VOL. I.]

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ENGLISH WEDDINGS, AND WEDDING PRESENTS.

Tis a matter of unquestionable notoriety, that all marriages are made in heaven; and it is equally certain that the beautiful descriptions of them, which we read, must be due to celestial correspondents. Such choice of words, such felicity of arrangement, such grace of epithets, could not emanate from any inferior source; and the future historian will best gather from these chronicles the condition of the English language in our day, and the manners and customs of those who spoke it. We shall not, perhaps, be accused of unnecessary repetition, if we call attention to the subject. The sun is shining, and peculiar interest is excited. The bridegroom is accompanied by his friend, who is officiating as groomsman, and who is qualified by frequent service for the efficient discharge of the multifarious duties which are attached to the position. At precisely thirteen minutes and a half past eleven they alight at the church, saluted by the acclamations of the crowd, the excitement of the bystanders, and the symphony of bells. When the door is opened, four and twenty perpetual curates and prebendaries, deans and archdeacons, begin to assist one another. The scene increases in interest, until the climax is reached, when the bride enters, leaning on somebody's arm, and supported by her bridesmaids, supplied with jewelry by a neighboring firm, which thus has the good fortune to secure eight advertisements of its goods. The religious ceremony is performed with peculiar solemnity, unbroken, save by the fidgeting of the groomsman; the benediction is pronounced, and on repairing to the vestry, the formalities of registration are gone through, a part of the ceremony which is often described in language worthy of Burke. After this, the party repair again to a mansion or residence, where a sumptuous dejeuner is prepared, and numerous covers are laid; a mysterious but interesting process. It is here that English oratory is displayed to its best advantage; and graceful tributes are paid on all sides, characterized by good taste, by brevity, and fluency. The peer forgets his pomposity, and the fact that nobody listens to him elsewhere; the groomsman feels that the lightest part of his duties has come, and all regret the close of his remarks. At precisely four minutes past two the bride and bridegroom take leave of their friends, and seek the seclusion of a country-seat.

Meantime, the "friends" separate, and the correspondent is enabled to furnish those advertisements which all read with interest, if not with excitement. The enumeration of the presents and of the names, both of their eminent manufacturers and of their donors, fills columns, and affords invaluable opportunities for fine writing. The "members of the domestic household," called sometimes by profane and illiterate people servants, contribute something difficult to carry, and impossible to pack. It is interesting to know that the flowers were not the production of nature, but were expressly supplied for the occasion by the floral manufacturer; nor is the name of the pastry-cook wanting, who made the indigestible compound termed a "bride-cake." A few years more, and we shall be told the incomes of the guests, their ages, and the construction of the ladies' petticoats. It may be that publicity is thus ostentatiously given to the names of those who contribute towards the future ménage of the happy couple, in order that the standard may

