nish myself with many things which I foresaw would be very necessary to me.

THE SCOTCH SHEPHERD AND HIS DOG.-Hogg.

He

My dog was always my companion. I conversed with him the whole day; I shared every meal with him, and my plaid in the time of a shower; the consequence was that I generally had the best dogs in all the country. The first remarkable one that I had was named Sirrah. was, beyond all comparison, the best dog I ever saw. He was of a surly, unsocial temper, disdained all flattery, and refused to be caressed; but his attention to his master's commands and interests never will be again equalled by any of the canine race.

The first time I saw him a drover was leading him by a rope; he was hungry and lean, and far from being a beautiful cur, for he was almost all over black, and had a grim face, striped with dark brown. The man had bought him of a boy for three shillings, somewhere on the Border, and doubtless had used him very ill on his journey. I thought I discovered a sort of sullen intelligence in his face, notwithstanding his dejected and forlorn situation, so I gave the drover a guinea for him, and appropriated the captive to myself. I believe there never was a guinea so well laid out; at least, I am satisfied that I never laid out one to so good a purpose.

He was scarcely then a year old, and knew so little of herding that he had never turned a sheep in his life; but as soon as he discovered it was his duty to do so, and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions. He would try every way deliberately till he found out what I wanted him to do; and when once I made him understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it again.

Well as I knew him, he very often astonished me; for when hard pressed in accomplishing the task he was put to, he had expedients of the moment that bespoke a great

C

share of the reasoning faculty. Were I to relate all his exploits, it would require a volume; I shall only mention one, to prove what kind of an animal he was. I was a shepherd for two years on the same farm, where I had always about seven hundred lambs put under my charge every year, at weaning-time. As they were of the short, or black-faced breed, the breaking of them was a very ticklish and difficult task. I was obliged to watch them night and day for the first four days, during which time I had always a person to assist me. It happened one year that just about midnight the lambs broke loose and came up the moor upon us, making a noise with running louder than thunder. We got up and waved our plaids, and shouted in hopes to turn them, but we only made matters worse; for in a moment they were all around us, and by our exertions we cut them into three divisions; one of these ran north, another south, and those that came up between us, straight up the moor to the westward. I called out, Sirrah, my man, they are away,' the word of all others that set him most upon the alert; but owing to the darkness of the night, and the blackness of the moor, I never saw him at all.

As the division of the lambs that ran southward were going straight toward the fold, where they had been that day taken from their dams, I was afraid they would go there and again mix with them; so I threw off part of my clothes and pursued them; and by great personal exertion, and the help of another old dog that I had besides Sirrah, I turned them, but in a few minutes afterwards lost them altogether. I ran here and there, not knowing what to do, but always, at intervals, gave a loud whistle to Sirrah, to let him know that I was depending on him. By that whistling, the lad who was assisting me found me out; but he likewise had lost all trace whatever of the lambs.

I asked him if he had never seen Sirrah. He said he had not; but that, after I left him, a wing of the lambs had come round with a twirl, and that he supposed Sirrah had given them a turn, though he could not see him for the darkness. We both concluded that whatever way the

lambs ran at first, they would finally land at the fold where they left their mothers, and without delay we bent our course towards it; but when we came there, there was nothing of them, nor any kind of bleating to be heard, and we discovered, with vexation, that we had come on a wrong track. My companion then bent his course towards the farm of Glen, on the north, and I ran away westward for several miles, along the wild track where the lambs had grazed while following their dams. We met after it was day, far up in a place called the 'Ben Cleuch,' but neither of us had been able to discover our lambs, nor any traces of them. It was the most extraordinary circumstance that had ever occurred in the annals of the pastoral life! We had nothing to do but to return to our master, and inform him that we had lost his whole flock of lambs, and knew not what was become of them.

On our way home, however, we discovered a body of lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in front of them, looking all around for some relief, but still standing true to his charge. The sun was then up; and when we first came in view of them, we concluded that it was one of the divisions of the lambs, which Sirrah had been unable to manage until he came to that commanding situation. But what was our astonishment when we discovered, by degrees, that not one lamb of the whole flock was wanting! How he had got all the divisions collected, in the dark, is beyond comprehension. The charge was left entirely to himself, from midnight until the rising of the sun, and if all the shepherds in the forest had been there to assist him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety. All that I can say farther is, that I never felt so grateful to any creature below the sun as I did to my honest Sirrah that morning.

PEARL-FISHING.- Leisure Hour.'

We found Condatchy Bay the scene of much animation; for more than one hundred and fifty boats, principally

from the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, had reached the bay, and their crews were making preparations for engag ing in pearl-fishing, which was not to commence until the 16th of February, three days after our arrival.

An oyster-bank is divided into five parts, only one of which is fished in a year, and each in turns. This prevents the bank from being completely stripped, and gives the young oysters a chance of reaching maturity. The right of fishing on certain portions of the bank is sold at auction to the highest bidder, and purchased by speculative merchants, who generally lose money in the business. This, however, does not prevent them from engaging in it, since there is a chance of a large fortune being made at it in one

season.

Each fishing-boat is manned by twenty men, besides a tindal, or man acting as pilot, who has authority over all the others. Ten of the twenty men are divers; the others attend on them, pull the boat, and perform all other duties.

The oyster-banks off Condatchy are about twenty miles from the shore; and early on the evening of the 15th, more than a hundred boats were manned by men anxiously waiting for the signal for them to start for their respective fishing-grounds.

At ten o'clock in the evening a gun was fired at Arippo. It was a signal that the boats might start; and, setting a sail to catch the land breeze, then fairly on its way for the sea, we started. I had consented to form one of the ten of a boat's crew, whose duty consisted in managing the boat and looking after the divers; and, on our first excursion out, Senhor Manos, who had commanded the brig, was our tindal, or pilot.

We reached our station a little before sunrise, and preparations were immediately commenced for business. The divers divested themselves of all clothing except a small piece of calico about the loins; and to a belt around the waist, each fastened a small net to hold the oysters. Each had a piece of iron weighing about ten pounds, to which was tied a small line with a loop, in which a foot could be

inserted. These weights were to enable them to descend with greater rapidity to the bottom; for, as they could only remain under water from one minute and a half to two minutes, it was necessary that no time should be lost on the way down.

One end of the small line attached to the weight was retained in the boat, to enable us to recover the weight after the diver had reached the bottom and withdrawn his foot from the loop. Although there were ten divers in each boat, only five went over at a time. This enabled each to have a rest, and still kept the work constantly going on.

Each man before going over had placed around his body, under the arms, a line by which he could be pulled to the surface, the end of the line being held by one of the crew in the boat; and, as an additional precaution against danger, a line was hanging from the stem of the boat, and sunk with a weight to the bottom.

With a knife in one hand, and firmly grasping the nose with the other, five of our divers went over the side, and rapidly disappeared below, while those in the boats saw that the lines attached to their bodies ran out clear, and stood ready to pull them up should the signal be given for us to do so.

This was the first work of the kind I had ever seen performed, and the minute and a half or more in which we waited for the shaking of the lines, which was the signal for us to haul up, seemed to me a period of nearly ten minutes.

All came up within a few seconds of each other, and each had not less than one hundred oysters in the net. The diver attached to the line I was holding was the first to make an appearance, and required much more force in pulling him up than what I thought was necessary; but as he reached the surface, the reason of this was immediately seen. He was bearing in his hands a mass of oysters, adhering together, that he had succeeded in detaching from a rock with his knife. The mass could not have weighed less than forty pounds.