LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 434, 3 November 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

co. ( Concluded,) ‘l—fancied not. Now, we are both wealthy men. Dart,’ continued Walter, bravely and gently, ‘and this wealth we offered, a day or two ago, to Isabel Conyngham. You guess what 1 am going to say ? Shall she benefit by our—love for her f-* The senior partner looked up, slowly, questioningly. A thought, which had been haunting him all night, made the full meaning of these words quite plain to him. ‘ Yes, I see you have felt this.’ resumed Walter quietly, ‘ just as I have felt it. I see that my words only came as an ending to your thought, I understand how it put itself to you. Leslie h s invested all his father’s savings—all his patrimony, as one may say—in our bank, and spends his whole days here most conscientiously, most trustworthily. All he draus for this cannot keep a house which we - you and I—like to picture as Isabel’s home. And then his mother has to be provided for. T ou think, Dart, that it would not hurt us—and could not make any difference to Captain Dart, who has no voice in any bank matters —if Leslie had power to draw what should keep them a little more comfortably. In short in shoit, old fellow, you would make him equal partner with me.’ ‘ With ourselves,’ said Mr Dart shortly, ‘ with ourselves, you mean. If we were all equal partners ’ ‘ Let us discuss it this evening. Think it over till evening, Maurice,’ put in Walter, feeling that the senior partner should have time to make his decision; ‘ we will talk it over again.’ The discussion was duly held that afternoon in the partners’ private room; then Tom was summoned to hear the result of it. Though not a long interview, it was one impossible to describe; for how could any words show the utter failure of Mr Dart’s effort to maintain his grave reserve through Tom’s extravagant boyish, humble, proud, ridiculous gratitude ? Or describe Walter Maitland’s persistent (though always disregarded) assurance that ‘ as Mr Dart had decided to make this arrangement, he was very glad to accede to it ?’ After that interview, who could repeat the limitless promises Tom made to his fellow clerks when he told them of his marriage ? Or tell how he reached home in half his usual time, and put his arms about his mother with his eyes full of tears —just as if he had been thirteen instead of thirty ? But, above all, who could describe Isabel’s mute, wondering gratitude to the two men to whom she had given such pain ? ‘lam very, very grateful, Tom,’ she said, appealing to him with tears thick upon her lashes ; but —I would rather not talk about it—yet. Let me have time to think of it. ’ Quick to understand her wish, anddeli,cate in carrying it out, Tom left Isabel, delighted that his news had moved her so, yet wondering over it a little, too—because the .secret of the partners was so safe in the keeping of the girl whom they had—not unworthily —loved. But hardest of all would it be to describe how brilliantly before Tom’s eyes that night there came a vision of that identical brass plate which really met him face to face when, after his ‘ holiday,’ he first reached . the heavy familiar doors of the Highborough Bank—Dart, Maitland, Dart, and Leslie, Co was no more. ♦ A TRIP BY RAIL IN THE TROPICS. (From Chambers’ Journal.) ‘ Here, mister; the colonel sent this to you and your friends with his compliments. ’ It was an order for free transit for self and party to cross the Isthmus of Panama by rail. A most agreeable compliment too; for five pounds, the faro for a journey of fortyseven miles, was too heavy a sum to be thought of for a pleasure excursion. ‘And I guess,’ added the messenger, ‘ you’ll have to be peart sharp, for she starts at five to the exact instant.’ Arrived at the station, and having presented our authority, and shaken hands witl. every official, from the guard to the porter, wearing a white skin, we take our seats in an empty van, the guard kindly placing phairs for us, and us with cigars

and his company. The town of Colon, or Aspinwall, or Navy Bay, for it rejoices in a variety of nomenclature, was our point of departure. How we got away without destruction to human life is one of the things that remain unanswered, for the line runs through the only street which constitutes the town, close to the houses; and as every house is an hotel, and every hotel crowded both within and without; and as human beings, black and white, mixed with dogs, pigs, and turkey buzzards, crossed the rails in every direction—it still remains a puzzle how we cleared the town without accident. However, we did so, without even touching a feather of a crowd of turkey buzzards that are holding high carnival. Talking of turkey buzzards, these birds flourish wherever garbage exists, floating almost motionless at an immense altitude in the clear blue tropical sky. They detect carrion fr»m afar by their keen powers of vision, and a dead horse or ox is soon a seething mass of fowls, eating until gorged, when they lazily hop away to make room for fresh arrivals. The first portion Of the rail to Panama runs through a deep mangrove swamp, heavy and green, the tangled roots and branches swarm over the poisonous waters, which ever exhale the death-bearing malaria ; here and there the mangroves leave open spaces, which are greedily seized upon by gigantic reeds and rushes, netted and intertwined by water-lilies. At intervals mighty trees, leafless, black, and gnarled, stand alone, showing the pestiferous effects of the swamp ; but these are not unadorned ; from every bough hang ferns and orchids of various and beautiful growth; conspicuous among the latter is the Santo-spirito, with its down-like pistil and stamens. The dangers attending the laying out of this railway were so great that it required no great stretch of imagination to comprehend the statement, that every ‘ sleeper’ on that part of the line at all events, cost a human life !

