The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 539, March 24, 1832 — John Shaqi
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 539, March 24, 1832Various
Religion
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 539, March 24, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
The first is a learned entomologist, who, hearing one evening at the
Linnean Society that a yellow Scarabaeus, otherwise beetle, of a very rare
kind was to be captured on the sands at Swansea, immediately took his seat
in the mail for that place, and brought back in triumph the object of his
desire. The second is Mr. David Douglas, who spent two years among the
wild Indians of the Rocky Mountains, was reduced to such extremities as
occasionally to sup upon the flaps of his saddle; and once, not having
this resource, was obliged to eat up all the seeds he had collected the
previous forty days in order to appease the cravings of nature. Not
appalled by these sufferings, he has returned again to endure similar
hardships, and all for a few simples. The third example is Mr. Drummond,
the assistant botanist to Franklin in his last hyperborean journey. In the
midst of snow, with the thermometer 15° below zero, without a tent,
sheltered from the inclemency of the weather only by a hut built of the
branches of trees, and depending for subsistence from day to day on a
solitary Indian hunter, "I obtained," says this amiable and enthusiastic
botanist, "a few mosses; and, on Christmas day,"--mark, gentle reader, the
day, of all others, as if it were a reward for his devotion,--"I had the
pleasure of finding a very minute Gymnóstomum, hitherto undescribed. I
remained alone for the rest of the winter, except when my man occasionally
visited me with meat; and I found the time hang very heavy, as I had no
books, and nothing could be done in the way of collecting specimens of
natural history."
_Magazine of Natural History_
* * * * *
[Illustration: BURIAL PLACE IN TONGATABU.]
This is another of Mr. Bennett's sketches made during his recent visit to
several of the Polynesian Islands. It represents the burial-place of the
Chiefs of Tongatabu: over this "earthly prison of their bones," we may say
with Titus Andronicus:
In pence and honour rest you here my sons:
(The) readiest champions, repose you here,
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps:
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned grudges: here are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.
Mr. Bennett thus describes the spot, with some interesting circumstances:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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