ture. There, with almost hopeless labor, we have dug deep wells, which the future traveller will enjoy. Without a guide who had traversed them, we have ventured into trackless prairies, where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pickaxe in hand, we have worked our way over mountains, which seemed to defy aught save the wild goat; and hewed a passage through a chasm of living rock, more narrow than our wagons. To bring these first wagons to the Pacific, we have preserved the strength of the mules, by herding them over large tracts which you have laboriously guarded, without loss.

"The garrisons of four Presidios of Sonora, concentrated within the walls of Tueson, gave us no pause; we drove them out with their artillery; but our intercourse with the citizens was not marked by a single act of injustice. Thus marching, half naked and half fed, and living upon wild animals, we have discovered and made a road of great value to our country.

But of the public man-as we remember him for nearly thirty years-of the personal friend-for so it was our honor and delight to be permitted to consider him-we may utter in sadness and yet in triumph, some of the facts which illustrate this glorious life.

Mr. Kent, from 1794 to 1824, was the occupant of a judicial station-beginning with that of recorder of the city of New York in 1794, and ending with that of chancellor of the state in 1824. At this time he accomplished his sixtieth year, and thenceforth, according to the arbitrary assumption of the constitution of New York, he was to be deemed incapable of serving the public as a judge. But nature, which has no complaisance for the chimerical notions of constitution-mongers-nature, aided by an even disposition, a life of moderation and temperance, and saved alike from decay and from rust, by cheerful industry, and constant application of fine intellectual faculties to the pursuit and elucidation of knowledge, nature vindicated her right and dignity in his person, and enabled him, after the law had pronounced him incompetent, to prepare and give to the world--we use the word advisedlythose "Commentaries," which take second rank to no known treatises on law. Edition after edition of this standard work has been published-each one carefully superintended, improved, and added to by the author; whose mind was never idle, whose industry could not be overtasked. It was a labor of love to him, and is fraught with benefits innumer"Thus, volunteers, you have exhibited some high able and inappreciable to his countrymen, and to the and essential qualities of veterans. But much re-cause of sound conservative principles elsewhere. mains undone; soon you will turn your strict attention to the drill, to system and order, to forms also, which are all necessary to the soldier. "By order of Lt. Col. P. ST. GEO. COOKE. [Signed] P..C. MERRIEL, Adjutant."

"Arrived at the first settlement of California, after a single day's rest, you cheerfully turned off from the route to this point of promised repose, to enter upon a campaign, and meet, as we believed, the approach of the enemy; and this, too, without even salt to season your sole subsistence of fresh

meat.

"Lieuts. A. J. Smith and Geo. Stoneman, of the 1st dragoons, have shared and given valuable aid in all these labors.

From the N. Y. Courier.

CHANCELLOR KENT is dead! Such was the salutation which passed in whispers yesterday from mouth to mouth in the thronged marts of business -in the precincts of courts of law-wherever men most do congregate. It was whispered as one utters something sacred at once and sorrowful.

With the cheerfulness and elasticity of youth in his spirits, and in his step, Chancellor Kent has enjoyed, for the last twenty years of his life, a sort of moral and intellectual supremacy in this our republic, rarely paid to any man-and never was any one so wholly unspoiled by it. Simplicity, was quite as much the attribute of his mind, as vigor and justness—and that quality gave to his personal intercourse an indescribable charm.

He His

His opinions were uttered with a frankness that an open and honest nature can alone practise. had no concealments, and he needed none. learning was deep and varied-his reading comprehended the whole scope of knowledge-his memory was faithful, and it was aided by the habit, invariable we believe with him, of reading pen in hand and annotating as he read.

It is even so! the great jurist, the pure patriot, the instructive companion, the wise teacher, the good man is dead! But he had been permitted to live beyond the ordinary age of man, and has gone down to the tomb as the sun sets in the west-with He was educated in the politics of the federal splendor mellowed but undimmed, with a glory re-school, as it was in the days of his youth-with flected from earth to sky, and again from sky to

earth.

