defy a rope-maker to have done it better*. The upper | ney I let down a piece of twine to D'Alegre: to this he part of the building of the Bastille overhangs three or four feet. This would necessarily occasion our ladder to wave and swing about as we came down it, enough to turn the strongest head. To obviate this, and to prevent our fall, we made a second rope 160 feet long. This rope was to be reeved through a kind of double block without sheaves, in case the person descending should be suspended in the air without being able to get down lowert. Besides these we made several other ropes of shorter lengths, to fasten our ladder to a cannon, and for other unforeseen occasions. When all these ropes were finished we measured them-they amounted to 1400 feet. We then made 208 rounds for the rope and wooden ladders. To prevent the noise which the rounds would make against the wall during our descent, we gave them coverings formed of pieces of the linings of our morning gowns, of our waistcoats, and our underwaistcoats. In all these preparations we employed eighteen months, but still they were incomplete. We had provided means to get to the top of the tower, to get into and out of the fossé: two more were wanting one to climb up on the parapet; from the parapet into the governor's garden; from thence to get down into the fosse of the Port St. Antoine; but the parapet which we had to cross was always well furnished with sentinels. We might fix on a dark and rainy night, when the sentinels did not go their rounds, and escape by those means, but it might rain when we climbed our chimney, and might clear up at the very moment when we arrived at the parapet: we should then meet with the chief of the rounds, who constantly inspected the parapet, and he being always provided with lights, it would be impossible to conceal ourselves, and we should be inevitably ruined. The other plan increased our labours, but was the less dangerous of the two. It consisted in making a way through the wall which separates the fosse of the Bastille from that of the Port St. Antoine. I considered that in the numerous floods, during which the Seine had filled this fosse, the water must have injured the mortar, and rendered it less difficult, and so we should be enabled to break a passage through the wall. For this purpose we should require an auger to make holes in the mortar, so as to insert the points of the two iron bars to be taken out of our chimney, and with them force out the stones, and so make our way through. Accordingly we made an auger with one of the feet of our bedsteads, and fastened a handle to it in the form of a cross. We fixed on Wednesday the 25th February, 1756, for our flight: the river had overflowed its banks: there were four feet of water in the fossé of the Bastille, as well as in that of the Port St. Antoine, by which we hoped to effect our deliverance. I filled a leathern portmanteau with a change of clothes for both, in case we were so fortunate as to escape.

Dinner was scarcely over when we set up our great ladder of ropes, that is, we put the rounds to it, and hid it under our beds; then we arranged our wooden ladder in three pieces. We put our iron bars in their cases to prevent their making a noise; and we packed up our bottle of usquebach to warm us, and restore our strength during our work in the water, up to the neck, for nine hours. These precautions taken, we waited till our supper was brought up. I first got up the chimney. I had the rheumatism in my left arm, but I thought little of the pain: I soon experienced one much more severe. I had taken none of the precautions used by chimney-sweepers. I was neary choked by the soot; and having no guards on my knees and elbows, they were so excoriated that the blood ran down on my legs and hands. As soon as I got to the top of the chimThis is really no exaggeration.

This part of the narrative is by no means clear.

