66

"I hit him! I hit him! I am certain I hit him!" I cried. Which did you fire at, Jasper ?" "The one to the right."

"I thought so; I fired at the big fellow to the left. I am certain I hit him. Do you think we shall get him ?"

Our object was, of course, to put him out of his misery as soon as possible, and accordingly we dragged him on shore and commenced operations; but neither by wound or bullet could we kill him. At length Nim proposed to cut off his head, which was accordingly done by the negroes. We left them to their bloody work, and retreated under the shade of a tamarind tree, where we spread out the contents of some well-stored baskets, refreshed ourselves, and hunted the alligator over again.

I strained my eyes into the rapidly shallowing water. "What's that? Ha! There he is, there he is!" I shouted, half beside myself.

The canoe was going over him. I could see him distinctly, paddling away at a great rate, not two feet beneath us; our approach interrupted his course; he turned sharp to the left, away from my side. Nim saw him and gave chase.

"Dis side, sa! dis side, Cap'en! Here him be! here him be! 'trike him true! 'teady, Cap'en! Now, sa! Ah, dat bad; dat miss dat. dat mad buchra, him ober."

Hi!

It was true enough; I had struck at the alligator -missed him-lost my balance, and tumbled head over heels into the water. It was not above three feet deep, luckily for me, and I soon, with Nim's assistance, scrambled back into the canoe, drenched and dripping, but my ardour for the chase neither cooled nor diminished by the disaster, but on the contrary increased tenfold. Neither was I the least disconcerted at the shouts of laughter, both from Jasper and from the other side of the lagoon; I was far too much in earnest to mind such trifles.

No sooner was I on board again, than we were in hot pursuit of the chase; we made a lucky cast. There he was, paddling away along shore at a furious rate, evidently making for, and nearing rapidly, a cluster of mangroves that grew in the water, and amongst whose roots he would be safe.

He was within a few yards of his cover, when the canoe shot up alongside of him. How my pulses throbbed and my heart beat! but my hand was steady and my eye true this time; I allowed for the two feet of water between us, and aimed well in advance of the foe. I struck him with all my might; he is transfixed; in vain he struggles, and snaps his immense jaws at the stick.

more than twenty feet in length. I beg to say that this is Nim's statement, not mine.

Well, there at all events was my victim laid out on the grass for our inspection, and a more formidable looking monster, or an uglier, it would have been difficult to find. His decapitated head was replaced, the mouth (nearly a yard long, I do believe), was wide open, so were his fierce fiery eyes; and as I gazed upon the brute, I felt quite proud of my exploit; which unbecoming feeling was quickly dissipated by Gibson saying with slow distinctness-he had not spoken a word since we sat down-

66

Lucky for you that fellow ran away from you, Brook."

A most offensive observation! But I said nothing, hoping that no notice would be taken of Gibson's speech: a vain hope. The ball was thrown, and was instantly caught, returned and kept going.

The awkwardness of my tumbling into the water, the ludicrous figure I cut scrambling out again, my unfortunate mistake about the logs of wood, my state of excitement, etcetera etcetera, were all freely criticised and ridiculed unmercifully. I thought that even old Harry was unnecessarily jocose at my expense. But, for once in a way, I was ridicule proof. "Laugh away, gentlemen," I said, as I proudly contemplated the dead alligator; "your virtues and your valour (such as they are) are all of a negative character, and consequently are as hollow and unreal as your pretended mirth, when you know you are all fit to cry with vexation at my success and your failure; you did not tumble into the water-you did not take alligators for logs of wood-and you did not kill an alligator-all negative virtues, gentlemen."

"By the by, did any one hit the alligator ?" suggested Jasper; "let's see."

