Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827», страница 4

Garden Rhubarb

To force garden rhubarb, sow the seed on a rich moist border in the beginning of April. Thin the young plants during the summer; in the end of October, carefully transplant them into forcing-pots, five or six in each pot. Place them in a northern aspect, to recover the effect of their removal from the seed-bed, and in a month they are fit for forcing.

American Canals

The canals are the most striking internal improvements in the United States. The Great Erie canal is 360 miles in length, with an average breadth of 40 feet. It connects the great line of lakes with the ocean by the Hudson. Another to connect the Hudson with Lake Champlain is also complete. Above 2,000,000l. have been expended on them; and the annual returns from the tolls alone have already amounted to 120,000l. In the state of Ohio, another canal is in progress, almost equal in magnitude to the Erie canal. On the rivers which it connects with the lakes, there is a steam-boat navigation of 5,000 miles. In Pennsylvania, the Schuylkill navigation works comprise an extent of 108 miles, of which 62 are canal, and 46 the river made navigable. These works are complete. The Union canal, a line of 74 miles, to connect the Schuylkill with the Susqueannah, is in progress, and will be completed within the present year. These, however, are but a few of the gigantic strides which America is making in the march of nations.

Caledonian Canal

Between August 1, 1826, and August 1, 1827, 212 vessels have passed through the Caledonian canal from sea to sea. 295 vessels have made partial passages through one end of the canal, to and from various ports; 74 boats, not above 15 tons burden each, have been employed in the carriage of articles to the fishery stations; and 91 steam-boats have passed through the canal, all within the period abovementioned.

Medicine

A respectable contemporary journal gives the following calculations on the relative state of the medical profession in London and Paris. The French have long objected to the multitude of our professors, and the drugs they employ; and it would seem by this comparative statement that their objection is not ill-founded:—

In London there are 174 physicians, or 1 physician to 700 inhabitants; 1,000 surgeons, or 1 surgeon to 1,200 inhabitants; 2,000 apothecaries, or 1 apothecary to 600 inhabitants.

In Paris there is 1 physician to 1,300 inhabitants; 1 surgeon to 6,000 inhabitants; 1 apothecary to 4,450 inhabitants.

Being in the proportion of 1 physician in Paris to 5 in London; 5 surgeons in London to 1 in Paris; 7 apothecaries in London to 1 in Paris.

Supposing, on an average, each of these persons to receive 1,000l. a year, the whole income of the medical profession in London would be 3,474,000l. annually.

Poor Rates

About the close of the seventeenth century, the poors' rates of England and Wales were stated, on the authority of parliamentary documents, to amount to 665,362l.; and the population of both to 5,475,000. In 1821, the poors' rates amounted to about 7,000,000l., and the population to 12,218,000. Dividing the greater rates 7,000,000l. by the lesser 665,362l., we have about 10-1/2 to 1, which is the proportion in which the poors' rates have increased in the last 127 years. And dividing the greater population 12,218,000 by the lesser 5,475,000, give about 2-1/2 to 1, which is the proportionate increase of population during that space of time.

Van Dieman's Land Wasp

The wasp of Van Dieman's Land is a smaller but much more splendid insect than the English wasp; it has four orange-coloured wings, and horns and legs of the same colour, a hard body, and a formidable sting. It is an inhabitant of the forest, and is at war with a spider that makes its hole in the sandy places, and which is armed with a cap or door, which it pulls over on the approach of its enemy, or in rainy weather. The wasp hovers close over the ground, prowling from one hole to another. Having seized its prey, it immediately kills the spider, and carries it off to its own hole, when it is said to devour the limbs, and to deposit its egg in the body to be hatched by the putrefaction that ensues, and which furnishes food for the young insect produced.

THE SKETCH-BOOK.
No. XLVIII

HIGHLAND SUPERSTITION

There is an extraordinary superstition connected with the M'Alister family. Ages ago,—for I have never yet got a date from a Highlander as to the transactions of long past times,—but many generations back, in the days of a chief of great renown in the clan, called M'Alister More, either from his deeds or his stature, there was a skirmish with a neighbouring clan that ended fatally for the M'Alisters, though in the contest at the time they were victorious.

