Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443

The young man expressed his determination to take the matter on himself; that he alone would settle the quarrel, and promised to appear on the morrow at the appointed time. They then all departed noisily. The old man rose quietly, and turning to me, said: 'Sir, you have been witness to the insult; be witness also to the satisfaction. Here is my address: I shall expect you at five o'clock. Good-night, Monsieur l'Abbé! To-morrow, there will be one Jacobin less, and one lost soul the more. Good-night!' and taking his hat and stick, he departed. His companion the abbé followed soon after.

I now learned the history of this singular man. He was descended from a good family of Marseilles. Destined for the navy while still young, he was sent on board ship before the Revolution, and while yet of tender years. Later, he was taken prisoner; and after many strange adventures, returned in 1793 to France: was about to marry, but having been mixed up with the disturbances of Toulon, managed to escape by a miracle to England; and learned before long that his father, mother, one brother, a sister of sixteen years of age, and his betrothed, had all been led to the guillotine to the tune of the Marseillaise. Thirst for revenge, revenge on the detested Jacobins, was now his sole aim. For a long time he roved about in the Indian seas, sometimes as a privateer, at others as a slave-dealer; and was said to have caused the tricoloured flag much damage, while he acquired a considerable fortune for himself. With the return of the Bourbons, he came back to France, and settled at Marseilles. He lived, however, very retired, and employed his large fortune solely for the poor, for distressed seamen, and for the clergy. Alms and masses were his only objects of expense. It may easily be believed, that he acquired no small degree of popularity among the lower classes and the clergy. But, strangely enough, when not at church, he spent his time with the most celebrated fencing-masters, and had acquired in the use of the pistol and the sword a dexterity that was hardly to be paralleled. In the year 1815, when the royalist reaction broke out in La Vendée, he roved about for a long time at the head of a band of followers. When at last this opportunity of cooling his rage was taken from him by the return of order, he looked out for some victim who was known to him by his revolutionary principles, and sought to provoke him to combat. The younger, the richer, the happier the chosen victim was, the more desirable did he seem. The landlord told me he himself knew of seven young persons who had fallen before his redoubted sword.

The next morning at five o'clock, I was at the house of this singular character. He lived on the ground-floor, in a small simple room, where, excepting a large crucifix, and a picture covered with black crape, with the date, 1794, under it, the only ornaments were some nautical instruments, a trombone, and a human skull. The picture was the portrait of his guillotined bride; it remained always veiled, excepting only when he had slaked his revenge with blood; then he uncovered it for eight days, and indulged himself in the sight. The skull was that of his mother. His bed consisted of the usual hammock slung from the ceiling. When I entered, he was at his devotions, and a little negro brought me meanwhile a cup of chocolate and a cigar. When he had risen from his knees, he saluted me in a friendly manner, as if we were merely going for a morning walk together; afterwards he opened a closet, took out of it a case with a pair of English pistols, and a couple of excellent swords, which I put under my arm; and thus provided, we proceeded along the quay towards the port. The boatmen seemed all to know him. 'Peter, your boat!' He seated himself in the stern.

'You will have the goodness to row,' he said; 'I will take the tiller, so that my hand may not become unsteady.'

I took off my coat, rowed away briskly, and as the wind was favourable, we hoisted a sail, and soon reached Cap Verd. We could remark from afar our three young men, who were sitting at breakfast in a garden not far from the shore. This was the garden of a restaurateur, and was the favourite resort of the inhabitants of Marseilles. Here you find excellent fish; and also, in high perfection, the famous bollenbresse, a national dish in Provence, as celebrated as the olla podrida of Spain. How many a love-meeting has occurred in this place! But this time it was not Love that brought the parties together, but Hate, his stepbrother; and in Provence the one is as ardent, quick, and impatient as the other.

My business was soon accomplished. It consisted in asking the young men what weapons they chose, and with which of them the duel was to be fought. The dark-haired youth—his name was M– L– insisted that he alone should settle the business, and his friends were obliged to give their word not to interfere.

'You are too stout,' he said to the one, pointing to his portly figure; 'and you'—to the other—'are going to be married; besides, I am a first-rate hand with the sword. However, I will not take advantage of my youth and strength, but will choose the pistol, unless the gentleman yonder prefers the sword.'

A movement of convulsive joy animated the face of my old captain: 'The sword is the weapon of the French gentleman,' he said; 'I shall be happy to die with it in my hand.'

'Be it so. But your age?'

'Never mind; make haste, and en garde.'