We accordingly examined the monster carefully, from his snout to his tail. Not a mark, that we

Let go! not if he had dragged me over the boat's side, which he certainly would have done had I been alone. What tremendous muscular power he put forth, to be sure. I could not have held him for five minutes without assistance, much less have killed him; but assistance I soon had, and even then we found it very difficult to despatch him. Anything like the tenacity of life which that reptile evinced I never saw, and could not have believed if I had not seen.

hit" from a bullet, was to be seen. Whether he even was touched or not, till my bayonet pinned him to the bottom, will ever remain a mystery, though in all probability he was, or we should never have overtaken him so easily in the canoe. Nim,

I am happy to say, was decidedly in favour of that supposition. However that might be, there was no doubt as to whose right hand had arrested his progress, and his head was, by universal consent, awarded to me as his legitimate captor.

In proof of which, you have but to enter my

study. And there you will see, "not the lizard's body, lean and long"-for that was left to the redants and the John Crows on the bank of the lagoon where he fell-but "the fish's head, the serpent's tongue" are there. A head brim-full of long, sharp, shining teeth, which grin at you between pipes and paddles, reels and rifles, stuffed birds and steeped snakes, flanked by "a favourite pony," and "a faithful friend," worthy relatives of "the distinguished member of the humane society." Yes, there is the proud trophy of my maiden chase in the West Indies, with the following inscription, neatly written on "a vessel of paper," (Wykehamists will understand me), which is carefully secured by wafers to the wooden panel beneath :-

"HEAD OF ALLIGATOR,

his daily tithe of the pig's dinner, and gets killed when the pig is killed and the trough is taken away for the sty to be cleaned out.

Rats are naturally gregarious animals. We seldom hear of one rat about the house. If there is one there are generally more, and they have, I am quite convinced, the power of communicating intelligence one to the other. How they do this I know not; but news of good food, and of danger, is as quickly, circulated among them as if they had a "Times" newspaper distributed among them every morning. In the Downs near Ilsley, i Berks, are many lone barns situated about the fields. One of these barns was lately “ratted,” and great slaughter committed with dogs and sticks, but not half the rats were killed; they were

BY THE AUTHOR OF "CURIOSITIES OF NATURAL HISTORY." WHETHER we consider him collectively or individually, the rat is, of all quadrupeds, the most cunning, the most wide-awake, and the most difficult to be taken. So ingenious, indeed, are his plans of escape, that the art of catching him has attained the dignity of a "profession," and there is hardly a town in England where we do not find "a chair" occupied by a professional rat-catcher. Mighty jealous are these worthies of their knowledge and talents, and very difficult it is to worm out of them their secret, which, after all, is often no secret at all, but some simple plan made mysterious.

The poor rat has no friends, but lots of enemies"the catcher," to begin with, and the catcher's dogs and ferrets. He can't come out of his hole to look for his supper, but Puss pounces upon him as he turns the corner. He is enjoying a nice gambol, on a moonlight night, on the top of the corn-rick, when Mrs. Owl quietly pounces upon him, and carries him off in her talons to her downy young ones in the roof of the barn. He finds a nice bit of sugared bread and butter put near his hole; famished with hunger he eats it up; a few minutes after his meal he experiences queer feelings about his stomach, and a taste of lucifer matches in his mouth. Running to the water, he dies there in agonies; the sugared bread and butter was "buttered" with phosphorus paste, but hunger blinded the poor rat's usual caution.

Can we then wonder that he has his wits sharpened when he finds danger at every point? I really believe a London rat is more ingenious, and more difficult to be caught, than a clown rat from the country. The London rat meets his friends inte sewers, and has consultations about where the god larders, corn-stores, and other choice feeding-places are to be found. The country rat lives in a hole behind the trough in the fat pig's sty; he takes

which time they were seen about. After a short period, preparations were made one afternoon to hunt them the next morning; but the next morning, when the hunters came, the holes were empty, there was not a rat in the place! Young and old. little and big, they had all gone away to a bara some distance off, and, curiously enough, a shep herd had met them, just at dawn that very mort.ing, marching along in a line, quietly and persever ingly, over the open downs, towards their newly chosen quarters.

