and was congratulating myself on not having gone out in such weather, when I heard a quick step outside the door, and Herbert burst in, crying in a decided manner: ‘There’s a dismasted schooner drifting up channel, broadside on to the sea; there’s a heavy squall of rain over Looe [the nearest port, about eight miles off], and the life-boat people can’t see her; so Sam and I are going off to her in the fishing-boat; and as none of the villagers will come to steer, I’ve come to fetch you.’

‘Fetch me!’ I ejaculated, horror-struck. ‘But my illness’——

‘Put your illness in your pocket, and keep it there till you come back,’ said my friend. ‘You _must_ come—unless you’re afraid,’ he added, glaring at me.

Although of a weak and nervous temperament, I am by no means a coward; so I told him I was ready to accompany him. On our way to the bay, Herbert told me that when first seen, the schooner was dismasted, but that the crew had managed to keep steerage-way on her by hoisting the jib and letting her run before the gale: the canvas being rotten, however, as is often the case on board small traders, the sail had blown right out of the bolt-ropes, and the vessel had swung round broadside on to the sea.

On reaching the cliff, a thrilling sight met my gaze. Some four miles off, a square-topsail schooner of not more than two hundred tons was being tossed about at the mercy of the waves. Her mainmast had gone by the board, and her fore-topmast had snapped off a few feet above the cap; her foreyard, however, still remained. She had a tremendous list to port—which was also her lee-side—and every sea that struck her broke clean over her, and seemed to shake her fearfully. We did not stop half a minute to observe this, but hurried to the bay where our boat was beached. Sam was preparing her for sea with all speed, but as coolly as if he were going out with a water-party on the upper reaches of the Thames.

After taking out some of the ballast to lighten her for the heavy pull—we could not sail, for wind and sea were dead against us—the boat was launched. No sooner had we got beyond the points of the two natural breakwaters, than a sea with what sailors call a ‘head’ on it struck us on the starboard bow, sending the boat’s head flying round and filling her quarter-full of water.

‘Gracious powers!’ I cried, ‘we’ll never get out there. And if we do, we’ll never get back safely with the boat full of people.’

‘Pull her head round to the sea, Sam, my boy.—Mind your helm, Arthur, and don’t talk,’ said Herbert calmly. ‘And as soon as we get beyond the rocks, you can start baling,’ he added, as we again met the first wave outside the bay. But this time I was prepared, and grasping the helm firmly, kept the boat’s head dead on to the sea. With one vigorous stroke of the oars, which Herbert and Sam handled in a masterly style, we dashed over, almost through, the huge billow that threatened to ingulf us, and not a moment too soon, for a second after it passed under our stern, it broke with a roar like the report of a cannon.

Then began a tremendous battle against wind and sea; Herbert dragging his oar through the water with that apparent ease and grace peculiar to men endowed with enormous muscular power; whilst Sam, who was pulling bow-oar, strained his sinewy arms and lithe body till, by their united efforts, the spray flew over the boat’s bow as she boldly dashed over, often through, the waves. We were wet to the skin; and it was with great difficulty that I could keep the boat’s head straight.

After about an hour and a half of as hard work as two men ever endured in a good cause, during which time I was kept constantly baling, we got close under the lee of the wrecked vessel, which had now drifted to within two miles of the shore. There were eight poor half-frozen wretches on board, one of whom was a woman, clinging to some spars which were securely lashed on the mainhold hatch. When we shouted and signalled them to throw us a rope, none of them moved. The cold and wet, and staying so long in the same position, had so stiffened them that they were unable to render us any assistance in getting on board. We then tried to approach the lee-quarter of the wreck; but just as we got under the mainchains, by which my companions meant to climb on board, a tremendous sea broke over the weather-quarter, and washing down over the lee gunwale, half filled our boat, and almost upset it.

‘We’re gone this time!’ I exclaimed.

‘Then we’ll all go together,’ cried Sam in a tone as if he rather enjoyed the idea than otherwise.

‘Out oars and pull back again,’ said Herbert calmly, without taking any notice of my frightened exclamation, for the wave had washed us some distance from the schooner.