It was a strange sight: the handsome young man on one side, overbearing confidence in his look, with his youthful form, full of grace and suppleness; and opposite him that long figure, half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred breast was entirely bare. In the old man, every sinew was like iron wire: his whole weight resting on his left hip, the long arm—on which, in sailor fashion, a red cross, three lilies, and other marks, were tattooed—held out before him, and the cunning, murderous gaze rivetted on his adversary.

''Twill be but a mere scratch,' said one of the three friends to me. I made no reply, but was convinced beforehand that my captain, who was an old practitioner, would treat the matter more seriously. Young L–, whose perfumed coat was lying near, appeared to me to be already given over to corruption. He began the attack, advancing quickly. This confirmed me in my opinion; for although he might be a practised fencer in the schools, this was proof that he could not frequently have been engaged in serious combat, or he would not have rushed forwards so incautiously against an adversary whom he did not as yet know. His opponent profited by his ardour, and retired step by step, and at first only with an occasional ward and half thrust. Young L–, getting hotter and hotter, grew flurried; while every ward of his adversary proclaimed, by its force and exactness, the master of the art of fence. At length the young man made a lunge; the captain parried it with a powerful movement, and, before L– could recover his position, made a thrust in return, his whole body falling forward as he did so, exactly like a picture at the Académie des Armes—'the hand elevated, the leg stretched out'—and his sword went through his antagonist, for nearly half its length, just under the shoulder. The captain made an almost imperceptible turn with his hand, and in an instant was again en garde. L– felt himself wounded; he let his sword fall, while with his other hand he pressed his side; his eyes grew dim, and he sank into the arms of his friends. The captain wiped his sword carefully, gave it to me, and dressed himself with the most perfect composure. 'I have the honour to wish you good-morning, gentlemen: had you not sung yesterday, you would not have had to weep to-day;' and thus saying, he went towards his boat. ''Tis the seventeenth!' he murmured; 'but this was easy work—a mere greenhorn from the fencing-schools of Paris. 'Twas a very different thing when I had to do with the old Bonapartist officers, those brigands of the Loire.' But it is quite impossible to translate into another language the fierce energy of this speech. Arrived at the port, he threw the boatman a few pieces of silver, saying: 'Here, Peter; here's something for you.'

'Another requiem and a mass for a departed soul, at the church of St Géneviève—is it not so, captain? But that is a matter of course.' And soon after we reached the dwelling of the captain.

The little negro brought us a cold pasty, oysters, and two bottles of vin d'Artois. 'Such a walk betimes gives an appetite,' said the captain gaily. 'How strangely things fall out!' he continued in a serious tone. 'I have long wished to draw the crape veil from before that picture, for you must know I only deem myself worthy to do so when I have sent some Jacobin or Bonapartist into the other world, to crave pardon from that murdered angel; and so I went yesterday to the coffee-house with my old friend the abbé, whom I knew ever since he was field-preacher to the Chouans, in the hope of finding a victim for the sacrifice among the readers of the liberal journals. The confounded waiters, however, betray my intention; and when I am there, nobody will ask for a radical paper. When you appeared, my worthy friend, I at first thought I had found the right man, and I was impatient—for I had been waiting for more than three hours for a reader of the National or of Figaro. How glad I am that I at once discovered you to be no friend of such infamous papers! How grieved should I be, if I had had to do with you instead of with that young fellow!' For my part, I was in no mood even for self-felicitations. At that time, I was a reckless young fellow, going through the conventionalisms of society without a thought; but the event of the morning had made even me reflect.

'Do you think he will die, captain?' I asked: 'is the wound mortal?'

'For certain!' he replied with a slight smile. 'I have a knack—of course for Jacobins and Bonapartists only—when I thrust en quarte, to draw out the sword by an imperceptible movement of the hand, en tierce, or vice versâ, according to circumstances; and thus the blade turns in the wound—and that kills; for the lung is injured, and mortification is sure to follow.'

On returning to my hotel, where L– also was staying, I met the physician, who had just visited him. He gave up all hope. The captain spoke truly, for the slight movement of the hand and the turn of the blade had accomplished their aim, and the lung was injured beyond the power of cure. The next morning early L– died. I went to the captain, who was returning home with the abbé. 'The abbé has just been to read a mass for him,' he said; 'it is a benefit which, on such occasions, I am willing he should enjoy—more, however, from friendship for him, than out of pity for the accursed soul of a Jacobin, which in my eyes is worth less than a dog's! But walk in, sir.'

