The most entertaining portions of the book to most readers will probably be the descriptions of river-side and mountain scenery, the many incidents of travel, the perilous adventures on the land and the waters, and the wide range of country travelled over by the writer, the cities of great fame which she visited, cities possessing within them objects of the highest historical and antiquarian interest, supplied her with the most abundant means of enriching her pages with facts and observations that could not but inform and amuse the reader. On one occasion she travelled from Calcutta to Allahabad by dāk, on another by the Ganges. Then there are given very clever and enlivening descriptions of Benares, of Cawnpore, of Lucknow and Delhi-of Agra, Fathigar, Ghazipur, Rajmahal, Kanauj, Assam, and indeed of the whole line of country from the Sunderbunds to the Himalaya range. Added to this, the fair traveller was an ardent collector of whatever was curious and rare in nature and in art, and we expect has a very well-furnished museum around her of Indian varieties and singularities. Nothing came amiss to her-flexible stones and butterflies, skeletons and skins, idols of all kinds, insects, plants, flying foxes, tiger-claw charms, coinswhatever the country could produce of curious and beautiful, that she could obtain, was added to her stores. The stories of tigers, leopards, bears, thugs, are numerous and exciting enough to please the most fastidious in tales of perils and horrors, and several romances might be made out of the incidents of travel which the volumes contain. But these are chiefly distinguished from all others upon India, by their revelations of life in the Zenana, into which the authoress was admitted through her intimacy with her highness the ex-queen of Gwalior. What she there witnesses must be left to her pages to explain, and what she there says of the lives of royal and noble ladies must be new, or nearly so, to all English readers. We have as briefly as possible spoken of these elegant volumes, and have purposely avoided entering upon their multifarious contents; they speak of so many things that all classes of readers must necessarily find therein the subjects they most desire to be amused upon. A certain measure of praise will therefore be given by all, and the full measure of praise will thus be given by the whole to a work that will be read with the highest interest by all who take an interest in our Indian empire, and in the wonderful people who form its main population.

A RATTLESNAKE ON A STEAMBOAT.

THE LIFE OF A LOUISIANA "SWAMP DOCTOR."

SHORTLY before the usual time for wending my way North to the medical lectures, an opportunity was afforded me by an ingenious negro, who had caught the reptile asleep, of exchanging a well-worn blanket coat and two dimes,-principally in cash-for as fine a specimen of the rattlesnake as ever delighted the eye or ear of a naturalist; nine inches across the small of the back, six feet seven-eighths of an inch in length, eyes like globular lightning, colours as gaudy as an Arkansas gal's apron, twenty-three rattles and a button, and a great propensity to make them heard, were the strong points of my pur

chase.

Designing him as a propitiatory offering to one of the professors, my next care was to furnish him with a fitting habitation. Nothing better presenting itself, I made him one out of a pine box, originally designed for shoes, by nailing thin slats transversely, so as neither to exclude air or vision, but sufficiently close, I thought, to prevent him from escaping. The day for my departure arrived, and I had his snakeship carried on board the boat destined to bear me to V- where I would take an Ohio steamer.

Unfortunately for the quietude of my pet, on the Yazoo boat was a young cockney lady, who, hearing that there was a live rattlesnake on board, allowed her curiosity to overcome her maiden diffidence sufficiently to prefer a request that the young doctor "would make 'is hanimal oller;" a process which the proverbial abstemiousness when in confinement of the "hanimal" was accomplishing rapidly without any intervention on my part. Politeness would not allow me to refuse, and as it was considerable of a novelty to the passengers, his snakeship was kept constantly stirred up, and his rattles had very little rest that trip.

The steamer at length swung alongside the wharf boat at V—, and transferring my baggage, I lounged about until the arrival of a boat would give me an opportunity of proceeding. The contents of the box were quickly discovered; and the snake had to undergo the same inflictions as the day previous-until, thoroughly vexed, I made them desist, and resolved thenceforth I would conceal his presence and allow him to travel as common baggage.

"The shades of night were falling fast," as the steamer "Congress" came booming along, and, after a detention of a few minutes for passengers, proceeded on her way, obtaining none however, except myself. The snake-box was placed with the other baggage on the cabin deck in front of the "social hall," jam up, as luck would have it, against one of the chimneys, making the location unpleasantly warm. It was one of those clear, luminous nights in autumn, when not a cloud dims the azure, and the heavens so "beautifully blue," (Alas! poor Neal,) are gleaming with their myriad stars, when the laughing breeze lifts the hair off the brow, and presses the cheek with as soft a touch as the pulpy lips of a maiden in her first essay at kissing. The clear, croupy cough of the steamer was echoed back in prolonged asthmatic strains

from the dark woods lining the river, like an army of cowled gigantic monks come from their cells to see a steamboat. Supper was over, and the beauty of the night had enticed the majority of the passengers from the cabin to the open deck.

A goodly number, myself among the rest, were seated in front of the social hall, smoking our cigars, and swapping yarns of all climes, sizes, nations, and colours.

Sitting a few yards from me, the most prominent personage of the group, smoking a chiboque, and regaling the crowd with the manner in which he choked a "Cobra de Capello" to death that crawled into his hammock in India, was an old English sailor, who, from his own account, had sailed over all the world, and through some parts of it.

Weighing the words down with a heavy ballast of oaths, he said he "wasn't afraid of anything in the snake line, from the sea serpent down to the original snake that tempted Eve." I asked him if he had ever met the rattlesnake since he had been in America, thinking I would put his courage to the test on the morrow.

