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economical ways, turning every scrap of ground capable of cultivation to account, and in some cases carrying cultivation to the very summit of the hills. Triberg, of course, means the town of the three mountains. But the chief thing which the tourist sees is the waterfall of the Gutach, which is the finest in all Germany. Like Wordsworth, I love" to hunt the waterfall," to go from fall to fall and to trace it to the upper stream, and, if possible, to the source. Now this fall of the river Gutach-they call it the Fallenbach-is one of five hundred feet, in a series of seven cascades. There are safe bridges which cross and recross the stream, giving views of the mass of waters both from above and from below. The pine forest creeps to the water's edge, but here we have not only the pine, but other trees of greener and varied leaf. The fallen fir tree lies across the chasm, the rocky boulders are covered with moss, exquisite wild flowers spring on the banks, and the ferns are dashed with the spray of the water cloud. But I went higher and higher still. I pass almost beyond the roar of the cataract, through the damp narrow pathway in the wood, but the stream is murmuring along its rocky bed, lashed into eddies and mimic cascades around the boulders, and preparing itself for its gigantic leaps below.

I get back into Triberg, and in the mile between the little town and the railway-station, I find a number of travellers and tourists, English and Americans being of course largely predominant. I turn aside to the baths, where I spring the douche and charge columns of water against myself. One regret I have for these nice people of the Black Forest, that, with few exceptions, they will never, never view the sea, that great blessing of our island home. May it be theirs to stand on the shore of that "sea of glass mingled with crystal"! Triberg is the great seat of the Dutch clock business, which I mentioned. It is also famous for its musical boxes, and that fine musical instrument, the orchestrion. There are lovely walks and excursions, but of course the waterfall transcends them all in interest. Still the scenery of the Hollenthal is by some considered the most impressive in the Black Forest.

It is best reached by coach from Freiburg, and the postal diligence service is not highly spoken of. The best thing is to walk. The road gradually contracts. There is just room for a narrow road by the side of a brawling, tumbling stream. Overhead the rocks almost close in upon the traveller, emitting only scanty gleams of sunshine. The sublime part of the pass is about a mile. Continuing on the road you come to one of the pretty lakes of the forest. It was on this road, then hardly passable, that the unhappy Marie Antoinette made her first ill-omened journey into France, and it was by this road that Moreau's famous military retreat was effected in the French revolutionary war.

The Black Forest is the great water-bed of rivers. The Danube and the Necker take their rise here, and the Rhine is mainly fed by its streams. The writer in Murray's 66 Handbook" (Rhine and North Germany) truly says: "This is indeed a land of fountains and of watercourses; and though the height of the mountain's is not great and they have no glaciers or perpetual snow, yet the reservoirs of the Black Forest feed with large sup

plies the two principal rivers of Europe. The flakes of winter snow which descend upon some of the ridges, nay, even the drops of rain falling on opposite sides of a house, in some situations, are destined to end their career at the two opposite extremities of a continent; and while part find their way to the German Ocean, others which reach the ground within a few feet of them, take an opposite course and fall into the Black Sea." At Donaueschingen we come to the reputed source of the Danube. There is a beautiful park, like an English park, with a lake with swans, which are reputed to have descended from the first swans brought into Europe from Cyprus at the time of the Crusades. But there is something more interesting still. In a garden on the left of the Palace there is a round basin of thick masonry, surmounted by an allegorical statue, full of clear sparkling water bubbling up into the air. There is a pitcher and goblet for those who will drink of the fountain. This is the far-famed source of the Danube.

Two other streams, two miles further, claim each to be the true source; but as these streams are apt to run dry until replenished from this fountain, I think it has a true title to be called the source of the Danube. A little while before I came to Donaueschingen, I had the pleasure of meeting two English ladies, who were about to go to the Moravian settlement of Konigsfield, near Peterzell station. The settlement is famous for neatness, industry, and education. The Moravians have kept the faith pure and unsullied through many generations, and have been among the greatest missionaries in the world. I will only add that those who wish to know more about the country should read Miss Seguin's recent work, "The Black Forest : its People and Legends," which has much useful information, embedded, however, in a number of legends hardly worth preserving.

