too. The sultan had power to release the prisoners who had been spared in the wreck already mentioned; and this power Mr Brooke hoped, by discretion, to prevail upon his majesty to exercise. The picture of this potentate is thus drawn by Mr Brooke :

"The sultan is a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person, with a countenance which expresses, very obviously, the imbecility of his mind. His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb-the natural member being crooked and distorted. His mind, indeed, by his face, seems to be a chaos of confusion-without acuteness, without dignity, and without good sense. He can neither read nor write; is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their ignorance and greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. The favourable side of his character is, that he is goodtempered and good-natured-by no means cruel-and, in a certain way, generous, though rapacious to as high a degree. His rapacity, indeed, is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome; but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other Pangerans; and afterwards, through Mr Williamson, solicited more trifles-such as sugar, penknives, and the like. I may note one other feature that marks the man. He requested as the greatest favour-he urged with the earnestness of a child-that I would send back the schooner before the month Ramban, (Ramadan of the Turks,) remarking, What shall I do during the fast without soft sugar and dates ?" "

The delivery of the prisoners, and the forgiveness of Muda Hassim, were quickly obtained; the more personal matter found opposition with the advisers of the Crown, but was ultimately conceded. On the 1st of August 1842, the letters to Muda Hassim were sealed and signed; and at the same council the contract, which

gave Mr Brooke the government of Sarawak, was fully discussed; and by ten o'clock at night was signed, sealed, and witnessed. Mr Brooke returned to his government and people on the following day.

On the 1st of January 1843, the following entry appears in the diary so often quoted :- "Another year passed and gone!-a year with all its anxieties, its troubles, its dangers, upon which I can look back with satisfaction-a year in which I have been usefully employed in doing good to others. Since I last wrote, the Dyaks have been quiet, settled, and improving; the Chinese advancing towards prosperity; and the Sarawak people wonderfully contented and industrious, relieved from oppression, and fields of labour allowed them. Justice I have executed with an unflinching hand."

It was in the month of March 1843, at the conclusion of the Chinese war, that Captain Keppel was ordered in the Dido to the Malacca Straits and the island of Borneo. Daring acts of piracy had been committed, and were still committing, on the Borneon coast; and, becoming engaged in the suppression of these crimes, he fell in with the English rajah of Sarawak, and obtained from him the information which he has recently given to the world, and enabled us to place succinctly before our readers.

The piracy of the Eastern Archipelago is very different to that of the western world. The former obtains an importance unknown to the latter. The hordes who conduct it issue from their islands and coasts in fleets, rove from place to place, intercept the native trade, enslave whole towns at the entrance of rivers, and attack illarmed or stranded European vessels. The native governments, if they are not participators in the crime, are made its victims, and in many cases, we are told, they are both-purchasing from one set of pirates, and plundered and enslaved by another. Captain Keppel has well related more than one engagement in which he was concerned with the ferocious marauders of these eastern seas-scenes of blood and horror, justified only by the enormity of the offence, and the ulti

mate advantages likely to be obtained from an extirpation of the deeplyrooted evil. As we have hinted at the commencement of this article, our present object is not so much to draw attention to the battle-scenes described by Mr Keppel, and which may be read with peculiar though painful interest in his book, as to obtain for Mr Brooke, the peaceful and unselfish disposer of so many blessings amongst a benighted and neglected people, that admiration and regard which he has so nobly earned. He has done much, but our government may enable him to do more. He has shown the capabilities of his distant home, and called upon his

mother-country to improve them to the uttermost. We hear that her Majesty's government have not been deaf to his appeal, and that aid will be given for the development of his plans, equal to his warmest expectations. We trust it may be so. Nothing is wanting but the assistance which a government alone can afford, to render Borneo a friendly and valuable ally, and to constitute Mr Brooke one of the most useful benefactors of modern times; a benefactor in the best sense of the term-an improver of his species-an intelligent messenger and expounder of God's purpose to man.

"OH! there's not in this wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with song and mirror, was ever so fascinating-no daughter of Eve so pretty and provoking !"