The picture, a wonderfully lovely maidenly face, with rich curls falling around it, and in the costume of the last ten years of the preceding century, was now unveiled. A good breakfast, like that of yesterday, stood on the table. With a moistened eye, and turning to the portrait, he said: 'Thérèse, to thy memory!' and emptied his glass at a draught. Surprised and moved, I quitted the strange man. On the stairs of the hotel I met the coffin, which was just being carried up for L–; and I thought to myself: 'Poor Clotilde! you will not be able to weep over his grave.'

THE TREE OF SOLOMON

Wide forests, deep beneath Maldivia's tide,
From withering air the wondrous fruitage hide;
There green-haired nereids tend the bowery dells,
Whose healing produce poison's rage expels.

    The Lusiad.

If Japan be still a sealed book, the interior of China almost unknown, the palatial temple of the Grand Lama unvisited by scientific or diplomatic European—to say nothing of Madagascar, the steppes of Central Asia, and some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago—how great an amount of marvel and mystery must have enveloped the countries of the East during the period that we now term the middle ages! By a long and toilsome overland journey, the rich gold and sparkling gems, the fine muslins and rustling silks, the pungent spices and healing drugs of the Morning Land, found their way to the merchant princes of the Mediterranean. These were not all. The enterprising traversers of the Desert brought with them, also, those tales of extravagant fiction which seem to have ever had their birthplace in the prolific East. Long after the time that doubt—in not a few instances the parent of knowledge—had, by throwing cold water on it, extinguished the last funeral pyre of the ultimate Phœnix, and laughed to scorn the gigantic, gold-grubbing pismires of Pliny; the Roc, the Valley of Diamonds, the mountain island of Loadstone, the potentiality of the Talisman, the miraculous virtues of certain drugs, and countless other fables, were accepted and believed by all the nations of the West. One of those drugs, seldom brought to Europe on account of its great demand among the rulers of the East, and its extreme rarity, was a nut of alleged extraordinary curative properties—of such great value, that the Hindoo traders named it Trevanchere, or the Treasure—of such potent virtue, that Christians united with Mussulmen in terming it the Nut of Solomon. Considered a certain remedy for all kinds of poison, it was eagerly purchased by those of high station at a period when that treacherous destroyer so frequently mocked the steel-clad guards of royalty itself—when poisoning was the crime of the great, before it had descended from the corrupt and crafty court to the less ceremonious cottage. Nor was it only as an antidote that its virtues were famed. A small portion of its hard and corneous kernel, triturated with water in a vessel of porphyry, and mixed, according to the nature of the disease and skill of the physician, with the powder of red or white coral, ebony, or stag's horns, was supposed to be able to put to flight all the maladies that are the common lot of suffering humanity. Even the simple act of drinking pure water out of a part of its polished shell was esteemed a salutary remedial process, and was paid for at a correspondently extravagant price. Doubtless, in many instances it did effect cures; not, however, by any peculiar inherent sanative property, but merely through the unbounded confidence of the patient: similar cases are well known to medical science; and at the present day, when the manufacture and sale of an alleged universal heal-all is said to be one of the shortest and surest paths that lead to fortune—when in our own country 'the powers that be' encourage rather than check such wholesale empiricism—we cannot consistently condemn the more ancient quack, who having, in all faith, given an immense sum for a piece of nut-shell, remunerated himself by selling draughts of water out of it to his believing dupes. The extraordinary history of the nut, as it was then told, assisted to keep up the delusion. The Indian merchants said, that there was only one tree in the world that produced it; that the roots of that tree were fixed, 'where never fathom-line did touch the ground,' in the bed of the Indian Ocean, near to Java, among the Ten Thousand Islands of the far East; but its branches, rising high above the waters, flourished in the bright sunshine and free air. On the topmost bough dwelt a griffin, that sallied forth every evening to the adjacent islands, to procure an elephant or rhinoceros for its nightly repast; but when a ship chanced to pass that way, his griffinship had no occasion to fly so far for a supper. Attracted by the tree, the doomed vessel remained motionless on the waters, until the wretched sailors were, one by one, devoured by the monster. When the nuts ripened, they dropped off into the water, and, carried by winds and currents to less dangerous localities, were picked up by mariners, or cast on some lucky shore. What is this but an Eastern version—who dare say it is not the original?—of the more classical fable of the dragon and the golden fruit of the Hesperides?