attached the end of the rope to which our portmanteau
was fastened. I drew it up, unfastened it, and threw it
on the platform of the Bastille. In the same way we
hoisted up the wooden ladder, the two iron bars, and
all our other articles: we finished by the ladder of ropes,
the end of which I allowed to hang down to aid D'Alegre
in getting up, while I held the upper part by means of
a large wooden peg which we had prepared on purpose.
I passed it through the cord and placed it across the
funnel of the chimney. By these means my companion
avoided suffering what I did. This done, I came down
from the top of the chimney, where I had been in a
very painful position, and both of us were on the plat-
form of the Bastille. We now arranged our different
articles. We began by making a roll of our ladder of
ropes, of about four feet diameter, and one thick. We
rolled it to the tower called La Tour du Treson, which
appeared to us the most favourable for our descent.
We fastened one end of the ladder of ropes to a piece
of cannon, and then lowered it down the wall; then we
fastened the block, and passed the rope of 160 feet
long through it. This I tied round my body, and
D'Alegre slackened it as I went down. Notwithstand-
ing this precaution I swung about in the air at every
step I made. Judge what my situation was, when one
shudders at the recital of it. At length I landed without
accident in the fossé. Immediately D'Alegre lowered
my portmanteau and other things. I found a little spot
uncovered by water, on which I put them. Then my
companion followed my example; but he had an ad-
vantage which I had not had, for I held the ladder for
him with all my strength, which greatly prevented its
swinging. It did not rain; and we heard the sentinel
marching at about four toises distance; and we were
therefore forced to give up our plan of escaping by the
parapet and the governor's garden. We resolved to use
our iron bars. We crossed the fossé straight over to the
wall which divides it from the Port St. Antoine, and
went to work sturdily. Just at this point there was a
small ditch about six feet broad and one deep, which
increased the depth of the water. Elsewhere it was
about up to our middles; here, to our armpits. It had
thawed only a few days, so that the water had yet float-
ing ice in it: we were nine hours in it, exhausted by
fatigue, and benumbed by the cold. We had hardly
begun our work before the chief of the watch came
round with his lantern, which cast a light on the place
we were in: we had no alternative but to put our heads
under water as he passed, which was every half-hour.
At length, after nine hours of incessant alarm and exer-
tion; after having worked out the stones one by one,
we succeeded in making, in a wall of four feet six inches
thick, a hole sufficiently wide, and we both crept through.
We were giving way to our transports when we fell into
a danger which we had not foreseen, and which had
nearly been fatal to us. In crossing the fossé St. An-
toine, to get into the road to Berey, we fell into the
aqueduct which was in the middle. This aqueduct
had ten feet water over our heads, and two feet of
mud on the side. D'Alegre fell on me, and had
nearly thrown me down: had that misfortune hap-
pened we were lost, for we had not strength enough
left to get up again, and we must have been smothered.
Finding myself laid hold of by D'Alegre, I gave him a
blow with my fist, which made him let go; and at the
same instant throwing myself forward I got out of the
aqueduct. I then felt for D'Alegre, and getting hold
of his hair, drew him to me: we were soon out of the
fossé, and just as the clock struck five were on the high
road. Penetrated by the same feeling, we threw our-
selves into each other's arms, and after a long embrace
we fell on our knees to offer our thanks to the Almighty,
who had snatched us from so many dangers."

VENOMOUS SERPENTS.

We have received the following interesting communication from a gentleman who has spent much of a valuable life in Africa. THE serpents of South Africa, commonly accounted the most dangerous, are the Cobra-Capello (or hooded snake), the Puff-Adder, and the Berg-Adder (or mountain snake). The first of these is exceedingly fierce and active, and sometimes, it is said, attains the formidable length of ten feet; I have, however, never met with any of much more than half that size. The Cobra has been known to spring at a man on horseback, and to dart himself with such force as to overshoot his aim. The Puff-Adder, on the other hand, is a heavy and sluggish animal, very thick in proportion to its length, and incapable, when attacked in front, of projecting itself upon its enemy. To make amends, however, it possesses the faculty of throwing itself backward with perilous and unexpected effect; but its disposition is inert, and unless accidentally trod upon or otherwise provoked, it will seldom attack mankind. The Berg-Adder, though much smaller in size than either of the preceding, is generally considered not less deadly, and it is the more dangerous from its being less easily discovered and avoided.

harmless lizards which swarm in every part of South Africa, he did not at first much mind it, but came out to the open air, laughing, and shaking his limb to dislodge the vermin. But when a black wriggling snake came tumbling down about his naked ancles, poor Spandilly, uttering a cry of horror, kicked the reptile off, springing at the same moment nearly his own height from the ground; and, though he had in reality sustained no injury, could scarcely for some time be persuaded that he was not "a gone man."

It is, in fact, from apprehensions of danger, or the instinct of self-defence, far more than from any peculiar fierceness or innate malignity, that the serpent race ever assail man or any of the larger animals. of course, against the foot that tramples or the hand that They turn, threatens them; but happily nature has not armed them, in addition to their formidable powers of destruction, with the disposition of exerting these powers from motives of mere wanton cruelty, or for purposes unconnected with their own subsistence or security. Were it otherwise, countries like the Cape would be altogether uninhabitable. As it is, the annoyance experienced from the numerous poisonous snakes is not such as, on the whole, to affect in any considerable degree the comfort of those accustomed to them.

Conversing on this subject one day with my friend Captain Harding, who had been for many years a resident and magistrate in the interior, I inquired whether he had ever, in the course of his campaigns on the Caffer and Bushman frontiers, and when necessarily obliged to sleep in the desert or jungle in the open air, suffered injury or incurred danger from serpents-he replied, that the only occasion he recollected of incurring any great hazard of this sort, was the following

"Being upon a military expedition across the frontier," said he, "I had slept one night, as usual, wrapt in my cloak, beneath a tree. On awaking at daybreak, the first object I perceived on raising my head from the saddle, which served for my pillow, was the tail of an enormous Puff-Adder lying across my breast, the head of the reptile being muffled under the folds of the cloak close to my body, whither it had betaken itself, appa

