This was the last of these great catastrophes, but the still steaming crater, and the old lava-stream, like "a huge black serpent" on the face of the mountain, serve to remind the spectator of its latent capabilities. The present crater, situated at a height of 8,500 feet above the sea, yawns to an unknown depth, with nearly vertical walls. Its aspect is thus described : The churning and groaning far below, the masses of fetid vapour ever being hurled up wrathfully from the gloomy and awful depths, and the riven, scorched, and honeycombed walls, exhaling clouds of suffocating steam from a thousand crevices and holes, readily suggest latent possibilities well calculated to appal the stoutest heart. Apparently the present crater is the youngest and innermost of three. Further down, on the south-west side, are to be seen, along with numerous fissures of unfathomable depth, remains which point to the existence of two former craters, concentric and of large dimensions, and separated from one another by a considerable interval. Possibly the existing cone may have been formed during the great eruption of 1783. The Panama Canal.-The report of an engineer who recently visited the Isthmus of Panama is summed up in the journal of the Manchester Geographical Society for the second quarter of 1886. According to this account no trace of the excavations supposed to have been made for the Canal are visible for half the distance between Colon and Panama. Along the line he saw instead many overturned and rustcovered carriages, some of which were embedded in the soil, while quantities of rolling stock not yet put together were lying about in a state of ruin, owing to long exposure to wind, weather, and marshdamp. At Matachin, where it was supposed that the construction of the Canal was being pushed on with all speed, nothing was to be seen but abandoned excavations and upturned steam engines, the latter being apparently very common objects in the Isthmus. In a neighbouring jungle he found straight rows of saplings, three or four yards deep, extending for a length of 160 yards. On closer inspection he found that this symmetrical plantation had grown out of waggons filled with earth which had been left there a couple of years ago. The story is rather taller than the saplings, but it is put forward with an air of perfect seriousness. The aggregate plant of the company has cost eight millions sterling. Three fourths of it is said to be unfit for use, owing to the carelessness with which complicated machinery is left out in the open air, or at best packed up in skeleton cases. Of the twenty-one sections into which the future waterway has been divided, only five are in anything like an advanced condition. In three the ground has merely been scratched, and in thirteen it has been left alone altogether. He does not think much of the project to choke up the Chagres by means of a gigantic dam. He saw the river rise twelve metres in one night, and carry down quantities of soil held together by the roots of tropical plants, more than sufficient to fill up the proposed reservoir. On M. de Lesseps' own showing, his difficulties at this moment are very serious, apart altogether from his financial embarrassments. As an advocate of level canals he has always declared that no maritime canal depending on inland waters can be a success. In spite of that he cannot quite make up his mind whether the canal is to be taken right across the Isthmus at one uniform level, or whether the rising ground of the Cordilleras is to be surmounted by locks. If the difficulty of the inland water supply could be got over, it would be much cheaper to make the Canal with locks rather than to cut it through on one level, but it would be far more expensive to work, and the delays would be endless. If enough money is not forthcoming to inake the waterway according to the original plans, it is possible that a canal with locks may be resorted to; but if this prove to be the case it will be a considerable defeat for M. de Lesseps and a great misfortune to his shareholders. In some of M. de Lesseps' most recent utterances about the Canal, he declared that it would be open, as originally announced, in 1889, and that it would not matter if the most difficult part of the work still remained to be done, as the prestige secured by the opening would attract fresh capital. From this remarkable pronouncement it may be inferred that an attempt will be made to push on the works through the marshes at both ends in order to have a sham inauguration of the unfinished waterway at the time originally named. The Plague of Yunnan.