roots or branches of creepers hung like
ropes to the ground, and even on these
very ropes many strange ferns and flower-
ing parasites had found sustenance for
themselves. All the trees, from the noble
kauri downwards, were evergreens; but
they were far from being characterized by
that sombre hue which throws gloom over
the foliage of a thicket of evergreens in
England. Amongst the more noticeable
trees were many glossy laurels of different
sorts the lofty, moss-like rimu, the puriri,
with flowers like snap dragon, and the
lance-wood tree with its tall, bare stem,
twenty or thirty feet high, crowned by a
scanty tuft of lanceolate barbed leaves
about eighteen inches long; and to a not
unsightly little shrub with a long name I
was led by that despised organ- the
nose !
Its scent was stronger than steph-
anotis, and made the spot where it grew
sweet as a greenhouse of hyacinths. Un-
fortunately for the world at large, the
genus to which it belongs confines itself
strictly to the northern island of New
Zealand, and the particular species we
met with to only a very small portion of
that somewhat limited area. It seems quite
ridiculous to go into ecstasies over a little
plant with such a break-jaw name as Al-
seuosmia linariifolia. But what could one
do? The sweet flowers out there have no
common names of endearment- -no tender
diminutives- -as they have here with us
in England. And indeed, if they had, we
should probably be not much the wiser.
I daresay a botanically inclined China-
man, coming to England and finding a
simple daisy by the wayside, would label
it in his memory as Bellis perennis.
What meaning could the word daisy
possibly have for him? What picture of
childlike faith and trust would it call up in
the hard heart of the "heathen Chinee"?
Or, again, what English botanist collect-
ing in China would be much impressed
when, on finding some fair lily of the field,
he heard its name was hi-ping or chow-
chow? So we must just take our little
honeysuckle as we find it named in the
book, and pass on.

lowing in the marsh, and sleeping in the matted and almost impervious jungle of tui grass. We moved but slowly on through this difficult bit of ground, having continually to throw ourselves on the grass to flatten it down, and so make a way over it where we could not force a passage through it. Much of it was as high as, or higher than, ourselves. In places we cleared a track with our billhooks, floundering on in Indian file, till we reached the far end of the swamp. On the border of the forest beyond we lighted our pipes, and being thirsty, felled a palm-tree and regaled ourselves on the deliciously juicy substance, well known to settlers, which grows inside, and which is, in fact, the unexpanded crown of stem and unfolded leaf. Coming, presently, to the rootings and fresh tracks of pigs, we laid our dogs on the scent, and, after a time, heard them give tongue. Off we went after them, as hard as we could tear. Obstacles, insurmountable before, were easily surmounted now. We did not now complain of the gashes we received from the barbed, spear-like grass, which gave a cut as clean as any sharp knife. To get first to the front was now our only care; and so simultaneously did we all arrive on the scene of action that we fell pell-mell upon the savage boar as he stood at bay before the dogs, "brailed up against a great tree, which he had artfully chosen as a rear-guard. Allingham, with a notable briskness which won him much applause, seized a propitious moment, and, stepping in, cut the boar's throat with his bowie-knife. It was a dangerous job, well and quickly performed, and with little regard for the furious beast's tusks, which are formidable, and occasionally fatal, weapons. With much difficulty we choked our dogs off the dying beast, and, having dressed him in a butcherly fashion, hung him up by a cross-pole betwixt the two trees where he fell. Covered with the blood of the pig, and with blood issuing from the scratches we had received, we looked a horrid crew as we stood to take breath and sheath our reeking knives At Te Arai we sat on rocks by the after the excitement was over. But heavy surf and picked up multitudes of there was no time, happily, for sentiment. shells; amongst others, mutton-shells and The dogs were again giving tongue ear-shells, of which the wild boars are loudly ahead, and off we went on the trail, said to be fond, coming down at low tide and, half an hour later, had the satisfacand tearing them off with their tusks. tion of despatching a second boar. By Striking through the sandhills, we entered the time we had got him trimmed and those swamps of which I have spoken, hung up, it was pitch dark; and it was and which lie between the sandhills and with much fatigue and difficulty that we the high wooded lands, further back. groped our way out of the forest and at Here the wild pigs have their lairs, wal-length arrived at the Crapps' cottage,

