1835 the United States Senate passed a resolution in favor of building the canal, and President Jackson sent Mr. Biddle to examine the routes and negociate for a concession. He did neither. In 1838 Captain Edward Belcher, R. N., ascended the Estero Real for thirty miles, and suggested water communication to Lake Nicaragua from the Gulf of Fonseca on the Pacific side. In 1846 Prince Louis Napoleon while an exile in London published a pamphlet demonstrating the immense advantages of a Nicaragua Canal. Becoming President of the French Republic and Emperor, he was otherwise engaged. In 1847 the British Government advanced claims to the control of the, proposed inter-oceanic waterway, the Atlantic terminus having been in the hands of our protectorate on the Mosquito coast since 1824. An expedition under Captain Lock was sent by the Governor of Jamaica, Sir Charles Grey, to occupy the river and the forts of San Juan del Norte (afterwards. Greytown), while the Pacific squadron seized the Isla del Tigre in the Gulf of Fonseca. Captain Lock advanced to Grenada, and the Nicaraguan Government signed a treaty by which it undertook no longer to molest the Mosquito territory, or interfere with the occupation of Greytown. Meanwhile, with the approval of the United States the Nicaraguan Government had also signed a contract with an American firm for the construction of a canal. This concession lapsed. It had never been submitted to Congress. The question was finally arranged by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850, by which "the neutrality of all or any, present or prospective inter-oceanic waterways across Nicaragua, was absolutely guaranteed." The text of the treaty is in the appendix to that admirable work "The Key of the Pacific," by Archibald Ross Colquhoun, from which most of the facts and figures of this article are drawn. He treats the subject exhaustively from an engineering point of view and shows how the great Frenchman De Lesseps erred in thinkCAVERSHAM, Oxon. ing he could make a canal on an ocean Will the new gateway to the further In addition to the motion in Congress to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer treaty and make the Nicaragua Canal an American ditch, to be closed at will to Great Britain, and of course to Canada, comes the monstrous demand of the United States to put war ships on the lakes. With what object? Who is the enemy? Are 60,000,000 people of the United States afraid of being conquered by 6,000,000 Canadians? Wolf and lamb! Both Great Britain and America are forbidden by treaty to put war ships on the lakes. It would be a serious drawback to Great Britain to be obliged to lock up a part of her navy in the inland waters of America. When a new-found friend asks to be allowed to put a pistol to your head as a proof of reconciliation, the man or nation that allows it has no brains worth blowing out. bah! T. Bland Strange, yes! EASTER AND EASTER LORE. HE festival of Easter, like many THE other customs, is the perpetuation of an old usage, which became the rule in the Christian Church in A. D. 68. Easter derives its name from the Saxon goddess Estre, the personification of the East or Spring. In ancient times it was sometimes called the "Sunday of Joy." Easter has always been considered the chief festival of the Christian year. It is the sanctified symbolism of the wonderful resurrection of Christ; but it is also symbolic of the renewal of life in nature. It is said that "the ancient Athenes celebrated the awakening of the earth and the blossoming time of the year with pipes and pans of rejoicing, and processions to the violet crowned hill of the Acropolis." Our Saxon ancestors continued the celebration of Easter for eight days. After the long penitential season of Lent; after the forty days of doing good, and abstinence from public amusements, marriage festivities and other worldly attractions; and after the long winter's burial, when the earth has been wrapped in sombre shades, the people found legitimate gratification in the celebration of the spring festival. It was a season of joy-joy at the wonderful Resurrection, and for the revivication of nature. "For, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the time of the singing of the birds is come. Easter, being a movable fest, does not fall annually on the same day, but the month Nison (or April) seems peculiarly appropriate for this symbolic festival. In eastern countries vegetation is early, and wondrously beautiful, and at this season the lovely blossoms, which the warm sun and soft spring rains have wooed from their long sleep, fill the air with their fragrant odours. Blooming to garland Easter, This annual awakening and activity of the powers of nature from the death of winter, this "Jubilee of the Universe," (There is an old legend, that the sun dances in the sky on Easter Sunday) typifies a greater mystery than return of bird or blossom. It is deeply significant of the resurrection, and the new and nobler conditions of the future life. During the Easter festival, in earlier times, slaves received