74 OUE FRENCH CAPTAIN. ch. in. 



enough our last evening on board the Verite. Though he 

 took little pains to conceal his strong prejudices against 

 the English nation, our captain was thoroughly good- 

 natured and obliging towards the individual Englishmen 

 with whom he was associated. No doubt our scientific 

 pmrsuits recommended us to his good offices, for the slight 

 smattering of scientific knowledge acquired by half- 

 educated persons in most Continental countries has the 

 effect of awakening some interest in such pursuits. It 

 may, indeed, be doubted whether, at least in France, the 

 teaching of physical science goes far enough to convey any 

 accurate knowledge, even of an elementary kind ; but, at 

 all events, the national temperament leads Frenchmen to 

 expose their deficiencies more than other people readily 

 do. An Englishman who knows that he is not well 

 grounded in a subject holds his tongue, or if pressed by 

 questions will probably exaggerate the extent of his own 

 ignorance, where a Frenchman will gaily lay down the 

 law and span over the gaps in his knowledge by startling 

 bridges of conjecture. Om* worthy skipper amused us not 

 a little when, in conversation on the climate of this coast, 

 reference being made to the rainless zone of the Peruvian 

 coast, he explained that in that country the moisture of 

 the air is absorbed by the gases that accompany earth- 

 quakes, thus accounting to his own satisfaction for the 

 meteorological phenomenon. But the full vehemence of 

 his nature was reserved for matters of much more im- 

 mediate interest. He had left Marseilles after the Com- 

 munist rising in that city had been suppressed, but while 

 the miserable tragic farce that was to end in the horrors of 

 May, 1871, was being enacted in Paris. He could not 

 allude to the subject without a degree of fury that to us 

 seemed utterly unreasonable. But it is easy for people at 

 a distance to treat such matters with calmness, and there 

 were not many Englishmen on the spot who at the time 

 were able to share the noble calmness of Lord Canning 

 during the Indian Mutiny. 



