offered, dry-goods, furniture, wearing apparel, agricultural implements, deal boards, and salt, and from China silks for the decoration of the churches and fire-works for the celebration of saints'-days.

The Hawaiian islands now held commercial intercourse with the outside world, having established a market for the sale of native products, receiving Mexican dollars and European cloth in exchange. The sandal-wood in the mountains was found to be a profitable article of commerce, a ready market for it being found in China.

From San Francisco Beechey made an excursion to the Philippine and Lew Chew islands, the latter situated northeast of Formosa, and the trade of which was mainly with China, Japan, and Formosa. "Commerce between Loo Choo and China," says Beechey," is conducted entirely in Japanese vessels, which bring hemp, iron, copper, pewter, cotton, culinary utensils, lacquered furniture, excellent hones, and occasionally rice, though this article when wanted is generally supplied from an island to the northward belonging to Loo Choo, called Ooshima; but this is only required in dry seasons. The exports of Loo Choo are salt, grain, tobacco, samshew, spirits, rice when sufficiently plentiful, grass hemp of which their clothes are made, hemp, and cotton. In return for these they bring from China different kinds of porcelain, glass, furniture, medicines, silver, iron, silks, nails, tiles, tools, and tea, as that grown upon Loo Choo is of an inferior quality." Formosa exported, among other things, gold and silver, mother of pearl and tortoise-shells. "Loo Choo had, besides a tribute vessel, two junks making annual trips to China. These islanders had hand-looms and spinning-wheels, mills worked by cattle, and manufactured paper, spirits, cloth of cotton and grass, pottery, baskets, salt, and made a large flat shell so transparent that the Japanese used it as window glass."

A notable journey into the Pacific was that of Charles Darwin, in the ship Beagle, in 1832, sent by the British government to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, begun by Captain King in 1826; also to survey the coasts of Chili and Peru, to visit some of the islands of the Pacific, and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world. For five years the great naturalist thus pursued his studies, in the companionship of Captain Fitz Roy

and his officers, the government contributing £1,000 toward the printing of his report on his return.

At Port Desire Mr Darwin discourses on the wild llama, the characteristic quadruped of the plains of Patagonia. At Port San Julian, geology claims his attention; at Santa Cruz, the natives, basaltic lava, and the habits of the condor; at the Falkland islands, wild cattle, wild horses, rabbits, fire-making as an art, streams of stones, and the habits of birds; at Tierra del Fuego, the savages, the scenery and the strait; Port Famine, the forests of Cape Horn, edible fungus, bartering tobacco for skins and ostrich-feathers, the equable humid and windy climate, the height of the snow line and the descent of glaciers, erratic bowlders, climate and productions of the antarctic islands; Valparaiso, the clear dry delicious atmosphere, the rounded hills, with scanty vegetation and high cordillera beyond, the bed of shells at the hacienda of Quintero, and the reddish-black vegetable mould which proved to be marine mud.

The narrow seaboard strip comprising Chili is traversed by several sierra lines parallel to the cordillera, between which are basins opening into each other, and supporting towns, as San Felipe, Santiago, and San Fernando. These basins are easily irrigated and fertile; and every landholder in the valley has part of the hill country for his cattle, which at the annual rodeo are driven down, counted, and marked. Wheat, corn, and beans are easily grown; yet for all this, these people are not as prosperous as they should be.

Mining-shafts puncture the hills and mountains every where. Copper ore is sent to Swansea to be smelted. All is singularly quiet about the mines; no smoke, and no rattle of machinery. The government encourages prospecting, and permits mining on any one's ground on payment of a small sum. The copper-mining process of Chili is cheaper than that of Cornwall. The miners are hard-worked and poorly paid, five or six dollars a month being the usual wage, with poor food, -figs, bread, beans, and roasted cracked wheat with seldom any meat. On these meagre earnings they have to clothe and feed their families.

The naturalist gives the habits of the puma, or South American lion, and describes the various species of humming-birds. Nothing in nature is too large or too small for his keen vision

and intelligent observation. In crossing the cordillera he gives its geology, and description of its torrents, with remarks on the sagacity of mules; the discovery of mines and the effect of snow on rocks; and the zoology of the Andes, with what he saw of locusts, and silicified trees buried as they grew. On the island of Chiloe was found peat, a wild potato, and many strange birds. One great forest covers these islands, which have strong winds and a heavy rainfall. The inhabitants were short and of dark complexion, and lived on shell-fish and potatoes.

