Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written, free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. Omoo would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes—rarely, it is true—meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn, so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous idiot, and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the "Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian reminiscences, on the shadowy souvenir of those happy days when he fed on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he dreamed of cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter. Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this number of the Magazine reaches his hands—and reach them it assuredly will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland—a detailed and bona fide history of his Life and Adventures, from the day he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last sheet of his valuable autobiography. And we pledge ourselves to bestow upon his book what Aaron Bang calls an amber immortalisation, by embalming it in a review; treating him tenderly, as one we dearly cherish.

Neither pleasant recollections of Omoo, nor equally agreeable anticipations of Longghost's lucubrations, shall prevent our doing full justice to Coulter. Mr Melville made a charming book out of most slender materials. What had he to write about? Literally next to nothing. The fag-end of a cruise, and a few weeks' residence on an island, whose aspect, inhabitants, and all pertaining to it, had already been minutely and well described by Kotzebue and other voyagers. But he has found more to say that is worth reading, about what he saw in his very limited sphere of observation, than Dr Coulter has concerning his extensive voyages and travels "on the Western Coast of South America, and the interior of California, including a narrative of incidents at the Kingsmill Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and other islands in the Pacific Ocean." And with respect to the manner of saying it, the Yankee has it hollow. Dr Coulter's style is careless, often feeble, and defaced by grammatical errors, so glaring that one marvels they escaped correction at the very printers' hands. It says much, therefore, for the fertility of the subject, for the novelty and curiosity of the scenes visited and incidents encountered by the adventurous doctor of medicine, that his book, although devoid of the graces of composition, is upon the whole both instructive and amusing.

To understand the desultory to-and-fro nature of Dr Coulter's cruise, it is necessary to read his preface, where he gives some general information concerning the singular and precarious commerce known as the Pacific Trade. This is carried on between the ports on the western coast of North and South America, the Pacific Islands, and the coasts of China, and is very lucrative, but often dangerous. The articles of trade and barter are exceedingly various. Europe contributes wines, brandy, hardware, and sundry manufactured goods; California sends deals, corn, and furs; the various islands furnish arrow-root, oil, pearls, dye-woods, tortoiseshell, &c. The ships engaged in the traffic, and which are of many sizes and countries, are usually owned, wholly or in part, by the captain or supercargo, and consequently, wholly unfettered in their course, they wander from port to port, according to the caprice of the hour, or the chances of an advantageous market. For protection against pirates, and against the attacks of the fierce and savage tribes with whom they frequently come in collision, they are well armed and manned. The precaution is no idle one, nor could it possibly be dispensed with. "Few of these trading vessels ever return with their cargoes to the coast of the Americas, China, the Sandwich Islands, or Australia, without having frequent fights with the savages, and there are some of them, who have reckless captains and crews on board, that never can end a trading transaction with the natives without a row."

Whether reckless or not, fighting appears to be an every-day sport with the warlike pearl-seekers of the Pacific—one which the meekest and most amiable navigators cannot avoid sharing in. We infer this compelled pugnacity from Dr Coulter's adventures when sailing in the Hound, a smart brigantine commanded by the gallant Captain Trainer. For although the doctor started as surgeon to the ship Stratford, and finally returned to England in her, he was long an absentee from her state room, and cruising on board the Hound. It happened thus. With a degree of thoughtlessness hardly pardonable in one of his profession, he made a practice of sleeping on deck, even when season and climate rendered such an exposed bed-place highly insalubrious. The consequence was a severe attack of rheumatism, and on making the coast of California he was fain to land, and take up his abode in a Roman Catholic Mission-house. The ship was ready for sea, bound to the far west for whales but the doctor was by no means in a like state of preparation, and the captain, seeing his crippled condition, urged him to remain on shore. Captain Lock was a sort of amateur medico, who prided himself on his Esculapian skill, and, although sorry to lose his surgeon's society, he evidently rather chuckled at the idea of having an opportunity to exercise his accomplishments. So Doctor Coulter allowed himself to be persuaded, and making an appointment to meet the Stratford, Deo volente, at Tahiti in the month of November, he remained under the care of the Spanish padre at the Mission, much to his own satisfaction, but probably not quite so much to that of any unlucky mariner upon whose fractured limb or diseased body Captain Lock may subsequently have found it necessary to practise. And even the doctor, although the motion of the ship was agony to his aching bones, and the