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Often wanting the necessaries of life, every day in peril from wild beasts, his solitary hut and its lone dweller actually watched on one occasion for many successive days and nights by a tiger; disliked by the Indians, and abandoned by the white men, he says, Our Saviour was always with me, and I spent my time in happiness and peace.' One incident is too illustrative of great principles to be omitted. Lying in his hammock in a paroxysm of fever, a boa-constrictor slowly glided from the roof, and coiled its huge body round the missionary; and now entwined round the limbs and neck. of Daehne, a horrible Laocoon-like death seemed inevitable. Even then the great ambition of his heart was his ruling passion. He knew that if found dead in his hut the Indians would be suspected, and that the government (who had allotted him the land) would punish some on suspicion; and knowing how this would alienate the Indians' minds from his successors, while struggling with the snake, with his left hand, with apostolic calmness, he wrote on the table with a piece of chalk, 'A serpent has killed me.' Some promises of Scripture darted into his mind; a supernatural energy seemed given; it was another minute's life-struggle, but in it he was victorious, and after having been bitten severely, he succeeded in tearing loose the constrictor from his body. The mission was at length abandoned, and Daehne, old and worn, returned to die peacefully in his bed, in his own dear Holland.'

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Nothing more appears to have been done for the Indians of British Guiana until 1826, when the Church Missionary Society sent a pious catechist among them. Sir Benjamin D'Urban made a grant of land for mission purposes to this society at a place called Bartica, a tongue of land situated at the confluence of the Mazaroony and Essequibo rivers. Here in 1846 we saw a church; a good school-room, well attended by Indian boys and girls; a substantial dwelling for the missionary; and a goodly number of the aborigines, who, having found out that the missionary is not a Christian like other white men,' have been wholly or in part reclaimed from a wandering life, and were then turning their attention to the cultivation of the soil, or the severer toil of wood-cutting. The joy of seeing these unmistakeable evidences of real success standing out from the dense forest that everywhere surrounded the mission premises was extreme; and in the hope that this chapter on Indian missions will interest our young readers, we shall briefly detail the labours of the interval noted above. The catechist alluded to was soon joined by Mr. Youd and his wife. The conversational language of the Carrabees was easily acquired, and the devoted missionary held many a long discourse with the Indians of Tamuasy' (God) and his great salvation. Considerable success attended his labours at Bartica, and, thus encouraged, he penetrated five weeks distance into the interior, among the Macusie tribes, occupying the then unknown regions of British Guiana, leaving the Bartica settlement under the care of his assistant catechist. Everywhere the Indians received Mr. Youd with readiness, listened to his teachings, and hailed him as their friend. Besides Sir Robert Schomburgh in the pursuit of discovery, and the missionary, no European had ever

penetrated so far into the interior; and even here the missionary was the pioneer of the traveller. In Sir Robert's finely illustrated work, he thus describes this mission settlement at Pirara :*-'I again approached Pirara, and remarked with surprise and pleasure the appearance and number of dwellings which composed the village. I counted upwards of thirty huts, the highest place being occupied by a building somewhat European in construction, the walls of which, plastered by the red ochreous clay of the savannahs, and the roof with gable ends neatly thatched with palm leaves, formed a strong contrast to the surrounding dome-shaped huts of the Indians. Another building, a little to the east of the former, and of large dimensions, but of similar construction, was in the course of erection; and men, women, and children appeared equally eager to lend an assisting hand for its completion. This house was intended to be dedicated to the service of the only true God; the former for the dwelling of the missionary, to whose arrival and residence among them they were looking forward with great delight. In anticipation that their request for a missionary to come and settle among them would be granted, they had begun to erect these houses according to their idea of the mode of building among the white people, and twenty-nine men of their tribe had been selected to assist in conveying the missionary to his station.' Mark the sequel:- On my return from an exploring expedition to Pirara in May, 1839, we found it occupied by a detachment of Brazilian National Guards, under Senhor Pedro Ayres. The church in which formerly hymns to the praise of our Lord had been sung, and where the first seeds of Christianity were sown amongst the benighted Indians, was now converted into barracks, and was the theatre of obscene language and nightly revels. An official despatch was delivered to the missionary, from the Commander of the Upper and Lower Amazon, desiring him to withdraw and disperse the mission. The Brazilian † detachment had orders to enforce obedience to this mandate. Too many desolated places besides Pirara are now to be seen in the savannahs, which were once the site of villages, and which have met a similar fate. When will the hour come when peace and happiness shall be insured to the poor remnants of those who once roved in full supremacy over the soil which Europeans and their descendants have usurped!'