Time went on. Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and a new route was opened to Eastern commerce. The Portuguese, who encountered the terrors of the Cape of Storms, were not likely to be daunted by a griffin; yet, with all their endeavours, they never succeeded in discovering the precious tree. By their exertions, however, rather more of the drug was brought to Europe than had previously been; still there was no reduction in its estimated value. In the East, an Indian potentate demanded a ship and her cargo as the price of a perfect nut, and it was actually purchased on the terms; in the West, the Emperor Rodolph offered 4000 florins for one, and his offer was contemptuously refused; while invalids from all parts of Europe performed painful pilgrimages to Venice, Lisbon, or Antwerp, to enjoy the inestimable benefit of drinking water out of pieces of nut-shell! Who may say what adulterations and tricks were practised by dishonest dealers, to maintain a supply of this costly medicine? but, as similar impositions are not unknown at the present day, we may as well pass lightly over that part of our subject.

The English and Dutch next made their way to the Indian Ocean; yet, though they sought for the invaluable Tree of Solomon, with all the energy supplied by a burning thirst for gain, their efforts were as fruitless and unsuccessful as those of the Portuguese. Strange tales, too, some of these ancient mariners related on their return to Europe: how, in the clear waters of deep bays, they had observed groves of those marvellous trees, growing fathoms down beneath the surface of the placid sea. Out of a mass of equally ridiculous reports, the only facts then attainable were at length sifted: these were, that the tree had not been discovered growing in any locality whatever; that the nut was sometimes found floating on the Indian Ocean, or thrown on the coast of Malabar, but more frequently picked up on the shores of a group of islands known as the Maldives; from the latter circumstance, the naturalists of the day termed it Cocus Maldivicus—the Maldivian cocoa-nut. Garcius, surnamed Ab Horto (of the garden), on account of his botanical knowledge, a celebrated authority on drugs and spices, who wrote in 1563, very sensibly concluded that the tree grew on some undiscovered land, from whence the nuts were carried by the waves to the places where they were found; other writers considered it to be a genuine marine production; while a few shrewdly suspected that it really grew on the Maldives. Unfortunately for the Maldivians, this last opinion prevailed in India. In 1607, the king of Bengal, with a powerful fleet and army, invaded the Maldives, conquered and killed their king, ransacked and plundered the islands, and, having crammed his ships with an immense booty, sailed back to Bengal—without, however, discovering the Tree of Solomon, the grand object of the expedition. Curiously enough, we are indebted to this horrible invasion for an interesting book of early Eastern travel—the Bengalese king having released from captivity one Pyrard de Laval, a French adventurer, who, six years previously, had suffered shipwreck on those inhospitable islands. Laval's work dispelled the idea that the nut grew upon the Maldives. He tells us, that it was found floating in the surf, or thrown up on the sea-shore only; that it was royal property; and whenever discovered, carried with great ceremony to the king, a dreadful death being the penalty of any subject possessing the smallest portion of it.

The leading naturalists of the seventeenth century having the Maldives thus, in a manner, taken away from beneath their feet, took great pains to invent a local habitation for this wonderful tree; and at last they, pretty generally, came to the conclusion, that the vast peninsula of Southern Hindostan had at one time extended as far as the Maldives, but by some great convulsion of nature, the intermediate part between those islands and Cape Comorin had sunk beneath the waters of the ocean; that the tree or trees had grown thereon, and still continued to grow on the submerged soil; and the nuts when ripe, being lighter than water, rose to the surface, instead—as is the habit of supermarine arboreal produce—of falling to the ground. Scarcely could a more splendid illustration of the fallacies of hypothetical reasoning be found, than the pages that contain this specious and far-fetched argument. Even the celebrated Rumphius, who wrote so late as the eighteenth century, assures his readers that 'the Calappa laut,' the Malay term for the nut, 'is not a terrestrial production, which may have fallen by accident into the sea, and there become hardened, as Garcias ab Horto relates, but a fruit, growing itself in the sea, whose tree has hitherto been concealed from the eye of man.' He also denominates it 'the wonderful miracle of nature, the prince of all the many rare things that are found in the sea.'