James Kent, whom yet all people knew and called by the office he so long adorned-was in the 87th year of his age-with mind unclouded, with the consciousness of a well-spent life-in peace with all mankind-he saw the approach of deathunmoved. On the stage of life he had played his part well-it was a conspicuous part, and at the close of it, wrapping his robe around him with dignified composure, he laid him down to die.

We cannot upon the spur of the moment undertake to present even a sketch of the career of this eminent civilian. It would be unjust moreover if it were practicable, for he who did so much for the renown of his country, should not suffer any attaint of his own from imperfect, however well-meant, representation.

Washington for its chief, and such men as Hamilton. Marshal and John Jay for his models and teachers From the high-toned, conservative and patriotic principles imbibed from such sources, Chancellor Kent never swerved. He died, as he lived, a federal republican.

Into the domestic sanctuary, now in the newness of its grief at the loss of such a head, we may not intrude, further than to say, that in every relation which belongs to family, and in all the qualities of affection, kindness and trust-in the cheerfulness which irradiates, and the steadfastness which binds together, the family circle-he was unsurpassed.

When the tomb shall close over the mortal remains of James Kent, there will be none to gainsay the record that there lies all that is mortal of an able, upright, and honest man.

From Chambers' Journal.

THE PRIVATEERS.

In order to recollect the last shots fired in the European battle-field of this country, a man must now be well up in middle age. The young know nothing of arms but from history; and they can hardly persuade themselves that the most pacific old man in England, is the same Iron Duke who commanded at Waterloo before they came into the world. The trade of soldiering has no longer any necessary connection with fighting. Its duties are merely the drill and parade, and the wearing of gay clothes. And although the officers, in their different grades, are hardly so well paid as merchants' clerks, still there is always a sufficient number found for so easy and amiable a service. It is true they have a chance of being drafted, at some time or other, to the further East, several thousand miles away; but they know very well that in India they will meet with no such equal enemies as were formerly grappled with in Europe, while in China, it is a mere amusement to bring down the baldheaded celestials—in fact, a human battue.

were then at peace,) having on board the Spanish ambassador on his way to Denmark, was boarded by three different squadrons of privateers, and plundered even of his excellency's baggage. A little hanging was had recourse to on this occasion; and in the following year, the nuisance still continuing unabated, great numbers of the privateers, as they were taken and brought into the English ports from time to time, were consigned to the gallows. The neglect of our internal police added to the disorders of the period; and the result, as we are informed by historians, was, that an ingredient of savage ferocity mingled in the national character.

Forty years later in the first year or two of the present century-when the war raged bitterly between France and England, the career of two adventurers commenced, one on either side of the channel, who were destined to exercise some influence on the fortunes of each other.

Jérôme Harbour resided in a little sea-port on the coast of Brittany—that is, when he was on shore; for although now only twenty-four years of age, he had been fourteen years a sailor, man and boy. He was little, fat, fair, with short arms Under such circumstances, we look back upon and round shoulders. His face was the reverse war as one of the interesting or terrible things of of long; but his small nose, small mouth, and the past; and although somewhat sick of the small blue eyes, were lost in its width. He was, details of its bloody struggles, from their having in fact, anything but the pirate of poetry or been so frequently obtruded upon our notice, we romance in form; and in other respects he had regard the composition of its materials and char-nothing to distinguish him from the commonest of acter as legitimate objects of literary curiosity. common sailors, except his genius for sea robbery. One of the strangest departments of such a subject is the privateering system; and we now proceed to offer some illustrations of a class of belligerents who have not as yet received due attention either from history or romance. This we shall do by means of a couple of individual portraits-one French, and one English-which may be taken as exhibiting, though of course in higher relief than usual, the general features of the tribe.

When in his twenty-fourth year, his uncle, a weaver at Vannes, left him 20,000 francs—a large fortune either in Normandy or Brittany; and after twelve months' cogitations, assisted by as much brandy as would have gone well-nigh to float a letter of marque, he determined to invest his money in the purchase of a vessel, and go a privateering.