rough service she was proceeding on would hardly have suited one in his crippled state, must surely have experienced some regret in thus deserting the whaler, from whose decks he had witnessed so many gallant contests with the oleaginous monster of the deep. Whaling is indeed a glorious sport, as far superior to your salmon fishing and fox hunting, as those diversions are to bobbing for gudgeon and chasing rats with a terrier. And whilst the excitement it occasions must, we apprehend, be the strongest possible to be known, short of that of the battle-field, it has the advantage of being much less dangerous than it looks. The ideas suggested to a landsman by the description of an attack on a whale, are those of extreme peril to all engaged in it, a peril from which the chances against their escaping alive are at least ten to one. A few hardy fellows pull up to a creature that looks like a small island on the surface of the sea, and one sweep of whose tail or flukes is sufficient to knock their frail bark into splinters; they dash their harpoons into his huge flanks, and submit to be towed through the waves by the maddened monster at a rate that makes the water boil round their bows. Such is the power of the fish, that if he came in contact with a ship, during his headlong course, his weight and impetus would stave in her sides. Sometimes he runs straightforward; at others in circles, with irregular rapidity. Still the boat sticks to him, until the smart of his hurt subsiding, or through fatigue, he slackens his speed, enabling his enemies to approach and to pierce him with fresh wounds. At last, when the waters around are reddened with his blood, comes the death-flurry. "Stern all!" The boats stand clear, and the fish disappears in the cloud of spray that he, dashes up in his dying agonies. His flukes quiver, he plunges heavily, and all is over. Perhaps, and this frequently happens, in the course of the contest a boat has been cut in two, or so far damaged as to fill and sink. But the crew are seldom lost. They support themselves by aid of the oars, until their comrades pick them up. Whaling seamen are paid by shares in the profits of the voyage, which arrangement of course contributes to render them zealous and daring.

Such are the scenes described in the early part of Dr Coulter's book, some of them with tolerable spirit. The whale captured, next comes the cutting in and boiling out of the blubber—the former a laborious and often a dangerous process, the latter, anything but an odoriferous one. The death of a whale is the signal for the arrival of a host of sharks—blue, brown, and shovel-nosed—all eager to make a meal off the defunct leviathan. "We were all day surrounded with sea-fowl of various kinds—haglets, peterels, &c.—picking up floating particles of blubber as it passed astern, and vast numbers of large blue sharks that kept continually plunging on the fish, and rendered it very unsafe for the man to go down and point the hook into the hole cut for it; indeed we were frequently obliged to jerk him up off the whale out of their way by the aid of the rope round him for that purpose." The carcass and head on board, the fires are lighted, the kettle boils, and the ship speeds merrily on her course—the crew reckoning their share of gain, and listening anxiously for the welcome sound of "There he blows!"—the look-out man's usual cry on sighting a whale.

When he left the Stratford, Dr Coulter bade adieu to the grand seasport of whale-catching, in which he had taken the passive part of a spectator. But his hand, if unskilled to hurl the harpoon, was familiar with rifle and fowling-piece. Both of these, with an ample supply of lead, powder, and shot, his kind friend, Captain Lock, left with him at the mission of Yerba Buena, literally Good Grass, a Californian town in the bay of St Francisco. And as soon as pure air, repose, and the use of the Temescal, or hot-air bath, had restored the doctor's health, he scoured his fire-arms and made ready for the chase. A looker-on at sea, on terra firma he proved himself a perfect Nimrod. From that day forward nothing that wore fur or feather could escape his sure eye and steady hand. From the quail to the swan, from the frightened squirrel to the formidable grisly bear, all birds and beasts felt his power, and fell before his unerring rifle. Nor had he long to wait for opportunities of distributing his bullets with fatal effect amongst foes whose form was human, although in customs and civilisation they were but one degree above the brutes of the forest. After some months' stay in California, taken up chiefly with hunting and fishing excursions, but of which the doctor, anxious to get to sea again, gives but a brief account, he began to consider how he should best reach his rendezvous at Tahiti. He had plenty of time before him; but the whaling season on the west coast of America being at an end, he could hardly expect a westward bound English or American ship to touch at St Francisco for a considerable time to come. He had some notion of proceeding by a coasting vessel to a more southerly port, when one morning a fine brigantine hove in sight under a cloud of snow-white sail, and came to an anchor in the bay. Upon going on board, he recognised all old acquaintance in the captain of the Hound, whom he had formerly met—the doctor has been a great rover—at a seaport in Chili. Captain Trainer was trading along the coast, buying furs; had come into port for fresh water and repairs; was off for a cruise in the Indian archipelago; and calculated on winding it up by a visit to the Society Islands. The prospect of variety and adventure held out by such a voyage exactly chimed in with the doctor's undecided and erratic mood, as its projected termination did with his promise to rejoin his ship at Tahiti; so, without more ado, he made terms with his friend Trainer, and took up a passenger's berth on board the Hound.

