32 THE GREAT THIRST LAND. 



days out) a most instructive lecture on the Hudson's 

 Bay Territories, where he spent many of the early 

 years of his life. The lecture was illustrated by 

 sketches from his own pencil admirable and graphic 

 in the extreme. One drawing of Tadusac, on the St. 

 Lawrence, and another of a log-cabin on the snow- 

 covered margin of a small lake, took me thousands of 

 miles away, to where I had once shot the moose and 

 cariboo, or tracked poor bruin to his hollow-log home. 



A death occurred this day on board. The unfor- 

 tunate was sent to sea too late to save his life ; although 

 every attention had been given him, and his poor wife 

 was more than unremitting in her attention. At half- 

 past ten in the morning the ship had her engines 

 stopped, for the funeral obsequies. The beautiful, solemn 

 service over the dead was just commenced when an 

 immense shark rose to the surface, from under the 

 counter of the ship. Fortunately the poor distressed 

 lady did not see the monster, or her feelings could more 

 easily be imagined than described. But, strange as it 

 may appear, such things do frequently happen at sea. 

 Can a shark smell a corpse, as the sailors say ? Why 

 not, then, the pigs and sheep constantly slaughtered 

 for food ? 



Holly has become once more very musical that 

 unfortunate song has been done to death; and as his 

 grog has been stopped, it was imagined that, in pro- 

 portion to the decrease of the distance to be traversed, his 

 spirits had risen; but such turned out to be mere theory. 

 My naval friend had laid in a stock of Madeira for 

 acquaintances at the Cape ; but, alas ! his perfidious 

 fellow-passenger, with a nose as acute for liquids as a 

 pointer's for a partridge, discovered the treasure, lubri- 



