mats for them, and feasted them sumptu- riences, presenting, as it were, mere pimously on boiled rice, roast monkey, and ples on the earth's crust of 12,000 or 14,000 yams. After a good night's rest they feet or so, we pass rapidly over them, stayed there another day, when they al- just as a man might, if he were equal to most all got inebriated on toddy not New-Guinea exploration, walk up Mont that seducing compound known to Scotch Blanc and down the other side in a day. baillies, but the juice of the cocoa-palm In this region they saw lilies, such as Solfermented with the bruised leaves of a omon, in all his glory and with all his plant called thadda; but that did not im-knowledge of plants, could never have pair their sight, for in the evening they imagined; one like a narcissus, with went out and shot long-tailed monkeys leaves six or seven feet in length and one with ball from the tops of tall trees, in breadth, and so tough that the captain bringing down a score in two hours. Af- found it impossible to tear them in two; ter supping again on roast monkey they the bulb was as large as a man's head, lay down and slept and rose up next morn- and the height of the plant nine or ten ing and departed from the friendly Ma- | feet. Out of the down round this lily the halla that was the chief's name -prom- birds of paradise build their nests, when ising to return and feast once more with they can get it. Nor were the other him on baked monkey. On leaving the vil- plants behind the lilies in due proportion, lage they plunged into a jungle, where the for there were daisies like those which grass was five or six feet above their grow in our English meadows, "but as heads; and now the native guides began large as sunflowers." "They were crimto talk of moolahs, a savage beast, which son-tipped," pleasantly says Captain Lawit will be seen is as big or bigger than a son, "but not very modest, seeing they Bengal tiger. But as yet they saw no lifted their heads to a height of eighteen tigers, only butterflies and birds of para- inches." On reading which, it strikes us dise, and that in a forest in which there that a traveller must be modest indeed were trees three hundred and thirty-seven who could write thus of daisies, and yet feet high and downwards, and eighty-four have his features not crimson-tipped. feet some inches round the trunk." This," But let not the reader suppose that he says Captain Lawson, "I should say is the can rush off into New Guinea and botantallest tree in the world, so tall, ín fact,|ize without risk. He is already warned as that the Papuans cannot climb it. It is called the wallah-tree, and bears nuts which are something like chestnuts; in form and foliage this giant of the forest is like the elm." That night, when waiting ravenously hungry for their supper, they were greeted by "a prolonged and horrible growl, which Aboo said came from the jaws of a moolah, and shortly arose a great chorus of those beasts, whose howls,” Captain Lawson tells us," are ten times worse than the screech of the hyena," but so far as we can make out not nearly so terrible, so far as mere sound goes, as the braying of a jackass. Then came the moaning of some large animal," the most remarkable being a black one intermingled with the crunching of its five inches and a half long by three broad, bones by the fell beast. Morning rose, covered with white triangular marks, and and revealed a pool of blood and the re- with horns two inches long. It is remarkmains of a large deer, which had been able that only the males have horns." the moolah's prey. In the evening they "This," Captain Lawson again exclaims, hastened on, and on the 16th of July, at "I believe is the largest beetle in the six in the evening, began to ascend a world." As for the moths and butterflies range of mountains "which," says Cap- they are innumerable, the biggest being tain Lawson, "using the privilege of ex- exactly twelve inches across when its plorers, I named the Papuan Ghauts," wings were expanded, while its body was from their resemblance to the Western": as thick as my thumb" we should like

Ghauts in India.

As these Papuan Ghauts were nothing to Captain Lawson's further alpine expe

to the moolahs and beasts of prey; but now come the reptiles and creeping things. One afternoon, it was on the 23rd of July, Captain Lawson was all but stung by a scorpion which he had been carrying about unawares in his haversack. "It was of the enormous length of ten inches;" and its bite, as they afterwards found, would have been instant death. Indeed, though there are no weekly bills of mortality in New Guinea, which yet awaits its Farrs and Grahams, Captain Lawson believes that more deaths occur among the Papuans from scorpion bite than from any other cause. Then there were beetles,

to know how thick Captain Lawson's thumb is—“and six inches in length. The feelers were seven inches in length."