The schooner answering to this canine appellation was a rakish, fast-sailing craft of two hundred tons burden, fitted out expressly for the Pacific trade. She carried four small carronades and a long nine-pounder, a sufficiency of small arms, and a smart crew of sixteen hands. Boarding-nettings she had, too, ready to be triced up in case of need; and altogether she had no occasion to dread any enemy she was at all likely to meet. Her captain was an Englishman born, frank and fearless, and a thorough sailor. Dr Coulter represents him as a kind-hearted and humane man, desirous to trade fairly and amicably with the savages, and not, after the fashion of many desperado skippers in those latitudes, to clench his bargains by blows and bloodshed. This admitted, it must be confessed that the captain was unfortunate; for during the time Dr Coulter sailed with him, we find him continually at loggerheads with the natives. For the most part, however, the strife was brought on by the treachery and robber-like propensities of the latter, who, whilst trading with their European customers, seldom neglect an opportunity of boarding their ships and cutting their throats. As soon as a vessel comes to anchor they surround it with their canoes, and show great anxiety to get on board, especially the women, whom many vessels admit, but whom Captain Trainer managed to keep off by tabooing his ship. The vice and immorality prevalent in most of the Pacific Islands is carried to a frightful pitch, doubtless greatly encouraged by the example of the reckless and dissolute mariners. Any stimulus of that kind was unnecessary to barbarians originally cruel, treacherous, and licentious in a very high degree. Cannibalism is prevalent amongst them. At Drummond's Island, one of the Kingsmill group, the first land where the Hound made any stay after leaving St Francisco, Dr Coulter had abundant proof of this. Except upon the coast, where the disgust shown by Europeans had rendered them ashamed of it, or at least anxious to conceal it, the natives did not deny the practice. Some of the men wore necklaces composed of the bones of human feet and hands, which clattered at each motion of the body. And other human bones were to be seen in their houses. They eat only strangers and enemies taken in battle; and as the occasional cutting off of a boats' crew or straggling watering party from a European ship is insufficient to keep their larders supplied, they get up constant wars with the natives of other islands. Amongst themselves, too, they are very quarrelsome. Dr Coulter, when at Drummond's Island, was present at a grand council, where, after a certain amount of singing, stamping, and speech-making, the warriors came from words to blows, and one of them was killed by a spear-thrust. To satisfy the honour and appease the wrath of his followers and partisans, a peace-offering was necessary. It consisted of six fighting cocks, with which and with the corpse of their chief the warriors took their departure, perfectly satisfied. Cock-fighting is a sport to which most of the Pacific tribes are passionately addicted.

When the Kingsmill savages had got all they could out of Captain Trainer, and trade was over, and the ship about to depart, they came out in their true colours. Previously they had been amiable and affable enough, contenting themselves with small pilferings, and with robbing Dr Coulter, whose curiosity took him on shore, of his clothes, which they replaced with a fish-skin cap and a war-mat. They now showed hostile intentions—attacked a boat, killed one of the crew, and then made an open attack on the schooner with a whole fleet of armed canoes. A shower of grape played havoc amongst them, and sank or capsized several of their craft; but they still persevered in their advance, and clung to the vessel's sides and to the boarding-nettings until repelled by cutlass and pistol. Thus began and ended most of the quarrels with the natives, who, usually the aggressors, were invariably defeated, but not without hard fighting and some loss on the part of the assailed. Captain Trainer, however, was not always quite blameless in the provocation of quarrels, which always terminated in heavy loss to the misguided savages. At New Hanover a foolish jest, which his experience of the people he had to deal with ought to have prevented him from indulging in, was cause of much bloodshed, and nearly occasioned the loss of the vessel, and destruction of the crew. Trade had gone on merrily and amicably for several days, when Trainer expressed a desire for a remarkable necklace of shells and teeth worn by one of the chiefs. The wearer was willing, and a bargain struck. The necklace was tightly knotted, and the purchaser propose to cut it. By way of a joke, "instead of cutting the cord, which he held in one hand, he raised the knife in a threatening manner as if about to stab the man." Practical jokes are always foolish and in bad taste,—jeu de mains, jeu de vilains, as the French proverb says;—and the results of this one were very serious. "The native took instant alarm, thought the captain was in earnest, made a spring clear of him, which broke his necklace, and plunged overboard. A few natives on deck at the time followed his example." A fierce fight, in which several of the schooner's crew were wounded, and a large number of the islanders killed, was the consequence of this thoughtless act. And scarcely had the assailants been repelled when the vessel was found to be on fire, ignited gun and pistol wadding having fallen through an open hatch amongst inflammable dunnage. By great exertion the flames were overcome, and the Hound sailed from the inlet where these unpleasant occurrences had taken place.