thoroughly spent and ravenously hungry, bat all in high good-humor, and satisfied with our day's exploit. By the light of blazing kauri gum we devoured the liver of one of our pigs, and then smoked till we fell asleep. This day may serve as a sample of many others passed in like manner, with variations of eel-fishing and pigeon-shooting. Our farm was the last thing that engaged our attention, and, of good sooth, there was nothing engaging about it. We did, indeed, set a few potatoes, and sow carrots and turnips, but they (very wisely) refused to come up. Our time was spent in fighting against the cold and almost incessant rains, and in endeavoring to exist on the rotten, rat-eaten remnant of our soaked provisions, which, ever since we came down, had been left without protection to the fury of the elements. There was no room for both them and us in the hut. Perhaps it had been better to have given them the pas and remained outside ourselves. At the end of six weeks we were reduced to tea which, from | mould, was greener than green tea. Our sugar was done, having melted itself away. All our other things were in a like bad way, with the exception of the salt pork, which, having behaved well from the first, remained cheerful to the last, and came up smiling to the scratch, in spite of much ill-usage, frizzling and frying in its pan to our daily solace and contentment. Nevertheless, we began to think our rôle of landed proprietors was pretty nearly played out. The man's words that our land was "much of a muchness, and would probably do for us " rang ever in our ears. At the end of three days of steady pelting rain, in our seventh week, Allingham, on a sudden impulse, took himself off, swearing that no consideration on earth should induce him again to enter our dilapidated hut. He had reason on his side; also he had friends at Kaipara and Akara, twenty miles off Irish people, who had often asked him to pay them a visit and he thought this a good opportunity. I lingered behind for a few dull days, and then, packing up what was left me, started afoot for Mooney's, the little public-house at Mangawai, eight miles off, and our nearest village.

and was not elevated into the picturesque even by neglect and decay." When I got to the Mangawai River I had to wait an hour or so before the state of the tide would admit of my crossing. I employed the time satisfactorily amongst the tree oysters; but it was unpleasant work, afterwards, wading barefooted amongst the muddy mangroves, on whose tangled and protruding roots whole colonies of these bivalves had found homes for themselves. Oysters are grateful to the palate, no doubt; but far from grateful is an external application of their spiky shells to the naked feet. It was just sunset when, on getting to Mooney's, I found Allingham at the door to greet me, having just arrived from his visit to Kaipara, where he had found his friends, the Blakes, very comfortably domiciled in a noble forest. To sit on a soft chair; to eat off a table with four sound legs; to have food clean, wholesome, and prepared by other hands than mine; above all, to sleep in a proper, decent bed these things, from long disuse, seemed odd, but very enjoyable. Our first day at Mooney's was one of heavy gale and pelting rain. We sat delightfully snug and comfortable in our cozy parlor, over the blazing fire of logs on the hearth. All warm and dry, we looked with contempt on the rain, which had so lately been our continual dread and abhorrence. We had brought a few books with us, so that we did not find time hang heavily on our hands. Our library was as odd a little jumble as ever found its way to a bush inn: the "Letters of Junius," Horace, "Essays of Elia," Greek Testament, Sophocles, "The Diversions of Purley," Thomas à Kempis, "The Garden of the Soul," " Spiritual Quixote," and a rather risky French novel we had borrowed of the Crapps. We had made our selection with strict regard not so much to worth as to weight, preferring the worst duodecimo to the best octavo. After waiting eleven days for the cutter, which lay at anchor in the stream before our windows unable to cross the bar, we heard at last there was a chance of her sailing, and immediately went on board; but, when we had drifted cautiously down to the bar, we found it still too rough to cross, so anchored again Allingham had appointed this as our and amused ourselves as best we could. place of rendezvous on the termination Next day we had better luck, and after a of his visits. It was without the faintest spanking run of fourteen hours came to shadow of regret that I left "the Snare our berth in Auckland harbor, and were a thing that" (like the village stocks not sorry to find ourselves back in our in one of Lord Lytton's novels) "in its comfortable cottage after two months' best day had small pretensions to beauty," roughing it in the bush."

