254 Voyage of the Novara. 



still further gained tlie sympathies of all on board, with his 

 melancholy fate, by his manly reticence on the subject of 

 the injustice he had sustained.* 



Another convict, who had excited universal attention at 

 Papeete, was M. Belmare, a well-educated young man, who in 

 1850 avowed he had shot at Louis Napoleon while at the Tuil- 

 eries, and, in consequence, been transported to Tahiti. The 

 fact that Belmare has since then been taken into the employ 

 of the treasury at Papeete, where he receives a salary of £100 

 per annum, gave colour to the most whimsical reports as to 

 the clemency displayed by the French Government in this 

 case ; yet we repeatedly heard the opinion expressed that 

 Belmare was solely put forward as a tool for carrying out — 

 which was to be used as a blind by giving the Government of 

 Louis Napoleon opportunity for new stretches of arbitrary 

 power. Wliether, however, a residence at Tahiti, even with 

 a handsome salary, be sufficient recompence for such services, 

 M. Belmare alone is in a position to say. 



A succession of bad weather, such as so frequently occurs 

 in the tropics, delayed our departure for several days. Now 

 it was a heavy gale, commencing in the north and gradually 

 veering round to W. and S. W ; now it was a series of calms, 

 while the surf swept in unbroken masses on the beach, and so 

 heavily, that it seemed the height of imprudence to take the 



* Shortly after his arrival in Valparaiso, Longomasino went to Serena, a city in 

 Chili of 20,000 inhabitants, near some rich copper-mines, where he occupied himself 

 with ecliting a newspaper in Spanish. 



