ARCHITECTURE AT BOTANY BAY.

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five pound note: less acceptable, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully received. This was well intended on the part of the directors: but the consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate; a large stock of rum was immediately laid in from the circumambient slop boats; and the materials of constant intoxication secured for the rest of the voyage. — [E. R. 1823.]

ARCHITECTURE AT BOTANY BAY.

ORNAMENTAL architecture in Botany Bay! How it could enter into the head of any human being to adorn public buildings at the Bay, or to aim at any other architectural purpose but the exclusion of wind and rain, we are utterly at a loss to conceive. Such an expense

is not only lamentable for the waste of property it makes in the particular instance, but because it destroys that guarantee of sound sense which the Government at home must require in those who preside over distant colonies. A man who thinks of pillars and pilasters, when half the colony are wet through for want of any covering at all, cannot be a wise or prudent person. He seems to be ignorant, that the prevention of rheumatism. in all young colonies is a much more important object than the gratification of taste, or the display of skill.[E. R. 1823.]

COLONIAL BREWERIES.

WHAT two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Britannia?-what event more awfully important to an English colony, than the erection of its first brewhouse?-[E. R. 1823.]

SELF-GOVERNMENT IN AUSTRALIA.

THE time of course will come when it would be in the highest degree unjust and absurd, to refuse to that settlement the benefit of popular institutions. But they are too young, too few, and too deficient for such civilised machinery at present. "I cannot come to serve upon the jury-the waters of the Hawkesbury are out, and I have a mile to swim-the kangaroos will break into my corn-the convicts have robbed me-my little boy has been bitten by an ornithorynchus paradoxus-I have sent a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to buy a pair of breeches for the assizes, and he is not returned." These are the excuses which, in new colonies, always prevent Trial by Jury; and make it desirable, for the first half century of their existence, that they should live under the simplicity and convenience of despotism— such modified despotism (we mean) as a British House of Commons will permit, in the governors of their distant colonies.[E. R. 1823.]

CEYLON IN 1803.

THE geographical figure of our possessions in Ceylon is whimsical enough; we possess the whole of the sea-coast, and enclose in a periphery the unfortunate King of Candia, whose rugged and mountainous dominions may be compared to a coarse mass of iron, set in a circle of silver. The Popilian ring, in which this votary of Buddha has been so long held by the Portuguese and Dutch, has infused the most vigilant jealousy into the government, and rendered it as difficult to enter the kingdom of Candia, as if it were Paradise or China; and yet, once there, always there; for the difficulty of

MALAYS.-THE KING OF KANDY.

25

departing is just as great as the difficulty of arriving; and his Candian Excellency, who has used every device in his power to keep them out, is seized with such an affection for those who baffle his defensive artifices, that he can on no account suffer them to depart. He has been known to detain a string of four or five Dutch embassies, till various members of the legation died of old age at his court, while they were expecting an answer to their questions, and a return to their presents: and his Majesty once exasperated a little French ambassador to such a degree, by the various pretences under which he kept him at his court, that this lively member of the Corps Diplomatique, one day, in a furious passion, attacked six or seven of his Majesty's largest elephants sword in hand, and would, in all probability, have reduced them to mince-meat, if the poor beasts had not been saved from the unequal combat.-[E. R. 1823.]

MALAYS.

THIS is truly a tremendous people! When assassins and blood-hounds will fall into rank and file, and the most furious savages submit (with no diminution of their ferocity) to the science and discipline of war, they only want a Malay Bonaparte to lead them to the conquest of the world. Our curiosity has always been very highly excited by the accounts of this singular people; and we cannot help thinking, that, one day or another, when they are more full of opium than usual, they will run a muck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian.-[E. R. 1803.]

THE KING OF KANDY.

THE King of Candia is of course despotic; and the history of his life and reign presents the same mono

26

PEARLS.-RELATIONS OF MANKIND.

tonous ostentation, and baby-like caprice, which characterise Oriental governments. In public audiences he appears like a great fool, squatting on his hams; far surpassing gingerbread in splendour; and, after asking some such idiotical question, as whether Europe is in Asia or Africa, retires with a flourish of trumpets very much out of tune. For his private amusement, he rides on the nose of an elephant, plays with his jewels, sprinkles his courtiers with rose-water, and feeds his gold and silver fish. If his tea is not sweet enough, he impales his footman; and smites off the heads of half a dozen of his noblemen, if he has a pain in his own.-[E. R. 1803.]

PEARL FISHERY.

A COMMON mode of theft practised by the common people engaged in the pearl fishery, is by swallowing the pearls. Whenever any one is suspected of having swallowed these precious pills of Cleopatra, the police apothecaries are instantly sent for; a brisk cathartic is immediately despatched after the truant pearl, with the strictest orders to apprehend it, in whatever corner of the viscera it may be found lurking.-[E. R. 1803.]

RELATIONS OF MANKIND.

By what curious links, and fantastical relations, are mankind connected together! At the distance of half the globe, a Hindoo gains his support by groping at the bottom of the sea for the morbid concretion of a shellfish, to decorate the throat of a London alderman's wife. -[E. R. 1803.]

HONEY-BIRD.-TALIPOT TREE.

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THE HONEY-BIRD OF CEYLON.

AMONG the great variety of birds in Ceylon, we were struck with Mr. Percival's account of the honey-bird, into whose body the soul of a common informer appears to have migrated. It makes a loud and shrill noise, to attract the notice of anybody whom it may perceive; and thus inducing him to follow the course it points out leads him to the tree where the bees have concealed their treasure; after the apiary has been robbed, this feathered scoundrel gleans his reward from the hive. The list of Ceylonese snakes is hideous; and we become reconciled to the crude and cloudy land in which we live, from reflecting, that the indiscriminate activity of the sun generates what is loathsome, as well as what is lovely; that the asp reposes under the rose; and the scorpion crawls. under the fragrant flower, and the luscious fruit.-[E. R. 1803.]

AN EAST INDIAN CHAPLAINCY.

THE best history of a serpent we ever remember to have read, was of one killed near one of our settlements in the East Indies; in whose body they found the chaplain of the garrison, all in black, the Rev. Mr. (somebody or other, whose name we have forgotten) and who, after having been missing for above a week, was discovered in this very inconvenient situation.—[E. R. 1803.]

,

THE TALIPOT TREE.

A LEAF of the talipot tree is a tent to the soldier, a parasol to the traveller, and a book to the scholar. It is a natural umbrella, and is of as eminent service in that country as a great-coat tree would be in this. -[E. R. 1803.]