Pet. Well, there is no crime in being born at Moscow; besides, that was no fault of yours.

Sta. That's not it. Listen! It happened, one day, that a party of soldiers halted near my mother's hut; the commanding officer presently cast an eye at me, and was so amazingly taken with my appearance, that he requested I'd make one of his company. I was about to decline; but he assured me that the Czar Peter (our namesake, you know), having particular occasion for my services, would take it as an offence if I refused the invitation; so he forthwith clapped a musket on my shoulder, and marched me off.

Sta. Enlisted! why, I can't say but I was. Now, I was always an independent sort of fellow, fond of my own way, and could n't stomach being ordered about against my inclination.

Pet. (Aside.) So, so! This fellow is a deserter!

Sta. I put up with it a long while, though; till, one bitter cold morning in December, just at three o'clock, I was roused from my comfortable, warm sleep, to turn out and mount guard on the bleak, blustering corner of a rampart, in the snow was too bad, was n't it?

It

Pet. I don't doubt you would rather have been warm in bed.

Sta. Well, as I could n't keep myself warm, I laid down my musket and began to walk; then I began to run, and — will you believe it? I did n't stop running till I found myself five leagues away from the outposts!

Pet. So, then, you are a deserter!

Sta. A deserter! You call that being a deserter, do you? Well, putting this and that together, I should n't wonder if I were a deserter.

Pet. Do you know, my dear fellow, that if you are discovered you will be shot?

Sta. I've some such idea.

Indeed, it occurred to me at the time, so, thinking it hardly worth while to be shot for being so short a distance as only five leagues away from my post, I made the best of my way to Saardam; and here I am.

Pet. This is an awkward affair, indeed, and if the burgomaster were informed of it, however, be assured your

secret is safe in my keeping.

Sta. I don't doubt you, for I suspect you 're in a similar scrape yourself.

Pet. I?-Ridiculous!

Sta. There's something very mysterious about you, at any rate. But, I say you will keep my secret?

Pet. O trust me for that.

Sta. Because, if it should get to the ears of any of the agents of the Czar, I should be in rather a bad fix, you know.

Pet. The Czar shall know no more about it than he does now, if I can help it; so don't be afraid. He himself, they say, is rather fond of walking away from his post.

Sta. Ha, ha! Is he? Then he has no business to complain of me for running away, — eh?

Pet. You must look out for him, though.

way of finding out everything.

secret.

They say he has a Don't be too sure of your

Sta. Come, now; he 's in Russia, and I'm in Holland; and I don't see where 's the danger, unless you mean to blab.

Pet. Fellow-workman, do you take me for a traitor?

Sta. Not so, Peter; but, if I am ever taken up here as a deserter, you will have been the only one to whom I have told my secret.

Pet. A fig for the Czar!

Sta. Don't say that—he's a good fellow, is Peter the Czar; and you'll have to fight me if you say a word in his dispraise. Pet. O if that's the case, I'll say no more.

Anon.

LXXXI.

SCENERY CF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.

1. Ir has been the fashion, with travellers, to talk of the scenery of the Mississippi as wanting grandeur and beauty. Mōst certainly, it has neither. But there is no scenery on earth more striking. The dreary and pestilential solitudes, untrod

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den, save by the foot of the Indian; the absence of all living objects, save the huge alligators, which float past, apparently asleep, on the drift-wood, and an occasional vulture, attracted by its impure prey on the surface of the waters; the trees, with a long and hideous drapery of pendent moss, fluttering in the wind; and the giant river, rolling onward the vast volume of its dark and turbid waters through the wilderness, form the features of one of the most dismal and impressive landscapes on which the eye of man ever rested.

2. Rocks and mountains would add nothing of sublimity to the Mississippi. Pelion might be piled on Ossa, Alps on Andes, and still, to the heart and perceptions of the spectator, the Mississippi would be alone. It can brook no rival, and it finds none. No river in the world drains so large a portion of the earth's surface. It is the traveller of five thousand miles, more than two thirds of the diameter of the globe. The imagination asks, whence come its waters, and whither tend they? They come from the distant regions of a vast continent, where the foot of civilized man has hardly yet been planted. They flow into an ocean yet vaster, the whole body of which acknowledges their influence.