Herons, bitterns, and wild ducks find a home here, not to speak of water-lizards, snakes, and alligators. Onward we speed, now through swamp, now through ancient forest, where the gigantic silk-cotton tree spreads its magnificent branches to the sky, yet seems almost swallowed up by parasites, which in festoons hang from its boughs, or writhe like snakes round the stem. Clouds of parrots and parrakeets fly across us, screaming most inharmoniously, drowning the sound of the steam trumpet, as it announces our arrival at Monkey Hill Station. Here we stop to take in water, for all the water for Colon must be brought from Monkey Hill. On again through the tropical forest. Our next station was Lion Hill, called so, probably, because there are no lions there. However, as far as roaring is concerned, the absence of the king of beasts is immaterial, for the Howling Monkey (My cetes nr sinus) keeps ap a continual con cert in the woods. The stranger is inc l eed at first startled by the sound, as, from its depth and loudness, the cry very much resembles that of the larger carnivora. The kindly offer of the station-master to take us in charge for the day and shew us some of the wonders of the forest, determined us to remain, and go on by the afternoon train. Our host turned out to be a Scotchman; his speech betrayed him at once, for the pleasant north country accent still hung on his tongue, though his expressions, from some years of absence from his native hills, were not in every instance Doric. With him we got on famously, and ere we parted, we were on the most familiar terms. A great collector of natural history specimens was Mac - not, indeed, that he knew much about them, but then they were worth so many dollars to non-scientific collectors. How he had pitched here with his wife and comely daughter, 1 know not. Whether it was that auld lang syne affected the maiden’s heart, or the sight of a young man (for dried-up Yankees were her only acquaintances) was pleasant to her sight, it is not for this historian to say; but whatever the cause, through Jenny I obtained from her father some rare specimens, chief among which was the King Fly-cather (Mnscivora Mexicana).

A hurried luncheon of salt fish and bananas, and gun in hand, we sally out into the sombre forest. Flocks of b’aok ‘ witches’ (Crotophaga) accompanied us on our way; green parrots screeched in every direction ; trogons whistled softly in the shade; golden orioles popped in and out of their nests, which hung like purses from the tips of the branches ; the magnificent scarlet woodpecker hammered away, recalling to mind Mr Moule and Mrs Gamp. Deep in the forest roared the howling monkeys. And such a forest! Trees, the lowermost branches branches of which surpassed in size the trunks of our largest elms; and so dense their foliage, that in places the gloom approached to darkness. Underneath, flourished the cactus and aloe, presenting an absolutely impenetrable barrier to the wanderer, except where the deer or other wild animal had wound through. Ninety degrees in the shade soon becomes intolerable even to the most enthusiastic of wild nature’s worshippers, especially when the mid-day siesta has become a habit; even the birds retire at noon, and silence falls on the forest for the next three or four hours. In the middle of the forest is a solitary dwelling, inhabited by a solitary personage whom Mac knew, and by whom we were introduced. He welcomed us to his abode and invited us to the hospitality it afforded. After our forest rambling, it was pleasant to lounge in the cool verandah, jalousied, to admit the air without the sun. Cigars, coffee, and American rocking-chairs added to the comfort.

‘ Would any one like a hammock?’ asked our host. Yes, one of us would. A grass hammock was accordingly fetched, and about to be slung, when out sprang a small snake, and glided away. ‘Nesty vermin; I hate them,’ said Mac. ‘ I always shudder at them, since an adventure I had this very time last year.’ ‘ An adventure; what was it ?’ from everybody. *

‘ Weel,’ returned our Scotch host (warming up at the recollection of something, and giving free play to many Scotticisms, the greater number of which I now forget), ‘ I call it an adventure at anyrate. Ye see, I had been out all the morning with the gun— Jenny minding the signals, and as I was returning, I stopped doun bye at the brook to have a dip. The day was melting. The path to it was shady, and runs through a grove of mango bushes, and being fond o’ the fruit, I was looking for it wherever I saw a likely tree. Weel, I picked and ate, and better picked and ate, till I could eat no longer, and had just pulled the last, when what should dart down from the tree, full at my face, but one of these nesty black 9011-

structors. Luckily I put up my right hand and catched him by the neck before he had time to bite. I knew the vermin week and had shot plenty o’ them, and to tell the real truth, their hug’s waur than their bite, for they don’t belong to the poisonous kind. But they are fashions enough for all that, for if they come to close grips, it taks a pretty stout chiel to untwist them.’ Here our worthy host paused to refresh, a few moments being allowed for the operation. To he continued.