In her presence he forgot his wrongs, he forgot the very object of a journey which had thus led him to her side, all his past feelings seemed petty and ignoble, and fame itself a matter of little

worth; he took her small gauntleted hands and stood there, resting his eyes on the dear face which had haunted his thoughts through all his weary exile. Thank God,' he murmured, it is no dream- this time!'

407

CONTRASTED JOURNEYS.

A MAN who has travelled long and far drops into a habit of contrasting his experiences. At some time of special misery he recalls special delights past, and the two eras become associated in his mind. It is so with me, at least, and with comrades of mine. Some of the contrasts that have fallen in my way I purpose to roughly etch.

I had the luck to gain a first glimpse of the Tropic world under most kindly circumstances. It was in Ceylon. Charles Kingsley told us that to see a palm-grove had been his dream of childhood, but he had never beheld visions so beautiful as the scenes nature showed him in old age, when he visited the West Indies. But Kingsley saw only the shadow of the loveliness that may be found on earth. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life have their home in the Orient. Pictures of fairness almost divine America displays to those who seek them, but Beauty's native home is the East, and Ceylon is her supreme glory. It was my chance to be thrown upon that coast by an accident that befell our steamer. We broke down some distance from the island, fired guns, displayed signals and so on, which were leisurely acknowledged. But to lie off that enchanted shore for an indefinite time revolted my imagination. A catamaran boarded us, and in it I obtained a passage. There was nothing to sit on saving the nets and a slippery pile of fish. Gradually the outline of the coast formed itself distinctly-then the colour. I am not going to describe Ceylon. Everybody has called there, and none could paint that scenery with pen or brush. The fishermen landed me somewhere in parts unknown, amid purple rocks lapped by a gentle surf and plumed with verdure, beneath a hanging wood of cocoanut. Their cottages stood apart, lost and buried under loads of greenery. They led me to a fine highway that skirted the spot, leading from I didn't know whence to I could not think whither. A score of children gathered about me-lovely little naked things, holding each other by the hand to gaze with wide black eyes. Not a word had we in common. I ejaculated Galle?'-the boatmen nodded and laughed; off I set, trusting to turn up somewhere. The babies followed in silence for a mile or two, their

fingers in their mouths; then suddenly raced home, with a pretty clamour.

Eden had no path more beautiful than that. The woods of cocoanut stretched clear and smooth on either hand, emblems of the light and sunny tropic, as are pines of the dreary north. Through the midst of them wound a long avenue of shade-trees following the coast-line. I remember nothing but those cocoanuts and the people on the road. Through gaps on the right hand the laughing ocean peeped, and sunshine streamed in ponderous bars. Here and there great banyans spread beside the way; hucksters had wattled their arcaded roots together, and hung them with gay prints, bangles of laq, and tinsel rubbish that looks charming on a smooth, dark skin; for there was a pilgrimage or a feast on hand, and devotees passed in a cheerful throng. They were all clad in white, with scarves of brilliant colour folded around their lithe bodies. All the young were pretty, boys and girls, but which was which I had seldom any assurance; for both sexes alike have delicate features, gentle eyes, golden brown skin, and long hair held by a circular comb. There is little difference in height commonly, and all look like girls.

scene.

That walk remains in my mind as the most delightful I have ever taken. The gentleness and the beauty of nature have grown upon mankind in Ceylon. The springing of the palmfronds, the play of sunlight through their glittering plumes, ever the same and ever new, fill one with a despairing sense of loveliness beyond human grasp. And the figures were worthy of the Evening and hunger drew on before I suspected their approach. When things were becoming just the least little bit dusky, so to put it, I met a small milk cart, drawn by a trotting bullock. The boy, or girl, understood my signs and turned about; I clambered up; he or she ran behind, and gaily started the small bullock, with a petulant shake of his bells. Twenty minutes afterwards we ran into the high life' of Galle. The concentrated gaze thrown upon me from the roof of a drag is not to be forgotten whilst I still have the grace of blushing. Our little bullock was not steered by reins, and I failed to influence the driver. We did not stop until all the fashionable folks had gazed at me, on the top of a milk cart, clothed in fish scales like a mermaid.