66

On reading which we exclaim with our throats cut, they were very hospitably American cousins, "Something like a treated by a chief named Tan, who cultibutterfly!" In this most entomological vated a farm of thirty acres with rice, region, where he only lingered a few days, maize, and cocoa-nut, and who had a herd during part of which he was surveying a of short-legged, hump-backed oxen and great range of mountains, and partly inca- cows, which bore a great resemblance pacitated from illness, Captain Lawson to the yak." This Taa, on the whole, contrived to collect a magnificent collec- was what would be called a good fellow, tion of beetles and butterflies, comprising only he was not at all kind to his old father, a hundred different kinds; but we believe named Sassofrang, ordering him about in that owing to the perils which he after- a way very shocking to Captain Lawson's wards underwent no part of the collection feelings; but perhaps this poor old creathas yet reached Europe. ure had outlived his time, and only existed by sufferance. For, as Captain Lawson doubtless well knows, there are tribes in which the relations of a man who has lived too long in public opinion hold a caucus and eat him, "instead of venison," as Sir John Maundeville adds, who first tells the story. On the whole, then, old Sassofrang was, perhaps, not so badly off, if he lived on amidst kicks and cuffs, instead of being eaten by his son Taa in the Papuan village of Burtemmytara. It is very remarkable that at this distance from the coast Captain Lawson found old Sassofrang smoking a long Dutch pipe, and many of the inhabitants speaking Dutch; and this was very fortunate for our traveller, who could thus communicate with them, for as yet he had not acquired that knowledge of the Papuan language which enabled him farther on to maintain a fluent conversation with the natives.

But these entomological treasures were not gathered without danger. The explorers were in an elevated region; and, as is not uncommon, they were overtaken by mist, which wet their clothes and made them very uncomfortable. Still they persevered, and climbed to the top of one of the mountains called, very appropriately, Mount Misty, ascertained. by Captain Lawson, with a precision which would do credit to any surveyor, to be just 10,672 feet above the sea-level, while two peaks near it attained the height respectively of 12,580 and 12,945 feet. We do not know whether Captain Lawson is a member of the Alpine Club, but the ease and rapidity with which he scales the most precipitous peaks certainly entitle him to be elected into that hard-footed body by acclamation. The 10,672 feet of Mount Misty were but a breather, a short morning's work, and by four in the afternoon they were back at the foot, and this though they were suffering from agonies of thirst, which in the evening of the same day nearly caused the destruction of the whole party; but we should add, that the ascent of this range was much assisted by "a little blue flower, like a forget-me-not, which clung to the hard rocks with such tenacity that it required a strong pull to disengage it. In several places it served to help us up the almost perpendicular face of the cliffs." One result of this indefatigable climbing was, that at the same time the whole party had "walked the skin off their feet," which were instantly attacked by insects, which on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of July laid them all up except Aboo, who was as "hard as iron," and perhaps for that matter was shod with the same metal. It was when thus incapacitated that Captain Lawson took the angles, which enabled him to present his readers with the precise height of the range; and then he moved the camp slowly on, descending the range, and arriving on August 1st at another Papuan village. Here, instead of being eaten or having their

But we must hasten on. On August 2nd the explorers left the village and passed through a hilly country, in which nothing particular happened, except that they encountered a hurricane of wind, which blew the parrots, and probably the monkeys also, out of the trees, tore the giants of the forest up by the roots, and blew gravel and stones about so that a great stone fell on Aboo's shoulder, and gave him an awkward cut. This gale was followed by a hail-storm, in which many of the stones were "as large as a hen's egg." We are not told if any of the party were hit by these hailstones, which must have inflicted serious wounds. Then, too, they were so bitten by insects that their eyes were bunged up, and when they woke they were all blind, and had to bathe their eyes for nearly an hour before they could see; but when they opened them they were rewarded, on August 9th, by discovering an immense inland lake, which the Australians shouted out was "the sea,” but which Captain Lawson, like a loyal subject, called Alexandrina, after her most gracious Majesty. At the same time “a proud joy" so filled "his breast" that he