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be raised, and that the donor of a water-bottle may shrink from appearing in the same list with the donor of a diamond bracelet. That aim, however, has not yet been realized, and the list of objects is as varied, and as free from all connection with each other, as the words which make up a page of Johnson's Dictionary. The company is a medley one; sugar-basins and aneroids, an antique pair of bellows, the Zoological Gardens faithfully represented in ormolu, a musical-box, a sketch mounted as a fan, fifty travelling articles to make locomotion impossible, a basket of snowdrops, and nine addresses on vellum, congratulating the bridegroom on the examples he has to imitate and on the wisdom of his choice, quite unreadable from the magnificent flourishes with which the initial letters abound, and signed by the schoolmaster and schoolmistress in behalf of the scholars. Were the bride and bridegroom endowed with ostrich-like digestions, they might find some use for these articles. As it is, they often prove the most unmitigated nuisance, a misery alike to him who gives and to him or her who receives. It occasionally happens that the announcement of an engagement, instead of recalling the fact that two people are perfectly certain of being happy for life, that the cares of this world are over for them, and that a beautiful account of their marriage will appear in the newspapers and enrich the literature of the country, only suggests the painful thought that a present must be given, and, in order to be given, must be bought. To explain the grounds for this impression would be impossible; a slight relationship exists between the victim and one or other of the engaged pair, and the persons about to marry are going to live in London, possibly in a large house; it may be that the intending giver received at some former period a perfectly useless and now blackened object, too dirty to make its appearance again in the world of rubbish, and that he feels bound to reciprocate the attention. "Human nature," says a great authoress, "is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of." Whatever may be the cause, the dilemma remains the same. Much mental agony is undergone, increasing as the interval before the marriage becomes shorter. Some prudent persons have a stock of objects always on hand, one of which they forward upon receipt of the intelligence; and thus they may have the good fortune to send the first of the fifteen inkstands which follow. who hesitates is lost; now helplessly bemoaning her condition, now peering uneasily into shop-windows, and finding that every thing costs seven pounds, when she is prepared to spend only four. Her sense of her unfortunate position daily grows in intensity, and she may next be seen sitting in a shop, with a choice selection in front of her, amongst which are a blotting-book covered with excrescences of brass like a portmanteau, a miniature helmet, two shepherdesses of modern Meissen, a silver-gilt machine for brushing away crumbs after breakfasting in bed, a gentleman in ormolu looking into a windwill about the same size as himself and of the same material, both containing cavities in their insides for matches, the discovery of which would occupy a lifetime. What a choice is here! The biggest fool of her acquaintance has just ordered the silvergilt machine, which costs thirty pounds, so she takes the windwill with a sigh of relief, and sends it as a little object to remind her friend of the happy hours they have spent together.

She

Her friend sends in return a little note, assuring her that she will always value it, reflecting that it is a just requital for the ormolu porcupine stuffed with pins which she had presented on a previous occasion. But the donor and the windmill are not destined to lose sight of one another just yet. It is bad enough to see the rubbish in the shop, but there is some excuse for the production of these costly and worthless trifles. What the dogs are in the East to the streets, the givers of modern wedding presents are to the trade, the scavengers of refuse; what is too dirty, too useless, too ugly for other purposes, they absorb; but it is too hard to be called upon to look at it again when exposed to view in the drawing-room of the unfortunate girl whose future life is to be spent, or supposed to be spent, in its contemplation. There are entertainments of divers kinds and degrees of dulness; but the entertainment which is given for the display of the objects we have described is without an equal. Neatly arranged upon the tables in symmetrical order lie these specimens of English taste, "several hundreds in number," slips of paper being attached to them recording the names of the givers. Here the lady and the windmill meet once more, regretfully perhaps, for some kind friend announces that she only gave two pounds for the candlesticks opposite; another has picked up something for thirty shillings, which produces a sublime effect, and the name of the shop where similar objects can be procured is whispered in secret. There is a pleasing equality evinced in the display; her Grace and the housemaid think the same thing "beautiful," and probably spend the same amount of money upon the object of their admiration.

The custom of giving wedding presents, as it now exists, is a social tax which, though paid by every one, is only paid grudgingly and on compulsion. It represents neither affection nor interest, and is not productive of the smallest profit to any save the tradesmen whose wares are sold for the purpose. Its counterpart can only be found in the custom which existed a short time ago of giving leaving-books at Eton. The fashion was exactly analogous; little boys gave them to big boys, to whom they always had been, and to whom they continued in after life, complete strangers, subscribing themselves their "sincere friends on their leaving Eton."

The head-master submitted to the custom at a smaller cost; wise in his generation, and being an elegant classic, he had published, or privately printed, a quarto edition of some Latin author, which, it is needless to say, nobody ever wanted, and no one ever bought. This peculiarly useless volume was exchanged for the sum of ten pounds, deposited in some corner of the room by the boy who was bidding good-by, whence it was generally supposed that the head-master ultimately took it. This pleasant mode of escaping the tax was, unfortunately, not open to those who paid for the leaving-books presented by their sons to their sincere friends, and who not unnaturally considered that the annual expenditure of fifteen or twenty pounds was hardly compensated by the possession of some scores of soiled copies bound in yellow calf. What these books are to the library, wedding presents are to the ordinary furniture of a house. What is to be done with the windmill? Should the first opportunity be seized for getting rid of it, there is the risk that its donor will tenderly inquire after it. It cannot be given away after the lapse of six months; for its color is gone, and it looks as if it might have been present at Hilpah's wedding to Shalum. The poor thing eventually finds a shelter and a home in some spare bedroom of a country house, where damp and dust hasten its decay. Sometimes it is destined to a harder fate. One swallow does not make a summer, and the gift of a wedding present does not insure the celebration of a marriage; the engagement may very possibly be broken off, and one of the consequences is the return of the windmill to its unhappy and original possessor, whose feelings on its re-appearance we forbear from commenting on. the State would include wedding presents among the assessed taxes, and fix a definite sum to be paid at the beginning of each year, great relief would be experienced; the government would, of course, realize a profit, and a