On again approaching the wreck, we found the upper part of the fore-topmast floating about thirty feet from her side, with the fore-topmast backstay still fastened to it. After some trouble, Sam managed to cut the spar adrift and make the rope secure to our boat, the other end still being fast to the schooner. Herbert, telling me to keep the boat as clear of water as possible with the baling bucket, went forward. Taking hold of the rope, he jumped overboard, quickly drew himself hand over hand to the schooner’s side, and climbed on board by the forechains. Sam soon followed him, though he was nearly washed away by a sea which broke over the schooner. Herbert, however, who was clinging to the foreshrouds, quickly grasped his wrist, and saved him.

After a short consultation, Sam went aloft with a rope, and lying out on the lee foreyard arm, passed the end of the rope through the brace-block. He then came down on deck again, and making a bowline on a bight (a knot with two large loops) with it, gave it to Herbert, who made it and the other end of the rope fast to a belaying pin. Sam then came back to the boat to help me to receive the unfortunates. Herbert proceeded with great difficulty to the main hatch, and waiting till a huge wave had washed over the schooner, took the woman in his strong arms and brought her to where he had made fast the tackle. He then signalled us to haul the boat as near to the wreck as we dared. Then he put the woman’s head and shoulders through one loop, and her limbs through the other, and waiting his opportunity, swung her on to the boat, where we unslung her, so to speak, and passed the knot back to Herbert. The crew followed in the same manner. As Herbert was carrying the last of them down to swing him over to the boat, the schooner shipped a tremendous sea, which sent Herbert and his burden flying into the lee scuppers. After remaining in suspense for half a minute without either of them appearing above the bulwarks, Sam jumped at once overboard, dragged himself by the rope to the wreck, and climbed on board. Stooping, he disengaged the tightly clasped arms of the sailor from Herbert’s neck; he then helped his friend, who was half insensible, to rise, and propped him against the bulwarks with his arms round the backstay. Sam was then about to stoop again to help the sailor, when he recoiled with an exclamation of horror. The poor fellow’s head, as he had fallen with Herbert’s huge weight on the top of him, had struck against the main-bits, and was shattered: he was stone-dead!

With great difficulty Sam managed to put his friend into the bowline and sling him over to the boat, he himself following by the rope by which we were made fast to the schooner. Herbert, who looked very pale and ill, sank back exhausted in the stern-sheets. A thin stream of blood was trickling from his temple; and he also suffered from pain in his right side.

It was late in the afternoon ere we cast off our rope and prepared for our homeward journey. We had scarcely got fifty yards from the schooners side, when a heavy sea struck her; she shook from stem to stern, then heeled over to port till we thought she would capsize; but she righted herself again, as if struggling to keep afloat, then slowly began to sink by the bow. A second wave struck her, more on the quarter; plunging her bow into the trough of the sea, she raised her stern in the air, and, diving like some sea monster, disappeared. We afterwards learned from the captain that her cargo—loose limestone blocks of about a hundredweight each—had shifted. The list this gave to the schooner had caused the mainmast, which was already slightly sprung, to go over the side, taking the fore-topmast with it. The shifting of the cargo had also started one of the planks, which accounted for the schooner springing a leak and going down.

The wind, which had chopped round to the southward, had blown us to within half a mile of the shore. Hoisting our close-reefed lug, we steered for the small haven, which we reached in safety in a quarter of an hour, after having narrowly escaped being upset by the ugly ‘topping’ of a wave at the entrance between the two points of rock. We were received with shouts of joy from the villagers and some coastguardsmen, who, having perceived that the vessel was drifting in shore, had prepared the rocket apparatus in case of emergency.

Poor Herbert had to be lifted out of the boat and carried to our cottage on a stretcher. A surgeon was in immediate attendance, and we awaited with no little anxiety the result of his examination. Three ribs were found to be fractured; but the wound in his temple proved very slight. Suffice it to say that our friend was able to return to his studies in a few weeks.

Neither Sam nor myself suffered from our exposure; the former remaining all night in attendance on Herbert; I, taking a steaming glass of grog, turned in between the blankets.

The shipwrecked crew were well attended to by the landlord of the village inn, and were next morning sent on to Plymouth. Nothing was known about the man who was killed; he had shipped on board the schooner at Falmouth, but no one knew where he came from.