Rats cannot exist without water. If a rat go twenty-four hours without water, he must perish. In the rear of most farm-houses there is a pond, or a ditch of some sort. If the margin of this be examined, the paths made by the rats coming out the premises beyond to drink will certainly be seen. It will hardly be credited, but it is nevertheless a well-known fact, that on these same Ilsle Downs, when the rats get into nice rich corn-ricks which are far away from water, they will make reservoirs for themselves. A country gentleman, a good observer of natural facts, who owns several of these ricks, tells me he has frequently seen under and near them hollows in the ground, containing water when all around has been dry; these hollow places have been found to be lined with earth, well beaten down and made waterproof by the rats. These "rat-ponds" are well known to the labourers in that part of Berkshire.

In order to keep the rats out of the ricks, iro props are put underneath them-great puzzles fo the rats, who nevertheless have been seen to catel at overhanging straws, and swing themselves up into the coveted feasting house. They will also jump on to the top of such an island-like rick from neighbouring hay-ricks up which it is easy to climb.

I know a gentleman in Essex, who, having the greatest animosity to rats, went to the expense of covering the floor of his barn with concrete, but the rats outwitted him. They only made their burrows half a foot deeper, got under the concrete, and were just as snug as ever. Rats are wonderful climbers, and I have made tame rats climb up poles over and over again. They cling round with their little white paws and sharp nails; they flatten their bodies against the pole; and, what is still more curious, they use their tail as an organ

of

prehension.

To many persons a rat's tail is an object of abhorrence; to the rat himself it is of the greatest possible use. It is covered over with a thick hard skin, from which numerous bristle-like hairs project; it is, in short, a sort of additional flexible leg to the owner, who can coil it round a pole, and either strengthen his ascent or steady his descent. More than this, I have made tame rats walk along outstretched ropes, and have observed that they then use the tail as a rope-dancer uses his balancing-pole, viz. to preserve his centre of gravity! If the rope be shaken while the rat is upon it, it is amusing to see how nervous he gets, and how he whisks his tail about; at one moment twisting it round the rope, the next stretching it out as stiff as a bit of wire, on either side of his body.

At Lord C-'s, in Worcestershire, there is a large meat-safe, suspended by a rope in the middle of a room. One night some cold meat was put in and hauled up into mid-air by the cook, who unfortunately left the door of the safe open. Next morning the cold meat was found nearly all devoured by a rat, of whose presence no traces could be found. He had, no doubt, climbed up the rope, which was fastened near the ground on to a hook; arriving at the ceiling, he had gone along the rope, head downwards like a house-fly on the roof, then down the rope into the safe, and, having eaten his fill, had returned again by the same method.

A friend of mine, who read Plato and Demosthenes with me at Oxford, but who now is galloping after cows and washing sheep in New Zealand, has informed me that the rats are the plague of his life, and that, if they have a bit of meat, they hang it on a rope, and place a native plant that resembles a bunch of bayonets tied together, upon the rope, point uppermost. The rats cannot face the sharp points of the plant as they come down the rope. Thus they are beaten; but they wreak their vengeance upon their conqueror by squeaking and fighting all night, and keeping him awake. Our English sailors adopt a similar principle when they tie a new birch broom on to the rope which attaches their ship to the wharf; the rats cannot creep through it, and the twigs are too slender to allow them to crawl over it.

rats.

A ship once came into harbour swarming with The commander determined to get rid of them, and therefore, one night he had the ship scuttled. As the water rose in her, the rats became alarmed, and came out of their retreats. For some reason, the commander had ordered a plank to be placed from the ship to the shore. The rats no doubt thought this was expressly for their accommodation in going out, and out they went accordingly, every one of them, and the ship was free from rats. Some two days afterwards the ship was hauled close to the wharf to take in cargo, and that very night the same troop of rats (so it was supposed) was seen to re-enter the ship, and take possession of their old quarters. Knowing the gregarious habits of rats, and their great instinct, I am willing to give every credence to this story, told me by a gentleman whose name was first on Nana Sahib's list for decapitation, only he luckily

left for Agra just a fortnight before that miscreant showed his tiger-like teeth to the English.