From Dr Coulter's account, the islands of the Pacific are the scene of continual acts of injustice, oppression, and insubordination. It constantly happens that seamen, seduced by the prospect of a sensual and idle life, and weary of hard work and uncertain pay on board traders and whalers, desert their ships and settle amongst the savages. Sometimes they are driven to this by ill-usage from their captains, often fierce and hard-hearted men. When a vessel becomes short-handed, it is a common practice to inveigle Indians on board; and if fair promises are insufficient to induce them to serve as sailors, to take them away by force. At Tacames, in Colombia, Dr Coulter fell in with a Californian who had served for some time on board an American ship. Jack, so his Yankee shipmates had christened him, had gone on board, in company with another of his tribe, to sell furs, and had not been allowed to go ashore again. His companion died of grief and ill-treatment on the coast of Japan, and Jack, when his services were no longer needed, was left at Tacames, two or three thousand miles from his native land. He belonged to a wandering tribe who lived by bartering furs for powder, tobacco, and other Indian necessaries, and, as an experienced and intrepid hunter, was invaluable to Dr Coulter. The account of their expeditions in the South American forests is highly interesting, and we are willing to believe unexaggerated, although some portions of the doctor's venatorial adventures and experiences, both in South America and elsewhere, do remind us a little of the marvels recorded in a diverting and apocryphal book put forth a few years ago by all ingenious nautical author. On the first day of their sortie, Jack and his employer, after passing unharmed through jungles peopled by gigantic monkeys of great boldness, who made various attempts to purloin their caps and guns, but did not otherwise molest them, reached a deep ravine, where the barking and howling of beasts were loud and incessant. Presently a wild horse dashed past them, pursued by a brace of tigers. The horse dropped from fatigue, the tigers sprang upon him, the ambushed hunters fired. The doctor's tiger was killed on the spot; "my shot, after passing through him, entered the horse's neck, and killed him also." Jack's aim had been less deadly; his beast was wounded, but still active and dangerous. Dr Coulter proposed giving him the contents of his second barrel, but the guide preferred to use his knife. The account of the hand-to-hand combat that ensued reminds us of those graphic records of bruising matches that occasionally grace the columns of the weekly newspapers. Pierce Egan himself could hardly recount the progress of a "mill" between the "Tipton Slasher and the Paddington Pet" in terser and more knowing style than that employed by John Coulter in narrating the set-to between Jack and the tiger. "Jack went boldly up to him; the infuriated animal grinned horridly and writhed rapidly about, throwing up a good deal of dust from the dry ground. One plunge of the knife—a roar; into him again—a hideous grin and a tumble about, some blood scattered on the ground; at him again—a miss stroke of the knife; try once more—both down and nearly covered with dust." Whereupon the bottle-holder felt strongly inclined to fire, but was deterred by fear of hitting his own man. "The tiger had now hold of either the Indian or his clothes, as both rolled together; yet the knife was busily at work. At last his arm was raised high up with the red dripping instrument; and after one more angry plunge of it, the tiger turned on his back, his paws and whole frame quivering, and with an attempt at a ghastly grin he fell over on his side and died. Jack then stood up, covered with the animal's blood, and his first ejaculation was 'un diablo;' in English, 'one devil.'" A strong term, but scarcely misapplied to this plucky and hilarious tiger, whom we conclude, from his continual grinning, to have been a near relation of the laughing hyena. He died game, with a smile on his lips. Jack escaped punishment, barring "a faint bite on the shoulder, and a few tears of the paws on his arms," of which the hardy fellow made little account, but, after skinning the carrion, proceeded onward in triumph, through forests whose impervious foliage allowed no glimpse of the sky, where the sunbeams came with a mild green tint through the masses of impending leaves; down rivers fringed with lofty trees, whose branches were alive with parrots and kingfishers; where the monkey screamed, the tiger howled, and the disgusting alligator, coated with slime and mud, crawled lazily away at the paddle's splash. In this manner the brace of bold hunters reached the small town of Tolo; and whilst abiding there, intelligence came of one of those petty and partial revolutions so common in South American republics. A malcontent colonel and a few hundred men, unpaid by the needy government, were extorting their arrears by the strong hand from the towns upon the coast. They made a determined attack on Tolo, which had been hastily fortified, and was resolutely defended. The rebels were beaten off; and as they retreated, a party of cavalry came up, killed many, and made prisoners of the rest. Jack, whose shooting iron, as he styled his gun, had made itself heard with great effect during the siege, joined in pursuit, scrutinised the pockets of the fallen, and secured an amount of specie that filled his heart with joy. To complete his contentment, Dr Coulter interceded for him with the captain, who gave the poor fellow a free passage back to his own country.