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large sum would still remain to be distributed as marriage portions. The present inequality would be remedied; for, as it is, those who never marry at all (and their number is daily increasing) receive no return for their original outlay; but on the institution of the tax this need no longer be the case. Single women, on attaining the age of forty-five, might, on condition of subscribing a declaration setting forth the extreme improbability of their marrying, and their aversion to that condition, receive the sum to which they would have been entitled on marriage. Widows, on the other hand, would get nothing under any circumstances, being exhorted to remain contented with the ormolu of the first marriage. During the interval before the adoption of this plan we have but one remedy to propose. Surely the old shoes which are now so lavishly thrown away at the departure of the bride and bridegroom, are capable of conversion into some valuable substance; which cannot be predicated of wedding presents. Let, therefore, the next "groomsman set a bright example, and deserve well of society and the oppressed; as the carriage starts, let a shower of aneroids, barometers, bellows, candlesticks, vases, mosaics, and antiques, gracefully fall and flutter around it. Thus we feel sure that a "peculiar interest would be excited," while the struggles of the crowd to possess objects which to their inexperienced eyes might seem capable of being exchanged for a shilling would give additional animation to the scene. The prevalence of this custom might be expected to modify to some extent the present fashion. the chief compensation for which must be found in the advantages which result from a study of the pages of the Court Journal.

THE PRIZE-FIGHTERS AT HOME.

THE recent "gallant fight in the London district," which has resulted in the death of one of the boxers, reminds one of the details of a few visits paid within the last six months to a well-known haunt of the Fancy. This establishment was constantly advertised in certain sporting journals. The proprietor had been in the ring himself, before he sought the dignified retirement of a public-house in a back alley. The manner in which the special attractions of the tavern were announced was quite artful in its open-hearted hospitable terms. There was a promise of unlimited glove battles between the "Bermondsey Slasher," the “Teddington Tiler," and other well-known practitioners of the noble science. Add to this, the attraction of music, in the shape of "Mr. Horner, of mandolin celebrity," and surely there was every thing to be had at "The Blue Goat" that a gentleman of sporting tendencies could desire, in order to pass an agreeable evening. The bar of "The Blue Goat" is very unpretending in its furniture. You see no wonderful wigs there, no stately waitresses, no lavish display of golden cordials and colored glasses. The lady behind the counter of "The Blue Goat,” is rather rough in style and vig orous in air; she draws the beer with a muscular tug, she administers the gin with a business-like haste, which gives no encouragement to her customers to converse with her. Passing by the bar, you enter the drinking and musical salon of the "Goat." If you have arrived early, say eight o'clock, the place is comparatively deserted, save by mine host, who sits, not at the top, but at the side of the room, in a chair resembling the retreat into which a hall-porter retires when not on active duty. Mine host does not strike you as having much of the bull-dog look about him. On the contrary, he wears his nose like ordinary people, nor is his forehead villanous, or his jaw square. He is conversing in a low tone to a very red-eyed, spindled man, who never misses an evening here, and who is a bootmaker, chiropodist, and admirer generally of the Ring profession. It is only common courtesy for you to exchange a greeting with mine host, and to invite him to drink. You glance at the decorations of the apartment. It is a perfect Valhalla of defunct dogs, who have been famous for killing rats. They are hideous creatures, for the most part, and are not

improved by the glare of the gas upon their fierce, promi- | nent glass eyes.