66

J. LAWSON.

From The Spectator.

LA LISARDIERE.

IN the first days of April, the lanes of Anjou were full of primroses and violets, the fields were thickly scattered with cowslips, while over the banks, in wood and hedgerow, the blue stars of the wild periwinkle ran and crept everywhere. All the young leaf-buds were swelling under soft and constant showers; the grass by the little rivers was very green; sometimes there were hours of gentle sunshine, while the white clouds lingered on the horizon, leaving lakes of clear, pale-blue sky. The air was chilly, yet mild; it was just what one imagines that early spring ought to be. Morning and evening, the great blazing wood fires were very pleasant; towards the middle of the day, they had a way of smouldering and going out. Then was the time for walks in the sweet fresh air, about the flower-strewn country, through | the wet, sandy mud and stones of that labyrinth of lanes. And these are not mere objectless country walks; you cannot go far without coming on some curious traces of the old history of the province, some relic of its old great families, of its old distinction. Anjou is full of legends and stories, and no wonder; for all the romance of its former greatness lingers on in ruins, buried sometimes in what are now the most out-of-the-way corners of the country. No highroad for instance would ever bring a traveller to La Lisardière, the ruined château and cradle of a family that still exists, among the oldest and most distinguished of Anjou.

and commons, and turn round to look back over the curious, quiet view, all soft brown and purple, for it is too early for green leaves, and there are few evergreens below the fir woods. The woods have not more than the first reddening of spring on their broad brown surface; here and there is the sparkle of water, the little river in the valley; and there is the village spire, a few roofs near it, the peaked towers of the château we have left, another more distant house, almost hidden by trees; all these grey roofs shine in the soft, cloudy light. The road between the woods is rough and very lonely, its margin tufted with flowering gorse and dead bracken and green feathering broom. The woods here are low and young, and constantly cut down; numbers of trees lie neatly in heaps together, waiting to be sold and carried away. Beyond the woods is a lonely place with a wide view over what might be a Surrey common, only it is so much wilder; here four roads meet, and here malefactors used to be hung in chains by the seigneurs of the old château, the object of our pilgrimage. The road goes on across the upland, presently leaving the wild ground and running on between the hedges of high, bare fields, one of them cut and laid almost like an English hedge; over this, away to the right, one can see a group of old farm-buildings, known as le Moulin-a-vent. The windmill tower is still there, but the arms are gone; it is used now as a granary. A smart new gate, all made of little bars, in the middle of the transmogrified hedge, has quite an odd effect in this wild country; here one sees the first marks of a certain new farmer who has lately come, and has brought with him all sorts of new ideas from the Bourbonnais.

Wandering away at the back of the Château de B- which once itself belonged to the same family, and was prob. ably quite as old as La Lisardière, but was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, so that life still goes on there with all its The lane breaks into a steep field, somecharm and cheerfulness; wandering up thing like an old quarry, with its hollows through the lanes, with their high banks and heights, just as we are beginning to and straggling hedges full of flowers, and find the walk a long one. There it is; vineyards beyond them sloping to the there is La Lisardière; and all this unsouth, we pass by a little stone farm here evenness of ground is only the remains of and there, with low archways, and a green its old circle of fortification. In the valpond, and no gates, and a fierce dog that ley, looking vague and grey against the rushes out barking till some distant voice grey and green of slopes and fields behind calls him back. Sometimes we skirt ait, with trees, larger and older than one has field, where a woman in a short blue petticoat is ploughing with two oxen and a donkey, her dog also in attendance. She shouts at her beasts, and uses a long stick freely, as the plough lurches slowly along in its shallow furrow. From this peasantfarming region-instructive for those in terested in the subject. we climb up gradually to the higher ground of fir woods

lately seen, scattered about near it, stands this melancholy ruin of one of the greatest old châteaux of Anjou. Its most remarkable feature is the tall, thin, grey tower, which they call the tour du guetteur, rising up in the middle of the buildings, with an almost human air of peering forever over the hilltops round. There is a great square house, its steep grey roof half in