The tigers and patriots of Colombia, ugly customers though they be, are far less formidable than the highwaymen and grisly bears abounding in California. The robbers go about on horseback, well armed and provided with lassos, which they throw over the heads of their victims. The usual objects of their attack are travellers for trade or amusement—any one, in short, who carries saddlebags—and sometimes even the hunter, toiling his way to a seaport with a bundle of furs upon his back, is held worth despoiling of his hard-earned burden. But Californian hunters, cautious and keen-eyed, and deadly shots, seldom allow themselves to be surprised, or give up their plunder without a tussle. The doctor tells us of one fellow, a sort of Californian Natty Bumpo, with whom he passed some time, and who had defeated and slain with his own hand a gang of six robbers, making prize of their horses, arms, and accoutrements. In the woods and prairies of those wild districts, men become inured to hardship and danger of every kind. And to those who can dine by the bivouac fire and under the shade of the forest as cheerfully and heartily as in gilded halls and off polished mahogany, and who can sleep as soundly on fresh turf as in a luxurious feather-bed, California is a paradise, realising those happy hunting grounds to which the Indian warrior believes death a passage. The lakes and rivers abound with fish and wild fowl—trout and salmon, swans, geese, and ducks; the hazel-nut covers are alive with feathered game; the forests and mountains with buffalo, deer, hares, and innumerable other animals. Of beasts of prey, the principal are the jaguar or spotted leopard, the puma or American lion, and bears—black, brown, and grisly. These three specimens of the bruin family differ greatly in their habits and degree of ferocity. The black and brown bears are peaceable, well-behaved animals, whose principal occupation seems to consist in furnishing amusement for the hunters by their comical antics. At night they come round the fires; "but you need not trouble yourselves about a dozen of them, as, in most instances, they will let you alone, and keep a respectful distance, sitting on their haunches, scratching themselves with their fore-paws, wondering what brought you there, and taking a look round to ascertain whether you have any spare meat left for their supper." The grisly bear is of far more formidable character. Swift of foot, very powerful, and of enormous size, he jumps on the back of the largest buffalo, and kills him with apparent ease. He walks out from behind a rock or thicket, drives the hunters from their fire, and, if they have not left him the materials of a hearty meal, follows them with alarming boldness and rapidity. Dr Coulter relates a running fight he had with one of them, who pursued him and his companion for nearly a mile, and fell only when he had received fifteen rifle-balls in his head and body. They do not always take so much shooting, one ball or two sometimes sufficing as a quietus; but this fellow was unusually large and tenacious of life. "The hunter said, when he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the brute, as he yet, though blind with the shot, kept upon his haunches—'I'm of opinion, grisly bear, you're the biggest and hardest critter of your kind to kill ever I shot at.'" The Indians cut off the claws of these beasts, and wear them on a string round their necks as trophies of bravery and prowess.

