to meet the courageous Ali, fired at him through the floor, and the tell-tale holes still remain in the boards. Ali did not wait for death, but rushed out sword in hand, only to meet it upon the balcony from the rifles of soldiers who crowded up the narrow stairs to head him off. So died the hero of many a song, and the ravished virgins were avenged by the treachery of an unfaithful wife. Three days were spent at Janina, and the West called us once more. We bade farewell before dawn, while heavy clouds were rolling over the lake, and a hazy moon lit up the minarets. In a carriage drawn by three horses we drove southwards all that day, through mountain gorges, galloping down winding roads cut out from the sheer wall of rock, with nothing but the driver's skill to keep us from falling over a precipice on to the plane-trees by the rushing stream below. At Philippiada we stopped one short half-hour, and then southwards again, passing Arta on the left, the first outpost of Greece proper, right down to the Ambracian Gulf, where Demosthenes, the Athenian admiral, exhibited his skill of old. We drove along the narrow peninsula of famous Actium, through the strange, desolate ruins of Nicopolis, that colony founded by Augustus to celebrate to celebrate Mark Antony's defeat, down to the port of Prevesa. Here, after a night's rest and an enlivening dispute over passports, we boarded an Austrian-Lloyd steamer, which took us to Santa Mavra (Leucas), to the romantic coast village of Parga, past ancient Buthrotum, till, as evening closed in, the lights in Corfu upon the Fortezza Vecchia, Corcyra's Leucimmè, hove in sight. At nightfall we landed, and after a hasty meal once more entered a carriage. There we dozed, dozed as we jogged through Scriperò and over Mount Panteleemon, past ghostly vines and haggard olives, till we mounted the hill that brought us to our old Venetian gate and the courtyard of our villa at peaceful Cavalluri. ORLO WILLIAMS. WITH MY SALAMANDERS. "SHALL I bring you back some salamanders?" So ran the postscript to a letter written to me by our chaplain, who had gone for a few days' change of air to Schwartzburg. Should I like some salamanders? Well, yes, perhaps I should, if I were only gifted to know what salamanders were. I may as well acknowledge that not long since I should have written down a salamander as a species of either sand-fly or sand-shrimp to be met with in hot climates. "As lively as a salamander," or "Hot enough for a salamander." On dimly recollected and disjointed sayings of this type I might have built up a theory quite good enough for a man who was not invited to deal with the salamander in propria persona. But now, seriously athirst for information, I plied acquaintances here with inquiries, only to discover that in the matter of salamanders I was not much more ignorant than my neighbours. After the example of Rehoboam I sought advice from both old and young counsellors. But even so I failed to achieve my purpose, though a jolly old colonel, who might have sat for the portrait of the older Peveril of the Peak, and who appeared to have Ruff's Guide at his fingers' ends, was on the whole more truthful than his neighbours. "Salamander?" he exclaimed. "Why, bless my soul, yes! I remember him perfectly well-won the Grand National, my boy, somewhere in the 'sixties. I can't remember exactly who rode him, but I can easily look it up. D-d fine jumper he was too, though I didn't back him." A younger friend, an undergraduate, who having been educated on modern lines might reasonably be expected to know something of natural history, proved to be one of those truly delightful individuals who will who will hazard an opinion on any subject in the world. "Salamanders? Great Scot, yes! Little devils of sorts. Come in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' don't they? Not Lucifer or Beelzebub, you know, but one of the other Johnnies." My best friends in the longrun proved to be two fair residents in the town, who put two or three works upon natural history at my service, and in these I discovered that the ignorance of myself and my fellow-countrymen may be partially accounted for by the fact that the salamander is not found in England. "The salamander is a harmless amphibious reptile. Of the newt tribe; black with yellow spots. Very limited intelligence, the brain being exceedingly small," "I've put them by for you, in a box." "When can I see them ?" "When I've had my dinner." Unfortunately the roadmaker was not the only diner. The lid of a deep box had been left open, and one salamander had disappeared bodily. Mercifully a veil had been drawn over his fate, but suspicion of foul play was not wanting. For his companion in captivity had been partially devoured by an errant stoat-so at least the legend ran,-and the roadmaker was sensibly annoyed when the parson declined to become the purchaser of one hind leg and part of a tail. This last remark at once he had caught two salainfluenced me in favour of manders, and demanded 8 salamanders. Feeling that we mark. But our chaplain, the should have something in com- last man in the world to buy mon, I forthwith despatched a pig in a poke, was urgent an order for four of the for their production. creatures, and was not a little "Where are they?" disgusted when two days later the parson arrived without them. His was the tale so often told by the sportsman whose wife has sent him out to shoot for the pot. The supply had been ample until a demand was created-heaps of salamanders had been on view until they were really wanted, -but so soon as they were in demand they had apparently disappeared from off the face of the earth. Not merely had the chaplain himself spent three weary hours and encountered perils by land and by water in vain search of them, but according to his account the whole male population of Schwartzburg had devoted their time and energies to the same quest. Stimulated by the munificent offer of half 8 mark per head for salamanders, the ditcher had neglected his work, the postman dallied on his round, the schoolboy played truant from school, the lordly waiter from the hotel neglected his clients -to be sure it was the slack season—and wandered along the river-bank. But one and all the searchers had failed to produce a solitary live specimen. To a roadmaker, indeed, had been vouchsafed a partial but wholly