ruins, its white walls stained by time, its secret room, or underground passage.
windows, with their carving and arches, The whole place, outside and in, is a scene
half built up with mortar and stones. At of old feudal romance, and its history, if it
the corner nearest us, as we look down could be written, would be a strange one.
from our field, is a great round tower I believe that one French writer of some
which seems to have been cut in half, a distinction, knowing it and the neighbor-
great part of the château having been hood well, has already made it the scene
pulled down. Beyond, near the tour du of a historical novel. The farmer pres-
guetteur, is another round tower, seeming ently brought us into the immense room
to support its tall, slight neighbor; part near the entrance, where he and his wife
of the house next this is roofless, and fall-live. The furniture consisted of a table
ing fast to decay. Beyond, again, is an- and a few chairs, a large press, and a bed
other great block of buildings; here, we covered with a duvet about two feet thick.
think, may have been the banqueting. A few sticks were burning on the hearth.
hall; it has a stately row of windows, and The farmer's wife, a pale, worn-looking
great arched doors from the yard. Out- woman, was busily engaged with a small
side is a well, and near it a flight of steps maidservant in washing pots. She looked
leading down underground to immense kind and smiling, but did not join much in
dungeons or cellars. In front of these the conversation; her husband was quite
grand old buildings is a great wild yard, the superior being. He sat down by the
without gate or entrance of any kind, with fire and talked like an Englishman, telling
rows of cowsheds and pigsties under the us all his plans and prospects, and how by
windows, where some of the greatest peo- | his superior farming he meant to make
ple in Anjou used to look out, perhaps not four times as much as the general run of
more than a hundred years ago. Every farmers in that country. He spoke most
trace of them, their servants, their de- loyally of his landlord; he would follow
fences, is gone now; but the château is him to the moon, he said; and he was con-
well guarded, nevertheless, a fierce vinced that the métayer system was the
black dog and a still fiercer gander make fairest and most profitable for himself
it a rather serious matter to walk down the that could have been invented. It had
green slope of the hill, cross the yard, and not taken him long to discover that one of
approach the old ruinous steps which lead his visitors was English; he had seen an
up to the once stately door, in search of Englishman once at Moulins, where he
that advanced farmer from the Bourbon- came from. His wife also brightened up
nais, who lives here and farms most of the here; she had once had a letter from En-
land all round on the mélayer system. gland. It is probably not often that the
The estate was sold some years ago by tenants of La Lisardière have their soli-
its old family to some modern man, who tude invaded by curious visitors. In these
makes what he can out of it.
days it is not every one who knows the
We braved dog and gander successfully, way into that lonely valley, where a watch-
and in the yard were fortunate enough to man on the tall grey tower might watch
meet the farmer himself, a good-looking, forever, now, without seeing anything
fair-haired, blue-eyed man, dressed like more dangerous than a peasant, or a cas-
any other peasant, in blouse and fur cap. ual party of people taking a country walk,
One need hardly say that he does nearly arousing quite unnecessary rage in the
all his work himself. He was glad to see minds of geese and sheep-dogs.
It was
us, though a little condescending, the all one of those strange, romantic contrasts
manners of the Bourbonnais are more which one meets with so often in a country
modern than those of Anjou. He was like France, the grand old ruined châ-
very good-natured, however, and took us teau, with its peasant inhabitants, who yet,
all round the curious old buildings, in in the spirit of old hospitality, light up
which he seemed to feel a really intelligent their sticks and bring out their cider for
interest. In several of the great rooms any stranger who pays them a visit; state.
there are still the immense chimney-liness and squalor, the despair of old
pieces of that country, elaborately carved Anjou, the hopefulness and enterprise of
in stone, or painted in fresco; now, of
course, all cracked and faded and ruinous.
In one of the lower rooms, there is a deep
well, no doubt very necessary in those old
times when La Lisardière was fortified.
Several yards down this well there is an
iron door, probably the entrance to some

modern Bourbonnais; crumbling towers
and new cowsheds, hay and corn stored in
old banqueting-halls; the feudal system
and the métayer system, sheltered by the
same walls, living in the same
Even the young descendants of the first
received and entertained, in what might

rooms.

