604 TKe Spirit- Seeker. [Dec. 



There seemed to be some deep mystery in my fellow-passenger, 

 which, at any risk, I was determined to fathom. I endeavoured to get 

 into his confidence. For that purpose, I did him many little offices of 

 kindness. They were at first rather unfavourably received, but as I 

 persevered, his unsociableness wore off, and he seemed at last to take a 

 pleasure in my society. When we arrived in England, I visited him 

 frequently. One day, after some preliminary conversation, in which I 

 endeavoured to make him talk of his own affairs, he said to me, " You 

 have been kind, and I will confide in you. Listen, and you shall hear 

 a tale which nothing you have ever heard, or read of, seemed half so 

 strange." I listened attentively, and he continued: — 



" From a boy upwards, I have longed for an intercourse with the 

 unembodied shadows of the departed, whose existence I had often heard 

 well authenticated in the nursery and in the hall. I had strange desires 

 from my birth. I loved to be alone. I was fond of darkness. I would 

 sit up in the depths of midnight, in ' hopes of high talk with the 

 departed dead.' I yearned for the things that dwell not in the earth, 

 and yet are on it. Church-yards and cemeteries were to me as familiar 

 as my father's hearth. I loved the most savage spots, and the most 

 unfrequented places of the wild and mountainous country in which I 

 was born ; and when I heard from the superstitious peasantry that such 

 a ruin, or such a dell, or such a wood, was the haunt of supernatural 

 visitors, there would I make my dwelling ; and, night and day, I called 

 aloud upon the Spirits of the Dead — but they came not ! 



" I loved the sound of the thunder when it seemed to shake the heaven 

 on which I gazed, and the earth on which 1 stood. I courted the gaze 

 of the vivid lightning, and my eagle eye shrunk not at its burning 

 glance. I stood by the sands of the sea-shore, and drank in with 

 delighted ears the music of the storm. I climbed to the tops of moun- 

 tains ; I descended into the depths of vaults and caves ; I crossed the 

 fathomless ocean, and penetrated into the parched deserts of the torrid 

 zone. I heard the famished hyena howling for her food among unburied 

 skeletons ; and I saw the lion crunching the bones of many a luckless 

 victim, as he roared exultingly in his wrath. I stood in the night sur- 

 rounded by the ghastly fragments of those who had endeavoured to 

 penetrate its inhospitable regions ; the moon shone upon their bleached 

 skeletons with a sickly light ; the hot breath of the simoom gave a sense 

 of suffocation, which had made many a weary traveller lay down and 

 die ; and there was no sound stirring in the desert, save the scream of 

 the jackal. In the stillness of the deep night, I called aloud upon the 

 Sjiirits of the Dead — but they came not ! 



" I went on a pilgrimage to the idol Juggernaut, whose thirst is 

 quenched with blood, and whose hunger is appeased with human flesh. 

 I saw thousands rush under his massive chariot wheels, to obtain the 

 glory of being crushed to death ; a martyrdom which was accounted 

 the very highest honour. The streets were paved with carcases, and 

 the gutters streamed with blood. I passed on to the field of skulls, 

 where the vultures and the dogs were disputing over a living banquet 

 of quivering flesh. I stood in the middle of the festering carcases of 

 the worshippers of the deity, when there was not a star visible in the 

 heavens, and the moon had veiled her glory from the earth ; and I 

 called with a loud voice upon the Spirits of the Dead — but they came 

 not! 