In the fulness of time, knowledge is obtained and mysteries are revealed. Chemistry and medicine, released from the tedious but not useless apprenticeship they had served to alchemy and empiricism, set up on their own account, and as a consequence, the 'nut of the sea' soon lost its European reputation as a curative, though it was still considered a very great curiosity, and the unsettled problem of its origin formed a famous stock of building materials for the erecters of theoretical edifices. In India and China, it retained its medicinal fame, and commanded a high price. Like everything else that is brought to market, the nuts varied in value. A small one would not realise more than L.50, while a large one would be worth L.120; those, however, that measured as much in breadth as in length were most esteemed, and one measuring a foot in diameter was worth L.150 sterling money. Such continued to be the prices of these nuts for two centuries after the ships of Europe had first found their way to the seas and lands of Asia. But a change was at hand. In the year 1770, a French merchant-ship entered the port of Calcutta. The motley assemblage of native merchants and tradesmen, Baboos and Banians, Dobashes, Dobies, and Dingy-wallahs, that crowd a European vessel's deck on her first arrival in an Eastern port, were astounded when, to their eager inquiries, the captain replied that his cargo consisted of cocos de mer.[3 - Cocoa-nuts of the sea—the French appellation of the nut.] Scarcely could the incredulous and astonished natives believe the evidence of their own eyesight, when, on the hatches being opened, they saw that the ship was actually filled with this rare and precious commodity. Rare and precious, to be so no longer. Its price instantaneously fell; persons who had been the fortunate possessors of a nut or two, were ruined; and so little did the French captain gain by his cargo, that he disclosed the secret of its origin to an English mercantile house, which completed the utter downfall of the nut of Solomon, by landing another cargo of it at Bombay during the same year.

A singular circumstance in connection with the discovery of the tree, a complete exemplification of the good old tale, Eyes and no Eyes, is worthy of record, as a lesson to all, that they should ever make proper use of the organs which God has bestowed upon them for the acquisition of useful knowledge. Mahé de la Bourdonnais, one of the best and wisest of French colonial governors, whose name, almost unknown to history, is embalmed for ever in St Pierre's beautiful romance of Paul and Virginia, sent from the Isle of France, in 1743, a naval officer named Picault, to explore the cluster of islands now known as the Seychelles. Picault made a pretty correct survey, and in the course of it discovered some islands previously unknown; one of these he named Palmiers, on account of the abundance and beauty of the palm-trees that grew upon it; that was all he knew about them. In 1768, a subsequent governor of the Isle of France sent out another expedition, under Captain Duchemin, for a similar purpose. Barré, the hydrographer of this last expedition, landing on Palmiers, at once discovered that the palms, from which the island had, a quarter of a century previously, received its name, produced the famous and long-sought-for cocos de mer. Barré informed Duchemin, and the twain kept the secret to themselves. Immediately after their return to the Isle of France, they fitted out a vessel, sailed to Palmiers, and having loaded with nuts, proceeded to Calcutta. How their speculation turned out, we have already related. We should add that Duchemin, in his vain expectation of making an immense fortune by the discovery, considering that the name of the island might afford future adventurers a clue to his secret, artfully changed it to Praslin, the name of the then intendant of marine, which it still retains.

We shall speak no more of the Tree of Solomon; it is the Lodoicea Seychellarum—the double cocoa-nut of the Seychelles—as modern botanists term it, that we have now to deal with. As its name implies, it is a palm, and one of the most nobly-graceful of that family, which have been so aptly styled by Linnæus the princes of the vegetable kingdom. Its straight and rather slender-looking stem, not more than a foot in diameter, rises, without a leaf, to the height of from 90 to 100 feet, and at the summit is superbly crowned with a drooping plume, consisting of about a score of magnificent leaves, of a broadly-oval form. These leaves, the larger of which are twenty feet in length and ten in width, are beautifully marked with regular folds, diverging from a central supporting chine; their margins are more or less deeply serrated towards the extremities; and they are supported by footstalks nearly as long as themselves. Every year there forms, in the central top of the tree, a new leaf, which, closed like a fan, and defended by a downy, fawn-coloured covering, shoots up vertically to a height of ten feet, before it, expanding, droops gracefully, and assumes its place among its elder brethren; and as the imperative rule pervades all nature, that, in course of time, the eldest must give place unto their juniors, the senior lowest leaf annually falls withered to the ground, yet leaving a memento of its existence in a distinct ring or scar upon the parent trunk. It is clear, then, that by the number of these rings the age of the tree can be accurately determined; some veterans shew as many as 400, without any visible signs of decay; and it seems that about the age of 130 years, the tree attains its full development.

As in several other members of the palm family, the male and female flowers are found on different individuals. The female tree, after attaining the age of about thirty years, annually produces a large drupe or fruit-bunch, consisting of five or six nuts, each enveloped in an external husk, not dissimilar in form and colour to the coat of the common walnut, but of course much larger, and proportionably thicker. The nut itself is about a foot in length; of an elliptic form; at one end obtuse, at the other and narrower end, cleft into two or three, sometimes even four lobes, of a rounded form on their outsides, but flattened on the inner. It is exceedingly difficult to give a popular description when encumbered by the technicalities of science; we must try another method. Let the reader imagine two pretty thick vegetable marrows, each a foot long, joined together, side by side, and partly flattened by a vertical compression, he will then have an idea of the curious form of the double cocoa-nut. Sometimes, as we have mentioned, a nut exhibits three lobes; let the reader imagine the end of one of the marrows cleft in two, and he will have an idea of the three-lobed nut; and if he imagines two more marrows placed side by side, and compressed with and on the top of the former two, he will then have an idea of the four-lobed nut. In fact, almost invariably, the four-lobed nut parts in the middle, forming two of the more common two-lobed nuts, only distinguishable by the flatness of their inner sides from those that grew separately. When green, they contain a refreshing, sweetish, jelly-like substance, but when old, the kernel is so hard that it cannot be cut with a knife.

