Captain Carnot swears he'll fight you, if he falls in with you."

"He has kept his word," replied I; and then I narrated our action with the three French privateers, and the capture of the vessel, which surprised, and, I think, annoyed them very much.

"Well, my friend," said the general, "you must stay with me while you are on the island; if you want anything, let me know."

"I am afraid that I want a surgeon," replied I; "for my side is so painful, that I can scarcely breathe."

"Are you hurt, then ?" said the general, with an anxious look.

"Not dangerously, I believe," said I, "but rather painfully." "Let me see," said an officer, who stepped forward; "I am surgeon to the forces here, and perhaps you will trust yourself in my hands. Take off your coat."

I did so, with difficulty. "You have two ribs broken," said he, feeling my side; "and a very severe contusion. You must go to bed, or lie on a sofa for a few days. In a quarter of an hour I will come and dress you, and promise you to make you all well in ten days, in return for your having given me my daughter, who was on board the Victorine with the other ladies."

Accordingly, Mr. Simple and his men safely returned to the Rattlesnake.

THE RE-INTERMENT OF BRUCE'S REMAINS.

1820.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

"Tales of a Grandfather."

This passage of actual history has been selected for its simplicity and beauty.

THE Bruce's heart was buried below the high altar in Melrose Abbey. As for his body, it was laid in a sepulchre

398 THE RE-INTERMENT OF BRUCE'S REMAINS. in the midst of the church of Dunfermline, under a marble stone. But the church becoming afterwards ruinous, and the roof falling down with age, the monument was broken to pieces, and nobody could tell where it stood. But six or seven years ago, when they were repairing the church of Dunfermline and removing the rubbish, lo! they found fragments of the marble tomb of Robert Bruce. Then they began to dig further, thinking to discover the body of this celebrated monarch, and at length they came to the skeleton of a tall man, and they knew it must be that of King Robert, both as he was known to have been buried in a winding sheet of gold cloth, of which many fragments were found about this skeleton; and also because the breast-bone appeared to have been sawn through, in order to take out the heart. So, orders were sent from the King's Court of Exchequer to guard the bones carefully, until a new tomb should be prepared, into which they were laid with great respect. A great many gentlemen and ladies attended, and almost all the common people in the neighbourhood. And as the church. could not hold half the numbers, the people were allowed to pass through it, one after another, that each one, the poorest as well as the richest, might see all that remained of the great King Robert Bruce, who restored the Scottish monarchy. Many people shed tears, for there was the wasted skull that once was the head that thought so wisely and boldly for his country's deliverance; and there was the dry bone which had once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Harry de Bohun, between the two armies, at a single blow, on the evening before the Battle of Bannockburn.

It is more than five hundred years since the body of Bruce was first laid in the tomb, and how many millions of men have died since that time, whose bones could not be recognised, nor their names known, any more than those of inferior animals. It was a great thing to see that the wisdom, courage, and patriotism of a king could preserve him for such a long time in the memory of the people over whom he reigned,

399

THE "MAUVAIS PAS.' 1

1818.

EDWARD STANLEY, BISHOP OF NORWICH.

Born, 1779; Died, 1849.

The following adventure befell Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, when travelling in Switzerland. The narrative was published by him in Blackwood's Magazine.

Is there an individual who has trod at all beyond the beaten track of life who does not harbour within his mind the recollection of some incident, or incidents, of so eventful a nature, that it requires but the shade of an association to bring them forward from their resting place, bright, clear, and distinct, as at the moment of their existence? We suspect there are many, who, in their hours of solitude, might be seen to manifest symptoms of such reminiscences; and many who in the busy world, and amidst the hum of men, might also be seen to start as if visions of things long gone by were again before them, and to shrink within themselves, as though spirits of olden times were passing before their face, and causing the hair of their flesh to stand up.

It was in the year 1818 that I arrived at the village of Martigny, a few days after the memorable catastrophe, when, by the bursting of the icy mounds, the extensive lake of Manvoisin was in an instant let loose, pouring forth 600,000,000 of cubic feet of water over the peaceful and fruitful valleys of the Drance with the irresistible velocity of sixteen miles an hour, carrying before its overwhelming torrent every vestige of civilised life which stood within its impetuous reach. The whole village and its environs exhibited a dreary scene of death and desolation. The landlord with many of his acquaintance and kinsfolk had been swept from their dwelling places, or perished in the ruins. The wreck of a well-built English carriage occupied part of the inner court-yard, while the body, torn from its springs,

1 The "Bad Step."

had grounded upon a thicket in the field adjacent.

The plains through which the treacherous stream was now winding its wonted course, had all the appearance of a barren desert. Luxuriant meadows were converted into reservoirs of sand and gravel, and crops nearly ripe for the sickle were broken down into masses of corrupting vegetation. Here and there amorphous piles of trees, beams, carts, stacks, and remnants of every description of building, were hurled against some fragment of rock, or other natural obstacle, forming in many cases, it was too evident, the grave-ground of human victims soddening beneath. On the door of the dilapidated inn, an appeal was attached; but it required no document written by the hand of man to tell the tale of woe. The floods had passed over it, and it was gone, and the place thereof knew it no more.

It was impossible to contemplate effects consequent on so awful a visitation without a corresponding excitement of strong curiosity to follow the devastation to its source, and learn from ocular inspection the mode in which nature had carried on and completed her dreadful operations. Accordingly, having ascertained that although the regular roads, bridgeways and pathways were carried away, a circuitous course over the mountains was feasible to the very foot of the glacier of Pleuveur, which impended over the Lac de Getroz; a guide was procured, and with him, on the following morning before sunrise, I found myself toiling through the pine woods clothing the steep sides of the mountains to the east of Martigny. It is not, however, my intention to enter into details (although interesting enough in their way) unconnected with the one sole object, which, while I am now writing, hovers before me like Macbeth's dagger, to the exclusion of other things of minor import. Suffice it to say, that, as the evening closed, I entered a desolate, large, scrambling sort of mansion, formerly (as I was given to understand) a convent belonging to some monks of La Trappe, a fact confirmed by sundry portraits of its late gloomy possessors hung round the dark, dismantled cham

ber in which I was to sleep. The village of which the mansion had formed a part had been saved almost by a miracle. A strong stone bridge, with some natural embankments, gave a momentary check to the descending torrent, which instantly rose, and in another minute must have inevitably swept away all before it; when, fortunately, the earth on every side gave way, the ponderous buttresses of the bridge yielded, down it sank, and gave immediate vent to the Whilst I was looking towards e heights of Mount Pleuveur, on whose crest the spires and pinnacles of the Glacier de Getroz were visible, a stranger joined the owner of the house where I was lodged, and from their conversation I collected that he, with a companion, had that day visited the scene of action.

cataract.

"And you saw it ?" said the landlord.

"I did," was the reply.

And your companion ?"

"No, for we did not go to the lower road," observed the traveller.

"How so; did you take the upper?"

"We did," was the answer."

"Mais le Mauvais Pas?"

"I crossed it," replied the traveller.

"And your companion?" exclaimed the landlord. "He saw what it was, and returned."

Having heard nothing of any extraordinary difficulties, I paid no great attention to this dialogue, particularly as I had the warranting of my guide that our course would be on the right bank of the river the whole way, and it was evident that anything like this Mauvais Pas of which the host and the traveller spoke, was on the heights of the left bank. I therefore retired to rest in high spirits, notwithstanding the sombre, threatening looks of the monks, which seemed to glare at me from their heavy black frames, ornamenting the panelled walls of the cheerless dormitory in which my pallet was stretched, quite sufficient, under other circumstances, to call up the recollection of every ghost and goblin

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