To present little surface; to take hold of the water by length rather than breadth; to keep the As for the system itself, it is a relic of the bar- sea in any weather; and to be able to run close-in barism of the middle ages, organized and legalized shore at almost any depth-these were Jérôme's by the folly or depravity of modern governments. requirements in a ship. And all these and more It is the piracy of the northern barbarians and he found in a long, low, narrow schooner, which, eastern infidels sanctioned by letters of marque-a notwithstanding, he cut down still further; shaving document which affects to give the right of reprisal, her off almost to the water's edge, so that she ran but, in reality, invests the desperadoes of the coun- constantly between two seas-one below her keel, try with the privilege to rob and murder. This and the other above her always wet deck. This sort of commission did not come generally into vessel he rigged with a single sail of enormous fashion till the end of the sixteenth century; but proportions, with the weight of which the long, once fairly afloat, the privateers continued to main-low, narrow craft rocked like a cradle, even in the tain their flag in time of war, in spite of the bursts harbor. The astounded spectators called her La of indignation which their excesses called forth Grenouille, as signifying that she would soon seek from the neutral nations. Various attempts were her proper place at the bottom. "Be it so," said made to bring them under legal restraint; but to her owner; and presently the figure-head of a impose any control but that of force upon ruffians frog, splendidly painted in green and gold, apcalled into action by such sordid motives was peared at the bow. Jerome himself was from that impossible. Sometimes the channel between France day called Captain Grenouille, and in the course and England was swept so clean by the sea of a few years was known on the shore of the guerillas of the two nations, that the poor priva-channel by no other name.

teers must have starved if they had not turned His commission, in the mean time, had arrived; their arms against neutrals. In 1758, a ship and all being ready, he filled his tarry hat with belonging to Holland, (with which country we six-franc pieces, and stirring them up as he walked

with his tarry hand, so as to make them discourse | persuasion as no human being could withstand.

most eloquent music, he went from tavern to tavern to find a crew. The guests crowded round him at the enticing sound.

When he ordered, implicit and instantaneous obedience was necessary: but not because he spoke louder than usual, or had recourse to such ungen

"Who is for the Grenouille?" said he; "she tlemanly enticements as knocking recusants down sails this afternoon."

"I-I-I!" cried they with one voice.

66 Avast, brothers!

game leg?"

with a handspike: far from it. If a voice or a hand was raised beyond the desirable pitch, he

Who are you with the invited the indiscreet individual to his cabin, and

pouring out for him a glass of rum from his oldest

"I have only a little coolness with the govern- bottle, addressed him in some such terms as these:

"There are forty francs; ship yourself at once. pel me-you know it would, old chap-it would And you with the plaster on your eye?"

reduce me to the really unpleasant necessity of

"The police are such ugly fellows, I hate to blowing out your brains with this pistol. There, look at them.'

"You are an escaped prisoner?"

“Yes, captain.”

it is all amicably understood between us; and now, take another glass of rum-it is real good stuffand jump up to your work again like a rigger!”

"You belong to the Grenouille. And you This remonstrance never failed of its effect; and with the down-look ?"

for the simple reason, that every man on board "I was in the purser's department of a govern- knew that Captain Grenouille would do what he ment ship, and the rascals accused me"said "seeing as how" he had already done it more than once.

"We shall hear the story again. You are now in the purser's department of the Grenouille; but mind this, brother, that the first cipher you turn into a nine by putting a tail to it, I shall take off your head from your shoulders, and so make a cipher of you!"

This arithmetical sally was received with a roar of laughter which made the glasses jingle; and, in fine, by the time Captain Grenouille had made the tour of the taverns, a crew was collected which comprised the choicest ruffianism of the place.