The following, told me by a lady, will show how fond rats are of getting into ships.

Sir Frederick Maitland, of the "Wellesley," took the greatest pains to keep his ship free from rats, which infested most of the men-of-war on the Corfu station. He was for a long time very successful. At last he was ordered down to the Island of Ithaca. The entrance to the harbour is extremely narrow. He preferred not attempting to take his three-decker inside, and therefore moored her by a cable to a small islet rock at the entrance of the harbour. The following day he returned to Corfu, having touched nowhere else. Conceive his annoyance at finding the ship swarming with rats. They had travelled by the rope from the rock, which was commonly known by the name of Rat Islanda fact of which the "Wellesley" was ignorant.

Not

It was an unfortunate day for the rats when steam was invented. No wise rat will go on board a steamer; for when the colony gets troublesome, the steward fastens down all the hatches, and puts sails, etc. upon them. The engineer then turns on the steam into the body of the ship, through a hose pipe, and all the rats, as well as the cockroaches, become parboiled in a few minutes. one of them has a chance of escape, for the hot steam can go up crannies and down holes quite as small as can the rats and the cockroaches. In some of the garrison towns in Ireland, when the soldiers are exercised at the fire-engines, they turn their labours to some account by pumping down the rat-holes, and flooding out the inmates. It has also been proposed to bring chemistry into practical use by making sulphuretted hydrogen, and conducting it by pipes into the rat-holes; but I think the water plan better, remembering always the principle, that if you wish to get rid of rats, (or any other vermin,) make their quarters as uncomfortable to them as you possibly can, and after a time they will surely go away. It is comparatively easy to kill by poison, but the corruption from the dead bodies may make a still more intolerable nuisance.

[To be continued.]

FOOTPRINTS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT IN POTSDAM.

On

LAST year ("Leisure Hour," No. 324) we described our wanderings about Berlin in search of all that remains to remind us of Frederick the Great. the same errand we turned our backs upon that city one bright morning in October, and proceeded by rail to Potsdam. There are two seasons in the year that please us best for a visit to this city of summer palaces-in May and June, when the roses are in full bloom, and in the autumn, when the rich hues of red, brown, and gold mingle here and there with the summer green, that still wrestles with the coming winter. It was one of the twenty fine days of October, when Sans Souci would appear in its most gorgeous autumn dress, that we set off for a regular relic-hunting expedition.

While we are travelling by rail, we must occupy our readers with some facts concerning this summer residence of the Prussian royal family, and take them back to the year 1736, when Frederick William I, after having already shown his preference for the town of Potsdam, issued a royal letter, granting it still greater privileges and immunities. The king's love of the chase, and the facilities it afforded for the indulgence of this taste, were perhaps the chief reasons for his selection of this spot. There were many reasons against it: the marshy soil, the barren wastes of sand, and the chilly-looking unclad hills around the Havel, might not have had attractions for any other monarch. But Frederick William condemned both the grandeur of nature and art, which are generally considered the necessary appendages to royalty. His main objects were to hunt, and build barracks where his pet guard of giant soldiers could be quartered. There was great regularity, and but little beauty, in the additions made to the town by this king. Long rows of houses, tall, stiff, and as much like regiments as mason and carpenter could make them-such was the style of building best adapted to his taste. It mattered not if a piece of marshy ground intercepted the straight line ordained for a street; it was filled up with trees from the neighbouring forest. The labours of days, and the money expended upon this gigantic work, were sometimes lost in one single night; but, scarcely had the obstinate morass conquered his efforts, than the work was resumed, till at last nature gave way to the indomitable will of this iron-hearted king. We must therefore regard Potsdam, at the time of Frederick II's accession, as one of the ugliest, dreariest royal residences that can well be imagined. The castle was a plain barrack-looking building, without any pretension to magnificence. Sans Souci was a barren rising ground, the sandy soil yielding but a scanty herbage, and overlooking a wide extent of country; but its character is best described by the name generally given to it at that time, viz. "The Desert Mountain." The new palace Babelsberg Charlottenhof, and the other palaces, were not thought of, and many a marshy waste gave the whole place a chilly and desolate appearance.