burst out into cheers, and was thus sup- be quite in character with the rest of his ported in the midst of a heat of 107° in adventures. Be that as it may, it was hot the shade, which affected the monkeys with enough to cause trees to shed their gum in sunstroke, and made them drop dead out large drops as if a shower were falling; of the trees. Captain Lawson, indeed, and when it fell, it lay on the ground "in a had a slight touch of the same malady, but melted state, and hot enough to burn the he shook it off, and so preserved his rea- fingers." The party were now getting son and senses to survey the new-found rather exhausted, and Billy the Australian lake. Along its eastern shore the party complained of being footsore; but Capproceeded for several days, crossing stream tain Lawson declares that it was all a preafter stream, and morass after morass, tence, and that he could walk just as well very much annoyed by the monkeys, who as the rest. Still he bore with the shufprobably attributed the death of their re- fling fellow for two days; and then, when spectable relatives mentioned above to he refused to stir, and said, "I British Captain Lawson's black arts, and pursued subject; I no dog; I no do it; foot him them in their line of march with every sore, no walk;" the captain caught up a mark of contempt, pelting them with nuts strap with a heavy buckle, and thrashed and filth, and spitting down on them from the unhappy Billy "till his cries" - hear the trees. "One old fellow, deliberately," ," them not, O Exeter Hall and Aborigines says Captain Lawson, "spat down on me Protection Society!-"might have been with all the gravity of a human being; "an heard for a league round about." After expression we do not quite understand, as this, nothing more was heard of sore feet, it has not been our lot to live with human and Billy shouldered his burden with the beings who spat at us with or without rest. gravity. With pardonable indignation By this time, on August 16th, they were Captain Lawson shot the "old fellow," in want of meat, and the captain went out when his companions pelted him for fully with Aboo.in search of big game, and after three hours with wallah-nuts, in which sleeping out were rewarded by the sight space of time he got quite sore, and his of two herds of buffalo. Singling out an helmet " was battered into a highly dis-old bull, Captain Lawson stalked him till reputable shape." When this plague of he got within thirty yards, and just as he monkeys ceased, and they had leisure to was about to fire the brute charged him. look about them for other natural curiosi- Firing rather at random, he discharged ties, they were rewarded by the discovery two barrels, while Aboo, who had come of the trap-door spider, much more like a up, threw in another shot, but it was all in crab, or for that matter like a whale, than vain; on rushed the bull, whom the capa spider, for when they with some difficulty tain dexterously avoided only to be overgot it out of its beautiful nest it proved to taken at the second attack, when he felt be thirteen inches in its utmost stretch, what he calls "a terrible shock in the with nippers half an inch long, and two rear,” and became aware that he was spinexceedingly large and bright black eyes. ning through the air. The fact was that This yagi, as Aboo called it, was exceed- the bull had tossed him thirty feet from ingly active; and as its bite is as venom- the ground; down he came on his side, ous as that of the scorpion, if is fortunate | and then the brute stood over him trampthat it preys not on the human race, but on lizards, which it seizes when with the fatal curiosity of their race they peep in at its trap-door, and then sucking all the juice out of their bodies, rejects the bones and skin. The heat was still excessive, so much so, indeed, as to cause a slight aberration in Captain Lawson's register; for just after his story of the spider, he says the thermometer was 66 as high as 112° in the shade, which was the highest degree that I noted during my stay in the island; but he had a few pages before mentioned 114°, a temperature which he again records at page 197; while at page 172 he registers no fewer than 115° in the shade. Can it be that for 112 he wishes us to read 121? that temperature in the shade would

ling on him and ramming him. At this terrible moment the captain's courage did not fail; he had still, unlike Robinson Crusoe, his six-shooter in his belt. He drew it, as the Yankees say, and fired four shots into the bull's head, "which had the effect of confusing him a little." Just then Aboo came up and fired a bullet through the bull's shoulder, which brought him down; but even then the captain's misfortunes were not over, for the monster fell on him and crushed him with his huge weight. At last, when extricated from the carcass, it is not wonderful that our hero, for so we must call him, could hardly stand. Fortunately no bones were broken, but it is not at all surprising that he was shaken and bruised. While Aboo