We have loitered on dry land, and deserted the Hound, whose vagabond course led her, after quitting the Kingsmill group, to the distant shores of New Ireland, one of the Australasian islands. Here the king of the country came on board—a tall, coal-black man of commanding appearance, a fine specimen of a savage, decorated with bones, shells, and red feathers. Some of his front teeth were dyed red—a Papuan custom which Dr Coulter assures us, and we readily believe, gives a demon-like finish to these ferocious barbarians. His majesty was accompanied by an Englishman, one Thomas Manners, who had been landed at his own request from a whale ship, and had passed ten years amongst the savages, to whom in manners and appearance he was considerably assimilated. He had married the king's daughter, was a great chief, and perfectly contented with his condition. There appear to be a vast number of these barbarised Europeans dwelling on the various islands of the Pacific, some amongst the savages, over whom they usually exercise considerable authority, others alone, in isolated nooks, often with Indian wives and a numerous half-cast progeny. The doctor scarcely touched anywhere without meeting with one or more of these outcasts from civilisation, the adventures of most of whom would furnish abundant materials for a Robinsonade. Some of them, deserters from ships or runaway Australian convicts, kept out of the way; but others, bolder or having a clearer conscience, gladly served as interpreters, and supplied the voyagers with useful information. And on more than one occasion, the crew of the Hound found themselves engaged as allies in the civil wars of constant occurrence amongst the bellicose barbarians of the Pacific. Dr Coulter, especially, greatly distinguished himself as an amateur warrior. He is a most adventurous fellow, and assuredly made a mistake when he devoted himself to the study of the healing art, instead of to some more martial profession. His vocation was evidently to kill, not to cure. He does not inform us whether his rifle aided in repelling the various attacks on the Hound, but is less reserved concerning his achievements on shore, and at New Ireland fairly comes out in a military capacity, as a sort of British Auxiliary Legion to a scouting party of natives. The New Irishmen, emulous of their brethren in the old country, are for ever in hot water, squabbling amongst themselves, and keeping up a desultory border warfare, varied by an occasional pitched battle, as a natural sequel to which the slain are duly devoured by the victors, with or without such sauce as their savage cookery book, or, more properly speaking, their oral culinary traditions, may suggest. Dr Coulter was so fascinated by the beautiful scenery and strange customs of the island, and with the hospitable entertainment he found at the sign of the Three Skulls—an Indian council house from whose roof three tall poles arose, supporting human heads—that he resolved upon a lengthened excursion amongst these interesting aborigines, and committed himself, after putting on what he terms his go-ashore-among-savages suit, to the guidance of his friend Rownaa, son and heir of the red-toothed monarch already described. He had not far to go to become acquainted with the comforts of the country. On reaching an outpost, he obtained a peep into a cannibal larder. A party of the enemy had attempted a surprise, had been discovered and repelled, with the loss of two of their number, who were forthwith trussed for the spit. The modus operandi was rather violent, as was manifest to the doctor when he looked into the canoe where the bodies lay, carefully covered up with leaves. "They had been fairly riddled with arrows and spears, and their skulls were beaten flat with clubs. The legs were amputated at the knees, hands off at the wrists, hair cut off the head, &c., preparatory to cooking them." The doctor made bold to express his disgust at this horrible sight, but the natives, by way of extenuation, gave him to understand that it was "eatee for eatee," and that if they fell into the hands of their enemies, they would be converted into collops and forthwith dined upon. Four of them had been captured that morning, and would soon, if not rescued, be in the hands of the cook. To save them from this unpleasant alternative, twenty men advanced stealthily into the hostile territory, accompanied by Rownaa and Dr Coulter. The doctor was curious to see the fun, and thought himself safest with his friend the prince. After a short march they fell in with the prisoners, guarded by forty or fifty savages; a sharp fight ensued, in which the doctor at first took no part, thinking, not without reason, that he had no right to take the lives of men who had done him no injury. At last, however, "a serious consideration for my personal safety, and the necessity for self-defence, compelled me to fire both barrels of my gun into the advancing crowd." The ice thus broken, the double-barrelled rifle spoke out boldly and decided the day—the doctor celebrating his triumph by a stentorian hurrah that completed the panic of the discomfited foe. And thenceforward he shot savages at a handsome allowance. The apologetic and deprecatory tone in which he records his exploits is amusing enough. He pleads expediency and necessity, and tries to make it out justifiable homicide; whilst he evidently has a lurking consciousness that he need not have thrust himself into scenes and places where it became necessary or advisable to shed blood. To return to his ship, he had to coast the island, and to pass the territory of a tribe hostile to his friends. Canoes came out to assail those on which Dr Coulter and his allies were embarked. He was again compelled to smother humanity, prime, load, and fire as fast as he could, although "it grieved me afterwards to think I used such a death-dealing weapon with so much earnestness." Touching repentance! Compassionate Coulter! But "his dander was up," he says, and he thought no more, but acted. As anybody else would probably have done, on finding himself assailed by a flotilla of howling savages, with blood-coloured teeth, poisoned arrows, and a decided taste for the flesh of a wholesome white man. What business the doctor had in such a predicament, is altogether another question. "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galÈre?"

