ford's, the lord admiral's, and divers others; so that when the bell tolls to the lecture, the trumpet sounds to the stage. The playhouses are filled when the churches are naked. It is a woeful sight to see two hundred proud players jet in their silks, when five hundred poor people starve in the streets." As the taste for theatrical exhibitions increased, the task of providing the theatres with plays became a profession. Most of the precursors, contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare were young men of education who came down to the city from the universities to provide themselves with a living by whatever cunning there was in their brain and ten fingers. Some became actors as well as writers. The remuneration of the dramatist was small. Poverty and dissoluteness seem to have characterized the pioneers of the drama. As the theatre was popular as well as fashionable, the "groundlings" who paid their sixpences for admission had their tastes consulted. This accounts in some degree for the rant and vulgarity which strangely disfigure so many of the plays. The usual miseries and vices which characterize men of letters in an unlettered age, when authors are numerous and readers are few, distinguish the lives of many of the elder dramatists. Ben Jonson, in the Poetaster, makes Tucca exclaim, with a sidereference to the poets of his own day, that they are a sort of poor starved rascals that are ever wrapt up in foul linen, and can boast of nothing but a lean visage peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblem of beggary." We suppose this was too true a picture of many whose minds deserved a better environment of flesh and raiment. EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. PAS SOUTH AFRICA. HUNTING. ASSING on to Letloche, about twenty miles beyond the Bamangwato, we found a fine supply of water. This is a This is a point of so much interest in that country that the first question we ask of passers-by is, "Have you had water?" the first inquiry a native puts to a fellow-countryman is, "Where is the rain?" and, though they are by no means an untruthful nation, the answer generally is, "I don't know; there is none. We are killed with hunger and by the sun." If news is asked for, they commence with "There is no news; I heard some lies only," and then tell all they know. This spot was Mr. Gordon Cumming's farthest station north. Our house at Kolobeng having been quite in the hunting-country, rhinoceros and buffaloes several times rushed past, and I was able to shoot the latter twice from our own door. We were favored by visits from this famous hunter during each of the five years of his warfare with wild animals. Many English gentlemen following the same pursuits paid their guides and assistants so punctually that in making arrangements for them we had to be careful that four did not go where two only were wanted they knew so well that an Englishman would pay that they depended implicitly on his word of honor; and not only would they go and hunt for five or six months in the north, enduring all the hardships of that trying mode of life with little else but meat of game to subsist on, but they willingly went seven hundred or eight hundred miles to Graham's Town, receiving for wages only a musket worth fifteen shillings. No one ever deceived them except one man, and, as I believed that he was afflicted | matter how great among pheasants, foxes and with a slight degree of the insanity of greedi- hounds, would do well to pause before resolvness, I upheld the honor of the English name ing to brave fever for the excitement of riskby paying his debts. As the guides of Mr. ing such a terrific charge. The scream or Cumming were furnished through my influ- trumpeting of this enormous brute when inence and usually got some strict charges as furiated is more like what the shriek of a to their behavior before parting, looking upon French steam-whistle would be to a man me in the light of a father, they always came standing on the dangerous part of a railroad to give me an account of their service, and than any other earthly sound; a horse unused told most of those hunting-adventures which to it will sometimes stand shivering instead have since been given to the world before we of taking his rider out of danger. It has had the pleasure of hearing our friend relate our friend relate happened often that the poor animal's legs them himself by our own fireside. I had do their duty so badly that he falls and exthus a tolerably good opportunity of testing poses his rider to be trodden into a mummy, their accuracy, and I have no hesitation in or, losing his or, losing his presence of mind, the rider may saying that for those who love that sort of allow the horse to dash under a tree and crack thing Mr. Cumming's book conveys a truthful his cranium against a branch. As one charge idea of South African hunting. Some things from an elephant has made embryo Nimrods in it require explanation, but the numbers of bid a final adieu to the chase, incipient Goranimals said to have been met with and kill- don Cummings might try their nerves by ed are by no means improbable, considering standing on railways till the engines were the amount of large game then in the coun- within a few yards of them. Hunting eletry. Two other gentlemen hunting in the phants on foot would be not less dangerous, same region destroyed in one season no fewer unless the Ceylon mode of killing them by than seventy-eight rhinoceroses alone. Sports- one shot could be followed; it has never men, however, would not