The troubles of the faithful missionary were not yet ended; the worst was yet to come; in the hope of continuing his work he removed to the Urwa rapids, and there commenced another settlement. No sooner was the forest cleared and the progress cheering, than a second Brazilian detachment broke up the station, and dispersed the mission. Broken-hearted, Mrs. Youd sunk under their accumulated trials and fatigues, and by the banks of the Urwa river, in ground consecrated by a husband's bitter tears, unknown and uncared for, reposes the heroic

On the boundary line between Brazil and our own colony.

The boundary line between the Brazils and British Guiana has never been definitely fixed, and has led to innumerable evils.

wife of an heroic man until the final waking of the just. Nor was this all Mr. Y. had offended one of the Indians, and his death was resolved on. A poisoned leg of deer was sent him as a present; he fell asleep immediately after his meal, awoke in a few hours to find his body racked with acute pain, and in the course of a few days died. Wourali had done its work. The Indian chief, who saw his heart's desire in the death of Youd, met with a wretched fate. Loading his gun to the muzzle, he fired it, exclaiming, 'Now all is well;' the gun burst, and he was a corpse!

And yet his successor, Mr. Bernau, at Bartica Point, who also knows the meaning of peril and sorrow, calmly adds, in the spirit of his Master, I cannot but think that the privations of a missionary's life have been greatly magnified, and I venture to say that many a young soldier has shrunk back from enlisting himself among the small bands of missionaries on that account. I do not despair of the Indian, because I believe in the transforming influence of the glorious gospel. Christianize them first, and civilization is sure to follow.' Such is the faith of a lone dweller in the wilderness! In thus rescuing from oblivion the unknown labours of good men of another communion, we wish them God speed in the name of Jesus Christ.

Words for the Wise.

'Faithful are the wounds of a friend.'-SOLOMON.

Ego autem neminem nomino; quare irasci mihi nemo poterit, nisi qui ante de se voluerit confiteri.'-CICERO.

VIII. LOUD APPLAUSE.

IT was too true. Pitman himself might have furnished the report. The brief narrative had brought tears into my own eyes; but the melting mood had been abruptly terminated by the assembly clapping and cheering vociferously.

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There were the words in print, And so he died [loud applause].' I sat with my eyes fastened on them, until the entire scene returned to me from the world of shadows. First the rubicund face of the chairman; no shadow he, however, but a well-known civic dignitary, digesting (one could see) his dinner in state, and wiping, ever and anon, the perspiration from his ample forehead and ampler chin; then followed that large-hearted person, the vicar of All Saints; flanked by his less fortunate neighbour, the perpetual curate of let no man ask me what saint; next appeared Tritissimus, evidently in the act of incubation; and gradually the whole platform emerged from the darkness, groaning under the weight of orthodoxy, and, as the bills had announced, a very influential deputation.' Mr. M. was speaking;

and in a few more seconds I saw only him. He went on in a simple, natural manner, kindling with his theme, till at last the scene shifted a second time to the death-bed of the venerable Bede, which, I am not ashamed to own, I was looking at through my tears, when a tumult of vulgar applause dissolved the spell.

I have felt the cold iron of the dentist touch the naked nerve of a tooth; I have read at intervals the religious newspapers; I have heard the exclamation which the Drachenfels drew from a native of Cockaigne; I have seen the 'Windbag' lying at Agatha's elbow; I have understood that King Hudson was once the guest, for several days in succession, of the late Sir Robert Peel; and I see by the newspapers that the hero of Boulogne is at present Dictator of France: but of all the unexpected associations ever thrown in my teeth by this singular world, that loud applause' was, I sometimes think, the most revolting. What reader is not acquainted with the history? Bede was translating the Gospel of John into the Saxon tongue when his mortal sickness came on. "There remains now only one chapter,' said his amanuensis, but it seems difficult for you to speak.' 'It is easy,' was the old man's answer; 'take your pen, dip it in the ink, and write as fast as you can.' Soon after the young man said, 'Master, there is now but one sentence wanting;' upon which he bade him write faster. In a few minutes the scribe said, 'Now it is finished;' to which he replied, "Thou hast said the truth; consummatum est. Take up my head, &c.; and so he died' [loud applause].

