arrows. These spread themselves, and closed themselves into a circle of three miles in diameter, which was gradually narrowed to one of a few hundred paces. The horsemen then dismounted, and "setting foot to foot and shoulder to shoulder, they closed in upon the animals they had driven from their dens and haunts. The latter, after running hither and thither, and finding no exit, sunk down powerless, and were easily captured." As many as 1000 stags, besides wolves, foxes, and such "small deer," were sometimes caught in this manner in a single circle. Tigers were often among the game thus captured. This kind of chase was followed without a day's cessation for a distance of 900 miles, at the end of which the hunting-party "enjoyed two or three days' repose." The scientific Jesuit, who was compelled to be constantly by the king's side, though not compelled to take any more active part in the battue, was often nearly dead with fatigue after his day's work. After a further advance in this way of 400 miles, the expedition began to return to where it had left the queens; but bad weather coming on, this immense army covered the clay morasses with corpses of beasts of burden. In concluding his account of this hunting, Verbiest answers those who may be "disposed to ask what advantage could be derived to our mission from this expedition ?" in a very characteristic way:

"Inasmuch as this countless multitude of men, during the entire journey, saw me mounted on one of the emperor's horses, and heard me from the same, as from a pulpit, often discourse of our worship, in such manner that I might be said to be preaching to an enorinous congregation; for there were few among them who had not their attention turned to the emperor as he passed them from time to time, and who did not also see me in near attendance, distinguished as I was by the absence of bow and quiver, and by my long beard and European attire, they could not fail to observe me with close attention. As, moreover, nearly all knew me, not only as the author of the Chinese almanac, whose name, by means of that book, has been spread throughout the empire, but also as one who professed. with singular zeal, the doctrine of Christ; moreover, as one who, after the overthrow and expulsion of Yam-quam-sien, had re-introduced into China the European astronomy, together with the Christian doctrine; all this could not be without including many to ask questions touching the Christian faith.'

In the commencement of the second of these highly interesting letters, Verbiest declares that, in these journeys, the emperor had in view "to prevent for his soldiers, and especially his Tartar troops, that infection of Chinese luxury and corruption which might otherwise cally ensue from the idleness of peace." The Jesuit character es the Tartars as naturally "a

slothful people, and little disposed to any toil, even that of the chase; they neither sow, nor reap, nor plough, nor harrow." It is to be presumed, therefore, that these expeditions required the energy of an emperor like Camhi to keep them up. Many," says Verbiest, "who had taken part in the campaigns of preceding years, openly confessed to me that they had never, in actual war, endured such hardships as in this fictitious campaign." The Jesuit shrewdly suggests that an additional motive in these expeditions was to awe the out-lying Tartar tribes by an occasional display of force and imperial pomp. Finally, "it may be added," he writes, "that by this movement the emperor, with the queenmother, avoided the summer heat, which in the dog-days at

Pekin is tremendous."

This amusing and instructive volume concludes with a third epistle on one of these hunting-expeditions by Father Pereira, another Jesuit in attendance upon the emperor. Pereira gives a picture even more vivid than that drawn by Verbiest of the costly pomp of these expeditions, and the odd contrast of the Tartarean deserts with the filagree finery of the imperial cortège. Among precipices and tigers, "six sumptuous pavilions were erected, the first for the sole use of the emperor, the others for the queens, according to their rank, all alike of lacquer-work, with tin-lining, seven or eight ells in height. The entrance, after the fashion of the Chinese, faced the south, being guarded from the weather by curtains of the most costly silk damask. . . . The road," in these deserts, "had been so carefully mended, and also watered, that nothing more perfect could exist. It makes me ashamed to reflect how imperfect in comparison is my service to God, the Lord of heaven and earth." "Among these rocks every thing is at hand the same as in the palace at Pekin."

...

From a number of photographic touches, which are admirably effective in conferring credibility and reality upon these descriptions of the next to incredible features of the imperial hunts, we give a few at random :

"In the woods I met with edible mushrooms as large as our hats." "The soil in these highlands being much impregnated with nitre may perhaps be a cause of their great cold; wherever the earth is dug to the depth of three or four feet, this substance is turned up frozen like ice."

"Here also were found tigers, against which the emperor is so incensed that he never spares them, but pursues them to the death."

"Wheresoever a river occurs abounding in fish, the chase is superseded, and all betake themselves to fishing; and for this purpose camels carry on their backs small boats, made in separate pieces, which are put together and made available in an instant."

"I, who had no other purpose but to drive the game within shot of

the emperor, nevertheless caught an animal between my legs, which much pleased the emperor. Nor is it unfrequent that the wildest animals are thus easily captured, when the circle has once closed in upon them."

"Spits were produced, and large fires lighted, to which some held their portions of meat; others flung the pieces into the fire for a moment, and then swallowed them, still dripping with blood, with great relish."

"In the thickets are white and red onions, which I conjecture to have been brought from Egypt (!). Persian roses are as abundant as thistles or brambles with us."

"On these mountains, which have never before our expedition been ascended by man, trees are sometimes observed which have been injured by fire-a spectacle which greatly puzzled me when I first beheld it. I remarked that this conflagration always begins at the stems."

Father Pereira most ingeniously suggests that this curious phenomenon was caused by the stag,

"An animal which sheds its horns annually, and at this season is so plagued by the continual itching, that he rubs his horns to and fro with great violence against any substance till he gets rid of the itching and the horns together."