now find an equal been tried in Africa. number, for as guns are introduced among the tribes all these fine animals melt away like snow in spring. In the more remote. districts where firearins have not yet been introduced, with the single exception of the rhinoceros, the game is to be found in numbers much greater than Mr. Cumming ever saw. The tsetse is, however, an insuperable barrier to hunting with horses there, and Europeans can do nothing on foot. The step of the elephant when charging the hunter, though apparently not quick, is so long that the pace equals the speed of a good horse at a canter. A young sportsman, no TRADING. It was to be expected that they would be imposed upon in their first attempt at trading, but I believe that this could not be so easily repeated. It is, however, unfortunate that in dealing with the natives in the interior there is no attempt made at the establishment of fair prices. The trader shows a quantity of goods, the native asks for more, and more is given. The native, being ignorant of the value of the goods or of his ivory, tries what another demand will bring. After some haggling, an addition is made, and that bargain is concluded to the satisfaction of both parties. Another trader comes, and perhaps offers more than the first; the customary demand for an addition is made, and he yields. The natives by this time are beginning to believe that the more they ask, the more they will get: they continue to urge, the trader bursts into a rage, and the trade is stopped, to be renewed next day by a higher offer. The natives naturally conclude that they were right the day before, and a most disagreeable commercial intercourse is established. A great amount of time is spent in concluding these bargains. In other parts it is quite common to see the natives going from one trader to another till they have finished the whole village, and some give presents of brandy to tempt their custom. Much of this unpleasant state of feeling between natives and Europeans results from the commencements made by those who were ignorant of the language, and from the want of education being given at the same time. A THUNDER-STORM. We passed through the patch of the tsetse which exists between Linyanti and Seshéke by night. The majority of the company went on by daylight, in order to prepare our beds. Sekeletu and I, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse till dark. We then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became so pitchy dark that both horses and men were completely blinded. lightning spread over the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time, in shape exactly like those of a tree. This, with great volumes of sheet-lightning, enabled us at times to see the whole country. The intervals between the flashes were so densely dark as to The convey the idea of stone-blindness. The horses trembled, cried out and turned round as if searching for each other, and every new flash revealed the men taking different directions, laughing and stumbling against each other. The thunder was of that tremendously loud kind only to be heard in tropical countries, and which friends from India have assured me is louder in Africa than any they have ever heard elsewhere. Then came a pelting rain, which completed our confusion. After the intense heat of the day we soon felt miserably cold, and turned aside to a fire we saw in the distance. This had been made by some people on their march, for this path is seldom without numbers of strangers passing to and from the capital. My clothing having gone on, I lay down on the cold ground, expecting to spend a miserable night, but Sekeletu kindly covered me with his own blanket and lay uncovered himself. I was much affected by this little act of genuine kindness. If such men must perish by the advance of civilization, as certain races of animals do before others, it is a pity. THE FALLS OF VICTORIA. As this was the point from which we intended to strike off to the north-east, I resolved on the following day to visit the Falls of Victoria, called by the natives Mosioatunya, or, more anciently, Shongwe. Of these we had often heard since we came into the country; indeed, one of the questions asked by Sebituane was, “Have you smoke that sounds in your country?" They did not go near enough to examine them, but, viewing them with awe at a distance, said, in reference to the vapor and noise, "Mosi oa tunya' Mosi oa tunya" ("Smoke does sound there"). It was previously called | ly as when large tracts of grass are burned in Shongwe, the meaning of which I could not Africa. Five columns now arose, and, bendascertain. The word for a "pot" resembles ing in the direction of the wind, they seemed this, and it may mean a seething caldron, placed against a low ridge covered with trees; but I am not certain of it. Being persuaded the tops of the columns at this distance apthat Mr. Oswell and myself were the very peared to mingle with the clouds. They were first Europeans who ever visited the Zambesi white below and higher up became dark, so in the centre of the country, and that this is as to simulate smoke very closely. The the connecting-link between the known and whole scene was extremely beautiful; the unknown portions of that river, I decided to banks and islands dotted over the river are use the same liberty as the Makololo did, adorned with sylvan vegetation of great and gave the only English name I have variety of color and form. At the period affixed to any part of the country. No bet- of our visit several trees were spangled