skinned and cut up the quarry, the captain but the female, only wounded, ran up a lay quiet till a steak somewhat revived tree making most diabolical faces and uthim. Then he tried to walk the ten miles tering the most horrid outcries. A second back to camp, but after a mile his strength shot brought her down headlong, but even failed, and Aboo, lighting a fire, went back then she got on her feet, and at last a bulto bring help. When the rest arrived the let from the unfailing six-shooter made her battered captain was borne back on blan- give up the ghost. Well! now that they kets, feeling as if his spine was broken at are both dead, what was their size? The the small of the back. After a tolerable male was five feet three, and forty-two night he found himself so sore next morn- inches round the chest, the female five, ing that he thought he ought to be bled; and thirty-nine. It is not complimentary and here observe both the resources of the to mankind to be told by the captain that country and of the captain. It was easy"both were horribly repulsive in features to talk of bleeding, but how was he to be and yet human-like to an extraordinary debled? In the simplest way. Hard by was gree." For the rest their description ana rivulet full of leeches-whether horse-swers rather to the orang-outang than to leeches or not deponent sayeth not. So the chimpanzee, but most unfortunate it is Aboo went and fetched a score, from which applied to his loins the captain derived great benefit. An incident which reminds us of nothing so much as that remarkable story in a tale called "Chicken Hazard," where on a desert isle a ship-burst of laziness on the part of Billy and wrecked mariner, finding his boiled mutton tasteless, went out of doors and "cut some capers," by the aid of which he found his meal at once palatable. It was not till September 2nd that Captain Lawson was well enough to resume his journey, and it was four or five weeks before he was entirely free from pain. But even then we think he was a lucky man to come so well out of what he calls his duel with the buffalo.

So they proceeded skirting the lake till they came on a series of morasses, and resolved to leave its shores and to march in a north-easterly direction. As they advanced the country rapidly grew hilly and then mountainous, until at an elevation of 1,597 feet they descried a volcano in a dull state of eruption. With Captain Lawson to see a mountain is to ascend it, and perhaps he would add, to ascend a mountain is to see it. It took them just six hours to scale the summit, where they found a crater three miles and a quarter - English, not Dutch miles in circumference; but after all it was but a molehill, this Mount Sulphur, for it was only 3,117 feet high. After this they descended and discovered another lake, and on September 11th came upon "two monkeys of gigantic size and the most human-like shape." Like our first parents in Eden they were male and female, caressing one another, and eating a fruit like an apricot. This little idyl in ape-life was rudely interrupted by the rifles of Aboo and his master, for if the captain was like Robinson Crusoe, Aboo was surely his man Friday. The male fell stone dead to the captain's fire,

that the skins of these great apes could not be brought away, and that their kind must remain a matter of doubt. But the party were overburdened, and such an addition might have furnished a fresh out

caused him another flogging; so they were abandoned in the desert, taking their rest with their gory skins around them, and the explorers hastened on to fresh discoveries.

These were now geographical and geological rather than zoological. Due north they beheld more volcanoes and more peaks. Mount Vulcan was the name of one burning mountain, which Captain Lawson's angles ascertained to be 16,743 feet high; another, not burning, they called the Outpost because it stood in their way and they had to turn it. On rounding this they descried another peak of far greater height, distant about twenty-five or thirty miles. Of course as soon as Captain Lawson saw this mountain he resolved to climb it, induced probably by the abundance of the same small blue flowers which had proved so useful when scal ing the Papuan Ghauts. By the next night the party had got so close as six or seven miles from the base of the peak, the summit of which was veiled in mist; next day the full proportions of the mountain burst on Captain Lawson, and at first sight he calculated it to be 30,000 feet high, but on resorting to his angles it proved to be 32,783 feet above the sea-level, and 30,901 above the surrounding country. "It is by far the highest mountain known," he adds, with a serenity and simplicity of assertion which will carry their due weight with them. The skirts of this giant were clothed with forests, and to the hill itself Captain Lawson gave the name Mount Hercules. In old times it would have been considered one of the labours of