The enormous fruit-bunches, weighing upwards of fifty pounds, hang three or four years on the tree before they are sufficiently ripened to fall down; thus, though only one drupe is put forth each season, yet the produce of three or four years, the aggregate weight of which must be considerable, burdens the stem at one time. This great weight, suspended at the top of the lofty and almost disproportionately slender stem, causes the tree to rock gracefully with the slightest breeze; the agitated leaves creating a pleasing noise, somewhat similar to that of a distant waterfall. Some French writers have enthusiastically alluded to this rustling sound as a delightful adjunct of the interesting scene; nor have our English travellers spoken in less glowing language. 'Growing in thousands,' says Mr Harrison, 'close to each other, the sexes intermingled, a numerous offspring starting up on all sides, sheltered by the parent plants, the old ones fallen into the sear and yellow leaf, and going fast to decay to make room for the young trees, presents to the eye a picture so mild and pleasing, that it is difficult not to look upon them as animated objects, capable of enjoyment, and sensible of their condition.'

Though no longer producing a drug of great value for the exclusive use of the wealthy, the double cocoa-nut of the Seychelles affords many humbler benefits to the inhabitants of those islands. The trunk, when split and cleared of its soft, fibrous interior, serves to make water-troughs and palisades. The immense leaves are used, in that fine climate, as materials for building: not only do they make an excellent thatch, but they are also employed for walls. With one hundred leaves, a commodious dwelling, including doors, windows, and partitions, may be constructed. Baskets and brooms are made from the ribs of the leaves and the fibres of their footstalks. The young leaf, previous to its expanding, is soft, and of a pale-yellow colour; in this state it is cut into longitudinal stripes, and plaited into hats; while the downy substance by which it is covered, is found valuable for stuffing beds and pillows. Vessels, of various forms and uses, are made out of the light, strong, and durable nut-shells. When preserved whole, with merely a perforation at the top, they are used to carry water, some holding nearly three gallons. When divided, the parts serve, according to their size and shape, for platters, dishes, or drinking-cups. Being jet-black, and susceptible of a high polish, they are often curiously carved, and mounted with the precious metals, to form sugar-basins, toilet-dishes, and other useful and ornamental articles for the dwellings of the tasteful and refined.

The group of islands termed the Seychelles lie to the northward and eastward of Madagascar, in the latitude of 6 degrees south of the equinoctial. The tree, in its natural state, is found on three small, rocky, and mountainous islands only—Praslin, containing about 8000 acres; Curieuse, containing but 1000; and Round Island, smaller still; all three lying within a few hundred yards of each other. These islands are about 900 miles distant from the Maldives; and as Garcias ab Horto, in the sixteenth century, supposed, the nuts, many of which grow on rocky precipices overhanging the sea, drop into the waves, and are transported by the prevailing currents to other shores. It is a remarkable fact, that the trees will not flourish on any other of the adjacent islands of the Seychelles group. Many have been planted, but they merely vegetate, and are wretchedly inferior to the splendid natural trees of Praslin and Curieuse. From the time that the nut falls from the tree, a year elapses before it germinates; it only requires to lie on the ground without being covered, for the germ shoots downwards, forming a root, from which ascends the plumule of the future plant.

Several attempts have been made to grow this tree in some of the larger horticultural establishments in Great Britain, but hitherto without success. Hopes, however, are now entertained; for the interesting spectacle of a double cocoa-nut in the act of germination may be witnessed at this moment in the national gardens at Kew.

FALSE POLITICAL ECONOMY

LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION AGAINST FRAUDS

There is a proverb full of wisdom—as these brief embodiments of experience often are—to the effect that in commerce 'the buyer's eye is his merchant.' It has found its way into our legal text-books, to express a principle which modern law has had much in view—that people should look to their own skill and knowledge in making their purchases, and should not trust to the legislature to protect them, by interference and penalties, from purchasing unworthy commodities. Undoubtedly, fraud, when it occurs, must be punished. If a merchant sell by sample, and intentionally give a different article—if a dog-dealer clothe a cur in the skin of a departed lap-dog, and sell him warranted an undoubted Blenheim spaniel—there should be some punishment for the fraud. It will not be found expedient, however, to go far, even in such clear cases. In too entirely superseding the buyer's eye, and substituting the judge's, we remove a very vigilant check on fraud. If people never bought Blenheim spaniels without an ample knowledge of the animal's character and appearance, followed by minute observation, it would do more to prevent fraud in this small by-article of commerce than a host of penal statutes.