OUR OWN.

HE shoemaker, busy from morn till night
With pegs and awl and lapstone and leather,
Scarce raises his head until candle-light,
To mark the changes in wind or weather.
At other folks' soles he cobbles away,

Mending or making-he may not choose! Yet they of his household complainingly say: "The shoemaker's children must go without shoes."

The milkman is stirring before the dawn,

For milking time must begin so early.
Bonniface, Dorrit, and Crumpled Horn,
Brindle and Buttercup, Snowdrop and Curly,
Give down their portions; the cans are all filled,
For wives in homespun and wives in silk;
If any be lacking or any be spilled,

The milkman's children must go without milk.
The stranger who comes for a single day

To sit at our board must be given our best;
How gracious and courteous the words we say,
How ready our smile at his feeblest jest.
Let it be so! Hospitality teaches,

Not that we give to our guest alone :
Our kindliest smiles, and our gentlest speeches,
Are never too good to bestow on our own.
OY ALLISON.

I CORNADO ON THE CASPIAN.

HE following sketch is from the pen of a travelling correspondent of the Daily News, then sojourning at Gumuche Tepe, a town on the shores of the Caspian :

During early spring, in this part of the world, the weather changes as rapidly from snow and sleet to scorching sunshine, and then back again to storm and generally severe weather, as if a harlequin's bat were one of the "properties" of the weather office. Four days ago, without any great exertion of the imagination, one might have fancied himself in the Arctic regions. The sky was dull leaden grey, and the continuously falling snow had converted the plain into one vast expanse of dazzling white. Then one night we had what is here an infallible sign of fine weather being about to ensue. The jackals yelped and howled continuously, and were answered by the village dogs. It is odd enough that unless the dogs answer, the cry of the jackals has no significance. Next morning the sun shone out with a brilliancy and power rarely experienced in England, even in Midsummer. The snow rapidly disappeared from the steppes, and the huge white mass of the Elburz Mountains stood out against the clear blue sky, glittering in the sun like the giant ramparts of some enchanter's castle. The horses, too, had begun to shed their shaggy winter coats, and everything betokened the approach of permanent warm weather. The Turcomans undid the storm lashings of their kibitkas, and removed the extra felt coverings from the roofs. So sultry was the weather that people were forced to sit outside, in the shade of their huts, during the mid-day hours. The huge wolf-like dogs lay about in the sun panting, with their tongues lolling

out.

For two days this warm sunny weather continued without interruption, and the third set in with equal promise.

being forced up the channel, a result which follows in ten minutes after the commencement of the storm.

66

Meanwhile, to uninitiated eyes, the weather seemed not in the least likely to undergo a change. The sun was as hot and the sky as clear as before. Flocks of sea birds, however, flew screaming inland, and far out over the Caspian, away on the western horizon, a narrow snow-white streak was visible. It resembled the steam from a railway engine. It rose rapidly, the upper edge torn into jagged fringe known to sailors as catspaws." The wind, which had been blowing from the east, suddenly veered about to the opposite direction; and ere long the sea was completely shut out from view by the drifting vapour mass. Then the land was invaded; the mountains disappeared behind the mist, and the storm burst over the village with a sudden violence that was terrific. Had the inhabitants been taken unawares, as sometimes happens at night, when the premonitory signs cannot be observed in time, not one of the frail huts would have been left standing. That in which I was staggered and shook in such a fashion that I feared each moment that its frail bird-cage like framework would go to pieces. Some camels laden with hay, which were out on the plain when the "tenkis "" or tornado burst, had their loads scattered into the air in a moment, the animals themselves crouching close to the earth to avoid the violence of the tempest.

All day and all night long its fury continued unabated, and even on the morning following its commencement the wind and rain showed no sign of abatement. Under the combined action of the westerly gale and the natural current, the river was on the point of overflowing its banks within the village.

On such a coast as this, where ships are obliged to come into very shallow water in order to get any way reasonably near the shore, the danger of these sudden and violent tempests is very great.

THE INTERNATIONAL SCRIPTURE READING UNION.