From Valparaiso to Coquimbo and Copiapó, Darwin travelled by land, and this part of the coast is minutely described. He bought for £25 six animals before starting, and sold them at the end of the journey for £23. The occupants of hundreds of hovels along the cordillera foothills are supported from the surface gold-washings. From the deep mines the Chilian brings up on his back, up a narrow shaft on a notched pole, 200 or 300 pounds of ore at a load; yet they seldom eat meat and are not muscular. The rainfall is growing less; a little moisture goes far here in agriculture. The shingle-terraces of Coquimbo he thinks were formed by the sea. The hills are sterile but the valleys are fertile. At intervals are large haciendas where rich stock-raisers and corn-growers feed and lodge travellers for a consideration. Earthquakes come now and then to break the monotony of things, while the dead dogs which strewed the road-side, killed for fear of hydrophobia, excite the comments of the naturalist.

Entering Peru, the ancient aboriginal ruins attract attention, also an elevated water course, the Iquique saltpetre works, the salt supposed to percolate under ground from the cordillera, many leagues distant. The chief cost of the nitrate of soda is in carrying it to the ship's side, where it sells at three to four dollars per hundred pounds. The hills round Lima are carpeted with moss. Callao is a small, filthy seaport. There are hereabout many decomposing shells, and fossil human relics. At the volcanic Galapago archipelago are many craters, in one of which is a salt lake; many curious fishes and reptiles, great tortoises, and marine lizards feeding on seaweeds. The fear of man in animals is not an instinct but an acquisition.

The cultivable land in Tahiti is restricted to fringes of low

alluvial soil round the base of mountains, and protected from the sea by coral reefs. For tracts for the cultivation of yams, sugarcane, and pineapples, often orange, banana, cocoanut and bread-fruit trees have to be cleared away; the guava, imported as the choicest of fruit, has now become from its redundant growth like a noxious weed. Since giving up the meat of man as food, a mild benignant expression characterizes the features of the gentle savage, pleasant indeed to see.

Whence comes the ceremony of rubbing noses, found alike in New Zealand and Alaska? Some people think hand-shaking better; and some prefer rings in their ears to quills in their cheeks or rings in their noses. It is pleasant to find. here and in Australia an antipodal England where the weary world-encompasser may find rest and refreshment as in London. The green forests, the black aborigines, the blue mountains, and the white cliffs, all add their enchantments to the

scene.

In the coral isles the tiny insect is king and creator. In the Keeling archipelago are ring-formed reefs round some of the islands, open on one side. The three classes of reefs are atolls, barrier, and fringing-reefs. Atolls are lagoon-islands. Barrier-reefs are in diameter from three miles to forty-four miles; that which partially encircles New Caledonia is 400 miles long. The Malays are now free, and so will not take the trouble to work or run away. To catch a turtle, a man jumps from his boat upon its back, and there rides until the beast is exhausted, when it is hauled in, and in due time eaten. On the cocoanut, pigs and the land-crab alike feed.

CHAPTER XXVII

CRUSOE ISLAND

FOLLOWING the progress of investigation and discovery, we find in circumnavigations and adventures, and the publication of books and reports attendant thereunto, a natural sequence of causes and effects as elsewhere in human affairs. Thus the piracies of Francis Drake led to the adventures of Thomas Cavendish, and these to the voyages of Shelvocke and Woodes Rogers, the former suggesting to Coleridge the Lay of the Ancient Mariner, and the latter to Defoe The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner.

The merchants of Bristol sent into the South sea in 1708 the ships Duke and Duchess, Woodes Rogers commander, and William Dampier first pilot. A mutiny being quelled and shipwreck narrowly averted, they came to Juan Fernandez island, and there found and rescued Alexander Selkirk, for seven score years held to be the only true and genuine Robinson Crusoe.

Off the coast of Chili are situated these islands of Juan Fernandez, so called from a Spanish navigator of that name who in 1574 discovered them; and who discovered further that the south winds along shore did not prevail very far out at sea. This enabled him to make voyages between Chili and Peru so much quicker than others, that he was seized and imprisoned for sorcery, but was released on making explanation. So charmed by the beauty of these isles was the discoverer, that he asked and obtained a grant of them from the Spanish government, and proceeded to stock them with pigs and goats, whose progeny were found there by Alexander Selkirk and others, and played conspicuous parts in the tales of the buccaneers, and in the true story of Robinson Crusoe. The larger of these isles is fourteen miles long and four miles wide.