And when we come to less palpable imperfections in goods, it will be seen that legislation is quite incapable of coping with them. If every thrifty housewife, whose last bought bushel of potatoes is more waxy than they ought to be—if every shabby dandy, who has bought a glossy satin hat, 'warranted superfine, price only 5s.,' and who finds it washed into a kind of dingy serge by the next shower—had his action for the infliction of penalties, it would be a more litigious world even than it is. With thimble-riggers, chain-droppers, fortune-telling gipsies, and the like, the law wages a most unproductive war. Penal statutes and the police do little to put them down, while there are fools whose silly selfishness or vanity makes them ready dupes: if these fools would become wise and prudent, all the penalties might be at once dispensed with. But only imagine the state of litigational confusion in which this country would be plunged, if every tradesman who sold 'an inferior article,' which had a fair and attractive appearance, could be subject to penal proceedings!

Yet our ancestors made this attempt; and under the early monarchs of England there were passed a number of statutes, which vainly endeavoured to compel every manufacturer and dealer to be honest. The wool-trade was an especial favourite of this kind of legislation. Indeed, if any one be in search of violent legislative attempts to force trade into artificial channels, he will be very sure to find them if he turn up the acts on the wool and woollen trade. They would fill some volumes by themselves. One great object of the government, was to prohibit the exportation of wool, to export it only in the manufactured article, and to sell that only for gold. A tissue of legislation of the most complicated kind was passed to establish these objects. Costly arrangements were made, by which not only in this country, but also in others, the sale of the woollens was conducted only by Englishmen. This, however, is not our immediate subject—it relates rather to the curious efforts to make the manufacturers produce a sound article.

An act of the 13th of Richard II. (1389), gives this melancholy account of the dishonesty of certain cloth-makers, and provides a penal remedy: 'Forasmuch as divers plain clothes, that be wrought in the counties of Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, and Gloucester, be tacked and folded together, and set to sale, of the which clothes a great part be broken, brused, and not agreeing in the colour, neither be according to breadth, nor in no manner to the part of the same clothes showed outwards, but be falsely wrought with divers wools, to the great deceit, loss, and damage, of the people, in so much, that the merchants who buy the same clothes, and carry them out of the realm to sell to strangers, be many times in danger to be slain, and sometimes imprisoned, and put to fine and ransom by the same strangers, and their said clothes burnt or forfeit, because of the great deceit and falsehood that is found in the said clothes when they be untacked and opened, to the great slander of the realm of England. It is ordained and assented, that no plain cloth, tacked nor folded, shall be set to sale within the said counties; but that they be opened, upon pain to forfeit them, so that the buyers may see them and know them, as it is used in the county of Essex.' One would think, that if the buyers found themselves habitually cheated by made-up goods, they would find the remedy themselves, by insisting on seeing them, and declining, according to a Scottish saying, to buy 'a pig in a poke.' Another clause of the same act seems equally gratuitous: 'Provided always, that after the merchants have bought the same clothes to carry, and do carry them out of the realm, they may tack them and fold them at their pleasure, for the more easy carriage of them.' What a very accommodating statute!

And it really is reasonable, in comparison with other enactments on the same subject. In the ninth year of Henry VIII., for instance, an act was passed for 'avoiding deceits in making of woollen clothes,' containing a whole series of troublesome regulations, such as the following: 'That the wool which shall be delivered for or by the clothier to any person or persons, for breaking, combing, carding, or spinning of the same, the delivery therefore shall be by even just poise and weight of averdupois, sealed by authority, not exceeding in weight after the rate of xii pound seemed wool, above one quarter of a pound for the waste of the same wool, and in none other manner; and that the breaker or comber do deliver again to the same clothier the same wool so broken and combed, and the carder and spinner to deliver again to the said clothier yarn of the same wool, by the same even just and true poise and weight (the waste thereof excepted), without any part thereof concealing, or any more oil-water, or other thing put thereunto deceivable.