-Les Missions Catholiques of November 19 and 26 contains an interesting account of the singular epidemic which has at intervals ravaged the Chinese province of Yunnan since the suppression of the Mohammedan rebellion in 1873. The most singular feature of this illness is that it first attacks the rats, who die in myriads before the human victims are assailed by it, and it is hence called the "disease of the rats." Its most distinctive peculiarity is the appearance of a small tumour, at first no larger than a pea, and increasing to that of a pigeon's egg, in some of the articulations of the body, such as the arm-pit or elbow joint. This fatal symptom is attended by no local pain, but is followed by violent fever, which carries off the patient very often in twenty-four hours. Families have been carried off in a few hours and whole villages depopulated by this scourge, which appears to be highly contagious. It would seem to be confined to the lowlands, and people may escape it by taking refuge on the heights, if they can avoid ever descending thence during its continuance. After many remedies had been tried in vain, some one, it is not known who, thought of administering ipecacuanha, which was quickly adopted by the missionaries, and is now extensively used, with very good results, in doses of from one to two grammes, repeated at intervals. Other emetics have been tried as a substitute, but without success. The plague no doubt originated in the frightful mortality of the civil war, the poison of the corrupting bodies being transmitted or disseminated by the rats. Volcanic Eruption in the Pacific.-A letter in the Fiji Times gave the first news of an appalling volcanic outburst in the island of Ninafu, one of the Tonga group. The eruption, which occurred at the end of August 1886, was preceded by violent earthquakes and storms of thunder and lightning. The inhabitants, alarmed by these premonitory symptoms, left the six other villages to congregate in Futoo, a town on the leeward or western side of the island. From the 30th to the 31st of August violent shocks and earth-tremors were incessant, until, on the latter date, the subterranean fires burst through the earth-crust 2 on the shores of the lake, and a column of flame, visible at Keppel Island, 100 miles distant, shot up 2,000 feet into the air. For ten days the eruption continued, with varying degrees of violence, the earthquake shocks scarcely ever intermitting for an hour. The natives on the arrival of a ship were found huddled together at one end of the island, much terrified but uninjured. Provisions were left to them, but, as there seemed to be no further immediate danger, it was judged better not to remove them. This was perhaps an outlet of the great earthquake wave which shook the Southern States of America.— Times, December 2. Trade of the Corea.-No. 61 of the annual series of Foreign Office Reports contains a report by Consul-General Baber on the trade and the commerce of the Corea for 1885. Although the figures are still very small, imports and exports together amounting only to £382,000, this figure shows an advance on that for the previous year. This increase Mr. Baber attributes to the consumption of Manchester goods, used, he says, by 6,000,000 out of the 8,000,000 inhabitants, the heavier classes alone being in demand, and sized goods being unsaleable. The resources of the country are (he goes on) considerable, and with peace and good government Corea ought to afford an important outlet for British piece goods. These now hold the market, but so far English merchants have avoided entering the country, being content to allow Japanese to act for them and control the trade. One German firm has established a house at Chemulpo, and secured several government contracts; the agents of the American Trading Company have also visited the country, and met with so much encouragement, that they now propose to open an office in the capital. Several British merchants have prospected the country, but they retired after incurring heavy losses. Chinese, mostly from Chefoo, carry on a small barter-trade; nine-tenths of the shipping and of the import and export business is in Japanese hands, but of the goods imported, nearly two-thirds are of British origin and manufacture. In view of the revolutions and continuous political scares, the annual epidemics of cholera and relapsing fever, and, not least, the inexperience and vacillation of the native officials, it does not seem probable that any British mercantile firm of repute is likely to be established for some time to come in any of the three treaty ports." The Melbourne Massacre in the Louisiade Archipelago. Argus of November 1st has the following telegram from Cooktown:"The missionary schooner Ellangowan, which arrived during Saturday night, brings the information that Thomas Mullens reported at Fort Moresby that while he was at Renard Island the natives told him of the murder of Captain Craig and all the crew of the brig Emily of Cooktown. Captain Craig was pearl fishing off Johannet Island, near Gordon, a village in the Louisiade Archipelago. There were working with him Walter Hollingsworth, an assistant named Thompson, a Greek, a Malay, a cook, four Malay hands, and he also employed seven Johannet Islanders. On September 14th, a boat belonging to the Emily went out to the shelling-grounds, and the cook, with three islanders, who pretended to be sick, was left aboard. The boat anchored, and Craig and Thompson were in the act of raising the diver, when the natives capsized them overboard, cutting the diver's life-line. The Greek was clubbed with a piece of firewood, and the Malays jumped overboard, and swam for the reef close by. The islanders in the boat returned to the brig, got a rifle, and shot the men as they were still swimming for the reef. Meantime the cook The natives had been killed by the natives left aboard the brig. plundered the brig, spread the sails about, poured kerosene over them, and set fire to the vessel, which sank in nineteen fathoms. On hearing the account of the natives, Mullens crossed over to Johannet Island, the natives of which, who were previously friendly, were afraid to communicate with him. By the threat of bringing a man-of-war, he compelled them to restore the Emily's boat, and warned another ship's crew to be on their guard. Both Craig and Hollingsworth leave wives and families at Cooktown.