We, however, in the autumn of 1857, received a very different impression. Leaving the railway station, we crossed the Havel, which here widens almost to a lake, with many a wooded island and promontory casting their shadows over the still waters. Towers are seen here and there, rising above the trees, and commanding the best views of the city, and of the Havel and the surrounding country. Opposite us rises the dome of the St. Nicholas church, and turning to the left we enter the town portal of the palace, communicate our wishes to the castellan, and, being provided by him with a guide, we ascend the stairs, and are ushered into that part of the palace which was devoted to the immediate use of Frederick. A door in the wainscot of the audience-chamber opens into the concert-room, panelled in green, and pictures in the style of Watteau, framed in silver, forming the centre of each panel. This room, and those immediately following, have been left untouched since

his death. There stands the old piano built by Silbermann; a music-stand of tortoiseshell, inlaid with silver, still supports the flute accompaniment; and under a glass-case we see, upon a yellow piece of note paper, the music which he himself composed There, too, at a writing-table opposite the window, many a royal order has been signed, and many a royal blot is still visible. We pass on into a small writing cabinet, the walls of which are painted pal yellow, with festoons of flowers in coloured carving aud chandeliers of Dresden china en suite, altogether producing a light and elegant effect. There anothe? great man has written and issued orders, and has left a sign of his presence, as the guide, pointing to a new piece of velvet in the covering, tells a "Napoleon I cut out a piece of the velvet, and took it as a relic to Paris."

In the bedroom of the great king we find the chief personal relics. It is a large room, serving the double purpose of bed-room and sitting-row. the further end being divided by a low balustrad of solid silver. Here, too, was his private library, consisting entirely of French works; and through glass-case we are permitted to look at the fer things that have been preserved as relics-t green shade which he wore during his last day his last shirt, gloves, and cocked hat, the telescope le used on the field of battle, one of his many flutes and a book which was half burnt in his hand whi he was sleeping. The secret dining-room is a curious small circular apartment, with a table s constructed that all the dishes were drawn up fre the ground-floor, in order to prevent the necess of attendants. We must confess that there something very every-day in all that we can st about this palace, or rather this part of it, and gladly descend the inclined plane, which served a stairs for Frederick William I when his freque attacks of gout obliged him to be conveyed in chair from the upper rooms of the castle.

On our way through the Brandeburg gate the Grünen Gitter, we will imagine ourselves traported back to the time when Frederick first p jected and planned his summer retreat. We no longer surrounded by the modern improvemen of the nineteenth century, but we approach a ser what dreary space where, here and there, the var of wood, water, and rising ground warranted! hope that this spot might be to the toil warrior a "Sans Souci." It is the year 1744, second Silesian war is on the point of breaking but the king has just issued an order for the build of a summer palace. He writes during the and while his enemies surround him on every "I know not whether a Sans Souci can ever ex for me." But as time passes on, and many veteran has fallen, Frederick returns unhurt, to joy at last the repose which his new palace mi afford to one so restlessly energetic. The une rising ground had been transformed into six terrac planted with vines, and leading in a direct line the palace; to the right the picture gallery, and either side extended the gardens, laid out int formal style of the age, and not far from the pale the spot devoted as a cemetery for his dogs and favourite horse. The names are nearly obliterate

649

NAPOLEON AT THE TOMB OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.-(From a German picture).