+ ~ -
 
Please report pronunciation problems here. Select and sample other voices. Options Pause Play
 
Report an Error
Go!
 
Go!
 
TOC
 

total of one million pounds of coffee-leaves,
and the quantity of Ceylon coffee produced
is scarcely a tithe of that grown in various
parts of the world. In all the other coffee-
growing countries, a similar waste is as
constantly going on.

Good so frequently arises from evil when
least expected, that we are sanguine enough
to hope that the conflicts of races and
people raging in the north of Europe and in
China, may not be without some compensating
benefit. When, hereafter, we shall have to
sum up the great sacrifices of human life and
treasure involved in those struggles, it will
be at least some compensation if they shall
have been the indirect means of opening to
us the pent-up animal and vegetable riches
of our American and Indian territories.

THE SAILOR

A ROMAIC BALLAD.

THOU that hast a daughter
  For one to woo and wed,
Give her to a husband
  With snow upon his head;
Oh give her to an old man,
   Though little joy it be,
Before the best young sailor
  That sails upon the sea.

How luckless is the sailor
  When sick and like to die.
He sees no tender mother,
  No sweetheart standing by.
Only the captain speaks to him,—
  Stand up, stand up, young man,
And steer the ship to haven,
  As none beside thee can.

Thou sayst to me, "Stand up, stand up;"
  I say to thee, take hold,
And lift me up from off the deck,
  My hands and feet are cold;
And let my head, I pray thee,
  With handkerchiefs be bound;
There, take my love's gold handkerchief,
  And tie it tightly round.

Now bring the chart, the doleful chart;
  Seewhere these mountains meet
The clouds are thick around their head,
  The mists around their feet:
Cast anchor here; 'tis deep and safe
  Within the rocky cleft;
The little anchor on the right,
  The great one on the left.

And now to thee, O captain,
  Most earnestly I pray,
That they may never bury me
  In church or cloister gray.
But on the windy sea-beach,
  At the ending of the land,
All on the surfy sea-beach,
  Deep down into the sand.

For there will come the sailors,
  Their voices I shall hear,
And at casting of the anchor
  The yo-ho loud and clear;
And at hauling of the anchor
  The yo-ho and the cheer,—
Farewell, my love, for to thy bay
  I never more may steer!

THE LITTLE FLOWER.

HALF the legends of wild countries refer
to the exploits, good or evil, of brigands. In
general, the tone of such narratives is rather
favourable to the lawless than otherwise, and
it is easy to understand why this should be.
The ranks of Outlawry, when power is in the
hands of the violent or the corrupt, are
recruited from those very classes which in
better times become the warmest friends of
society. There is no reason why the Mokan,
of whose exploits we are about to speak,
should not under more favourable
circumstances, have become an ornament to his
name and country.

The Mokans are wandering shepherds from
Transylvania, who come down to the plains of
Bulgaria and Wallachia, on permission, to
pasture their flocks and herds. They are not
necessarily of one tribe, or race, and are
indeed joined by many free spirits, from the
surrounding unsettled countries, who see in
that vagabond kind of life a means of escaping
the tyranny to which all stationary
citizens are liable. Michal the Mokan, as he
was generally called after he became famous,
was a native of Bulgaria, and was born ia
the environs of Sophia. Some tyrannical
Pasha, when he was very young, endeavoured
to seize and make a servant of him, but he
escaped, and, after wandering as a beggar
through Servia, at length crossed the Danube,
and proceeding still northward, met a
company of Mokans on their way, with herds of
cattle, to the lower plains of Wallachia. He
at once enlisted himself amongst them, and
having been used to the care of cattle, soon
was regarded as a valuable acquisition. In
process of time he became a chief herdsman,
and prosperously continued his annual
voyages in search of pasture, sometimes as
far as the levels of Dobritza.

He had reached the age of nearly thirty
without having suffered further vicissitudes
in his new state than are commonly incident
to it, when one autumn, he was returning
to his elected country, with many companions
and vast herds. By engaging in the
pedlary trade across the Austrian frontier, in
addition to his ordinary duties, he had
now acquired comparative wealth; and,
although he was attired in worn leather
garments, covered with a sheepskin cloak,
the wool of which looked rather dirty, any
one who had seen him reclining beneath a
temporary tent made of a couple of blankets
supported by two uprights and a cross stick,
a little apart from the rest, near the banks of
the Dimbouritza, in its lower course, would
have at once guessed him to be a man of
respectability. It was near the eventide. The