I was sitting on a carpet, in the shade of a kibitka which serves as a medress, or theological seminary, where the ahoun, or professor, expounds knotty passages of the Koran to a dozen aspirants to the priesthood. I was trying to write, and at the same time answer the multitudinous questions put to me by half a dozen inquisitive, preposterously-hatted Turcomans. It was about half-past two in the afternoon. The sun was in- DAILY tensely hot. All at once I became aware of a confused clamour in the village, and noticed the inhabitants scampering about in a most unusual fashion, shouting and gesticulating energetically. Men were hurriedly putting on their houses the coverings which had been laid aside as useless. Some women were conveying within doors with frantic haste newlywashed articles which were drying in the sun, while others with earthen pitchers and vessels of every description were hurrying to the river bank for water. Everyone was shouting "Tenkis! tenkis!"

Not understanding what this word meant, and thinking that the people were crying "Tekkè," I fancied that Noor Berdi Khan's cavalry had made a descent on the village, and that the place was being put in a state of defence, the water I supposed being for the purpose of extinguishing incendiary fires.

moment.

My host, an old hump-backed Turcoman fisherman, was at the door of his house, evidently in a state of the greatest anxiety, and calling to me to come in without loss of a Under the impression that I was liable at any moment to be assailed by Tekké marauders, I hastily got my papers together, and rushing into the hut, made straight for the place where my sword and revolver were hanging. Inside the dwelling all was confusion. Masts of boats, boat-hooks, and miscellaneous pieces of wood were being planted against the roof and sides of the kibitka, and camel-hair ropes and cables were being hurriedly carried outside and thrown over the roof, the ends lashed to pickets in the ground. It was only then I understood the cause of the sudden alarm. A tornado was coming on, and the people, having partially dismantled their houses, were in the greatest trepidation lest they should be totally wrecked and blown away bodily across the plain.

The din throughout the village was amazing. Dogs, their tails between their legs, ran about howling dismally. Men and women hurried to and fro with poles and ropes shouting and screaming; and the activity of the water-carriers knew no bounds. These latter were securing a supply before the water of the river became undrinkable through that of the sea

PORTIONS FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER.

SUNDAY . October

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CHAPTER I.-The Old Home.

Y mother made me promise her that I would write, though I had not then any knowledge, and have almost as little now, how I should convey what I wrote to her. But I conceive it is not the part of a son who loves his mother, or even a possibility for him to refuse her such a request as that, when he is leaving her for the first time in his life, and on an expedition fraught with very much of danger. On the contrary, a good son, at least in my country, obeys his mother, whenever her demands are reasonable.

Lettice is the only one of us that has any beauty to boast of, mother says; while father repeats as often as he hears this, that beauty is not to be boasted of, a mere gift of the Almighty, given and removed at pleasure, in which it were a sin to delight oneself. But for me, I prefer beauty to ugliness, any day, and Lettice is admired by everyone about

us.

I don't believe I ever in my life thought so much about home as I have done since I left it. I am never patrolling at night, without having every field, and every tree almost, as plainly before me as if I were in Yorkshire instead of Devonshire. I can almost see my sisters, Patience and Miriam and Lettice, and hear my mother's voice, all busy together in the

Nothing was further from my expectations a few short months ago, than that I should take a share in this struggle now going forward, as my father ex-house and the dairy in the early morning; and I presses it, between the king and his people, for their lawful rights. It seemed to me enough for one family, and that not the largest in Yorkshire, to have the head of it engaged to maintain freedom, and it was with some surprise that I received my father's commands to prepare to join him.

Mother by no means held me back, and 1, who loved adventure, should have had no anxieties whatever, save for the business of the farm, which at that moment was pressing, for the lambs were still young and tender and needing care, and there were several calves and colts to be minded, and I mistrusted the wisdom and the judgment of Jonathan Thorp, whom father trusted boundlessly. And when I told him my fears, I received less thanks than would have been welcome.

