VOL. 4.] Anecdotes of the Battle of Waterloo. 151 in his power should be shown me. I Fathom, came into my mind, though complained of thirst, and he held his no women, I believe, were there ;) brandy-bottle to my lips, directing one several of them came and looked at me, of his men to lay me straight on my and passed on: at length, one stopped side, and place a knapsack under my to examine me. I told him as well as head he then passed on into the ac- I could, (for I could say but little in tion-and I shall never know to whose German,) that I was a British officer, generosity I was indebted, as I con- and had been plundered already; he ceive, for my life-of what rank he did not desist, however, and pulled me was, I cannot say, he wore a blue great about roughly, before he left me. About coat. By and by another tirailleur an hour before midnight, I saw a solcame and knelt and fired over me, dier in an English uniform coming toloading and firing many times, and con- wards me; he was, I suspect, on the versing with great gaiety all the while; same errand. He came and looked in at last he ran off, saying, Vous serez my face; I spoke instantly, telling him bien aise d'entendre que nous allons who I was, and assuring him of a renous retirer; bon jour, mon ami.' ward, if he would remain by me. He "While the battle continued in that said that he belonged to the 40th regipart, several of the wounded men and ment, but had missed it. He released dead bodies near me, were hit with the me from the dying man; being unballs which came very thick in that armed, he took up a sword from the place. Towards evening, when the ground, and stood over me, pacing Prussians came, the continued roar of backwards and forwards. At eight the cannon along their's and the British o'clock in the morning, some English line, growing louder and louder as they were seen at a distance; he ran to drew near me, was the finest thing I them, and a messenger was sent off to ever heard. It was dark, when two Hervey. A cart came for me. I was squadrons of Prussian cavalry, both of placed in it, and carried to a farm-house, them two deep, passed over me in full about a mile and a half distant, and trot, lifting me from the ground, and laid in the bed from which poor Gortumbling me about cruelly; the clatter don, (as I understood afterwards,) had of their approach, and the apprehen- been just carried out; the jolting of sions it excited, may be easily conceiv- the cart, and the difficulty of breathing, ed; had a gun come that way, it would were very painful. I had received have done for me. The battle was seven wounds; a surgeon slept in my then nearly over, or removed to a distance the cries and groans of the wounded all around me, became every instant more and more audible, succeeding to the shouts, imprecations, outcries of Vive l'Empereur,' the discharges of musquetry and cannon: now and then intervals of perfect silence, which were worse than the noise I thought the night would never end. "The man from the Royals was Much about this time, I found a soldier still breathing when I was removed in of the Royals lying across my legs, the morning, and was soon after taken who had probably crawled thither in to the hospital. room, and I was saved by continual bleeding, 120 ounces in two days, besides the great loss of blood on the field. "The lances, from their length and weight, would have struck down my sword long before I lost it, if it had not been bound to my hand. What became of my horse I know not; it was the best I ever had. his agony; his weight, convulsive mo- "Sir Dennis Pack said, the greatest tions, his noises, and the air issuing risk be run the whole day was in stopthrough a wound in his side, distressed ping his men, who were firing on me and me greatly, the latter circumstance my regiment, when we began to charge. most of all, as the case was my own. The French make a great clamour in It was not a dark night, and the Prus- the action, the English only shout. sians were wandering about to plunder; "Much confusion arose, and many (and the scene in Ferdinand, Count mistakes, from similarity of dress. The 152 Dr. Abel's Narrative. [VOL. 4. Belgians, in particular, suffered greatly though there, as we have seen, every from their resemblance to the French, character displays itself. The gay are being still in the very same clothes they still gay, the noble-minded are still had served in under Buonaparte." generous; nor has the Commander, in Such, probably, is the story of many his proudest triumph a better claim to a brave man, yet to me it was new. our admiration, than the meanest of The historian, describing military his soldiers, when relieving a fallen