The New Irishmen have some queer customs. The night following the battle was passed by Dr Coulter at one of their outposts, where he was prevented sleeping by the strange torches kept burning in the house he lodged at. They consisted of long sticks, with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre steeped in rosin and twisted round the top. These were lighted, and held by naked men, who relieved each other. The idols worshipped by these heathens are of a peculiarly ludicrous description, ten feet high, made of polished wood, with arms akimbo, oyster shells for eyes, and red pegs for teeth. The expression of the face is one of grotesque laughter, irresistibly provocative of mirth in the beholder. In one respect the example of these savages might be followed with advantage by more civilised communities. Their cemeteries are invariably remote from their dwellings, in lonely and unfrequented spots.

The ship's company of the Hound had been long without seeing any but savage faces, and it was with much satisfaction that on entering a bay on the coast of Papua or New Guinea, they perceived a brig riding at anchor. She hoisted the stars and stripes, and presently her captain paid a visit to the Hound. A Scotch Highlander by birth, his name Stewart, he was a daring and unscrupulous dog as ever fired a round of grape into a mob of South Sea savages. He had the reputation of a tolerably fair dealer, but some of his articles of traffic were extraordinary and disgusting. He was once at Cook's Straits, New Zealand, when there was a great fight amongst the tribes. A feast was to follow, and to save land-carriage, the cannibals freighted Stewart's ship with the provisions for their horrible banquet. "He took on board upwards of two hundred dead bodies, cut up and well packed, with eighteen or twenty chiefs, sailed round, delivered his cargo, and received in payment a large quantity of dressed flax, which he afterwards brought to Sydney and sold at a satisfactory price." After this, people looked askance at him, and held their noses when he passed; but Stewart jingled his dollars, and said it was no one's business but his own, admitting, however, that it was "a stinking cargo." Like the Roman emperor, he denied that good coin could carry an evil smell. "Another trifling affair," Dr Coulter writes, "blemished his character." Cargoes of ebony, neither more nor less; slaves bought in Australasia, and sold to the Dutch and Chinese. Human flesh, quick or dead, was a favourite article of commerce with this respectable Highlandman. In those remote regions, however, men cannot always pick their society, and Coulter and Trainer were glad enough to meet this dealer in dead and live stock, who was an old acquaintance of both of them. They went on board his vessel and dined with him, and it was agreed that the brigand schooner should keep together as long as circumstances permitted. After several days' profitable trading, chiefly in ambergris, tortoiseshell, pearls, and birds of Paradise, and which ended, wonderful to say, without a skirmish with the natives, they coasted along the north shore of the island, and came to an anchor in Gilvink's Bay, at its westernmost extremity, alongside the "Eternal Safety," a Chinese trading junk. According to the custom of his countrymen in those seas, the Chinese skipper had told the Papuans all manner of lies about the Europeans, and had warned them against trading with them. Stewart discovered this by means of an old acquaintance, a Sandwich islander and expert cook, who gladly left the junk, where he received a larger allowance of rattan than he liked, to officiate in the caboose of the American brig. Once safe upon the Yankee's deck, Mr Sing vented his indignation against his late master in a volley of abuse, interspersed with comical and contemptuous gestures. The Chinaman actually danced with rage, and at last levelled a matchlock at the object of his fury; but on Stewart's opening a port, and disclosing the grim muzzle of a carronade, he suspended, his warlike demonstrations. A supply of articles for barter with the natives was obtained from his junk, and the same afternoon a fresh breeze swept the European ships out of the bay.

The last place to which we shall accompany Dr Coulter is a district on the south coast of New Guinea, inhabited by the warlike and ferocious tribe of the Horraforas, who, at the period of his visit, lived happily under the paternal rule of King Connel the First. Terence Connel was a County Kerry boy, who had gone through many strange adventures in his own country and elsewhere. A deserter from a regiment of the line, he had served for some time under Captain Starlight's banner, and had distinguished himself by his intrepidity and zeal in house-burning, cattle-houghing, and other nocturnal amusements peculiar to the "first flower of the sea." After a couple of years of this praiseworthy career, he had been captured, tried, and transported to Australia. He escaped, with ten fellow-convicts, and, after various adventures, reached Papua. Nine of their number were slain by the Horraforas, who spared the two others and made them serve against a hostile tribe. Connel's companion was killed in a fight, but Connel greatly distinguished himself, and became head-chief, or king. Under his guidance and protection, we find Captain Trainer, four of his crew, and the indefatigable Coulter, wandering in the Horrafora territory, through magnificent tropical scenery, where snakes abounded, rats were as big as ordinary cats, the mosquitos flew about in dense clouds, huge bats flapped their mirky wings beneath the branches of gigantic trees, and immense saucer-eyed owls glared from out the gloom. Hog-hunting was the principal sport here; but the Horraforas were at war, as usual, and Dr Coulter's services were again put in requisition. Fighting is the business of life with these savages, and with an Irish king at their head, their combative propensity was not likely to be weakened. They have scouts out continually, and but for this precaution, as Connel explained, "one tribe would break in on top of t'other, be murdherin' man, woman, and child, and carrying off the rest to sell to the Chinese for slaves, all through divilment, or fair divarsion." To guard against surprise, the natives live in trees, amongst whose branches they construct commodious sleeping apartments. They ascend and descend by a notched pole, drawn up at night, and take their meals on the ground below.