aggravating measure of success. One morning he arrived at the hotel with the welcome intelligence that However, the parson had left the order open, and a cigar-box with breathing holes bored in the lid behind him, and two evenings later an old woman arrived in our garden with a long message, of which the only words that appealed to my intelligence were the chaplain's name and "salamander." Within five minutes I was in the chaplain's room helping to free the salamanders, which had been carefully packed in damp moss, and seemed none the worse for their journey. If the first view of them effectually dispelled any lingering idea of excessive liveliness, their colouring was so vivid as to be almost startling, and to recall my undergraduate's Here let me explain that what I am going to write is to be taken as applying to my own individual specimens of the salamander tribe. Inductive reasoning has its limits, and I am not qualified to lay down general laws on matters whereof my experience is limited. But having studied the creatures at pretty well every hour of day and night, I may at least claim to know more than even the 'Times 'Encyclopædia could tell me about the habits and the happenings, the manners and customs, and the personal characters of my own salamanders. declaration that they were it a wide berth, or sought to "little devils of sorts." For destroy it in the interests of were I called upon to repro- society. duce the colours of the devil, I should certainly take the salamander as a pattern. With one reservation only. For the devil-so runs the proverb-is not always so black as he is painted; the salamander, per contra, is even blacker. I would defy the painter's brush to reproduce exactly the intense blackness of either a bit of shiny coal or the body of a salamander. The black grounding is well set off by the vivid spots, splashes, and longitudinal bars of gold, which, commencing from the eyebrow, run at irregular intervals almost to the end of the tapering tail. Underneath, as though the colours were being rubbed off by the process of crawling, both black and yellow are comparatively dull. In the matter of colouring my salamanders so far run in pairs, that on two of them the yellow is of the shade seen on the ordinary wasp; on the other pair the spots and bars are of the richer shade found on the hornet or queen wasp. The general effect is, as I have said, so vivid as to be at the first sight startling, and had my first encounter with a salamander taken place when it was in its natural surroundings, sitting, as the chaplain saw them sit, with the flat serpentine head alone protruding from a hole in a rock, I should in my ignorance have written the harmless creature down as a venomous snake, and should either have given First, then, came the question of housing the new arrivals, who were perforce condemned to spend their first night in the comparative discomfort of a cardboard box filled with damp moss, and— for they were a little shy in the presence of strangers-to go to bed supperless. Before ten o'clock, however, on the following morning, I had procured for them a square glass case, about fifteen inches every way, and with a flat lid. This serves the purpose well enough, but now I find that I might have dispensed with at least six inches of the height of the case, and that the lid is wholly superfluous. The chaplain had told me that he had on several occasions seen a salamander run up a wall, and I had yet to learn that the creature lacks the power of climbing up a glass surface. Then for the furniture of the each has selected his-or inhouse. After various experi- deed it may be her-distinct ments I have finally settled quarters, and except when down to the following arrange- they are on the wander in ment, which seems to commend search of food or exercise, each itself to all parties concerned. may be safely backed to be One corner of the aquarium is found in his proper place, occupied by a large porous Schiller and Goethe side by stone, in shape not unlike a side, often indeed intercoiled church, whereof the tower is in loving embrace, under the just far enough off from either shelving wall of the church wall of the aquarium to prevent nave; Satan lying cat-like, its being utilised as a ladder of with his head resting on his escape. Even Lucifer, far and tail in the centre of the pot of away the most active and ad- moss; and Lucifer peeping out venturous of the quartette, from under the overhanging after sundry expeditions to the moss on the side of the church top of the tower, and as many opposite his classical brethren. attempts to win his way thence to the outside world, now regards it in the light of a viewplace only, and is seldom to be seen there. My church is kept in its place by a flat bit of granite, on the farther end of which rests a pot of moss, which in its turn is firmly wedged against the farther wall of the aquarium. The other half of the aquarium, the recreation-ground I may call it, as opposed to the sleeping accommodation, is laid out with smaller bits of granite, shells, and mossy banks. It must not be imagined that my salamanders' furniture was selected at random. On the contrary, the "church was purchased from the florist who supplied the moss; the granite was presented by the chaplain's children, and many of the shells and smaller pebbles by a young American lady. Nor has the care bestowed upon the preparation of their abode passed unappreciated by my salamanders. After due inspection And why these names? Well, was it not natural that in a district where a hundred years ago Goethe and Schiller lived and sang, the two darkest, and therefore handsomest, of my salamanders should recall these great names. Moreover, the inseparable companionship existing between a pair of beautiful creatures, of which the one is portly, the other of graceful and slender build, practically dictated-in Weimar, at any rate-the choice of the names. Early rising habits and lively temperament suggested for a creature decked out in diabolical attire the title of Lucifer; while to the largest and most masterful of my salamanders-pater ipse gregis-of the same colouring as Lucifer, the name of Satan seemed wholly appropriate. It was refreshing to find how people who only a few days before had not apparently been sure whether there really were such things living as salamanders, were now one |