'Item, that the weaver which shall have the weaving of any woollen yarn to be webbed into cloth, shall weave, work, and put into the web, for cloth to be made thereof, as much and all the same yarn as the clothier, or any person for him, shall deliver to the same weaver, with his used mark put to the same, without changing, or any parcel thereof leaving out of the said web; or that he restore to the same clothier the surplus of the same yarn, if any shall be left not put in the same web, and without any more oil brine, moisture, dust, sand, or other thing deceivably putting or casting to the same web, upon pain to forfeit for every default three shillings and four pence.

'Item, that no manner of person buy any coloured wool, or coloured woollen yarn, of any carder, spinner, or weaver, but only in open market, upon pain of forfeiture of such wool and yarn so bought.' And so on: these, in fact, are but the beginning of a series of regulations, which it would tire the reader to peruse throughout.

One would think, that shoes and other leather manufactures are among the last things that require to be made sufficient by legislation. The ill-made shoes wear out, and the purchaser, if he be wise, will not go again to the same shop. Parliament, however, did not leave him in the matter to the resources of his own wisdom. By a statute of the 13th of Richard II., it is provided: 'Forasmuch as divers shoemakers and cordwainers use to tan their leather, and sell the same falsely tanned—also make shoes and boots of such leather not well tanned, and sell them as dear as they will, to the great deceipt of the poor commons—it is accorded and assented, that no shoemaker nor cordwainer shall use the craft of tanning, nor tanner the craft of shoemaking; and he that doth contrary to this act, shall forfeit to the king all his leather so tanned, and all his boots and shoes.'

Fifty-two years later—in the year 1485, it was found that the people were still cheated with bad boots and shoes—especially, we doubt not, when they bought them cheap—and the legislature, pondering on a possible remedy, thought they might find it in further subdivision, and prohibiting tanners from currying their leather; and so it is enacted, 'that where tanners in divers parts of this realm usen within themselves the mystery of currying and blacking of leather insufficiently, and also leather insufficiently tanned, and the same leather so insufficiently wrought, as well in tanning as in currying and blacking, they put to sale in divers fairs and markets, and other places, to the great deceipt and hurt of liege people'—so no tanner is to 'use the mystery of a currier, nor black no leather to be put to sale, under the forfeiture of every hyde,' &c.

Let us now introduce our readers to a legislative protection against frauds of a more dire and mysterious character, in the shape of an act passed in the sixth year of Edward VI., 'for stuffing of feather-beds, bolsters, mattresses, and cushions.' Our readers, we hope, will not suppose—as the words might lead them to infer—that these articles are to be stuffed with the act; on the contrary, it would be highly penal so to do. The chief provisions are: 'For the avoiding of the great deceipt used and practised in stuffing of feather-beds, bolsters, pillows, mattresses, cushions, and quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical through putridity, or merely metaphysical and created, like the unlawfulness by statute. The act provides further, that after a certain day no person 'shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer, or put to sale) any quilt, mattress, or cushions, which shall be stuffed with any other stuff than feathers, wool, or flocks alone,' on pain of forfeiture.

But the most stringent enactments for the protection of the public against such wholesale deceptions appear to have been in the article of fustian; and perhaps the hidden adulterations that suggested the enactments, may be the reason why unsound reasonings and hollow speeches are called fustian. There is something mysteriously awful in the act of the eleventh year of Henry VII., called 'A remedy to avoid deceitful slights used upon fustians.' It begins thus:

'That whereas fustians brought from the parts beyond the sea unshorn into this realm, have been and should be the most profitable cloth for doublets and other wearing clothes greatly used among the common people of this realm, and longest have endured of anything that have come into the same realm from the said parts to that intent—for that the cause hath been that such fustians afore this time hath been truly wrought and shorn with the broad sheare, and with no other instruments or deceitful mean used upon the same. Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtlety and undue slights and means, have deceivably imagined and contrived instruments of iron, with which irons, in the most highest and secret places of their houses, they strike and draw the said irons on the said fustians unshorn—by means whereof they pluck off both the nap and cotton of the said fustians, and break commonly both the ground and threads in sunder; and after, by crafty sleeking, they make the same fustians to appear to the common people fine, whole, and sound; and also they raise up the cotton of such fustians, and then take a light candle, and set it on the fustian burning, which singeth and burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from the one end to the other down to the hard threads, instead of shearing; and after that put them in colour, and so subtlely dress them, that their false work cannot be espied, without it be workmen shearers of such fustian, or the wearers of the same.'

Many penalties and forfeitures are laid on the persons who so treacherously corrupt honest fustian. But one is apt to fear, that the accurate account given of the process may have induced some people to follow it, who would not have thought of doing so but for the instruction contained in the act for abolishing it.