"Thy mother is not a fool, Benjamin," he said, "and if Jonathan Thorp is occasionally somewhat idle, or even a trifle too much given to liquor, her eyes are no less sharp than thine and her authority will be greater. Besides, she cannot go with me to the conflict, and thou canst; therefore, without more ado, get thyself ready. If I had seven sons instead of only one, they should be all equally in God's hands this day, to let righteousness conquer, and tyranny and oppression be overcome."

At every fresh act of the king that my father perceived encroached upon the liberties of us subjects, he waxed very warm and wroth indeed, being sometimes scarcely able to keep himself within the bounds of moderation in his rage. I think I see him now, on the receipt of such news, walking up and down quite fast and furious, stamping his foot into the ground, as if he could thereby stamp out the wrong, and quite unmindful that he only spoiled the innocent daisies and buttercups, that could do no harm to anybody.

Until I came to this southern land, I believed there was no such meadow as the Lower Flat at Briar Grange for beauty and for flowers in all England. Lettice thinks so yet, I make no doubt. Her pretty brown eyes would fill to see father's heels crushing the gold and white of the flowers, and when he knew this, he was almost as sorry as herself, for his heart was tender enough when once reached. Lettice had always great power with father to make his wishes answerable to hers; she is very winning and graceful, and as light and agile as a fawn, of which she constantly reminds me in her movements, and in the deep colour of her eyes, and the gentleness of her

countenance.

know how the cows, with "Order" and "Diligence," and pretty little" Spotty" at their head, will troop in as gravely and solemnly to be milked, as if they were soldiers under review.

I notice that the women here are not equal for stature or commanding looks to our Yorkshire women. Only at one neighbouring place, Saltash, there exists a race of Amazons almost, who constantly dispute the power of the men to manage the boats; and in such aquatic sports and prowess as I never saw anything to equal before. The sea itself is a great novelty to me, and from the fortress we have excellent and wide-spreading views, of which I never tire. The softer, balmier air of this southern land would quite oppress me, were it not for the sea breezes.

My father reminded me, when we parted, that here at Plymouth, I should be in the very town of the great Sir Francis Drake, and that I should see the places he made famous when he sailed out to conquer the Armada, and to quell the Popish power of Philip. And Popery, my father says, is all ready to lift up her head again in England, for that the Queen is favourable thereto, and has no good love to her English subjects, unless she could make them Papists like herself.

As soon as Plymouth declared itself for the Parliament, a detachment was sent here to strengthen the hands of the townsmen, and I was numbered amongst these, thus separating me from my father, and rendering it much more difficult, being now some hundreds of miles from my home, to have any communication with those who remain in it. My father is more learned in the wisdom of the schools than most yeomen; he even had, through circumstances I do not precisely remember, some brief term at College in Cambridge, where he formed the acquaintance of a man now become a noted man of the time, even Oliver Cromwell, to whom my father pays the deepest respect, regarding him as a man of ripe judgment, of prompt action, and likewise of some scholarly attainment.

Many who are of my father's ways of thinking in religious matters, are inclined to estimate but little such head learning, as tending to pride of heart, but my father, so far from this, insisted beyond what I desired, that I should learn, and himself instructed me, often when I was far readier for bed than for study. But the fear of a rod is a wonderful awakener for a boy's eyes. I am not sorry now that I can read, write, and make shift to reckon up a

lengthy bill, or to sketch a plan for earthworks and fortifications. Already I observe that this inclines the minds of those in authority to treat me with more attention, and I was gratified to hear Captain Corbet call me to-day "that well-instructed young Yorkshireman," when he looked at the chart he had desired me to prepare of Maudlyn Fort.

But I foresee in this place difficulties for which my old life has but very ill prepared me, viz., a dearth of provisions. Now I never remember the time when I had to give thought as to what I should eat or drink; and to every meal my good mother provided, I have ever brought an excellent appetite. The breakfast was ready at six, the dinner at eleven, and the supper again at six, as regularly as if the hours themselves were laden with the proper meals to be

eaten.

We are not yet face to face with hunger, nor shall we be for many days, perhaps even months to come, for as yet the siege is rather talked of than actually begun, and we are expecting some strong reinforcements presently from Portsmouth way. Since I left my father, I have had no home news whatever, either through him or directly to myself; so that I am at a great loss as to where he is or how they fare at home, deprived of their natural protectors; and with only Jonathan Thorp to depend upon, who is, in my estimation, about as likely to be useful in the way of support as a broken reed.

