risk to life and health. Letters from home
afterwards tell him, "Even as it was, had
you thought it right to break up the mission-
station for the present, the committee would
have looked upon it as a mere error of judgment,
and not allowed it to make them feel a
whit less confidence in you." He adds:
"Would it be credited that at the very time
this was written, a man was at Stanley,
acting, as has since appeared, under their
express orders to get rid of me!" At this
time, the captain had been directed to buy
the entire island, "but like other directions
sent to me, it was useless, in consequence
of there being no money transmitted to me
for that or for any other purpose. Indeed I
was actually spending my own salary, little
as it was, in keeping up the payments, and
the respectability of the ship."

Another voyage was made to Monte Video,
where there was found waiting to join the
expedition a young, simple-minded German,
who had been announced as "linguist and
interpreter to the mission" in the society's
papers, who had been sent out, we are told,
at an annual salary of "forty pounds a-year,
and find himself;" this salary, moreover,
not to commence till he arrived at Keppel
Island. This person, described as a weak-
minded but well-meaning and religious youth,
was despatched, says the captain, with
instructions public and private; "the private
ones, as he told me, intimating that he should
act as a spy upon his brother wolves in the
mission. In proof, it will be enough to mention
that he really did this; and that, on the
passage out, he not only opened the sealed
letters entrusted to his care for the consul
and the chaplain, and one of my crew, but
actually read them and allowed them to be
read all over the vessel. His excuse was
that his master had bidden him study
epistolary correspondence, and that he would
better please his employers if he carefully
observed and noted, and then reported home,
all the doings of those with whom he was
henceforth to be associated."

The eighteen months for which the crew
was bound, expired, and the men claimed to
be sent home. No money was sent, and the
return of the vessel was forbidden. "The
ship," says the captain, "for purposes I can
well understand, was to remain out, no matter
at what expense, waste of time and inconvenience.
Thus, then, I had to discharge all the
men and send them home. What trouble I
had;—what I went through—hunting about
the streets for money to pay the men's wages
—going from place to place and ship to ship,
trying to get the men a berth home, instead
of paying for their passage;—battling with
the consul (who spoke feelingly, but firmly,
on the subject)—none can fully tell but
myself."

At last there came out to Stanley a
missionary with a mission party, eighteen in
number. He was reserved in his communications
with the captain, and it appeared
"that there was a sad division and much
unpleasantness existing between the missionary
and those with him." The missionary came
out as the superintendent of the entire enterprise,
but there were no instructions sent to
Captain Snow, who, not long afterwards,
found himself cleverly ejected from his ship,
and left ashore with his wife on the Falkland
Islands. "I asked," says Captain Snow,
"for money to defray the expenses of myself
and wife home to England, and also to
support us on shore until we could get home.
All and everything was, however, refused."
Thus, then, after two years' hard and faithful
service, the man who had "placed the society
in the favourable position it now occupies,"
and was ever applauded and spoken well of
by that society, was, with his wife, thanked,
indeed, by suddenly, at one blow, reducing
them to next to beggary, and turning them on
shore eight thousand miles from England!
The captain sold his books and instruments
to buy a passage home.

We have told the main facts of the captain's
story as we find them stated in his book,
have made no comments, and shall draw
no inferences.

THE QUEEN'S GUEST.

I HAVE the honour of being a guest of her
Majesty, and ranking as first-class debtor of
Lewworth Prison. How I got the invitation,
which had to be regarded in the light of a
command, and implicitly obeyed, may form
a curious chapter of contemporary prison
history.

Just two years ago, I was as comfortably
off as any literary man of moderate
aspirations could wish. Though not enjoying
the aura popularis of notoriety, I had enough
of the solid pudding, and was biding my time
to make my notch in the London catalogue.
Now, I am a prisoner for debt, and
doubtlessly held up as a warning to all honest
men in the small watering-place where I
reside. Against this decision I wish to protest
and, know no better opportunity of making
my story known, and setting my character
right, than by giving a straightforward
account of the circumstances to which I owe
my incarceration.

Some malicious sprite, envying my good
fortune, imbued me with a feeling of patriotism,
if I may term it so, and when an opportunity
of serving my country in the East was offered
me, I gladly accepted it. I entered one of
the foreign legions, under a verbal agreement
that my services would be required for three
years, and so much longer as the war might
last, My outfit cost me, in round numbers,
one hundred and fifty pounds—one
hundred and twenty to my tailor, and twenty
odd to my bootmaker—these items,
representing the equipment I was directed to
procure by my commanding officer. I served in