A party of their young men set out once upon a foray; they marched over the hills for several hours, and at last descended into a little glen, which was rented as a black cattle farm by a widow woman and her two sons. The sons were absent from home on some excursion, and had carried most of their servants with them, so that the M'Alisters met with no resistance in their attempts to raise the cattle. They hunted every corner of the glen, secured every beast, and, in spite of the tears of the widow, they drove her herd away. When the sons returned, and heard the story of the raid, they collected a strong party of their friends, and crossing the hill secretly by night, surprised the few M'Alisters who were left in charge of the spoil, vanquished them easily, and recovered their cattle. Such a slight to the power of M'Alister More could not go unpunished. The chief himself headed the band which set out to vindicate the honour of the clan. He marched steadily over the rugged mountains, and arrived towards sunset in the little glen. To oppose the force he brought with him, would have been fruitless; the sons and their few adherents were speedily overpowered, and led bound before him; they were small in number, but they were gallant and brave, and yielded only to superior strength. M'Alister More was always attended by four and twenty bowmen, who acted as his body guard, his jury, his judges, and his executioners. They erected on the instant a gibbet before the door of the wretched mother, and there her sons were hung.

Her cottage was built at the foot of a craggy, naked rock, on a strip of green pasture land, and beside a mountain torrent; the gibbet was a few paces from it, on the edge of the shelf; and the setting rays of a bright summer sun fell on the bodies of the widow's sons. They were still warm when she came and stood beside them. She raised her eyes on the stern chief, and his many followers, and slowly and steadily she pronounced her curse:—

"Shame, shame on you, M'Alister! You have slain them that took but their own; you have slain them you had injured! You have murdered the fatherless, and spoiled the widow! but he that is righteous shall judge between us, and the curse of God shall cling to you for this for ever. The sun rose on me the proud mother of two handsome boys; he sets on their stiffening bodies!" and she raised her arm, as she spoke, towards the gibbet. Her eye kindled, and her form dilated, as she turned again to her vindictive foe. "I suffer now," said she, "but you shall surfer always. You have made me childless, but you and yours shall be heirless for ever. Long may their name last, and wide may their lands be; but never, while the name and the lands continue, shall there be a son to the house of M'Alister!"

The curse of the bereaved widow clung steadily to the house of M'Alister. The lands passed from heir to heir, but no laird had ever been succeeded by a son. Often had the hopes of the clan been raised; often had they thought for years that the punishment of their ancestor's cruelty was to be continued to them no longer—that the spirits of the widow's sons were at length appeased; but M'Alister More was to suffer for ever; the hopes of his house might blossom, but they always faded. It was in the reign of the good Queen Anne that they flourished for the last time; they were blighted then, and for ever.

The laird and the lady had had several daughters born to them in succession, and at last a son: he grew up to manhood in safety—the pride of his people, and the darling of his parents; giving promise of every virtue that could adorn his rank. He had been early contracted in marriage to the daughter of another powerful chieftain in the North, and the alliance, which had been equally courted by both families, was concluded immediately on the return of the young laird from his travels. There was a great intercourse in those days with France—most of the young highland chiefs spent a year or two in that country, many of them were entirely educated there, but that was not the case with the young heir of M'Alister; he had only gone abroad to finish his breeding after coming to man's estate. It was shortly before the first rebellion in the 15, to speak as my informant spoke to me—and being young, and of an ardent nature, he was soon attracted to the court of the old Pretender, whose policy it was to gain every Scotch noble, by every means, to his views. The measures he took succeeded with the only son of M'Alister:—he returned to his native country, eager for the approaching contest, pledged heart and hand to his exiled sovereign. In the troubles which broke out almost immediately on the death of the queen, he and his father took different sides; the old laird fortified his high tower, and prepared to defend it to the last, against the enemies of the House of Hanover. The young laird bade adieu to his beautiful wife, and attended by a band of his young clansmen, easily gained to aid a cause so romantic, he secretly left his duchess, and joined the army of the Pretender at Perth.