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The door opens, and a man enters with a half apologetic, sneaking gait, taking off his hat, and slinking into a corner. Mine host glances at him, and beckons him up. You may have a pot, Jack," he says: "there'll be a job for you to-night;" whereupon Jack is silently and respectfully grateful; and when the drawer brings the pewter measure, he retires with it again, in the meekest fashion, to the end of the room. "Good man, sir, is Jack," remarks the exbruiser: "he's gettin' a little stiff now, but he's handy enough for the most of them yet." A question elicits the information that Jack is of the Ring, but can very seldom have a chance now in consequence of the expletive police, and the expletive difficulty of getting gentlemen, as they used, to come forward to back him. He made his living by sparring, mostly, and "doing housework by the odd job." Jack—in full, let us say, they call him Jack the Slogger; for by an analogous title is he at this moment distinguished -didn't seem to be a person who would command a householder's confidence to the extent of being intrusted with odd jobs on the premises; but that he might engage voluntarily in a little night-work on a back-kitchen window of a suburban villa, appeared highly probable. He was exceeding clean, and shorn and shaven with a completeness that imparted to his cheek the look of the jowl of a pig on a hook in a shop. His eyes were ferrety and furtive, his ears small and pointed; he had huge hands, and a big frame; but there was the drayman's puffiness in his frame, the puffiness brought on by scanty food and plentiful beer. The next arrival was a gigantic soldier of the Guards, a superb specimen of an animal, with a pair of eyes as soft and innocent as those of a cow. Then follows Prof. Brown (Professor of Physical Culture), and a whole string of good company. "You see that gentleman, sir," remarks the host in a solemn whisper to me: that gentleman is Prof. Jones, the cleverest man with his daddles that ever stood in the ropes." The professor did not strike me as a Hercules: he was rather dwarfed in stature, indeed, and limp and narrow-shouldered in build; but his hands were as long as the hands of a gorilla, and the professor had won his repute by his faculty for "painting a face," as an operation of the Ring is playfully termed, the said operation implying a power in the arust to slash and score his adversaries' visages, while his own length of reach prevents reprisals. Soon after the entrance of the professor, the "mandolin celebrity," who had been drinking stout with the soldier, began a prelude upon his instrument, which he twanged with some skill and considerable emphasis. He was called upon by the chairman for a song, and struck up at once a Christy Minstrel ballad, which was loudly applauded. It was then, it would seem, the custom for any one to offer to oblige; and Tom Nobble, facing the president of the evening, volunteered. Tom was as like an illustration out of a book of the typical fighter, especially the illustration of the "Chicken," in Dombey and Son," as any thing could be like another. Before he commenced he was asked by the pugilistic cobbler what he would wet it with; and having decided upon wetting it with gin and water, of all songs in the world, he chose for performance "Let me kiss him for his Mother." There was something half ludicrous, half pathetic, in the countenance of Mr. Nobble, his eyes squinting aloft at a sentimental angle, his voice harsh and hard, as he asked to be permitted to kiss him for his mother, to touch his youthful brow, etcetera. The audience were respectful, attentive, and evidently pleased with the text of the ditty. Now, this is a curious fact, and may be stated for what it is worth, in mitigating our contempt and disgust for the boxers and their calling. About a dozen songs were sung in the course of the evening, and every one of them was of a perfectly harmless and innocent kind. The comic ballads of the music-hall were evidently not in vogue or in favor with the Ring. "The Wearing of the Green" was given in excellent voice and point by an Irish railway porter, who is a sparring notoriety; and an individual of that class, occa

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sionally described in the papers as possessing an "American appearance," repeated, or rather delivered, a dozen verses in the Southern States interest, with a correctness of elocution that was indeed remarkable. This gentleman was an emissary, I understood, from the New-York Ring to the London Centre.