This apostrophe, which certainly appears, now that in cooler moments I recall it, rather rhapsodical, was not uttered viva voce, nor even sotto voce, seeing that its object, Miss Dora M'Dermot, was riding along only three paces in front of me, whilst her brother walked by my side. It was a mere mental ejaculation, elicited by the surpassing perfections of the aforesaid Dora, who assuredly was the most charming girl I had ever beheld. But for the Pyrenean scenery around us, and the rough ill-conditioned mule, with its clumsy side-saddle of discoloured leather, on which she was mounted, instead of the Spanish jennet or well-bred English palfrey that would best have suited so fair an equestrian, I could, without any great exertion of fancy, have dreamed myself back to the days of the M'Gregor, and fancied that it was Die Vernon riding up the mountain side, gaily

chatting as she went with the handsome cavalier who walked by her stirrup, and who might have been Frank Osbaldistone, only that he was too manly-looking for Scott's somewhat effeminate hero. How beautifully moulded was the form which her dark-green habit set off to such advantage; how fairy-like the foot that pressed the clumsy stirrup; how slender the fingers that grasped the rein! She had discarded the heavy ridinghat and senseless bonnet, those graceless inventions of some cunning milliner, and had adopted a head-dress not unusual in the country in which she then was. This was a beret or flat cap, woven of snow-white wool, and surmounted by a crimson tassel spread out over the top. From beneath this elegant coiffure her dark eyes flashed and sparkled, whilst her luxuriant chestnut curls fell down over her neck, the alabaster fairness of which made her white head-dress look almost tawny. Either because the air, although we were still in the month of September, was fresh upon the mountains, or else because she was pretty and a woman, and therefore not sorry to show herself to the best advantage, she had twisted round her waist a very long cashmere scarf, previously pass

ing it over one shoulder in the manner of a sword-belt, the ends hanging down nearly to her stirrup; and this gave something peculiarly picturesque, almost fantastical, to her whole appearance.

Upon the second day of my arrival at the baths of St Sauveur, in the Pyrenees, I had fallen in with my old friend and college chum, Jack M Dermot, who was taking his sister the round of the French watering-places. Dora's health had been delicate, the faculty had recommended the excursion; and Jack, who doated upon his only sister, had dragged her away from the gaieties of London and brought her off to the Pyrenees. M'Dermot was an excellent fellow, neither a wit nor a Solomon; but a good-hearted dog who had been much liked at Trin. Coll., Dublin, where he had thought very little of his studies, and a good deal of his horses and dogs. An Irishman, to be sure, occasionally a slight touch of the brogue was perceptible in his talk; but from this his sister, who had been brought up in England, was entirely free. Jack had a snug estate of three thousand a-year; Miss Dora had twenty thousand pounds from her mother. She had passed two seasons in London; and if she was not already married, it was because not one of the fifty aspirants to her hand had found favour in her bright eyes. Lively and high-spirited, with a slight turn for the satirical, she loved her independence, and was difficult to please.

I had been absent from England for nearly two years, on a continental tour; and although I had heard much of Miss M'Dermot, I had never seen her till her brother introduced me to her at St Sauveur. I had not known her an hour, before I found myself in a fair way to add another to the list of the poor moths who had singed their wings at the perilous light of her beauty. When M'Dermot, learning that, like themselves, I was on a desultory sort of ramble, and had not marked out any particular route, of fered me a seat in their carriage, and urged me to accompany them, instead of prudently flying from the danger, I foolishly exposed myself to it, and lo! what might have been anticipat

ed came to pass. Before I had been two days in Dora's society, my doom was sealed; I had ceased to belong to my self; I was her slave, the slave of her sunny smile and bright eyestalisman more potent than any lamp or ring that djinn or fairy ever obeyed.