their freedom, the poor and needy were helped and feasted, bonfires were lighted, scenic representations, games, songs and dances were indulged in; even the clergy recited from the pulpit stories and legends, for the amusement of their hearers-an odious custom, against which the reformers of the sixteenth century successfully issued their re monstrance. A game played with egg-shaped balls of various colours, was a favourite sport in which municipal corporations formerly engaged. The game was kept up with considerable pomp and ceremony, even into the early part of the nineteenth century. The "Feast of Eggs" has ever been the most popular of the Easter observances. The egg is the ancient symbol of the new birth, and a religious significance has always been given to its use at Easter. The Hebrews use them at their Passover feast, and the Persians present each other with delicately tinted eggs, at a feast which they keep, at a period of the year which corresponds with our Easter. The customs connected with Easter eggs are quaint and interesting. In Scotland on "Pash Sunday," as they call it, the young people rose early, and went out to the moors to search for wild-fowls' eggs for breakfast, considering it a happy omen if they found them. It is still customary to boil eggs hard, dye them different colours, and give them to children to play with on Easter morning. The writer of "Sketches of Germany and the Germans observes that "Easter is another season for the interchange of civilities, when, instead of the coloured egg in other parts of Germany, and which is there merely a toy for children, the Vienna Easter egg is composed of silver, mother-ofpearl, bronze, or some other expensive material, and filled with jewels, trinkets or ducats." Kohl, in his "Russia," gives this account of a visit to the imperial glasscutting manufactory: "We saw two halls filled with workmen, employed in nothing else but in cutting flowers and figures on eggs of crystal. Part of them were for the Emperor and Empress to give to their courtiers." The red colour, with which the Russian peasants dye their eggs at Easter, is in memory of the blood of Christ, shed for sin. William Jones, F.S.A., in his "Credulities Past and Present,' says: "In Galicia there still lingers a tradition that somewhere far away, beyond the dark seas, there dwells the happy nation of Rakhmane. They lead a holy life, for they abstain from eating flesh all the year round, with the exception of one day, the 'Rakmanian Easter Sunday.' And that festival is celebrated by them on the day on which the shell of a consecrated Easter egg floats to them across the wide sea, which divides them from the land inhabited by ordinary mortals.” The same author quotes the following from "Emilianne": "In Italy the heads of families on Easter eve and Easter day, send great chargers filled with hard boiled eggs to the church to be blessed. The priest having performed the ceremony, every one carries his portion home, and causeth a large table to be set in the best room in the house, which they cover with their best linen, all bestrewed with flowers, and place around about it a dozen dishes of meat. 'Tis a pleasant sight to see these tables set forth in the houses of great persons, when they expose on side tables (round about the chamber) all the plate they have in the house, and whatever else they have that is rich and curious, in honour of their Easter eggs, which by themselves make a fair show, for the shells of them are all painted with divers colours and gilt. Sometimes there are no less than twenty dozen in the same charger, neatly laid together in the form of a pyramid. The table continues in the same posture, covered all the Easter week, and all those who come to visit them at that time are invited to eat an Easter egg with them, which they must not refuse. There are many myths and legends in regard to eggs, in nowise connected with Easter, but which, nevertheless, are quaint and interesting. "Everything springs from the egg, it is the world's cradle," is an oracle of our forefathers, and according to Chinese supposition Pon-Koo-Wong, a human being which came from a vast mundane egg which had divided itself into two parts, created of the upper portion of the shell the heavens, and of the lower part he made the earth. The Hawaiians have a superstitious legend that their "island was produced by the bursting of an egg which had been laid upon the water by a bird of great size, presumably the eagle, it being considered of great creative power, and that there was no other land." An ancient custom, which has seized upon the popular mind of our period, of always wearing something new on Easter Sunday, is whimsically described in the following verse: "Laste Easter I put on my blue frock coat, the virst time, vier new; Wi' yaller buttons aal 'o brass, The religious part of the Easter festival in early times consisted mostly in the daily services held in the churches, which were lighted on Easter eve, by immense "Paschal tapers," weighing two or three hundred pounds. On Easter Sunday the people |