enachievements, passes silently over those emy in the midst of danger and death. who go into the heat of the battle, W. MUDFORD. DR. CLARKE ABEL'S NARRATIVE. From the Literary Gazette, August, 1818. NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY IN THE INTERIOR OF CHINA, IN 1816, &c. BY CLARKE ABEL. London, 1818. TH THE Literary Gazette has already ities. With regard to the snake, the performed the Ko-tou to the various author seems to think that no story of interesting works which have emanated his powers in swallowing even human from the Chinese Embassy, and in beings and large animals too improbamore than nine of our Numbers will ble for belief. Thus he repeats, withbe found the bowings of our heads out attempting to discredit, the assertion over their pages. We do not regret of Andreus Cleyerus, that " he bought that we are again called upon to repeat one of these snakes of a hunter, and, on the ceremony, since nothing relative to dissecting it, found in its body an entire China can be otherwise than curious middle-aged stag, covered with its and amusing; and, though the charm skin; that he purchased another which of novelty be denied to this volume, it had swallowed a wild goat in spite of possesses many incidents and notices its large horns; and that he drew from which amply reward the task of its pe- the stomach of a third, a porcupine rusal. That it is not infinitely more armed with its quills:" he also menvaluable is to be attributed not to any tions, that "a pregnant woman was want of ability in the writer, but to two swallowed by one of these animals.” unfortunate circumstances; the first, We suspect that our sceptical readhis illness during part of the journey; ers will refuse to swallow these tales, and the second, his irreparable loss of but there is far too strong a propensity the collection of Natural History, &c. in fire-side travellers to withhold their by the wreck of the Alceste in the belief from facts stated by more exStraits of Gaspar. Yet, in spite of cursive investigators, merely because these calamities, we find much to ap- they exceed the sphere of their own prove of in this book, which we shall limited experience. The habits of the accordingly, without further preface, proceed to analyse for our readers. snake which died on board the Cæsar, are thus described by Capt. Heyland, who had him several months in Java before he was embarked for England: The early portion of the voyage to Madeira, Rio Janeiro, and thence to Java, occupies no great space, and fur- "The animal was brought to me nishes little of novelty. The Java bat early in January 1813, and did not and great snake are here described: from that time taste food till the July the former with its well-known hideous following. During this period he genpeculiarities, and the latter with its tre- erally drank a quart of water daily, mendous swallow. Mr. Abel shot a and frequently passed a thick yellow male a female bat; their bodies excrement. The man who brought covered with long hair, resembling him, stated, that he had been seen to that of a fox in smell, colour, and form, eat a hog-deer the day before he had and that of a full grown rat in size; been taken. He was allowed to be at the wings, like those of a common bat, liberty in the grounds about my house, measured five feet between the extrem- One evening, early in July, hearing a VOL. 4.] Dr. Clarke Abel's Narrative.--Varnished Ladies, &c. 153 applied to the skin, apart from the animal, excites a smarting pain." Having gone so minutely through movements of the Embassy in China, in our review of that gentleman's work, we shall not travel much over the same ground with Mr. Abel, who, to do him justice, does not linger upon matters already sufficiently treated of. His description of the first visit of theChinese to the ships, and a few other brief sketches, will serve to elucidate his manner : noise, I went out, and discovered that which covers its tendrils; as this, when the snake had left his harbour, under the boards of a stable, where he geneerally kept, and having entered a small shed where some fowls were at roost, Mr. Ellis's account of the official had contrived to sweep eleven from the perch, which he afterwards destroyed by pressing them between his folds. Then taking them one by one, head foremost into his mouth, swallowed the whole in twenty minutes. The largest animal which he ate, while in my possession, was a calf, which he killed and gorged in two hours and twenty minutes. He preferred goats to any other Chang was a civil, and Yin a animals, but was also fond of calves, military Mandarin, attended by a train sheep, and fowls; he never attacked of very shabby