"Seen a rattlesnake? Yes, enough to sink a seventy-four? Went to Georgia on purpose to kill them. Pshaw! To think a man that had killed a boa- constrictor, fair fight, should be fraid of a little noisy flirt of a snake that never grew bigger round than a marlin spike!"

At this moment the boat was running a bend near in shore, and the glare of a huge fire at a wood-yard was thrown directly under the chair of the braggart, when, to my utter amazement, I saw there, snugly coiled up, the huge proportions of my snake!

I was so astonished and horrified that I could neither speak nor move. I had left him securely fastened in his cage, and yet there he was at liberty, in his deadly coil, his eyes gleaming like living coals. The light was intercepted, and the foot of the sailor moving closer to the reptile it commenced its warning rattle, but slowly and irregularly, showing it was not fully aroused.

"What is that?" exclaimed a dozen voices.

The foot being withdrawn, the rattling ceased before its nature or source could be clearly traced.

""Twas the steam escaping," said one.

"A goose hissing," said another.

"The wind."

"A trick to scare the sailor," thought a good many; but I knew it was a rattlesnake in his deadly coil!

The horror of that moment I shall not attempt to describe; every second I expected to hear the shriek of the sailor as the deadly fangs would penetrate his flesh, and I knew if a vein were stricken, no power on earth could avail him, and I powerless to warn him of his danger.

"It sounded monstrous like a rattlesnake!" observed a passenger, "but there are no doctors or fool students on board, and nobody but cusses like them would be taking snakes 'bout.

"I was gwine up the Massassip wunst when a rattlesnake belonging to a medercal student on board, got out and bit one of the passengers; the poor crittur didn't live ten minutes, and the sawbone's 'prentice not much longer, I reckon."

My hair stood on end, for there was an earnestness about the man that told me he was not joking.

"You didn't kill him, surely?" asked some one.

"Oh, no! we didn't 'zactly kill him, sich as cuttin' his throat, or puttin' lead in his holler cimblin, for that would have been takin' the law inter our own hands; but we guv him five hundred lashes, treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, made a clean crop of one ear, and a swallow-forked-slit-under-bit-and-half-crop of the other, an' put him out on a little island up to his mouth in water, and the river risin' a plum foot an hour!"

Not knowing but a similar fate might soon be mine, in agony, with the cold sweat streaming over me, I listened to this infernal recital of an instance of the summary punishment termed "Lynch Law," to which the unavailability of the statute law so often drove the early settlers, and which, unfortunately for the fair character of the South and West, is not yet entirely abolished.

The sailor must again have moved his foot closer than agreeable to the snake, for his infernal rattling recommenced, and this time clear, loud, and continuous to the tutored ear, indicating great danger, the prelude to a fatal spring.

I shook off my lethargy, and shrieked out, "Don't move for your life! a light! for God's sake bring a light! Quick! quick!" None moved-thinking I was jesting.

"Mister," spoke the sailor, "if it's a trick to scare me, you'll miss the figure with your child's rattle. Jes bring one of your real rattlesnakes along, and I'll show you whether he can frighten an English sailor or not."

Hearing me calling so loudly for a light, the mate, a stalwart Irishman, came running up with a large torch, but hardly had he reached the deck, when he discovered the monster-his head drawn back ready for striking.

"Snake! snake!" yelled he, punching at him with his glaring torch. "Whereabouts, you lubber?" said the sailor, still suspecting a

trick.

"Under your feet."

The sailor looked down, and beheld the hideous reptile directly under his chair. With a loud yell, he made but one spring over the guards into the river.

"Whose is it?"

"Lynch the rascal!

"Kill the scoundrel!" swelled on the air, mingled with the crashing of broken doors and chairs, the oaths and rushing of terrified men, and the screaming of still more terrified women, who knew not what to fear, while clear and distinct above the infernal melée arose the piercing rattle of the snake, who, writhing his huge proportions about, and striking at everything near him, seemed to glory in the confusion he had created.

VOL. XXVIII.

N N

A shot was heard, and then the coil collapsed, and the rattling slowly ceased. The snake was dead.

"Who brought him on board?”
"Let's lynch the scoundrel!"
"Are there any more of them?
"Here's the box he got out of!"
My name was on it in large capitals.

"Throw it overboard!" I yelled out, "it may have more in it, throw it overboard."

No sooner said than done, and as the only evidence of my participation floated over the wave, no one was louder in his denunciation, no one wanted to be shown-in order that he might be lynched-the rascal that brought it on board, more than I did, except, perhaps, it was the sailor, who, now thoroughly humbled, stood shivering in his wet clothes by the furnace, ready to acknowledge that the "little, noisy flirt of an American snake, no larger than a marlin' spike,” was some snakes" certain.

THE TABLE OF THE INN.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF G. PFITZER.)

Not long ago, a country inn

I chanced at eventide to win,
Whose table, as I near it drew,
Unnumbered names revealed to view.
My simple meal upon it spread,

I read and sipped, and sipped and read;
And many a thought across me came,

While pondering over many a name. And one was stout and strong to viewThe oak right heartily cut through; As firm, methought, 'mid toil and strife, The carver cuts his way through life. And one had drawn, with skilful art,

A wreath around his name apart; And fair and neat the name was found Within the garland's graceful round.

And one was crooked, one was straight,

And one was small, and one was great. And many a strange plebeian name, Clumsy and coarse, between them

came.

Old table! oft I think of thee

When the world's motley mass I see; As full of folks as thou of names,

Pursuing each their different aims. There every name becomes a man, His neighbour elbowing as he can ; Some calmly seek to shun the fray, While others jostle on their way.