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Why, one might as well applaud in the death-chamber itself! Addison, we are told, sent for his step-son, the young Earl of Warwick, that he might show him how a Christian could die; but we do not hear that even the young roué applauded on the occasion. 'Nay,' cries Veridicus, Drury-lane itself is more decorous; for when, in my youthful days, I went once to see Kean in Othello, even the galleries heard in silence the exclamation of the broken-hearted Moor, "Put out the light, and then-put out the light." Surely the critics who bawled applause in the ears of the young orator, might have found some more seemly way of rewarding him for his speech, and have let the good old Anglo-Saxon die in peace. Better have called forth their favourite actor at the close of the performance,' adds my shrewd friend, and given him three times three, than to have profaned the chamber of death with these noisy acclamations.' And Discipulus, who never even breathed the tainted atmosphere of theatres, but who knows his Bible well, remarks that he has often heard read those great words of Paul, 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I am now ready to be offered; but that he never yet heard them followed by a round of applause. One knows not, however, what one may live to see. Possibly, as he conjectures, the discovery of some MS. which Wetstein, Bengel, Mill, Griesbach, Scholz, and Tischendorf, had all missed, with a new reading in it of a certain passage in the Acts, totally subversive of the accredited history, and making it plain that the Ephesian elders received Paul's admirable speech' with loud applause, rather than with tears?—

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No doubt this of Mr. M.'s was an extreme case. Our goodnatured critics are not always so clumsy. But upon how many other occasions must their vehement outcry needs prove infinitely offensive to a sober mind. These 'tremendous cheers' are well enough in their place. When Mulcock is elected vestry-clerk, after a severe struggle; when liberty triumphs in the person of the noble lord, the member for Shoestring; and, above all, when the Rev. Melchizedek McOrange, giving bull for bull, dares to beard the Scarlet Lady' in the Rotunda; we expect to hear shouting from innumerable throats. It is natural enough that exuberant electricity of that sort should be disposed of in that way; but that the Christian religion should have taken this shouting turn, must, one thinks, in the ears of the angels, have been an entirely novel and unexpected thing; and that in the present time it should be so noisy must seem astounding indeed. Who could see Exeter Hall in one of these paroxysms, and not find a heart of wisdom in that simple Grecian, who complained that his cockles would sing, although their houses were burning?

From shell-fish to the ocean is not far; and from old Neptune to the sailors who plow his back is but a step. Those who will take it with me may read words, apparently, in no trifling strain, from the pen of Discipulus :

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'Thou poor shipwrecked mariner, barely escaped with life, wilt thou, thyself but newly snatched from the unimaginable depths, take to premature shouting? Standing upon thy rock, which the waves wash, but cannot shake, thou hast cause for joy: but, blinded often by the salt spray, looking down now upon the receding waves, only to tremble anon, as they come back to break at thy feet again, in hoarse murmurs and angry surf, uncertain even as yet whether the highest tide and the wildest tempest be not still to come, thy joy, I think, for the present, will be mostly of the silent kind.' And again: Wilt thou float thy poor raft for the rescue of thy mates, with loud jubilant uproar from thine own throat? Not if thou art wise. For who knows whether thou shalt chance on even one spent swimmer of them all, in time to save him? And alas! how many must have gone down already beneath the wild, weltering waters, there to sleep until the sea shall give up its dead.' From which extracts it may safely be inferred, that the prize-speech-making and rapturous applause of the day do not find much favour with our friend. Indeed, I have heard him hint a slander, which I scarcely dare to repeat, namely, that Pliable's choicest peroration produces little more effect, now-a-days, than the blaze of light, which with a fiz-z-z, bang-bang, shr-r-r-r-r-r, makes an end of the performance at the Surrey Gardens; and that both are clapped in the same spirit. Without adopting this last opinion, one may venture a wish, that the rattling and clapping, at some of our religious meetings, did not invest it with a show of reason.

'Oh, this vinegar-cruet!' exclaims Sugar-candy, abruptly; who will find a stopper for it? May not pleasure be fitly expressed at such times by a little clapping and cheering? Sugar-candy, my friend, I do not take this interruption at all kindly; but we will not quarrel; I am

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