A fortnight had passed, and we were at BDuring that time, the spell that bound me had been each day gaining strength. As an intimate friend of her brother, I was already, with Dora, on the footing of an old acquaintance; she seemed well enough pleased with my society, and chatted with me willingly and familiarly; but in vain did I watch for some slight indication, a glance or an intonation, whence to derive hope. None such were perceptible; nor could the most egregious coxcomb have fancied that they were. We once or twice fell in with other acquaintances of her's and her brother's, and with them she had just the same frank, friendly manner, as with me. I had not sufficient vanity, however, to expect a woman, especially one so much admired as Miss M'Dermot, to fall in love at first sight with my humble personality, and I patiently waited, trusting to time and assiduity to advance my cause.

Things were in this state, when one morning, whilst taking an early walk to the springs, I ran up against an English friend, by name Walter Ashley. He was the son of a country gentleman of moderate fortune, at whose house I had more than once passed a week in the shooting season. Walter was an excellent fellow, and a perfect model of the class to which he belonged. By no means unpolished in his manners, he had yet a sort of plain frankness and bonhomie, which was peculiarly agreeable and prepossessing.

He was not

a university man, nor had he received an education of the highest order; spoke no language but his own with any degree of correctness; neither played the fiddle, painted pictures, nor wrote poetry. On the other hand, in all manly exercises he was a proficient; shot, rode, walked, and danced to perfection; and the fresh originality, and pleasant tone of his con

versation, redeemed any deficiency of reading or accomplishment. In personal appearance he was a splendid fellow, nearly six feet in his boots, strongly, but, at the same time, symmetrically built; although his size of limb and width of shoulder rendered him, at six-and-twenty, rather what is called a fine man, than a slender or elegant one. He had the true Anglo-Saxon physiognomy, blue eyes, and light brown hair that wayed, rather than curled, round his broad handsome forehead. And, then, what a mustache the fellow had! (He was officer in a crack yeomanry corps.) Not one of the composite order, made up of pomatum and lamp-black, such as may be seen sauntering down St James's Street on a spring afternoon, with incipient guardsmen behind them-but worthy of an Italian painter or Hungarian hussar; full, well-grown, and glossy. Who was the idiot who first set afloat the notionnow become an established prejudice in England-that mustaches were unseemly? To nine faces out of ten, they are a most becoming addition, increasing physiognomical character, almost giving it where there is none; relieving the monotony of broad flat cheeks, and abridging the abomination of a long upper-lip. Uncleanly, say you? Not a bit of it, if judiciously trimmed and trained. What, Sir! are they not at least as proper looking as those foxy thickets extending from jawbone to temple, which you yourself, each morning of your life, take such pains to comb and curl into shape?

Delighted to meet Ashley, I dragged him off to the hotel, to introduce him to M'Dermot and his sister. As a friend of mine they gave him a cordial welcome, and we passed that day and the following ones together. I soon, however, I must confess, began to repent a little having brought my handsome friend into the society of Dora. She seemed better pleased with him than I altogether liked, nor could I wonder at it. Walter Ashley was exactly the man to please a woman of Dora's character. She was of rather a romantic turn, and about him there was a dash of the chivalrous, well calculated to cap

tivate her imagination. Although perfectly feminine, she was an excellent horsewoman, and an ardent admirer of feats of address and courage, and she had heard me tell her brother of Ashley's perfection in such matters. On his part, Ashley, like every one else who saw her, was evidently greatly struck with her beauty and fascination of manner. I cannot say that I was jealous; I had no right to be so, for Dora had never given me encouragement; but I certainly more than once regretted having introduced a third person into what-honest Jack M Dermot counting, of course, for nothing-had previously been a sort of tête-à-tête society. I began to fear that, thanks to myself, my occupation was gone, and Ashley had got it.

It was the fifth day after our meeting with Walter, and we had started early in the morning upon an excursion to a neighbouring lake, the scenery around which, we were told, was particularly wild and beautiful. It was situated on a piece of table-land on the top of a mountain, which we could see from the hotel window. The distance was barely ten miles, and the road being rough and precipitous, M'Dermot, Ashley, and myself, had chosen to walk rather than to risk our necks by riding the broken-knee'd ponies that were offered to us. A sure-footed mule, and indifferent sidesaddle, had been procured for Miss M'Dermot, and was attended by a wild-looking Bearnese boy, or gossoon, as her brother called him, a creature like a grasshopper, all legs and arms, with a scared countenance, and long lank black hair hanging in irregular shreds about his face.