There is no fear that Briar Grange will be molested, save that when troops come into the vicinity no place is safe. But the King's court, such as it is, is held at York, and Hull is more in danger than we, indeed the country places, my father says, are often the safest in war time. It is a matter of chance, as I should say-of Providence, as my father would call it-that he and I are in this land to take part in this struggle. The name of this town of Plymouth in which I am now located to help to strengthen the garrison, as much as one man may, is perfectly familiar to me.

It was a near point that I did not visit it long since in my babyhood, for my father was only as by a hair's breadth prevented from joining the voyagers in the Mayflower and sailing away to the new world of America, and the rising colony of New England therein. But owing to some miscalculation as to the time when the ship would sail he missed his passage, and almost immediately thereafter his father died, and he succeeded to Briar Grange, and had the care of my grandmother on his hands as well as one of the best and most productive farms in Yorkshire, though not, I will admit, one of the largest.

Grandmother still lives with us, and I can hardly conceive of a greater calamity to the family than her death, though she is a feeble old woman, and sometimes in the winter season confined to her bed for weeks together. We who know her find it easy to believe that there are saints: her face shines with goodness, and neither the girls, my sisters, nor I, could entertain any ill-humour in her presence.

When the milk turns sour, or the mildew gets into the corn, or when Joan, our maid, breaks a dish, mother goes for comfort to grandmother, and never comes empty away. From Patience, downwards, we children have always carried our

sorrows to her, and if there was anything to be thought of to lessen them it would never escape her. It was as bad to part from her as from mother, and there was less hope in it, yet she cheered me in the midst of the parting more than anybody else had done.

CHAPTER II.-My Surroundings..

IF ever these records get to Briar Grange, one of the first things my mother and sisters and even my dear grandmother will want to know will be what sort of a place I am in.

The garrison is quartered in the various forts and the castle, though some few have private lodging. From my chamber in the fortress I have an excellent prospect of the sea, reaching to Mount Edgecumbe, with a nearer view close opposite of Fort Stamford and Sutton Pool. As to the town of Plymouth, it is a pretty convenient place, walled round, except where the water is a defence, and containing many good streets. It has a large and capacious church, dedicated to St. Andrew, which, on the principle of seeing what is to be seen, I have entered at several different times, and always found it well attended by a goodly company of people. Indeed, so crowded has it become of late years, that my comrade, Ensign Tonkin, tells me it was a matter of necessity that the new church, in course of erection, which is called after King Charles, should be built.

even

The people of Plymouth are mostly as thorough followers of the Parliament in their opinions as my father. They have busied themselves fortifying the place in its interests, ever since the king called away from the governorship of the place Sir Jacob Astley, to be his Major-General of Foot. The Parliament appointed the Earl of Ruthven as Governor, and Sir Nicholas Carew to be over the fort in which I dwell and St. Nicholas Island; which lies close outside in the open sea, as it were between Plymouth and Mount Edgecumbe.

Already, at the end of last year Sir Ralph Hopton appeared with a Royalist army before the town, but was driven off from it by Earl Stamford; since which time much has been done to improve the defences and strengthen the garrison, by adding to the valour of the men of Plymouth a little of that indigenous to other counties, and amongst the rest that far-off county of Yorkshire, of which I am proud to be called a native.

Now, having been here for two whole months, I am well accustomed to the place, and find no difficulty in tracing my way to any part of the town or its suroundings. We have several well-placed forts in close vicinity to the town to ward off attack, forming a chain from Lipson Fort on the east to Pennycomequick,_and new works on the west, besides works at Laira Point, Prince Rock, and Catdown, and on the opposite heights at Mount Stamford. My friend and comrade Ensign Tonkin, himself & native of Plymouth, has narrated to me what happened in December of last year. The garrison, himself being one of the number, under the command of General Ruthven "stood upon the Laira for the space of three hours facing the enemy."

The Cavaliers showed cowardice: they refused fair

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