Captain Grenouille was widely different from his crew, and from most other seamen, in one remarkable particular. He was no niggard of his money, and yet no spendthrift. He was devoutly attached to the sea, but at the same time had a passionate desire to be a landed proprietor. He was, in short, a Norman as well as a rover; and he garnered up from time to time the produce of his lawful piracy in fields, and barns, and cows, and cider-mills. An economist privateer must needs be a terrible phenomenon, and Captain Grenouille was this phenomenon.

But Captain Grenouille was not alone in his glory. He had a rival from the other side of the channel who was as distinguished a scoundrel as himself. The real name of this worthy, we regret to say, is not on record; but his soubriquet was

That afternoon the whole population ran along the rocks to see the Grenouille leave the harbor. The sight was worth the trouble; for as she got out into rough water, she appeared to pass between two seas, like a weaver's shuttle between the threads. Nothing was visible but the mighty sail flinging its gigantic shadow upon the water, and the legs of the crew, who were squatted listlessly Beggar-Captain Beggar-and the vessel he comat the port-holes, leaning their chins on the breeches of the guns, and smoking with imperturbable gravity. The next afternoon the Grenouille returned into the harbor, towing after her an English brig loaded with sugar and tobacco.

But we have no intention to record the battles, victories, repulses, flights, and escapes of the Grenouille. Such narratives have now become nauseous, from the frequency of their appearance, and the change that has taken place in the taste of the public. Suffice it to say, that the vessel became the terror of the channel; and her captain, notwithstanding his awkward build and low-breeding, the very Roland of privateers. It may be matter of surprise that a little fat man, with a bullet-head and a great stomach, should have acquired and retained so perfect a command as was necessary for the success of the letter of marque over the most desperate crew that ever floated on blue water; but Captain Grenouille had such ways of

manded was a schooner called the Hunger. Among his crew were some regularly-bred seamen; but the greater number were smugglers, thieves, ruined gamesters, and bankrupts the miscellaneous vagabonds, in short, who, in this amphibious country, take to the water by instinct when the land becomes too hot to hold them. Captain Beggar himself had been bred to the law, and is even said to have practised as a barrister; and his early studies were of great benefit to him in sundry predicaments arising in his new profession. He was a little young man, like the French privateer; but, unlike him, was thin and pale. In action he sustained himself with gin, as Napoleon did with snuff; but as the liquid fire burned in his entrails, it served only to sharpen his intellect, while externally it gave him a phantom-like appearance that terrified his very crew. When all was over, his excitement suddenly evaporated; and the poor little wretch dropped upon the deck, a mere lifeless

"Shall we do a little more, Captain Frog?" Say away, Captain Beggar."

66

"Well, there are ten ships of ours which will pay me a thousand pounds apiece, if I bring them safely through the channel. Will you let them alone? One good turn, you know"

"Of course. Here is a list I happen to have in my pocket of ten customers of the same sort. Give me yours. Is it agreed?"

"Agreed;" and the two captains, first shaking hands, and then pulling off hats, returned to their own ships, and bore away for opposite points of the horizon.

The paction was honorably kept. Gold became a drug among the privateers, who could hardly contrive to spent it fast enough to prevent its accumulation; and Captain Grenouille, who still held to his crotchet of investment, was at length so great a landed proprietor, that he had serious thoughts of giving up the sea, except a cruise against the English now and then for amusement.

