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going through the water at the rate of seven or eight miles an

hour.

The shot from the pirates fell considerably short of us, and I was therefore enabled to form an opinion of the range and power of their guns, which was of some use to me. Assistance from our cowardly crew was quite out of the question, for there was not a man amongst them brave enough to use the stones which had been brought on deck, and which perhaps might have been of some little use to us when the pirates came nearer. The fair wind and all the press of sail which we had crowded on the junk, proved of no use for our pursuers, who had much faster-sailing vessels, were rapidly gaining upon us. Again the nearest pirate fired upon us. The shot this time fell just under our stern. I still remained quiet, as I had determined not to fire a single shot until I was quite certain my gun would take effect. The third broadside which followed this, came whizzing over our heads and through our sails, without, however, wounding either the men at the helm or myself. The pirates now seemed quite sure of their prize; and came down upon us hooting and yelling like demons, at the same time loading their guas, and evidently determined not to spare their shot. This was a moment of intense interest. The plan which I had formed from the first, was now about to be put to the proof; and if the pirates were not the cowards which I believed them to be, nothing could save us from falling into their hands.. Their fearful yells seem to be ringing in my ears even now, after this lapse of time, and when I am at the other side of the globe. The nearest junk was now within thirty yards of ours; their guns were now loaded, and I knew that the next discharge would completely rake our decks. Now,' said I to the helmsman, 'keep your eyes fixed on me, and the moment you see me fall flat on the deck you must do the same, or you will be shot.' I knew that the pirate who was now at our stern, could not bring his guns to bear upon us without putting his helm down and bringing his gangway at right angles with our stern, as his guns were fired from the gangway. I therefore kept a sharp eye upon his helmsman, and the moment I saw him putting his helm down, I ordered our steersmen to fall flat on their faces behind some wood, and at the same moment did so myself. We had scarcely done so, when bang! bang! went their guns, and the shot came whizzing over us in all directions, splintering the wood about us. Fortunately none of us were struck. Now, mandarin, now they are quite close enough,' cried out my companions, who did not wish to have another broadside like the last. I, being of the same opinion, raised myself above the high stern of our junk; and while the pirates were not more than twenty yards from us, hooting and yelling, I raked their decks fore and aft, with shot and ball from my double-barrelled gun

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Had a thunderbolt fallen amongst them, they could not have

been more surprised. Doubtless many were wounded, and probably some killed. At all events the whole of the crew, not fewer than forty or fifty men, who, a moment before, crowded the deck, disappeared in a marvellous manner; sheltering themselves behind the bulwarks, or lying flat on their faces. They were so completely taken by surprise, that their junk was left without a helmsman; her sails flapped in the wind; and as we were still carrying all sail and keeping on our right course, they were soon left a considerable way astern. Another was now bearing down upon us as boldly as his companion had done, and commenced firing in the same manner. Having been so successful with the first, I determined to follow the same plan with this one, and to pay no attention to his firing until he should come to close quarters. The plot now began to thicken; for the first junk had gathered way again, and was following in our wake, although keeping at a respectful distance; and three others, although still further distant, were making for the scene of action as fast as they could. In the meantime, the second was almost alongside, and continued giving us a broadside now and then with her guns. Watching their helm as before, we sheltered ourselves as well as we could; at the same time my poor fellows, who were steering, kept begging and praying that I would fire into our pursuers as soon as possible, or we should be all killed. As soon as they came within twenty yards of us, I gave them the contents of both barrels, raking their decks as before. This time the helmsman fell, and doubtless several others were wounded. In a minute or two I could see nothing but boards and shields, which were held up by the pirates to protect themselves from my firing; their junk went up into wind for want of a helmsman, and was soon left some distance behind us.

"Two other piratical junks, which had been following in our wake for some time, when they saw what had happened, would not venture any nearer; and at last, much to my satisfaction, the whole set of them bore away."—p. 388.

With this long quotation, which we trust our readers will readily pardon, we must take our leave for the present of Mr. Fortune. We hope that his enthusiasm in the cause of his favourite science will induce him to return to the scene of his labours, and enrich still further the horticulture of his native land. We know no more agreeable, or amusing, or generally interesting volume, or one that we more cordially recommend to our readers, both old and young, than the "Wanderings in China.”

ART. IV.-Travels in Central America, being a Journal of nearly Three Years' Residence in the Country; together with a sketch of the History of the Republic, and an account of its Climate, Productions,Commerce, &c. By ROBERT GLASGOW DUNLOP, Esq. London: Longman, 1847.

THIS

HIS is a little book of small pretension, but nevertheless full of useful facts and statistics relative to places and people of whom Europeans possess at present but scanty information. The author, Mr. Dunlop, was a young and enterprising Caledonian, who emigrated four years ago in quest of money and volcanoes, and died, unhappily, before he had acquired much of the first, or explored many of the second. His constitution, naturally delicate, was broken to pieces by repeated fevers, and the last sheet of his little volume had scarcely passed through the press, when intelligence arrived that he had fallen a victim, as much perhaps to the climate as to the overtaxing of his powers, mental and corporeal. He died at Guatemala, on the first of January in the present year, his journal being dated from the same place in the month of December, 1846, the sixth of seven brothers who sleep in a foreign land.

