fact, they can bang upon and make a earthly clatter. On they go, dashing up clatter with and the procession starts, one street and down another, past pillar the peasant carrying the image of Death and post, always quicker and quicker, in front. Off he starts at a smart run, the while children stumble and elderly people villagers after him, cracking their whips, fall into the rear, until, exhausted and out blowing their whistles, banging on the of breath, the noisy multitude return to the pots and pans. On the party go, shout-point whence the start was made. ing and hooting, driving Death in front, to the nearest river or stream. Here a halt is made, a circle is formed by the riverside, and the dummy is thrown headlong into the water. The party then return in orderly procession, calling out as they march along: "We have driven out Death, and bring in the New Year." In many parts of Russia, the villagers content themselves with giving the figure of Death a good ducking, and then throwing it upon the nearest piece of vacant ground. In such cases, too, if the villagers happen to have a grievance against any neighboring hamlet, they carry the figure to the boundaries of the latter, and leave it upon their neighbors' land. This is certain to lead to a series of free fights between the two villages. It is an insult to throw the figure of Death on other people's land, and is considered to bring misfortune with it besides. The dummy is carried back by those who find it within their boundaries, while the village folk who left it there gather to oppose its return. The fighting in such cases is prolonged, and is not unfrequently attended with fatal results. The more peaceable villagers are content to leave the dummy in the water where it is thrown. On returning to the village sundry additions are made to the instruments with which the people are provided. The bells are taken from the necks of the cows, as well as the horns used for calling cattle together. One or two procure drums to beat. Then, men, women, and children begin to run round the village as fast as they can, making as much noise as possible. The object of this performance is to drive out the evil spirits Death is supposed to have left behind. The quicker the people go, and the more noise they make, the more effectually is the place cleared of the imps supposed to follow in the train of Death, and the greater will be the blessings of the coming season. The villagers, therefore, rush along pell-mell, as for a wager, the men hooting, the women screaming at the top of their voices, the children joining in with a piping treble, horns blowing, drums beating, and bells ringing, the pots and pans making an un It is generally evening by the time Death has been drowned, and the place cleared of evil spirits. The villagers take a rest, and then prepare to camp-out for the night; among the southern Slavs, no one ever dreams of going to sleep on the evening of the festival. It is an old Slavonic belief that on this night the gates of heaven are opened, and if any one asks for a special gift at the actual moment of opening, it will certainly be granted. At that particular instant, too, all trees are said to bear golden fruits, and whoever is lucky enough to grasp them just then, may retain them for his own. The Rus sian peasant, therefore, stays out in the field all night, in order to watch for the opening of the sky. That he does not make much of the opportunity, is perhaps due to the fact that he often takes advan tage of the camping-out festivity to get so drunk on vodki, that were the heavens really to rain gifts during the night, he would be in no condition to profit by the bounty of the skies. As soon as the first signs of sunrise are observed in the east by the women who keep watch, the vil lagers are roused, and are speedily afoot. In a body they proceed to the nearest hill facing east, where the earliest rays of the spring sun fall, there to welcome "Vesna,' the goddess of returning summer. two elders of the village take with them a clean white cloth and some bread and salt. Arrived at the summit of the hill, the cloth is spread upon the ground, and fastened down by pegs to prevent it blowing away. The bread and salt are placed upon it, and the men call out loudly: "Mother Vesna! see here!" desiring the goddess to accept their welcome. And with this invocation the special ceremonies of the "Death Week" terminate. The In western Russia, the "Smartna Nedelya" is not much observed. But in the rural districts of central and southern Russia, this week, with its pagan cere monies, is celebrated as regularly, and with much the same simple belief on the part of the country-folk, as among their heathen ancestors on the banks of the Ural and the Irtysh. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when req tested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents But once he came; he climbed the stair, He knows Phrynette is waiting there, But, ah! the nest is dark and lone, Hark, hark, the drum! The trumpets blow! Temple Bar. Is this the saddest time?" they said, "The birds and the flowers and the year all dead!" "Haply," I said, "'tis sad to die; But still our griefs we may forget, As in a dreamless sleep we lie; I know a sadder season yet! They cried, "We hear the thrushes sing, Have fallen like an emerald cloud And banished is the Winter's gloom. Our ears with song are surfeited Come, say if Spring is sad!" they said. I said, "I hear the wild birds sing, And smell sweet beds of violet; But, though a mystic grief they bring, I know a sadder season yet! They said, "The Summer heat has come; Recalls the by-gone summer days! The greenfinch, from the green-leafed tree, Is droning out his wistful call; The swallows chatter merrily, Their nests are on the sunlit wall. Some duller season name instead, And say not this is sad! I said, "I feel the heated air Hang heavy with the breath of flowers, Nor can conceive a world more fair Than this, in these sweet summer hours! I said, "I see the swallows wheel, And hear the distant landrail call Across the corn; and yet I feel This is the saddest time of all! How great! And oft I wonder why!" HEART-STORMS. THE shadow of night is falling, When the storm your waves uplifted, When the wind was wet with spray, My heart was eased of its long dull ache, And I looked from my grief away. 'Tis when all is calm and peaceful, P. W. RoOSE. From The Edinburgh Review. THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.* Eriksen has lent a kind of official sanction to the claim of that dashing sea-rover to take rank as the pioneer of the Aryan race on American soil. ALTHOUGH America was no more discovered than Rome was built in a day, yet October 12, 1492, may fitly serve as His exploit, although a considerable the representative date of what has been one, fell in quite naturally with the sewell described as a process rather than quence of preceding events. The overan event. On that day Columbus first set throw of the Jarls of Norway by Harold foot on transatlantic land, and his doing Haarfagr drove those restless spirits so proved decisive for the spread west among them who could not brook the ward of European civilization. Events, fixed order of a consolidated kingdom, to indeed, might easily have been directed seek their fortunes outside its bounds; otherwise. The incident might under and an exodus ensued more disastrous slightly altered circumstances have remained isolated, and devoid of momentous consequences, like so many others in the history of geographical exploration; and it seemed at first to mark no more than the opening of a long series of tentative gropings after facts confirmatory of a false theory. Nevertheless, as things turned out, that solemn disembarkation of a little band of white men on the palm-fringed shore of Guanahani really typified the effective discovery of the new continent. Its effective, not its formal, discovery. Columbus, like most other innovators in the realms of knowledge and thought, had been anticipated. "Wineland the Good" was no creation of Norse fancy, no shimmering region between sea and sky, where The Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze, but a concrete strip of coast-land, of ap proximately assignable latitude and longitude, washed perhaps by the same waters in which, one night of December in the year 1773, an obnoxious cargo of tea was memorably engulfed. And the recent erection at Boston of a monument to Leif 1. The Discovery of America. With some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. By John Fiske. In 2 vols. London: 1892. 2. Narrative and Critical History of America. Edited by Justin Winsor. In 8 vols. London: 188589. 3. Christopher Columbus, and how he received and imparted the Spirit of Discovery. By Justin Winsor. London: 1890. 4. Christophe Colomb, son Origine, sa Vie, ses Voyages, sa Famille, et ses Découvertes. Etudes d'Histoire Critique. Par Henry Harrisse. Deux tomes. Paris: 1884. 5. The North Americans of Antiquity. By John T. Short. Second edition. New York: 1880. 6. Prehistoric America. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated by N. d'Anvers. London: 1885. than plague or famine to many helpless populations. One of the few tranquil episodes in its eventful history was the settlement of Iceland in 874. Thence, by stress of weather, land further west was certain, sooner or later, to be reached; and it actually fell out within two years that one Gunnbjörn found himself icebound for the winter in one of the fiords near Cape Farewell. A century and more passed, however, before the unalluring possibility of adventure in this direction was followed up. It was the outlawry for homicide of Erik the Red in 983 that led to his exploring and colonizing expedition to the frigid peninsula visited by Gunnbjörn. He made his headquarters by the upper Igaliko fiord, near the site of the modern Julianshaab, and there "upon a smooth, grassy plain may still be seen the blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked ruins of seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked up with clay and gravel," the dwellings, nine hundred years ago, of the first European settlers in the Western hemisphere. The spot was one of the few in that dismal region where nature wore now and then even the semblance of a smile; and Erik called it "Greenland," somewhat, it may be admitted, on the same advertising principle of nomenclature followed by General Choke and Mr. Scadder in the designation of the "Eden Settlement." And the name, extended from one of its choicest corners to the whole frost-bound Country, survives as if in mockery of the grim reality. From Greenland, the continent of America was attained in precisely the same casual way that Greenland itself had been attained from Iceland. Thus Bjarni Her julfsen, drifting under cover of a fog, in adventures encountered there by the vids Heer Greenland and Vinland in partibus infidelium," set out in 1121 to search for the more remote section of his diocese. never returned, that the chroniclers were aware of; and the presumption is strong that he perished on the journey. p d op si st ever, lost upon Leif, son of the homicidal Erik, a thoughtful and strenuous man, not devoid of grasp upon the present and insight into the future. A trip to Norway in 998 brought about his conversion to Christianity; he carried missionaries back with him to Greenland; then, in the From Greenland, too, the outposts of year 1000, equipped a "dragon ship" for civilization were eventually withdrawn. ab a journey to the west. His first landfall The native Esquimaux, known only by s was most likely somewhere in Labrador; archæological traces to the comrades ofici and he named the country, from its dreary Erik the Red, again, in course of time, a and stone-strewn aspect, "Helluland," ie., migrated southward, and before the close "slate land," Further south, the explor- of the fifteenth century overwhelmed the M ers disembarked on the sylvan shore of intruders into their forsaken haunts. The te the so-called "Markland," plausibly iden- massive ruin, however, of what was once tified with some part either of Cape Breton the cathedral church of Gardar remains, Island or of Nova Scotia; but the dense and will probably long remain, standing forest-growth did not encourage tarrying, by the melancholy fiord of Kakortok, a and they determined to draw another lot conspicuous memorial of antique Christian out of the lap of the sea. This time they occupation. Only in the eighteenth cenwere in luck. A short run before a stiff tury the devastation was to some extent north-easter brought them to a fertile repaired by the planting of fresh settlestrand where the waters abounded with ments along the barely habitable coasts excellent fish, fields waved yellow with fringing the glaciated central mass of the maize, and wild vines, in that autumnal peninsula. season, drooped under a heavy burden of grapes. They called the place accordingly "Vinland," and wintered there in great comfort. Leif's return to Greenland with a cargo of timber prompted sundry colonizing efforts, notably an energetic one by Thor. finn Karlsefni; and since the natives, who seem to have been Algonquin Indians, eagerly bartered rich furs for worthless strips of scarlet cloth, trade with them was exceedingly profitable. These "Skraelings," as they are designated in the Sagas, were terribly afraid of the strange beasts brought from over the sea; and the bellowing of Thorfinn's bull on one occasion sent them into hiding for three weeks. Yet their hostility ended by becoming formidable, and led, in the course of twelve years, to the abandonment of this early attempt to secure a foothold for a European race on the western continent. Vinland became a dim tradition. The The Vinland of the Sagas may be lo cated with some confidence on the shore of Massachusetts Bay. In the neighborhood of Cape Cod the fox-grape still ripens freely, and Indian corn unsheaths its tasselled ears almost spontaneously. The mildness of the winter climate, besides, and the length of the winter days, which excited the comments of unaccustomed Icelanders, suggest a region certainly not more inclement than New England. But material vestiges of this curious adventure in colonization are scanty, or non-existent. Only by a stretch of romantic credulity are we even allowed to suppose that the "skeleton in armor," dug up many years ago near Fall River, and sung of by Longfellow in a spirited ballad, represented the genuine remains of some slain comrade of Thorfinn or of Thorvald. The Norse discovery of America re mained absolutely barren of results. The |