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"Now, sir, if you follow me up stairs, we'll have a few games with the gloves,” — and accepting the invitation at once, we walk after the host or president, whose chair is occupied by the man of "American appearance." Up stairs, one was ushered into a part of a chamber divided from the main apartment by a large bench. Inside the bench were two men stripped to the waist, with boxinggloves on their hands, attended by the fighting cobbler and Tom Nobble. I was supposed to occupy a state box; for before business commenced, five or six rather fast viveurs about town entered the enclosure, which was so placed as not to be visible to the gallery or pit attached to the narrow arena into which we looked. The men with the gloves were Jack the Slogger and the Guardsman. They shook hands, or rather gloves, with each other; "time' was called by Jack, and the bout commenced. At first it consisted in little more than dodging and feinting; but the Slogger having managed to plant a very neat blow on the jaw of his antagonist, the latter warmed to his work, and both "got together," and had so vicious a tussle of it that there was tremendous applause from the spectators. This went on for four or five rounds; and at the fifth or sixth, at the word, Finish this time, my lads," from the experienced Mr. Nobble, there was a tremendous display of energy indeed, both combatants snorting and snarling like angry mastiffs, and looking as if they would wish to try conclusions in another place. At the conclusion of the performance- - the fight was won by the soldier — the winner threw his hat or cap on the floor first, and his late adversary followed suit. The "swells cast to the gladiators shillings and florins or sixpences, and a thin drizzle of copper descended from the region of the vulgar. The money was gathered up by the soldier; and going down to the lower room immediately afterwards, I saw him amicably dividing the spoil with his adversary, though the good faith of the encounter was evident enough in the puffed lips and swollen eyes of the late combatants. There were seven or eight sets of similar exhibitions, with little or no variety except the excitement caused by the constant "slipping down" (falling when he had no right to fall) of a black boxer, and the awkwardness of a tyro who caught a dreadful glove-pummelling from a dexterous youth. The sufferer was constantly advised "to stop the next 'un with his head" by the outside spectators. It could not be said, on the whole, that there was any thing absolutely bad or vicious in the quality or conduct of the evening's entertainment, from first to last. But we must bear in mind that it is in such places that the fights are started and promoted, and it is to be regretted that " gentlemen" should frequent them, and be induced perhaps to subscribe for a sum to enable a couple of the Fancy to contend with clenched fists. Indeed, the personages present at the display here shortly described were just of the type and class of Connor and Callis. What greatly tends to support the Ring, even as it is supported on its last legs, is the recognition of it still as a sport or pastime. In a weekly journal, for example, I read the following, under the inscription of "Gallant fight in the London district, between Tom Callis and Jack Connor, for fifty pounds :

Round 18. Connor, determined not to let his opponent have any peace, set about him viciously, and quickly fought him down with both hands 19. Callis was getting weak; and seeing this, Connor rushed at him, and delivering some stingers with both hands, sent his adversary to grass in doublequick time.

This is a part of a spirited and animated record of the first act of the prize-fight; the second instalment of which concluded by the catastrophe which recalled to my mind an evening at The Blue Goat."

THE PORTUGUESE IN AFRICA.

THE knowledge which the ancients had of Southern Africa was soon lost to the world; and up to the time of the conquest of Northern Africa by the Saracens, its eastern shores had not been visited by Europeans beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb, and on the west they had sent no ship farther south than the limits of Mauritania. For six centuries after the occupation of North Africa by the Saracens, naval enterprise was almost unknown to Europe; but during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Portuguese and the Spaniards made themselves famous by maritime adventures. It was Prince Henry of Portugal, a nephew of our own Henry IV., who stimulated and directed this spirit of daring in his countrymen. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, this prince, while engaged with his father in an expedition against the Moors of Barbary, obtained information which led him to think, first, that the boundaries of the Portuguese dominions might be greatly enlarged by the acquisition of territory in Western Africa; and, second, that a new way to India might be found by sailing round Africa, and so might be secured for Portugal the vast stores of wealth which had hitherto been at the exclusive command of Genoa and Venice. And, in 1415, he sent out an expedition consisting of two small ships to western Africa, and thus inaugurated that wonderful series of geographical enterprises which terminated in the exploration of the whole coast-line of Africa, and the discovery of the long-sought passage to India. The prince did not live to see these great deeds accomplished: he died in 1463, and it was not until 1498 that Vasco de Gama reached the coast of Malabar, and thus won a reputation amongst navigators only second to that of Columbus.