The states now, or rather recently, known as the Republic of Central America, consisted during their dependance upon Spain, of Chiapas (which has been lately annexed to Mexico), Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Mosquitacoas, Nicaragua, and Costarica,-all of them vast, fertile, productive, and populous provinces, abounding with wood and water, with navigable rivers and inland seas, and an almost inexhaustible quantity of mineral and metalliferous wealth. In the earlier years of the Hispanic domination, their condition was comparatively flourishing -the Jesuits introduced among them many of the arts and sciences-palaces and churches reared their heads proudly in their towns and cities-architecture and painting were admired and cultivated. With the decline of Spain, however, and the expulsion of the society of Loyola, this comfortable position of affairs gradually faded away, until scarcely a vestige of the past remained; and at the beginning of the present century they were as poor, and almost as ignorant and enslaved, as our own Irish people under the despotism of bygone days.

On the 15th of September, 1821, the city of Guatemala, the most considerable and important of the capitals of those ruined provinces, proclaimed its absolute independence of the old Spanish dynasty, and its example was speedily followed by San Salvador and Honduras, who met with little or no resistance from the feeble, unsupported, and even unprotected authorities or governors who had been set over them by their foreign masters. Scarcely had they emancipated themselves from one tyranny, when they seemed fated to fall under the baleful influence of another. The emperor of Mexico, as the adventurer Iturbide then called himself, proclaimed war against the enfranchised provinces, desolated them with army after army, and in a short time they were annexed to, or reduced under, the Mexican dominion, which threatened them with even greater evils than those they had previously endured. The fall of Iturbide, and the consequent anarchy that tore up every order of society and government in Mexico itself, put an end to this new tyranny, and the entire of the provinces, with one exception, united themselves together, and, strong for the moment in combination, proclaimed themselves free and independent for evermore under the title of the Republic of Central America. They established a congress similar to that of the United States, repealed a number of old bad laws, and enacted some good new ones, and at the end of the year 1823 everything appeared happy and prosperous,-past evils were forgotten, and future blessings seemed assured.

In the January of 1824, however, began the first of those sanguinary insurrections against any and all government, which from that period up to February, 1839, when the Republic was dissolved, deluged the whole of Central America with blood, and converted these fine cantons into squalid deserts, inflicting in their career of desolation so many and such unexampled calamites upon high and low, rich and poor, man and woman, priest and laic, as we believe to be unparalleled in the history of the world, and which make us blush for human nature capable of committing the wildest and most abominable enormities without the slightest cause or reason that can be alleged in their justification. Usurpation, murder, robbery, assassination, exile, the scaffold, everything that accompanies war among the most savage nations,-all brutality, all madness, all hellish ferocity, ungovernable rage, uncurbed and

uncurbable folly and infatuation, bigotry, ignorance, revenge, cunning, falsehood, blasphemy, grovelling superstition, every infamous crime and passion that ever debased mankind from the creation to the present hour, have here had their horrid career, and reduced the entire of this once flourishing Republic to a state at which the devils themselves may shout and laugh with joy. Miscreant after miscreant, robber after robber have sprung up, and grown powerful among these misguided millions, aiming at sovereign command for the worst purposes, but with the most specious pretences,-pig-drivers being at one time lords and dictators, slaves at another being generals and rulers, until the whole framework of civil society has been so rudely ruptured, as to have resolved itself into its first elements, and left this once rich and enlightened people in a state not one whit removed from the aboriginal Indians, capable of anything and everything that levels man with the beasts of the field. Of the two rival ruffians who now rule with undisputed sway in separate portions of this vast territory, --Rafael Carrera and Gardiola, -we are furnished with the following sketches by Mr. Dunlop :

"RAFAEL CARRERA, the Commander-in-Chief and President of the State of Guatemala, is a dark-coloured and extremely ill-looking mestizo. He was originally servant to a woman of no very respectable character in Amatislan, and afterwards to a Spaniard, from whom it is supposed he learnt the little knowledge and breeding he possessed when he first appeared on the political stage of Guatemala; afterwards he was employed as a pig-driver; that is in purchasing and personally driving pigs from the villages to Guatemala and the more populous towns. The cholera morbus having appeared in April, 1837, the Indians were led to believe that the waters had been poisoned by emissaries sent by the parties then ruling the State, and being also excited against the system of trial by jury, (then lately brought into operation by parties inimical to liberal institutions), they united to the number of some thousands in the town of Santa Rosa, and under the command of Carrera, who had been one of the most active in deceiving them, destroyed a party of forty dragoons who had been sent out to disperse them. Carrera's faction was frequently defeated, and a vast slaughter made of the Indians who followed him at Villa Nueva by the government troops under the command of General Salagar, on the 11th of September, 1838, but they have always reunited in greater force, and on the 13th of April, 1839, Carrera took Guatemala at the head of 5000 Indians; since which time he has retained all the

real power in his hands. For some time he acted nominally under

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