During a residence of six years in the interior of the Cape Colony, and in the course of various journeys through the interior (extending to upwards of three thousand miles), I have met with a considerable number of snakes; yet I do not recollect of ever being exposed, except in one instance, to any imminent hazard of being bit by any of them. On the occasion referred to I was superintending some Hottentots, whom I had employed to clear away a patch of thicket from a spot selected for cultivation, when one of the men, suddenly recoiling, with signs of great alarm, exclaimed that there was a Cobra-Capello in the bush. Not being at that time fully aware of the dangerous character of this species of snake, I approached to look at him. The Hottentots called out to me to take care, for he was going to spring. Before they had well spoken, or I had caught a view of the reptile, I heard him hiss fiercely, and then dart himself towards me amidst the underwood. At the same instant, instinctively springing backward to avoid him, I fell over a steep bank into the dry stony bed of a tor-rently for warmth, during the chillness of the night. rent; by which I suffered some severe bruises, but fortunately escaped the more formidable danger to which I had too incautiously exposed myself. The Hottentots then assailed the snake with sticks and stones, and forced him (though not before he had made another spring and missed one of them still more narrowly than myself) to take refuge up a mimosa tree. Here he became a safe and easy mark to their missiles, and was speedily beaten down, with a broken back, and consequently rendered incapable of farther mischief. The Hottentots having cut off his head, carefully buried it in the ground, a practice which they never omit on such occasions, and which arises from their apprehension of some one incautiously treading on the head of the dead snake, and sustaining injury from its fangs; for they believe that the deathful virus, far from being extinguished with life, retains its fatal energy for weeks, and even months afterwards. This snake measured nearly six feet in length, and was the largest Cobra I have met with.

My little Hottentot corporal, Piet (or Peter) Spandilly, who assisted in killing this Cobra, had a still narrower escape from a small but venomous snake, of which I have forgotten the colonial appellation. Piet and his men (six soldiers of the Cape corps, placed at that time under my direction for the protection of our remote settlement against the Caffres) slept in a tent adjoining to mine, pitched in a grove of mimosas on the brink of the Bavian's river; and one morning when he rose from his couch of dry grass, Piet felt some living creature moving about his thigh in the inside of his leathern trowsers. Thinking it was only one of the

There was extreme hazard that if I alarmed it by moving, it might bite me in a vital part;-seizing it therefore softly by the tail, I pulled it out with a sudden jerk, and threw it violently to a distance. By this means I escaped without injury: but had I happened to have unwittingly offended this uninvited bedfellow before I was aware of his presence, I might in all probability have fatally atoned for my heedlessness."

It is not very unusual for snakes of various sorts to be found in the houses at the Cape, nor does it, in ordinary cases, excite any violent alarm when such inmates are discovered. They make their way both through the roofs and under the walls, in search of food and shelter, and especially in pursuit of mice, which many of them chiefly subsist upon. During my residence in the interior, however, I recollect only two instances of their being found in my own cabin. On one of these occasions I had sent a servant girl (a bare-legged Hottentot) to bring me some article from a neighbouring hut. It was after night-fall; and on returning with it, she cried out before entering the cabin-"Oh, Mynheer; Mynheer! what shall I do? A snake has twined itself round my ancles, and if I open the door he will come into the house." "Never mind,” I replied, “ and let him come if he dare." She obeyed, and in open the door, glided the snake, luckily without having harmed the poor girl. I stood prepared, and instantly smote him dead; and afterwards found him to be one of the very venomous sort called Nachtslang.

People get used to these things, and even Europeans by degrees come to regard them with much indifference,

Just before leaving the colony, I spent a week or two | charming the fiercest serpents, and of readily curing with my friend Major Pigot, at his residence near Gra- their bite; and who pretend that they can communicate ham's Town; and going one day to take a book from to others their mysterious powers and invulnerability, by some shelves in the drawing-room, I found a beautiful putting them through a regular course of poison-eating. yellow snake, about five feet long, lying asleep upon the The more usual object, however, of the Bushman in uppermost range of books. It lay so still that I at first catching serpents (exclusive of their value to him as an thought it was a stuffed specimen; but perceiving a article of food), is to procure poison for his arrows. The slight movement in its tail, I lent him such a thwack animal venom, too thin and volatile to preserve its -with a quarto volume as broke the poor fellow s back, efficacy long unimpaired when used alone, is skilfully and enabled me to demolish him at my leisure. I concocted into a black glutinous consistency, by the afterwards learned that another snake nad been killed a admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral poisons. few days previously in the very same spot, and a third in the former being generally the juice of the root of a Major P.'s dressing-room. They had all entered through species of amaryllis, called by the boors, from this cira loop-hole which had casually been left open, and cumstance, the gift-bol, or poison-bulb; the latter, a apparently had no other object in coming there (mousing bituminous or unctuous substance which is said to exude apart) than literary seclusion. from certain rocks and caverns. With this deadly mixture the dwarfish and despised African anoints the desperate weapons with which he resists (though unavailingly) the aggressions of the colonists, and sometimes cruelly revenges the injuries they have inflicted.