over ter proof of previous ignorance of this river with blossoms. Trees have each their own could be desired than that an untravelled physiognomy. There, towering over all, gentleman who had spent a great part of his stands the great burly baobab, each of life in the study of the geography of Africa, whose enormous arms would form the trunk and knew everything written on the subject of a large tree, beside groups of graceful from the time of Ptolemy downward, actually palms which with their feathery-shaped asserted in the Athenæum, while I was com- leaves depicted on the sky lend their ing up the Red Sea, that this magnificent beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic river, the Leeambye, had "no connection they always mean "far from home," for with the Zambesi, but flowed under the one can never get over their foreign air in Kalahari desert and became lost," and a picture or landscape. The silvery mohothat, as all the old maps asserted, the nono, which in the tropics is in form like Zambesi took its rise in the very hills to the cedar of Lebanon, stands in pleasing conwhich we have now come." This modest trast with the dark color of the motsouri, assertion smacks exactly as if a native of whose cypress-form is dotted over at presTimbuctu should declare that the "Thames" ent with its pleasant scarlet fruit. Some and the "Pool" were different rivers, he trees resemble the great spreading oak, having seen neither the one nor the other. others assume the character of our own Leambye and Zambesi mean the very same elms and chestnuts; but no one can imthing—viz., “the River." agine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes, but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. The only want felt is that of mountains in the background. The falls are bounded on three sides by ridges. three hundred or four hundred feet in height, แ Sekeletu intended to accompany me, but, one canoe only having come instead of the two he had ordered, he resigned it to me. After twenty minutes' sail from Kalai we came in sight, for the first time, of the columns of vapor, appropriately called "smoke," rising at a distance of five or six miles, exact which are covered with forest, with red soil | end of the tunnel to the other, down through appearing among the trees. · When about half a mile from the falls, I left the canoe by which we had come down thus far and embarked in a lighter one, with men well acquainted with the rapids, who by passing down the centre of the stream in the eddies and still places caused by many jutting rocks brought me to an island situated in the middle of the river and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls. In coming hither there was danger of being swept down by the streams which rushed along on each side of the island, but the river was now low, and we sailed where it is totally impossible to go when the water is high. But, though we had reached the island and were within a few yards of the spot a view from which would solve the whole problem, I believe that no one could perceive where the vast body of water went; it seemed to lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the fissure into which it disappeared being only eighty feet distant. At least, I did not comprehend it until, creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet, and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty yards. The entire falls are simply a crack made in a hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zambesi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thirty or forty miles of hills. If one imagines the Thames filled with low tree-covered hills immediately be yond the tunnel, extending as far as Gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London mud, and a fissure made therein from one the keystones of the arch, and prolonged from the left end of the tunnel through thirty miles of hills, the pathway being one hundred feet down from the bed of the river instead of what it is, with the lips of the fissure from eighty to one hundred feet apart, then fancy the Thames leaping bodily into the gulf and forced there to change its direction and flow from the right to the left bank, and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills,-he may have some idea of what takes place at this the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa. In looking down into the fissure on the right of the island one sees nothing but a dense white cloud, which at the time we visited the spot had two bright rainbows on it. (The sun was on the meridian, and the declination about equal to the latitude of the place). From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapor exactly like steam, and it mounted two hundred or three hundred feet high; there condensing, it changed its hue to that of dark smoke and came back in a constant shower, which soon wetted us to the skin. This shower falls chiefly on the opposite side of the fissure, and a few yards back from the lip there stands a straight hedge of evergreen trees whose leaves are always wet. From their roots a number of little rills run back into the gulf, but as they flow down the steep wall there the column of vapor in its ascent licks them up clean off the rock, and away they mount again. They are constantly running down, but never reach the bottom. On the left of the island we see the water. at the bottom, a white rolling mass moving away to the prolongation of the fissure which branches off near the left bank of the river. A piece of the rock has fallen off a spot on |