There is no season more agreeable in the Pyrennes than the month of September. People are very apt to expatiate on the delights of autumn, its mellow beauty, pensive charms, and suchlike. I confess that in a general way I like the youth of the year better than its decline, and prefer the bright green tints of spring, with the summer in prospective, to the melancholy autumn, its russet hues and falling leaves; its regrets for fine weather past, and anticipations of bad to come. But if there be any place

where I should be tempted to reverse my judgment, it would be in Southern France, and especially its western and central portion. The clear cloudless sky, the moderate heat succeeding to the sultriness, often overpowering, of the summer months, the magnificent vineyards and merry vintage time, the noble groves of chestnut, clothing the lower slopes of the mountains, the bright streams and flower-spangled meadows of Bearn and Languedoc, render no part of the year more delightful in those countries than the months of September and October.

As before mentioned, Dora rode a little in front, with Ashley beside her, pointing out the beauties of the wild scenery through which we passed, and occasionally laying a hand upon her bridle to guide the mule over some unusually rugged portion of the almost trackless mountain. M'Dermot and I were walking behind, a little puffed by the steepness of the ascent; our guide, whose name was Cadet, a name answered to by every second man one meets in that part of France, strode along beside us, like a pair of compasses with leathern lungs. Presently the last-named individual turned to me

"Ces messieurs veulent-ils voir le Saut de lou Contrabandiste?" said he, in the barbarous dialect of the district, half French, half patois, with a small dash of Spanish.

"Le Saut du Contrebandier, the Smuggler's Leap-what is that?" asked Dora, who had overheard the question, turning round her graceful head, and dazzling us-me at least-by a sudden view of her lovely face, now glowing with exercise and the mountain air.

The smuggler's leap, so Cadet informed us, was a narrow cleft in the rock, of vast depth, and extending for a considerable distance across a flank of the mountain. It owed its name to the following incident:-Some five years previously, a smuggler, known by the name of Juan le Negre, or Black Juan, had, for a considerable period, set the custom-house officers at defiance, and brought great discredit on them by his success in passing contraband goods from Spain. vain did they lie in ambush and set

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snares for him; they could never come near him, or if they did it was when he was backed by such a force of the hardy desperadoes carrying on the same lawless traffic, that the douaniers were either forced to beat a retreat or got fearfully mauled in the contest that ensued. One day, however, three of these green-coated guardians of the French revenue caught a sight of Juan alone and unarmed. They pursued him, and a rare race he led them, over cliff and crag, across rock and ravine, until at last they saw with exultation that he made right for the chasm in question, and there they made sure of securing him. It seemed as if he had forgotten the position of the cleft, and only remembered it when he got within a hundred yards or thereabouts, for then he slackened his pace. The douaniers gained on him, and expected him to desist from his flight, and surrender. What was their surprise and consternation when they saw him, on reaching the edge of the chasm, spring from the ground with izardlike agility, and by one bold leap clear the yawning abyss. The douaniers uttered a shout of rage and disappointment, and two of them ceased running; but the third, a man of great activity and courage, and who had frequently sworn to earn the reward set on the head of Juan, dared the perilous jump. He fell short; his head was dashed against the opposite rock, and his horror-struck companions, gazing down into the dark depth beneath, saw his body strike against the crags on its way to the bottom of the abyss. The smuggler escaped, and the spot where the tragical incident occurred was thenceforward known as "Le Saut du Contrebandier."

Before our guide had finished his narrative, we were unanimous in our wish to visit its scene, which we reached by the time he had brought the tale to a conclusion. It was certainly a most remarkable chasm, whose existence was only to be accounted for by reference to the volcanic agency of which abundant traces exist in Southern France. The whole side of the mountain was cracked and rent asunder, forming a narrow ravine of vast depth, in the manner of the famous

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