Such as these are no very uncommon occurrences, and as such pass even for subjects of jocularity amidst the adventures of a wild country. Instances, however, both frightful and revolting, sometimes occur.

It is well known that the Bushmen, a tribe of wild Hottentots who inhabit the mountains and deserts of South Africa, imbue the points of their arrows in a strong and subtle poison, and that the venom of the most dangerous serpents to be found in that country forms a principal ingredient in its composition. The boldness and dexterity displayed by these wild huntsmen, and by many also of the colonial Hottentots, in searching out and seizing alive the formidable Cobra-Capello and Puff-Adder, are truly astonishing. Still more surprising is it to witness the snakehunter extracting from the yet living and writhing reptile, held fast by his naked foot planted on its neck, the little bag containing the secreted venom, which the rage of the animal injects into the wound made by its fangs at the moment it strikes its victim,-to see him take this, and fearlessly drink its contents, as schoolboys in England would suck the blob of the honey-bee! The swallowing of this venom, they conceive, renders them in time proof against its deleterious effects, when it is brought into immediate contact with the blood, whether by the bite of a snake or the barb of an arrow.

[Distant View of Staffa.]

STAFFA, one of the Hebrides, or Western Isles of Scotland, lies a few miles to the west of Mull, within a sort of bay formed by the two projecting extremities of that island, and a short distance to the north-east of the more celebrated islet of the same group, Iona, or Icolmkill. It forms part of the county of Argyle, and of the parish of Kilninian, the principal portion of which is in Mull. Staffa is a very small island, scarcely a mile in length from north to south, and about half that extent at its greatest breadth from east to west. Although one of the most wonderful natural curiosities in the world, and lying so near our own shores, this island appears to have remained almost entirely unnoticed till a comparatively very recent period. It is said, in most of the late accounts of it (which are in great part copied from one another), that its columns and caverns are shortly described by Buchanan. In point of fact, however, that historian merely mentions its name. It is not, we believe, so much as named by Martin in his account of the Western Isles, published in the beginning of last century. Its existence was first made generally known by Sir Joseph Banks who visited it in August, 1772, and whose account was printed in the second volume of Pennant's Tour in Scotland.' Banks, in the course of a voyage to Iceland, in company with Dr. Uno von Troil (afterwards Archbishop of Upsal), was induced to put in at a port in Mull, where he was very hospitably received by Mr. Maclean, the principal proprietor of the island, At Mr. Maclean's the travellers

called Uamh an Binn, that is, the Cave of Music. And multiplicity of parts, combined with greatness of dimenthe explanation which he received of Banks's error, or sions and simplicity of style, which it possesses; still the rather that of his interpreter, was, that binn being pro- prolonged length, the twilight gloom, half concealing nounced vinn, and Fiuhn being in the genitive Fin, he playful and varying effects of reflected light, the of which the sound is nearly the same, the one word echo of the measured surge as it rises and falls, the had been mistaken for the other. This is a cu- transparent green of the water, and the profound and rious and not an uninstructive example of the degree fairy solitude of the whole scene, could not fail strongly of certainty that belongs to information thus obtained. to impress a mind gifted with any sense of beauty in art However, it is not impossible, whatever be the common or in nature. If to those be added that peculiar sentiment name of the cave, that there may be also a tradition of with which nature perhaps most impresses us when she its having been the work of the great Fingal, to whom allows us to draw comparisons between her works and other such stupendous miracles of nature in various other those of art, we shall be compelled to own it is not withparts of the Highlands of Scotland are popularly as-out cause that celebrity has been conferred on the Cave cribed, and who has also, we believe, the credit of being of Fingal." the architect of the Giant's Causeway in the sister island. This conjecture is rather confirmed by an anecdote which is related by another traveller among the Hebrides, Dr. Thomas Garnett, who has also given us an account of Staffa. "Our interpreter," says he, hearing me express my admiration of this wonder of nature, told me that it was generally considered as the work of Fion-macool, but that for his part he thought it had been built by St. Columba!"