-Times, December 8, 1886. Notes on Novels. The Princess Casamassima. By HENRY JAMES. London: THE HE irrepressible Socialist threatens to be as great a bore in fiction as in politics, and the subscribers to circulating libraries will soon have as much cause to anathematize his existence as Home Secretaries and inspectors of police. That it is utterly impossible to clothe this obtrusive personage with any degree of romantic interest we will not absolutely aver; we can only maintain that in the hands of any novelist who has yet treated him, he appears as an unmitigated and unconscionable nuisance. The reader in search of entertainment may generally make it a rule to skip every page in which he figures, and this recipe would reduce the fraction of Mr. James' work to be gone through to infinitesimal proportions. The Princess Casamassima, who gives its title to the book, is a fantastic foreign woman, separated from her husband, who seeks a stimulus for her jaded emotions in the companionship of socialists and conspirators. The story is principally concerned with the fate of one of the more innocent and helpless of these, Hyacinth Robinson, the son of a convicted murderess, whose fate would have a touch of tragic pathos were it not that he has deliberately brought it upon himself by volunteering for the rôle of assassin as the agent of a secret society. Ladies of rank who haunt the quarters of the poor under plea of charity, but really with the design of marrying revolutionary artisans, had better be left in the gutter which they seek by preference, and though perhaps intended as types of a certain phase of English society, are at best a broad caricature of it. Mr. James, whose vaguely suggestive style places him at the head of the impressionist school of fiction, is out of his element among the social deeps where he has here sought his subject. The Old Order Changes. By W. H. MALLOCK. London: MR. R. MALLOCK cannot write otherwise than brilliantly, and his present work is quite sufficiently full of smart sayings to justify his reputation. His brilliancy is, however, rather that of the essayist than of the novelist; and the readers of fiction pure and simple will find lengthy disquisitions on socialism, radicalism, and all the other isms allied thereto, somewhat heavy pabulum. Of course the principal characters are theologically-minded persons, with a due taste for airing their various views and opinions; and equally, of course, the hero belongs to the modern type of half-hearted waverers, halting between two loves and more than one religion. Many eminent personages figure here under more or less transparent disguises, and we fancy the author has transgressed the bounds of good feeling and literary courtesy in his malignant presentation of a prominent statesman under the alias of Mr. Snapper. The change in the attitude of the Conservative party towards the Liberal leaders since "The Old Order Changes" first began to appear in the pages of the "National Review "makes this breach of taste all the more conspicuous; and if we mistake not, it will now grate on many readers who were previously ready to condone, if not to applaud, it. Catholics, at least, have always reason to feel grateful to Mr. Mallock for the sympathy with which he writes of their religion; and the argumentative hero of the book, who triumphs over all opponents in the fields of politics and religion, is a Catholic priest, to one of whose sermons thirty-four pages of letterpress are devoted. The descriptions of Riviera scenery and chateau life among the Maritime Alps have all the glamour of the South, and lend grace and poetry to the action placed among them. A Modern Telemachus. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Two vols. THIS is a of the begich family among the Algerine corsairs. HIS is a tale of the beginning of last century, relating the adven a We are told that it is founded on fact; and Miss Yonge confesses that her authority (as she found out after the tale was written) had suppressed several touching catholic features in the narrative. There is a little French lady very charming in her romance and heroism; her head is full of " Télémaque," and in the most perilous moments she cannot help seeing wonderful coincidences; whilst her serene readiness for martyrdom is really touching. There is also, as a sort of foil to the little catholic girl, a young Scot, Arthur Maxwell Hope, |