have been the halls of their own ancestors, | after having been captured by Amazimu by the representatives of the second.

or Man-Eaters, and after having been told off to furnish the next feast for their captors; and with one -a chief still living in this colony. who was compelled by the cannibals to carry the pot in which he was told he would himself be cooked. The scene of his escape is not five miles from the spot (Maritzburg) on which this paper is written, and at present forms part of the episcopal property held by Dr. Colenso."

All was quiet as we walked away from La Lisardière and climbed the green hillside again, in the soft sunlight of that April afternoon. The great black dog was tired of barking, and watched us lazily; the irrepressible gander had been shut up in some corner of the old buildings. Often looking back as we crossed the brow of the hill, we gradually lost sight of the strange old place in the valley, its scattered farmyard, its ruinous walls and broken roofs, There is no reason to believe that the grand in their ruin. At last we could see Basutos brought the custom with them, nothing but the grey, slight top of the though there is ample evidence that they tour du guetteur, the landmark of La Li-practised it during the time of their wars sardière, which watched us away, till we began to descend the other side of the high ground, and looking back, could see nothing; valley and château, with all its wild old precincts, had vanished like a dream.

From The Cape Times.
SOUTH-AFRICAN CANNIBALS.

EARLY in this century, about 1820, the Basuto chieftain Moshesh, being worried and harried by a host of enemies, entrenched himself on a high rocky fortress now, as then, known as Thaba Bosigo, from whence, much to the dismay of his assailants, he would hurl down high piles of stones, packed up by night, on their woolly heads.

with Umziliganzi, and with the Korannas, and it may reasonably be supposed that it has been carried on in a hidden, shamefaced way, in spite of the opposition of their chiefs, down to a very modern date. Cassilis tells the stories of cannibalism which he heard from the natives on his first arrival in Basutoland, and giving 1820 as a date, says that Moshesh put an end to these horrors. He says there "are thirty or forty villages, the entire population of which is composed of those who were formerly cannibals, and who make no secret of their past life.”

I have seen, when quite a boy, the Natal Kafirs listen with eager and breathless interest to the wild, weird, and horrible tales that the elder Kafirs used to tell of their experiences in the gloomy fastnesses of the Maluti - the high and tumbled "Double Mountains" of BasutoThe Basutos were a brave people, but land. I well remember a fine old Kafir, reduced by their enemies to very hard who, as seems to be usual with really good straits, so that they were driven by abso-authorities, was rather taciturn regarding lute starvation to resort to the horrible work of cannibalism. This fiendish practice was certainly not to be debited to the account of the native races of South Africa as a rule. In the early days it was | not found amongst the Hottentots, nor even among the lowest of South African races, the Bushmen; and it is just as certain that it has not been amongst the Zulus, but as an exception, as with the Basutos, it occurred in Natal about the same period, 1820-23.

Sir Theophilus Shepstone, in a paper he contributed some years ago to the Royal Colonial Institute, says: "I have heard many a stirring story of escapes from the cannibals from the lips of those who were captured, and who had themselves listened to discussions as to whether they would eat tough or tender when they were killed. I have myself conversed with several men who escaped

the imparting of information concerning these and other early remarkable events, being at length persuaded to relate some of his adventures in the Malutis in the days gone by. Of course the Zulus, and the rest of the "human" tribes, had the liveliest horror and the most awful dread of the Amazimu -a name that mothers instantly silenced naughty children with.

However, the old Kafir (he was one of Matiwane's tribe, hailing from the Drakensberg, where the late Matiwane's son, called Žikali, was governing the tribe, the Amangwane - Zikali had been placed there to guard the mountain passes against the mischievous, and sometimes deadly, inroads of the Bushmen), well, the old Kafir took a drink of native beer, cleared his throat, and threw, with a graceful jerk of his arm, his robe off his shoulder, to give freedom to the impressive and expressive gesticulations employed — much