These two great rivals met for the first time off Cape la Hogue, and in circumstances of some interest. The English privateer was in chase of a French brig loaded to the gunwale, and stretching in desperation under a cloud of canvass for Cherbourg. But the efforts of the latter were vain; for it was Hunger that was after her, and the importunate Beggar would not be denied. She was just about to surrender as the guns of her pursuer thundered quicker and quicker over the abyss, when suddenly the desert circle of water, which was their field of strife, opened at another point of the horizon, about three leagues distant, and there entered upon the arena two other vessels. One of these fled, and the other pursued, and the sound of their distant cannonade came sullen and subdued over the deep. They were of course French and English; and Captain Beggar had here an opportunity of saving a countryman and destroying an enemy. But the privateers, even in the construction of the law, were afloat on their own account; they were under no legal constraint to interfere; and even One day, when this idea was passing through after the strangers proved to be an English argosy his mind, and with the greater force, that he had in the very clutches of the Grenouille, Captain been scouring the channel for a week without fallBeggar looked with his hungry eyes at the heavy ing in with anything worth his attention, a promFrench brig, teeming with spoil, and stood irreso-ising object was seen on the verge of the leeward lute. horizon. It proved to be a large, dusky, awkward ship, which lay upon the water like an island; and the heart of Captain Grenouille was glad within him, as he noted her unwieldy bulk, her peaceful build, and fat, bloated appearance. A thousand jibes passed from mouth to mouth on the privateer's deck, as they set their vessel, with her gigantic sail, large before the wind, and trundled. down upon the stranger, rolling from side to side, now over, and now under the waves, like a por-poise gambolling after a shoal of herrings. 'They likened the huge merchantman to a sleeping whale, whose blubber they would have under hatches in no time; and then they described her as an overgrown turtle, which they would cut up and devour for dinner. The object of their jocularity, in the mean time, as if confiding in her vastness, took no

Desiring to learn the enemy's intention, he at length put his ship about, and made a sweep round, as if with the view of examining the new-comers from a different quarter. This manœuvre was exactly imitated by Captain Grenouille; and by and by the two privateers were in a line in which, if far enough produced, they must have met. As they came nearer and nearer, they both cleared for action; but even when greatly within cannon range, not a gun spoke their counsel. When at length they might have fought with pistols, a small boat was seen putting off from the Grenouille; and Captain Beggar, leaping instantly into his yawl, went out to meet her, as in politeness bound, half way. The two captains saluted each other as their boats came alongside.

"What are we to be about?" said Captain notice of their approach; and Captain Grenouille, Grenouille.

"Don't know," replied Captain Beggar. "If I take you, what shall I do with your rascally crew, that are not worth a five-franc piece?" "And if I take you, what shall I make of yours, for the whole boiling of whom I would not give a herring ?"

"Then I should lose yonder three masted-prize." "And I yonder brig, with a cargo that seems bursting out of her hatches for very richness." "Suppose we each go about our own business?" "Done."

*This is proved by the division of spoil; which, in the case of a government prize, was shared in by any government ships that chanced to be within sight, it being supposed that it was their intention, as it was their business, to lend a hand. The privateers, on the contrary, whose business was their own interest, received prize-money only when they had been actually engaged in the mêlée. 3

CXC.

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XVI.

as he neared her, threw his ship up in the wind,, that he might not damage his green and gold frog against the senseless sides of the leviathan.

"I see nothing on deck," said Captain Grenouille, when they were within a stone's-cast, "but a dog, and a man in a cotton nightcap. Ahoy!" bellowed he through his speaking-trumpet, "which of you two is the captain?"

""Tis I," replied the man in the cotton nightcap—“I—Captain Beggar!"—and at the word, a discharge of musketry swept the decks of the French privateer as with a besom. Captain Grenouille, like most of his comrades, was laid prostrate; and when he next opened his eyes, he found himself in the prison of Plymouth.

He was one of the ten Frenchmen who effected an escape famous in the annals of ingenuity and daring. Without the assistance of a single instru

ment of any kind, wood or iron, they excavated a dawn broke upon the sea, showing that the fog tunnel from their dungeon, eighty feet long, and had cleared. Captain Grenouille, who had sank four feet wide, carrying away the rubbish in their into a doze, opened his eyes, then shut them again; pockets, and spreading it over the surface of a then rubbed them very hard, opened them once court where they were permitted to walk twice a more, and stared right forward. But he had not day. The task, however, was not a brief one; rubbed out the phantom which haunted him, and and when Captain Grenouille at length revisited which he at first supposed to be the fragment of a his Norman farms, the harvest had been gathered dream; and when he recognized Captain Beggar three times during his absence. in lith and limb sitting quietly on a beam before him, he sprang up with a shout, and catching an axe from one of his men, rushed upon his enemy.

