THE EIGHT. 117 



plunder, and above all, for the rape of Tuscan babies, to become 

 the future slaves of their own rising generation. Oh ! for a 

 Homer's pen to describe the universal ardour and the indivi- 

 dual prowess of our pigmy Amazons. By far more numerous 

 are the dusky Tuscans, though in discipline and personal 

 strength they are much inferior to the warlike Rufians. Of 

 the latter we have spoken, hitherto, as Lilliputians, but now 

 we have to treat of them as opposed to a tribe of very inferior 

 stature. 



The battle-field, an area of some four feet square, is strewed 

 with dead and dying. Sulphureous fumes exhale around. 

 Single combatants by thousands, each so eager in their re- 

 spective contests as to seem unconscious of all besides, have 

 spent their ammunition ; but with rancour undiminished, behold 

 them now, limb to limb, head to head, seized by each other 

 and held in savage grip now wrestling upright, now rolling 

 in the dust ; long does the dubious strife continue, till a third, 

 Rufian or Tuscan, comes to turn the balance and throw 

 death into the ascending scale. In another quarter, see perhaps 

 a dozen combatants of either party, all firmly linked together 

 in a living chain, dashing, writhing like a wounded snake in 

 serpentine convulsions, till snap goes a link beneath a mortal 

 blow ; but in an instant the dissevered portions reunite, and 

 struggle on with double fury. 



Look now at that powerful long-limted Rufian and the active 

 little Euscan, her opponent : the latter springs like a cat o' 