By the achievements of De Gama and his predecessors in this "great drama of discovery," and by the conquests of Alberquerque, and others who succeeded him, the Portuguese obtained vast possessions, both in Western and Eastern Africa. The southern portion of the continent they did not occupy; for then, as now, it was eminently an agricultural country, peopled by tribes of rude hardihood; and it offered, therefore, but few temptations to men who were urged by a desire to obtain power, and to make wealth speedily; but in the east and the west they were supreme. Nor were their possessions confined to the coasts. By degrees, they obtained much land and important positions in the interior, partly by pushing forward their military establishments as opportunities offered, but chiefly through the instrumentality of their missionary priests, whose patriotic ardor was not less than their religious enthusiasm, and who, while striving for the conversion of the natives, were equally zealous for the aggrandizement of the Portuguese throne and nation. And for a time, it seemed as though Portugal would rise to the height of her grand opportunity, and build up in Eastern and Western Africa great colonial empires. But the present position of the Portuguese in Africa affords an illustration of the sad results of opportunities neglected and power abused, perhaps without a parallel in the world.

Of the Portuguese in Western Africa I have no personal knowledge: but from information which I have received from Dr. Livingstone, and others who knew them, I am very sure I do them no wrong by saying, that in no respect do they differ from their countrymen on the other side of the continent; and their personal acquaintance I have been privileged to make.

In Eastern Africa, the Portuguese profess to hold the whole coast from Delagoa Bay to Cape Delgado, and important establishments and towns which extend for hundreds of miles inland along the course of the River Zambezi. Theoretically, their form of government is excellent. There is a governor-general of Mozambique, having under him the governors of Quillimane and Inhambane, on the coast, and Sena, Tete, and Zumbo, on the Zambezi; and subordinate to them are lesser notabilities, Commandos they are called, who occupy positions as rulers of districts that have not yet been raised to the dignity of provinces. In

alliance with these officials there are said to be judges and magistrates for the due administration of law, and a sufficient military force to protect the colonists from the ineursions of the tribes of the interior. The instructions which the governors, major and minor, receive from Portugal, express in high-flown language the most exalted sentiments. Never were the blessings of civilization and Christianity more eloquently set forth; never was the duty of extending such blessings to the barbarous heathens more urgently enforced. The laws are faultless. True, they recognize the right of the Portuguese to enslave the Africans, when moved thereto by the necessity of the colony; yet the provisions which regulate the conduct of the master towards the slave are so admirably framed with reference to the well-being of the slave, that by them the slaves are shown to be far better off in all things than their brethren who are not in bondage. Theoretically, nothing can be better than the position, the policy, and character of the Portuguese in Africa. Take the account which they give of themselves, and you could but say of them, Here is a highly-civilized and Christian people; the worthy possessors of a glorious heritage, potent for good, great in that spirit of enterprise which makes light of difficulty and overcomes danger, using their grand capacity to develop the resources of the land, and to raise in the scale of humanity the barbarous races that have been brought under their power or within the scope of their influence.

And now for my experience of them.