Hercules to have scaled such a mountain. | snow. Here the sleepless captain dozed But what was Hercules, and what his la-off and fell with a shock which effectually bours, to our age of steam and travel? At roused him. As for Aboo, he tramped four o'clock on the morning of September along mechanically. Now the blood be16th, a day ever to be remembered in the gan to flow from their noses, and even annals of mountain-climbing, the captain from their ears which were long exposed, and Aboo began the ascent, taking with and Aboo not unnaturally complained of them a supply of food and water, their headache, and begged to be allowed to sit arms and blankets; the first a most unnec- down. This the captain successfully reessary encumbrance, but perhaps Captain | sisted, but at the same time saw that it Lawson wished, like John Gilpin, to carry was time to beat a retreat. The therweight, and so took with him his double-mometer now marked 22° below zero barrelled rifle, his fowling-piece, and six- we conclude of Fahrenheit, and they shooter. To these a stout staff was added, gasped at every breath; worse still, their and then they started. This, besides its staves fell from their hands and they height, was a very peculiar mountain. could not pick them up again. How they Perhaps that very stature exercised a par- ever returned without those trusty supalyzing influence on vegetation, for at the ports is a marvel to us. It was now one elevation of 2,000 feet the forest under a o'clock, and they had climbed 25,314 feet tropical sky degenerated into scrubby in nine hours: certainly, unless Captain undergrowth and coarse grass. At 4,000 Lawson's powers of observation were feet almost all animal life ceased, a frozen out of him, the most astounding strange contrast with the wealth of animal | feat of mountaineering ever recorded. It and vegetable life on the lower slopes of took them three hours to descend the the Himalayan range, which abounds up to 10,000 feet to the first snow, and then 10,000 or 14,000 feet. Stranger still, there they pushed on more rapidly. At the was no soil except in odd patches at a same time as soon as his fingers were greater height than 6,000 feet; above that thawed, a little brandy was served out, all seems to have been rock and snow. which put new life into them; and so, says Of course there were grand views till the Captain Lawson, "we arrived at our camp pair got into the clouds, where they seem about half-past seven in the evening, to have remained in an atmosphere resem- thoroughly beat." bling a wet blanket for the rest of the ascent. But they did not let the grass grow under their feet, and indeed there was no grass to grow. By nine o'clock, that is in less than five hours, they had ascended 14,000 feet, very tall walking, seeing that between 10,000 and 14,000 feet "the rock was dangerously slippery owing to a slimy The captain here took off his boots, and Aboo his sandals, in order to maintain a footing. At 15,000 feet they came on the first snow, and above this they had to "climb up an almost perpendicular face. In doing so masses of rock gave way under them, and they received some ugly falls." At eleven o'clock they halted to rest and eat, and here both got so drowsy that they could scarce keep their eyes open. But, as the quack doctors say, "Delay is death."

moss."

The cap

tain roused Aboo and proceeded upward. And now the cold grew excessive. The thermometer was 12° below zero, and the water in their bottle froze. Now they felt the good of their blankets, and Aboo felt so comfortable that he fell several times asleep, and had to be awakened by rough means. All these are rather impediments to swift climbing, still they trudged on amidst rocks and cliffs wreathed with

We

We feel we can add little to this wonderful tale which is already sufficiently long. It is clear that as Captain Webb is among swimmers, so is Captain Lawson, of whom we know not whether he be a land or sea captain, among climbers. only wish we had been there to see him and the trusty Aboo go up and down 25,o00 feet of a perpendicular unexplored mountain in the time named. Next day they laid up, as they were rather footsore, but on the 18th they were off again, going due north. Now they were in the jungle, the haunt of the moolah, and Captain Lawson, who has a large acquaintance with Bengal tigers, was anxious to see what this Papuan tiger was like. His wishes were soon gratified; first they came on the footprints, and then on the beast himself, which rushed out on the gallant captain, who avoided it by a sudden contortion of the body, but it was a near shave as he felt "the draught" of its charge. At this moment the faithful Tooloo fired at and wounded it, when it escaped into the jungle. Then they stalked it in a body. They soon found it, when it received both barrels of the captain's rifle, and charged him before he could ram down another bullet. Now it