This explanation, he tells us, satisfied the Chinese, who called on him for an account of all out-of-the-way phenomena; and by way of satisfying the Europeans also that there may be something in his suggestions, he adds, "rotten wood gives out a light of itself by night, so that the smallest writing may be read by it."

By these and like questions I was kept in continual occupation, and by my answers obtained great applause and consideration. One of the great men of the court said to me, 'If we Tartars were to choose another religion than our own, I should embrace yours, because I never put any thing before its teachers but that I receive satisfaction in reply.'

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"It was so cold here that ten thousand horses died on the night of our arrival, the which were not even missed."

"In the middle" (of a high mountain, Pe Cha) "is a lake, said to be unfathomable, but which may rather be said to resist the attempt to fathom it, being always frozen.”

In one of the great flocks of sheep that supplied the expedition (C were captured two wolves, which kept company with the old sheep and fed on the young."

We cannot conclude our notice of these three remarkable epistles without expressing our regret that the published letters of the Jesuit missionaries of this period, or at least a selection from them, are not placed before the English public in an acces-·

sible form. Such a selection, well made and well translated, would be a most popular work.

The last work published by the Hakluyt Society is a Collection of Documents on Spitzbergen and Greenland. This volume contains three pieces. The first is a graphic description of Spitzbergen, written by F. Martens of Hamburg, who visited that locality in 1671. The translation before us was made from the German in 1674, and, together with the accompanying tracts, it is now edited by Mr. Adam White of the British Museum. (By the way, let us express our satisfaction that the staff of that institution is able to produce so many really "able editors.") Here, then, we have one genial naturalist edited by another equally genial and more scientific. This first and principal work is divided into sections treating severally of the voyage there and back, and of all the characteristic natural phenomena of Spitzbergen. The short chapters, each headed with the name of some plant, bird, fish, &c., do not promise much; but, after Jessie's famous gleanings, we know of no more amusing little work of the kind than this. F. Martens describes all he sees with sufficient accuracy and minuteness to be of service to the technical naturalist, and yet manages to delight the unscientific reader with the "touches of nature" to be found among the ice and crags of Spitzbergen. Here are a few of our traveller's remarks, taken from scores of others as good:

"There is hardly any difference of cold between night and day; yet at night, when the sun shineth, it seemeth to one that rightly considereth it, as if it was only clear moonlight, so that you may look upon the sun as well as you can upon the moon.'

Concerning the crags of Spitzbergen, he observes :

"Some are but one stone from the bottom to the top, appearing like an old decayed wall; they smell very sweet, as the green fields do in our country when it rains."

"On the 6th we had the same weather, and warm sunshine all night. Hard by us rode a Hollander; and the ship's crew, busie in cutting the fat off a whale, when the fish burst with so great a bounce as if a cannon had been discharged, and bespattered the workmen all over."

"All the herbs and mosses grow upon the grit and sand of the stones where the water falleth down, and on that side of the hill which the east and north winds cannot easily get at."

"If it be never so dark by reason of a mist, yet every bird knoweth how to find their own nest again, and flyeth directly to it."

*Goethe makes a similar observation about the lark, in his Conversations with Eckermann.

Concerning certain birds called mallemucks, he writes:

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They eat so much of the fat of the whales till they spew it up again, and tumble themselves over and over in the water until they vomit up the train-oil; and then they begin to eate afresh, until they grow aweary of eating. They bite one another and fight together, which is very good sport, about a piece of fat, fiercely, although there is enough for them all and to spare.'

Really these mallemucks bear a more insulting resemblance to humanity than monkeys themselves!

There are many curious and entertaining facts about whales and sea-horses, and other monsters of the polar deep; but we must leave room for the Relation du Groenland, by Isaac de la Peyrère, the celebrated preadamite, who writes this account to his friend, Mons. La Mothe le Vayer, in 1644, with the object, apparently, of disproving a certain theory of the descent of the Americans from the Greenlanders, and of the Greenlanders from the Norwegians.

This Relation is a rambling and ill-written compilation from semi-fabulous Icelandic and Danish chronicles, mixed up, however, with some good pieces of description of the country, superstitions of mariners, &c. Among the facts gravely recorded we find the following Dantesque account of "three sea monsters of enormous size" sometimes seen in the " sea of Greenland :"

"The fish, which the Norwegians saw from the waist upwards out of the water, they called haffstramb: it was like a man about the neck, head, face, nose, and mouth, with the exception of the head being very much elevated and pointed towards the top. Its shoulders were broad, and at their extremity were to stumps of arms without hands. The body was slender below; but they have never been able to see its form lower than the waist. Its look was chilling. There were heavy storms each time that this phantom appeared on the water. The second monster has been called marguguer: it was formed down to the waist like a woman. It had large breasts, dishevelled hair, and huge hands at the ends of the stumps of the arms, with long fingers webbed like the feet of a duck. It was seen holding fish in its hand and eating them. This phantom always preceded some terrible storm. If it plunges into the water with its face towards the sailors, it is a sign that they will not be shipwrecked; but if it turns its back to them, they are lost."

Our author tells us, upon what authority we know not, that "the sea of Spitzbergen" produces whales two hundred feet long; and that, when their bodies are opened, "they find nothing but ten or twelve handsful of little black spiders, which are engendered by the bad air of the sea; and also a little green grass. The sea, he says, is sometimes darkened with these spiders," and it is an infallible sign that the fishing will be good, for the whales follow the water that engenders this pestilence.'