When Livingstone brought the River Zambezi, and its suitability as a commercial highway to the interior, before the world, the Portuguese promptly declared that they were its legitimate guardians; and that they had established at its mouth a military force, a custom-house, and all other appliances of civilization, for the protection of their rights and the encouragement of commerce. When I entered the Zambezi this is what I saw: a flag-staff, from which flaunted the flag of Portugal; a rectangular house, that would have been dignified by the mistaking it for an English cow-shed; and a few huts, such as the natives build. Of buildings, domestic or governmental, nothing more. The house was for the officer in command; the huts for the common soldiers, and such other people, male or female, as belonged to the settlement. The military consisted of Senhor A., the officer in question, a Portuguese sergeant, and six natives, who were dressed in blue cotton uniforms, and armed with old muskets. I did not at first meet with Senhor A.; but when I made his acquaintance, he did honor to himself and his government by donning his uniform and parading his troops. The display was so amusingly absurd that I could scarcely refrain from laughter. The Senhor's perceptive faculties were large: he saw my difficulty, he divined its cause, and instead of resenting it, he sympa thized; for after he had dismissed his soldiers, he held out his hand, and said, "You are amused at what you see. Well you may be. If I were not what I am, I should be amused too. The position is very absurd." Before I left the country, I saw much of this man. He was a gentleman by birth, and had been well educated. He knew something of Latin and Greek, spoke English, French, and Italian fluently, and was a fair mathematician. But he was a ruffian according to common report. In Portugal, by his reckless disregard of the conventionalities of life, I heard that he gained for himself an evil reputation; and to escape more unpleasant consequences had been obliged to migrate to Africa, where he was hated and shunned. I have, however, no reason to think that he was worse than many in Portugal, who, with more discretion, managed to keep position; and in most things I found him infinitely the supe rior of the majority of us countrymen in Airica. great offence with them was that he spoke of things as he knew them to be. He prided himself upon this, and on one occasion said to me, "I am a blackguard, it is true; but in that I do not differ from my countrymen in this viie land; we are all blackguards together. But in one thing I do differ from them: they pretend to be better than they are; they are humbugs, hypocrites, all you like that is mean. I am not with them there. I hate humbug, and it

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is natural that humbugs should hate me. I care not. I take their hate as a compliment to my greater integrity."

From this man I obtained much information upon the position which his countrymen now occupy in Africa. In reply to my inquiry as to what hold they had upon the land, he said, " Upon the land we have no hold. We have a few important positions on the coast, and a few unimportant places on the Zambezi; beyond that, nothing. Mozambique is our capital; in itself it is strong: for defence, it is impregnable against all assaults from natives; and it might be as powerful for offence, but it is not. We are powerless beyond the precincts of the city. We cannot venture inland twenty miles from Mozambique, without the consent of the natives. They are once more the masters of the soil, and they shut us up at will in our stronghold. Quillimane is better placed: the tribes about are more docile, and we are more free to move at our pleasure from thence. Yet our power is but small; and, were it not for the barrier which the Zambezi interposes, Quillimane would soon be destroyed by the Landeens (a branch of the Zulu Kaffir race), who keep all on this the south side of the river in a state of terror, and impose tribute upon us at will. Inhambane is always in peril from the natives: we cannot keep a foot of ground beyond it. Sena is in ruins; Tete is powerless; and at Zumbo you will but find the site of what was, in the days of our prosperity, a considerable town."

I inquired of the position of the Commandos, who were said to govern the land in those parts that were not immediately under the cognizance of the more regularly constituted authorities; and his reply was, "Humbug again! There are certain men, it is true, who have made themselves powerful, here and there; but, with one exception, they are in the position of rebels. There is Senhor V., for instance, who inherited from his father some money, and more than a thousand slaves. He is a man of enterprise; and, not being content with the ordinary life of Quillimane, he armed many of his trustworthy slaves, and made an expedition towards Angoxa. He had to do some fighting; and, being better armed than the natives, he did not fight in vain. He gained territory, built himself a stockade, and, by force and by fraud, has become a great man. His will is law; and his followers obey him, and only him. But he has no wish to break with the government, and the government has no wish to break with him. He has free scope to do as he pleases; and the land he may gain is formally secured to him and to his successors for three lives, free from all taxation. This transaction is recorded in the archives of the government as another triumph of law and order, as another proof of the greatness of Portugal; whereas V. is irresponsible; he does as he will; and if he were to die to-morrow, as his influence is purely personal, the old state of things would again prevail; our authority would not be recognized in any way. V. is not a rebel, but the others who are said to occupy his office are; and they are the centres of a state of things which realizes hell upon earth. There is Mariano and Belchioro. (It was Belchioro's marauders who murdered Capt. Faulkner last year.) They are infamously notorious. They live amongst slaves, and the natives whom they have subjected to their will, and who now pander to their desires. They outrage all law, human and divine, unchecked. They plunder the tribes, and they destroy where they are resisted. Their quest is ivory and slaves, by means of which they procure from their agents in Quillimane and Mozambique, who are generally government officers, wine and spirits, and such other things as their vices and wants make necessary. Sometimes they quarrel with one another, when they are near neighbors, or encroach upon each other's preserves; and then they urge on their fighting-men, as your countrymen, I am told, urge on bull-dogs, to tear and destroy one another; and the daily strife of these slave partisans keeps the whole country in turmoil, and ultimately depopulates it, for both parties plunder and make slaves of the natives. The fact is, these Commandos are the captains of slaving and robbing hordes. They do incalculable mischief, and they make havoc of the land. Through them good government is impossible, for they keep the country, far and wide, in a continual state of anarchy and bloodshed.”