The party from the schooner soon found they had got themselves into trouble, being cut off from their vessel by the Whitepaints, a race of savages thus named by Dr Coulter from their habit of disguising their dusky complexion with a ghastly coating of white. A battle was inevitable, and Connel disposed his forces with all the tact of an experienced general. About a thousand of the enemy were opposed to eight hundred and fifty Horraforas, but the latter had the Englishmen to help them, and especially Dr Coulter, who, with his terrible rifle, was a host in himself. The Whitepaints came on to within about four hundred yards of their foe, and halted, their chief still advancing and yelling defiance, in hopes of drawing the Horraforas from their cover on the verge of a forest. His appearance was any thing but prepossessing. He was "a giant of a man, hair and beard powdered with chalk, face painted black, and body white all over!" Connel implored his allies to render him a great service by picking off this ugly heathen, and inquired who was the best shot. Trainer named the doctor, who "had really no wish to pull a trigger, except in actual self-defence." But Trainer and Connel pressed him to fire, and at last overcame his scruples. With charming modesty, he avoids naming himself as the man who made the huge Papuan magpie bite the dust. "Thus urged by Connel," he says, "one of our party rested his gun on the lower branch of a tree, took deliberate aim, and fired!" This "one of our party" was of course the doctor, the sailors being armed with short muskets, incapable of carrying so far. The shot took effect. Whitepaint ceased his capering, "stood fixed and upright like a daubed statue," and "was about receiving another shot (from the doctor's second barrel, we presume) when he fell heavily forward and lay motionless." Whereupon the Whitepaints advanced, and the six Englishmen "set to work in real earnest popping" off the cannibals. And soon becoming "madly excited by the scene, we continued to load and fire as fast as we could, accompanying almost every shot or volley with a Hurra! nearly as wild as the savage yell." Dr Coulter had got rid of his scruples, and Trainer and the seamen appear never to have had any. The latter "were eager to run down the mound for the purpose of enjoying a bayoneting match; but Trainer would not permit such folly, and told them to amuse themselves firing at them from where we were, which they did with great perseverance." The unfortunate Whitepaints were totally defeated, their tribe cut up root and branch, their women taken to wife by the victors, and themselves slung upon poles like rabbits and carried off to be buried, as Connel expressed it, in "the infernal stomachs" of their cannibal conquerors. The doctor and his companions being by no means anxious to witness the abominable feast, moved on with Connel, and, after a visit to the Whitepaint town, or rather rookery, the houses being built in trees, like those of the Horraforas, paddled down a river, through beautiful scenery, which Dr Coulter indicates, rather than describes. He is a poor hand at description, the worthy doctor, although evidently not devoid of a certain feeling for the glories of a tropical landscape. But he lacks words, and his attempts at a pen-and-ink picture are painfully meagre and unsatisfactory. After shooting a rapid, where the river falls about fourteen feet, and down which the natives conducted their canoes with singular dexterity, the country became more open, and the mast-heads of the brig and schooner appeared in the distance. "Sail ho!" bellowed Trainer, rejoiced at the sight of his floating home. And in his exhilaration, he resolved to "take a rise" out of Stewart. Concealing himself and men in the bottom of the canoe, he gave the hint to Connel, whose savage subjects forthwith set up a hideous war-whoop, which very nearly procured the incorrigible joker a volley of grape from his own ship. This final and unnecessary danger over, Dr Coulter, to his considerable satisfaction, once more found himself safely housed in the cabin of the Hound, relieved from all apprehension of becoming a corner dish at a cannibal dinner. In which snug quarters and comfortable security he will be found by those curious farther to pursue the thread of his adventures.