The young wife had lived with her husband, at a small farm on the property, a little way up the glen, a mile or two from the castle. But when her husband deserted her, she was removed by her father-in-law to his own house for greater security. Months rolled away, and the various fortunes of the rebels were reported, from time to time, in the remote glen where the chief strength of the M'Alisters lay. News did not travel swiftly then, and often they heard what was little to be relied on, so much did hope or fear magnify any slight success, or any ill-fortune. At last, there came a sough of a great battle having been fought somewhere in the west country, which had decided the fate of the opposing parties. The young laird and his valiant band had turned the fortune of the day. Argyle was defeated and slain, and the Earl of Marr was victorious;—King James had arrived, and was to be crowned at Scone, and all Scotland was his own.

It was on a cold, bleak, stormy, November evening, when this news was brought, by a Brae-Marr-man, to the laird's tower. He was wise and prudent, and he would give no ear to a tale so lightly told: but his beautiful daughter-in-law, sanguine for her husband's sake, cherished reports that brightened all her prospects. She retired to her chamber, almost hoping that another day might see it enlivened by his presence, without whom life to her was a dreary blank. She was lodged in a small apartment on the third story of the tower, opening straight from a narrow passage at the head of the winding stairs. It had two small windows, which looked on the paved courtyard of the castle; and beyond, to what was then a bare meadow, and the river. The moon gave little light, and she turned from the gloomy prospect to the ample hearth, on which the bright logs were blazing. Her heart was full, and her mind so restless, that after her maidens left her, she continued to pace up and down her little chamber, unwilling to retire to rest. At length she threw herself upon her bed, exhausted by the eagerness of her feelings, and in the agitation of her ideas she forgot to say her prayers. Yet she slept, and calmly, but her sleep was short. She awakened suddenly, and starting half up, listened anxiously for some minutes. The wind blew strongly round the old tower, and a thick shower of sleet was driving fast against the casements; but, in the pauses of the storm, she thought she heard distinctly, though at a distance, the tramp of a horse at his speed. She bent forward and watched the sound. It came nearer—it grew louder—it gallopped over the hard ground, and approached with the swiftness of lightning. She gasped and trembled—it was he, it must be he,—she knew the long firm bound of her husband's charger. Its rapid feet struck loud on the pavement of the courtyard below, and in an instant dropt dead below the great door of the castle. She had neither power to breathe, nor to move, but she listened for the call of the porter's name, and the jar of the chains and bolts which secured the door. She heard nothing—she grew bewildered, and tried to rise to call for succour—but a spell was on her to keep her down. At length, from the very bottom of the winding stair, came the sound of a firm foot, ascending regularly step by step, without a pause in its motion, the several stories. It rang on the stone passage adjoining her apartment, and stept with a loud tread at her door. No lock was turned, no hinge was opened, but a rushing wind swept through the room. Her fire had burned away, and she had neither lamp nor taper by her, but as she started up in an agony of terror, the heavy logs in her wide chimney fell of themselves, and lighting by the fall, sent forth a blaze into the chamber. Almost frantic with fear, she seized with one hand the curtains of her bed, and darting a look of horror, she saw, seated by the hearth, a figure in martial array, without a head; it held its arms out towards her, and slowly rose. The scream she tried to utter was suffocated in her throat—she fell motionless; the last sight she saw was an eagle's plume steeped in blood, cast at her feet by the advancing spectre—the last sound she heard was the loud crash of every door in the castle. When her maidens came to her in the morning, she was extended in a swoon upon the floor. She lay for hours cold and insensible, and they thought that she was gone for ever. After many trials she came at last to herself, but she recovered only to hear the true tale of the battle of Sheriff-muir.