Of course, it is only in such a land as that, and where slavery had thoroughly demoralized the people, white and black, that such a state of things could exist. Inordinate self-will, and all the worst vices which can infest humanity, almost invariably are manifested in men who dare to regard their fellow-men as property, in the same sense that we do a horse or a cow. I can quite imagine, however, that at no time was slavery in our own colonies, or in the Southern States of America, so utterly brutalizing in its effects as in the Portuguese African colonies; for, of all the forms of slavery which have cursed mankind, that which is constituted by the Portuguese in Africa, their philanthropic declamations to the contrary, is the most brutal. And before I left Senhor A., I had a very fair illustration of the truth of this. One day I saw him superintending the punishment of a slave-boy, whom he kept to wait upon him, and who had been guilty of some act of disobedience. The punishment was severe; it was a whipping, inflicted by a strong man, the Portuguese sergeant, in fact, with a three-thonged whip, each thong consisting of a plait of three strips of buck-hide. I remonstrated with the Senhor upon the brutality of this punishment. He took it in good part, but maintained, as a principle which cannot be set aside, that, wherever slavery is, the discipline, even under the best of masters, must be more or less brutal, and the results demoralizing both to master and slave, especially in countries where the masters form, as with the Portuguese in Africa, a very small minority. "You cannot," said he, "treat a slave in this land like a free man; do so, and he will rise against you or run away. You must keep them under by the whip, and any other means that suggest themselves, until they are reduced in mind and soul to the condition of dogs, and live only for you. You see that man?" pointing to one of his slaves, a stout-bodied, sturdy-looking fellow, who was at work near the house: "well, that fellow gave me a great deal of trouble when he first became my property. He was brought down here fresh from the hills. He is an Achowa, and, like all of his tribe, had some independence of character. The Achowas make good slaves when they are well broken in; but, out of five, you are fortunate if you get one moulded to your will, for the process kills them; that is, they will die rather than submit to you as unreservedly as is needful. This fellow at first was sullen and disobedient,- thought of his home on the hills, his wife and children, may be. Well, that was nothing to me: he had become, through the operations of a perfectly legitimate traffic, my property; for though the law prohibits the exportation of slaves, it permits slavery, and consequently the buying and selling of slaves amongst ourselves. So, when he was disobedient, I whipped him; when he ran away, as he did more than once, I made every effort and spared no expense to recover him, as it will never do to let a slave escape,- better kill him,- the example of a successful runaway is so pernicious to the rest. At last he gave me so much trouble, and was the cause of so much excitement amongst my other slaves, that I ordered him to be beaten in a way that I hoped would kill him; and his punishment was severe enough to kill any but a brutos-negros. You shall see. Come here you!" called out the Senhor, to the man in question. The fellow came; and his master turned down his loin-cloth, which in shame he had carefully tied over large scars in his loins, and I saw from them how horribly he must have suffered. "Well, that man would not die," continued the Senhor. "Life was strong in him, as it is indeed in all of the Africans. But the whip had at length cleaned the mucous from his brain. As he got well he became cheerful, went to work without a murmur; and, having made up his mind to his position, determined to get to himself as much pleasure out of life as he could. So one day he came to me, and said, 'Master, give me a wife it is bad for a man to have no woman to light his fire, cook his food, and make him happy.' I had no spare women at that moment, and this I told him."

he.

666

666

Will you give me a woman when you have one?' asked

Certainly I shall be sending ivory to Quillimane in a few days, and I will have women brought in return,' said I.