3. Through what varieties of climate have they passed? On what scenes of lonely and sublime magnificence have they gazed? In short, when the traveller has asked and answered these questions, and a thousand others, it will be time enough to consider how far the scenery of the lower Mississippi would be improved by the presence of rocks and mountains. He may then be led to doubt whether any great effect can be produced by a combination of objects of discordant character, however grand in themselves.

4. The prevailing character of the Mississippi is that of solemn gloom. I have trodden the passes of Alp and Apennine, yet never felt how awful a thing is nature, till I was borne on its waters, through regions desolate and uninhabitable. Day after day, and night after night, we continued driving right downward to the south; our vessel, like some huge demon of the wilderness, bearing fire in her bosom, and canopying the eterual forest with the smoke of her nostrils.

5. The navigation of the Mississippi is not unaccompanied by danger, arising from what are called planters and sawyers. These are trees firmly fixed in the bottom of the river, by which vessels are in danger of being impaled. The distinction is, that the former stand upright in the water, the latter lie with their points directed down the stream.

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6. The bends or flexures of the Mississippi are regular in a degree unknown in any other river. It often happens that the isthmus which divides different portions of the river gives way. A few months before my visit to the south, a remarkable case of this kind had happened, by which forty miles of navigation had been saved. The opening thus formed was called the new cut. Even the annual changes which take place in the bed of the Mississippi are very remarkable. Islands spring up and disappear; shoals suddenly present themselves, where pilots have been accustomed to deep water; in many places, whole acres are swept away from one bank and added to the other; and the pilot assured me that in every voyage he could perceive fresh changes.

7. Many circumstances contribute to render these changes more rapid in the Mississippi than in any other river. Among these, perhaps the greatest is the vast volume of its waters, acting on alluvial matter, peculiarly penetrable. The river, when in flood, spreads over the neighboring country, in which it has formed channels, called bayous. The banks thus become so săturated with water, that they can oppose little resistance to the action of the current, which frequently sweeps off large portions of the forest.

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8. The immense quantity of drift-wood is another cause of change. Floating logs encounter some obstacles in the river, and become stationary. The mass gradually accumulates; the water, saturated with mud, deposits a sediment; and thus an island is formed, which soon becomes covered with vegetation. About ten years ago, the Mississippi was surveyed by order of the government; and its islands, from the confluence of the Missouri to the sea, were numbered. I remember asking the pilot the name of a very beautiful island, and the answer was,

88

five-hundred-and-seventy-three, the number assigned to it in the hydrographical survey, and the only name by which it was known.

sugar-canes.

9. One of the most striking circumstances connected with this river-voyage was the rapid change of climate. Barely ten days had elapsed since I was traversing mountains almost impassable from snow. Even the level country was partially covered with it, and the approach of spring had not been heralded by any symptom of vegetation. Yet, in a little more than a week, I found myself in the region of the 10. The progress of this transition was remarkable. During the first two days of the voyage, nothing like a blossom or a green leaf was to be seen. On the third, slight signs of vegetation were visible on a few of the hardier trees. After passing Memphis, all nature became alive. The trees which grew on any little eminence, or which did not spring immediately from the swamp, were covered with foliage; and, at our woodingtimes, when I rambled through the woods there were a thousand shrubs already bursting into flower. On reaching the lower regions of the Mississippi, all was brightness and verdure. Summer had already begun, and the heat was even disagreeably intense. Col. Hamilton.

LXXXII.

REMARKABLE STORY OF AN ALBATROSS

1. THE albatross is a web-footed bird of large size, that fre quents the Southern Ocean, and is seen in the neighborhood of Cape Horn. It often weighs upwards of twenty pounds, and ordinarily measures from ten to eleven feet (sometimes even more) in its extent of wing. It varies in color according to age and season; but is generally more or less tinged with gray above, the rest of the plumage being white.

2. At sea, its vast extent of wing, its graceful evolutions, its power, displayed even in the tempest, when the wind lashes the waves into foam, have elicited the highest admiration from voyagers. Now, high in the air, it sweeps in wide circles, anon it descends with the utmost impetuosity, plunges into the water, and, instantly rising, soars aloft with its finny prey.