bleeding feet. Divided for a few days from
the rest, they dig a grave in the sand and
bury their good friend the cooper —these
two companions alone in the wilderness —
and then the time comes when they both are
ill and beg their wretched partners in despair,
reduced and few in number now, to wait by
them one day. They wait by them one day,
they wait by them two days. On the
morning of the third, they move very softly
about in making their preparations for the
resumption of their journey; for, the child
is sleeping by the fire, and it is agreed with
one consent that he shall not be disturbed
until the last moment. The moment
comes, the fire is dying—and the child is
dead.

His faithful friend, the steward, lingers
but a little while behind him. His grief
is great, he staggers on for a few days,
lies down in the desert and dies. But he
shall be reunited in his immortal spirit—
who can doubt it!—with the child, where
he and the poor carpenter shall be raised
up with the words, "Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto the least of these, ye have done
it unto Me."

As I recal the dispersal and disappearance
of nearly all the participators in this
once famous shipwreck (a mere handful
being recovered at last), and the legends that
were long afterwards revived from time to
time among the English officers at the Cape,
of a white woman with an infant, said to
have been seen weeping outside a savage hut
far in the interior, who was whisperingly
associated with the remembrance of the
missing ladies saved from the wrecked vessel,
and who was often sought but never found,
thoughts of another kind of travel come into
my mind.

Thoughts of a voyager unexpectedly
summoned from home, who travelled a vast
distance, and could never return. Thoughts of
this unhappy wayfarer in the depths of his
sorrow, in the bitterness of his anguish, in
the helplessness of his self-reproach, in the
desperation of his desire to set right what he
had left wrong, and do what he had left
undone.

For, there were many many things he had
neglected. Little matters while he was at
home and surrounded by them, but things of
mighty moment when he was at an
immeasurable distance. There were many many
blessings that he had inadequately felt,
there were many trivial injuries that he
had not forgiven, there was love that he
had but poorly returned, there was friendship
that he had too lightly prized;
there were a million kind words that he
might have spoken, a million kind looks
that he might have given, uncountable slight
easy deeds in which he might have been
most truly great and. good. O for a day
(he would exclaim) for but one day to make
amends! But the sun never shone upon
that happy day, and out of his remote
captivity he never came.

Why does this traveller's fate obscure, or
New Year's Eve, the other histories of
travellers with which my mind was filled but
now, and cast a solemn shadow over me!
Must I one day make his journey? Even so,
who shall say, that I may not then be
tortured by such late regrets: that I may not
then look from my exile on my empty place
and undone work? I stand upon a sea shore,
where the waves are years. They break and
fall, and I may little heed them: but, with
every wave the sea is rising, and I know that
it will float me on this traveller's voyage
at last.

IRON INCIDENTS.

I AM going to speak here of a little north-
west passage which connects the waters —not
of two oceans, the Pacific and Atlantic —but,
of two rivers, the Thames and Mersey. Its
"Point Riley" is in the longitude of Euston
Square. My track is on the line established
by the London and North-Western Railway
Company. This body is not only wealthier
than any other corporation in the world, but
is distinguished by having a larger and more
important field of operation.

The resources of the English people will
be made very apparent when we have
reflected that the value of the stock in trade
connected with this one little home transaction
is rather more than the whole capital of
the East India Company, which rules over a
hundred millions of people: it is quite
double that of the Bank of England; and
it comes very close up to the total outlay
upon the three thousand miles of canal now
established in Great Britain and Ireland.
Furthermore we may reflect that it conveys
every year more passengers than there are
people in Scotland. Its monthly receipts
(two hundred and fifty thousand pounds)
equal the yearly income of a good many
German Principalities. The value of the
goods it conveys to and from the single port
of Liverpool is fully a match for the whole
export and import trade of Belgium or
Portugal.

These are suggestive facts. Among other
things they suggest, is the question, how
can so much business be done with so
little fuss? How can one company contrive
to dispatch and receive along its lines
every year nearly ten millions of passengers,
and four millions of tons of goods and coals,
at the same time earning ninety thousand
pounds for the conveyance of parcels and
upwards of eighty thousand for the transport
of horses, carriages and cattle? How do
Captain Huish, in London, and Mr. Braithwaite
Poole, in Liverpool, contrive to keep
masses like these perpetually rolling to and
fro between them, with no more display of