He was wealthy; his estate was flourishing; and his friends urged him to marry, and subside quietly into a great proprietor. But Captain Grenouille had an account to settle, which was his thought by day and his dream by night. Captain Beggar must be paid to the last farthing!-he must be rewarded with interest upon interest; this was the only condition upon which he could rest. After a glance over his farms, and a second at the lady recommended for promotion as Madame Grenouille, he set himself to look out for a vessel which should rival his lost beauty. All was ready towards the end of January, 1814; and for no other reason than that all was ready, he set sail in quest of his enemy, in the midst of what was little less than a gale of wind.

It was

By and by it was quite a gale of wind; and at the tail of the storm there descended so thick a fog upon the channel, that Captain Grenouille, by this time dismasted and water-logged, found himself driving about, the sport of the winds and waves, without the possibility of ascertaining his bearings, or even knowing whether they were close to the land, or had a dozen miles of sea-room. intensely cold, and the air was so thick that they seemed to breathe sponge. All day they could only just recognize one another's faces; but as the night fell down in darkness and horror, even this last comfort was withdrawn. The strain of the ship's timbers was so great, that there was the strongest possibility of her going to pieces, without the agency of anything harder than water; but at two hours after midnight a sudden shock was felt, and after some wild convulsions, the groaning vessel seemed to be settling down in deep

water.

"Out with the long-boat!" roared Captain Grenouille through his trumpet, and the order was not given a moment too soon; for the ship, after a furious plunge, went down like a stone, very nearly sucking boat and men with her into the abyss. The proximate cause of the catastrophe had become obvious as the long-boat was leaving her side; for in addition to their own crew, numbering nine men, eleven strangers tumbled in in the dark. It was a case of collision. Both vessels, being near their last hour at any rate, perished in the shock; and both crews saved themselves in the same boat.

Captain Grenouille, who had been the last man to quit his ship, threw himself down sulky and silent in the bottom of the boat; leaving the task of baling to the rest, who had some difficulty in keeping her afloat. Not a word was exchanged among that sullen crew till the gray light of the

But the ten English sailors were up as promptly in defence of their captain; every right hand on board was in the air; and every bunch of fingers grasped a cutlass. The two leaders, however, accustomed to think in the midst of peril, soon came to their bearings.

"Good morning, Captain Grenouille," said he of the departed Hunger. Captain Grenouille growled.

"Have you any biscuit?" persisted the English privateer.

"We have nothing,” replied Captain Grenouille. "We could offer you as much ourselves," said Captain Beggar; "but since we cannot eat, let us go to council. We are now between Guernsey and Cherbourg-that is, between England and France; but nearer the former. It is clear to me, therefore, that we must steer for Guernsey." "It is clear to you that I must still be a prisoner in England! To the east, say I-for France!"

"Where I shall be your prisoner. Is it not so?"

"Exactly."

"But I have two men more than you, and that turns the scale."

"We shall see;" and the Frenchmen ranged themselves in the bows, while the English, under their captain, kept the stern. Appearances threatened a bloody struggle; but at that moment a large ship was seen emerging from the haze, and presently the report of a heavy gun boomed along the water.

"She is French!" cried Grenouille; "you will dance, captain!"

"She is English," replied Beggar; "you will return to Plymouth, captain!" But she was neither one nor other, for the next moment the Dutch flag rolled out upon the breeze.

"Are we your prisoners, or you ours?" shouted the two privateers to the Dutchman with their customary audacity.

"Neither," replied he: "Napoleon has ceased to reign, and all the world is at peace."

"Give us your hand!" said Captain Beggar. "There it is," replied Captain Grenouille. "I wish that Dutchman had not been in such a confounded hurry with his news, that I might have taught you to dance, brother; but since we are at peace, why, we are there is no help for it!"

Who would promote a state of things which could resuscitate the Grenouille and Beggar school of miscreants?