66 on

The excavation in question, at all events, is a vast opening, 42 feet in width at the mouth, extending 227 feet in depth, and gradually diminishing from nearly 100 to about 50 feet in height, supported throughout on both sides by perpendicular columns of extraordinary regularity. The opening is surmounted by a noble arch,

and from this to the farther extremity of the cave the roof extends in an unbroken surface, composed in some parts of smooth and unvariegated rock, in others of the ends of pillars stuck together in groups or bunches, and with the stalagmitic substance which fills up the interstices, displaying a species of mosaic work of great regularity and beauty. On the west side the wall of pillars is 36 feet in height; but on the east, although the roof is of the same elevation, they spring from a much higher base, and are themselves only 18 feet in length. Along this side is a narrow footpath, raised above the water which covers the floor, along which it is possible for an expert climber to make his way to the farther end of the cave, although the attempt is rather hazardous. The proper and usual mode of viewing the cave is by entering it in a boat; but even this can only be done with safety when the weather is tolerably calm. From the opening being so spacious there is abundance of light to the extremity; and from the same cause the waves, when there is a heavy sea, roll into it with great force. Dr. von Troil, who has given us a description of it in his Letters on Iceland, states that, very far in, there is a hole in the rock below the water, which makes a singularly agreeable sound on the flux and reflux of the tide. It is this melodious murmur of the waters passing into it, which has doubtless given origin to its common name of the Cave of Music.

SCOTTISH HUSBANDMEN OF THE LAST
CENTURY.

THE patriarchal simplicity of manners which, about the
Scottish husbandmen of the Lowlands, was calculated,
middle of last century, so especially characterised the
in a high degree, to foster deep affections, and a sober
but manly earnestness both of principle and deportment;
and it may be fairly stated as one of the happy privi-
leges of the Scottish church, that so large a number of
luable order of men. The following brief description of
its ministers have sprung from this virtuous and va-
farmer of former days, is a sketch, by an eye-witness,
the mode of life and household discipline of a Scottish
from early recollections of scenes long gone by:-

"When old simplicity was yet in prime;

For now among our glens the faithful fail
Forgetful of their sires in olden time:
That grey-haired race is gone, of look sublime,
Calm in demeanour, courteous, and sincere,
Yet stern when duty called them, as their clime,
When it flings off the autumnal foliage sere,

And shakes the shuddering woods with solemn voice severe.”

The habitation of a Scottish husbandman in the southern counties, sixty or seventy years ago, was generally a plain, substantial stone building, holding a middle rank between the residences of the inferior gentry and the humble cottages of the labouring peasantry. The farmhouse, with the small windows of its second story often projecting through the thatched roof, occupied, for the most part, the one side of a quadrangle, in which the young cattle were folded; the other three sides being enclosed and sheltered by the barns, stables, and other farm offices. A kitchen-garden stocked with the common potherbs then in use, and sometimes with a few fruit-trees, extended on one side, sheltered perhaps by a hedge of boortree or elder, and often skirted by a few aged forest trees; while the low, thatched dwellings of the hinds and cotters stood at a little distance, each with its small cabbage-garden, or kail-yard, behind, and its stack of peat, or turf fuel, in front.

An upland farm, of the common average size, extendAccording to Dr. Macculloch, who, in his Descriptioning to three, four, or five hundred acres, partly arable of the Western Islands, has given the latest and most and partly pastoral, usually employed three or four accurate account of Staffa that has appeared, the basaltic ploughs; and the master's household, exclusive of his pillars of this cave are "of one ingredient only, which is own family, consisted of six or seven unmarried servants, a granular splintery material resembling clinkstone, male and female. The married servants-namely, a highly coloured with iron, but of a greenish black hue." head shepherd, and a hind or two (as the married Between the several pillars has exuded a yellowish sub-ploughmen were termed)-occupied cottages apart; as stance, producing everywhere a deep contrast of two dis- likewise did the cotters, who were rather a sort of farm'tinctly defined colours, which admirably relieves what retainers than servants, being bound only to give the would otherwise be the sombre aspect of the cave. The master, in lieu of rent, their services in hay-time and stone, according to Dr. Garnett, is in many places richly harvest, and at other stated periods. The whole, howcoloured with light green, yellow, and orange, produced ever, especially in remote situations, formed a sort of little by different species of lichen growing on it. Dr. Mac- independent community in themselves, deriving their culloch says, in concluding his account, "It would be subsistence almost exclusively from the produce of the no less presumptuous than useless to attempt a descrip- farm. The master's household alone usually amounted tion of the picturesque effect of that to which the pencil to fifteen or twenty souls; and the whole population of itself is inadequate. But if this cave were even destitute the farm, or onstead, to double or treble that number, of that order and symmetry, that richness arising from a number considerably greater, perhaps, than will

-a