Some of these men, said the natives, used to stand on one leg, and hold a bar of iron in their hands-these must have been the sentries.

A more astounding assertion was the one that the strangers had noses a yard long; but the ingenious reader will conjecture that these "long noses" were the cocked hats to which Frenchmen have in all ages been greatly addicted. The Lascar had seen two Frenchmen

on the island. One of them had died three years before Captain Dillon's visit; the other had departed from the island in the suite of a fugitive chief, who had been compelled to retreat from Manicolo after being worsted in battle.

Captain Dillon now set himself to the task of collecting relics in corroboration of this account, and he found sufficient to set all doubts at rest. The natives came forward with a number of articles, some of which were easily identified. Among these were a piece of a ship's back-board displaying a fleur-de-lis, a part of a theodolite, a ship's bell with a French inscription, a number of bolts and bars, fragments of china, and pieces of philosophical instruments. On examining the

reef on which the larger ship was reported to have sunk, the captain raised several brass guns. With these practical proofs of his success he returned to Calcutta, and thence went to Paris, where the king, Charles X., liberally rewarded him for his exertions. Complete certainty was attained when an expert English genealogist identified the arms engraved on a candlestick-one of the relics brought home by Captain Dillon-as those of Colignon, one of the scientific men on board the Boussole.

Thus the fate of the two ships and of one of the crews was ascertained beyond a doubt. What became of the survivors and of the unfortunate commander himself after their departure from Manicolo will ever remain a mystery. That the two vessels should have been lost as they were is somewhat remarkable, when we consider that the natural prudence of the commander had been further stimulated by the unfor-tunate occurrence at Maouna; but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that so cautious and experienced a navigator as Cook himself barely escaped shipwreck on a coast where coral reefs rose suddenly out of the deep water as at Manicolo. The strangest part of the whole story is that an expedition sent out with the avowed purpose of ascertaining the navigator's fate, should, by an unlucky chance, have failed in its mission, while an English captain, turning out of his course to satisfy an impulse of curiosity in quite another direction, should stumble on the answer to the question that had been a mystery for nearly half-a-hundred years.

Of the importance of La Perouse's voyage, and of the merits of this commander as a navigator and explorer, there can be no doubt. Like Cook, whose example he quoted and followed on every important occasion, he was distinguished by continual vigilance and anxiety for the well-being of his crews, who enjoyed almost as complete an immunity from sickness as those of the Adventure and Discovery. A conscientious, painstaking man, he took care to perform his nautical duties with an honest thoroughness that has rendered his observations especially valuable. His examination of the coast of America to Monterez, and his investigations on the Tartar shore opposite Sagahin, supplied pages that had been wanting in the geography of the world.

Never, perhaps, did an explorer start with fairer prospects of success, or a more thorough determination to achieve it; never did voyage, begun under prosperous auspices, end more unhappily for those who

undertook it. Still, though the lives of the brave commander and his followers were sacrificed in the cause, their efforts were not in vain; and the names of La Pérouse and of the voyages of the Boussole and Astrolabe are worthily inscribed on the glorious roll of the heroes of maritime discovery.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AND HIS

TRAVELS.

I.

Humboldt's Long and Arduous Career-His First Work-His Pursuit of Geology-His Appointment as Inspector of Mines-He Resolves to TravelVerifies the Experiments of Galvani-Designs to Join Captain Baudin's Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere-On the Failure of that Expedition Resolves to Pass the Winter in Spain.

IN

N the year 1790, when the project of sending Admiral D'Entrecasteaux into the Pacific to search for La Pérouse was being mooted, there appeared a book on a subject then in its infancy, and very little understood even by scientific men. It was entitled Observations on the Basalts of the Rhine, and was published at Brunswick; it treated of certain geological facts, and was in many respects beyond the intellectual grasp of most readers of the day. It excited some attention, however, and the young Baron Humboldt, its author, was already spoken of as a man who had a great future before him. More than sixty years afterwards, in the year 1854, was completed a work of stupendous learning, research, and industry, entitled Cosmos. This book contained a great and exhaustive inquiry into the physical nature of the universe, comprising within itself deepest questions in astronomy, geology, distribution of climate, and, in fact, every department of science connected with the nature and operations of our planetary system. This book was by the same hand which in 1790 had indited the work on the basalts of the Rhine. Alexander von Humboldt, more than eighty years of age, was still hard at work, diligently and faithfully delving in the inexhaustible field of science. For more than sixty years had he been investigator, traveller, philosopher, and author; and though past the "fourscore years," the Scriptural limitation of the life of strong men, he still laboured day by day in his study, earnestly and patiently investigating those secrets which Nature only reveals as a reward for diligent and devoted toil.