6

A journey as unlike that as may be was my ride from the Pacific shore to San José de Costa Rica. At Punt' Arenas they

told me that one good march, with 'outspans,' would carry a light weight to the capital; I was a light weight then, and cheerily I started in the afternoon. It would be as easy to lose the 'track' in Regent Street, at the height of the season, as to miss the San José road. There is no other leading from the coffee grounds to the sea, and all the produce, all the imported merchandise of that busy and thriving land, goes up and down it. At that time of year an unceasing flow of waggons labours through the dust. The natural conditions of beauty are found in Costa Rica as in Ceylon. The road is a fine piece of engineering, solidly built in the low coast districts, carried up to the table-land by zigzags of extraordinary skill and audacity. For the most part it is heavily lined with trees, so tall and broad that they meet over the central space. There are palms and flowers, pleasant sounds, enthralling scents, all that makes the glory of the tropics, in Costa Rica, but man does not meet nature with sympathy. The famous road is a spectacle to see, but not to cherish among cheerful memories.

Its trees have been hacked for firewood in youth, and have grown shapeless. An eternal thicket of hedge-bamboo-that ungraceful sister of the family-fills the interstices. Every palm and wild banana that thrusts a head through the boundary has been robbed of its leaves. To a height of three feet, trunks and boughs and foliage and flowers are plastered with dry mud, and above this the white dust lies like snow. Such is the result of prosperity and business. And there are other signs even less agreeable. At the distance of a quarter of a mile or less, saving in the bleakest part of the Cordilleras, stands a drink shop, or a group of them. They are open sheds, with a single narrow closet along the back, where the barmen and barwomen sleep off their fatigue by turns. Every canteen has its gambler and its bullies, belonging to the establishment or paying a heavy rent for their privilege.

Imagine then my ride in this Christian land, haunted from the first by memory of the loveliness and the sweet Pagan quiet of Ceylon. Brawny peons swelter along, unseen to the waist up for dust, swearing without a break at their oxen, their fellows, and especially their wives. These sit aloft upon the coffeebags, scowling at their husbands and screaming at their children, who can barely be distinguished in the fog. At each bar the men turn aside, for a nip or a hand at monté, or both, while the grumbling wife drives on. There is a fight, more or

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less serious, every mile, and no man speaks to a stranger, hot, worried, dirty, half-drunken as they all are, without a surly blasphemy. After nightfall, however, the scene grows pleasingfrom a distance. All the straight road is bordered with fires, families are gathered round them, the oxen munch their sugarcane in a ruddy half-light. Many handsome youths and maidens are there, flaxen-haired and red-cheeked some of them, for the Costa Rican blood is pure Castilian, and the table-land is chilly. But prosperity and drink have spoiled their tempers. In thriftless Nicaragua, whence I came, a guitar would be passing round in every group, but nothing of the sort was here. There were no Indians on the table-land at the Conquest, or they fled, and these peasants have not learned the careless joys of slavery. Their pleasure still concentrated at the bars, which flared with torches. A mass compact of naked, glistening shoulders, wild hair, and straining eyes encircled the monté board ;-the reek of that maddening crowd, and the smell of the torches, raised my gorge in passing. The banker sat aloft, on the bar-counter, and his bullies knelt watchful on each side, machete in hand. Each few moments a stillness fell, whilst the cards were dealt; then a sudden outbreak of oaths, a brandishing of fists, and a surging of the crowd! Now and again the tumult grew murderous, and I hastened to slip by. But pistols are not used in these frays, or were not in my time, and the landlord never ceased to distribute his venomous compounds.

Many leagues of this ugly scene I traversed-Costa Rican peons, like other savages, have no superstition about going to bed. From the Pacific beach to the foot of the Cordilleras lights edged the road, a roar of drink and passion reverberated to the arch of leaves at every canteen. An extraordinary sight, an extraordinary hearing! I returned from Costa Rica by the route, unused then, of Serebpiqui, and the temptation to explore new ground was increased in no small measure by a wish to avoid the great highway. I reached San José at 3 P.M., after a ride of seventy-two miles.

My visit to South Africa opened under circumstances almost as favourable as that to the East. Our steamer was obliged to run into St. Helena Bay, there to await help from Cape Town. Some of us made up our minds forthwith that the incidents of that sea-voyage had been quite as thrilling as our constitutions could bear, and we made an effort to get on by land. The neigh