looking fellows. Yin dogs, cats, or pigs. Of these last, in- was accompanied by several soldiers, deed, he seemed to be in dread, for who did not add to the dignity of his whenever one was presented to him, cortège. Each man wore by he retired to a corner, and coiled him- his side a variety of accoutrements, self up, with his head undermost. If which, on a first glance, seemed to be regularly fed with animals not larger intended for warlike purposes, but on than a duck, he ate readily every day; a close examination dwindled into very but after the meal of a goat, refused food for a month!" Delicate monster! as Trinculo says of Caliban; such a pet would not be very pleasant in an English garden! While mentioning the strange habits of animals, we may add Mr. Abel's notice of a Stinging-fish in the Chinese seas: ----- peaceful appendages. A worked silk sheath, in shape like the blade of a dagger, inclosed a harmless fan. A small leather bag, studded with brass, and resembling a cartouche box, supplied flint and steel for lighting their pipes. These hung sometimes from their girdles by the side of their chopsticks, but were frequently in their and giving rise to a flow of saliva, mouths, pouring forth volumes of smoke, which was discharged without any attention to place." assafoetida added to these agreeable Their strong odour of garlick and accomplishments, and gave zest to the entertainments; where, besides "Whilst employed in collecting some sea-weed floating about the ship, I observed a species of Physalia, so small and transparent that I at first mistook it for an air-bubble; but on catching it in my hand was soon convinced of my error, for, wrapping its long tendrils round one of my fingers, it stung like a nettle, but with much more severe effect. In about five minutes the pain in my finger abated, but an uneasy sensation extended up the inside of my arm, which soon terminated in an aching pain in the arm-pit, accompanied by a sense of restriction in my chest; within fifteen minutes all uneasiness ceased. The manner in This sort of varnish seems not conwhich the animal produces these effects, is, I believe, unexplained; but it is fined to the dishes, for the author not improbable that they are occasion- caught accidentally a view of some ed by a peculiar poison, secreted by it, women (equally pleased with their and contained in a glutinous matter chance of gazing on the " Horse-faced .U ATHENEUM. Vol. 4. "All sorts of dressed meat, sheep roasted in halves and quarters, pigs and fowls in abundance, there were innumerable Chinese made dishes; amongst others, stewed sharks' fins, stags' sinews, birds' nests, and seaslugs-the joints so besmeared with a kind of varnish, as to exhibit a perfect metallic polish." . 154 Chinese Manners and Customs-Ladies' Costumes-Chinese Gods. [VOL.4 men," as they called the English, from notorious on the route; but Mr. Abel their comparatively long faces and appears to think that when they got noses,) who out of this line, the population deserved "Were of low stature, had faces a more favourable report. He doubts longer in proportion than those of the the prevalence of infanticide, but we men, but so covered with a flesh-col- confess that his reasoning is not strong oured paste, that the tint of their com- enough to overturn authenticated facts; plexion could not be discovered. There the following anecdote, however, was a general air of languor about places the social feelings of the Chithem, which was especially marked by nese in a better, though very peculiar the drooping of their upper eyelids, light. the interval between which and the "Mr. Morrison, in one of his walks, lower ones was so narrow, as scarcely fell in with a family of four generations, to appear sufficient for the purposes of amounting to about twenty persons, in distinct vision. Their internal angles the same house. At the feet of the were more deflexed and lengthened Patriarch, who was only 70 years of than in the eyes of the men. Their age, stood his great grandchild, while hair was black, and neatly rolled up on at one end of the room his son was the crown of the head, and ornamented working at his father's coffin. The old with flowers. Their dress consisted of man, on being asked, why he now a loose blue cotton robe with long prepared his coffin? answered, that he sleeves, and a pair of loose trowsers of felt his health declining, and wished to the same material, but of a pinkish colour. The robe was fastened before by several buttons from the chin downwards, and fell below the calf of the leg. Its sleeves covered the hands. The trowsers were fastened about the ancle, and almost covered with their folds the small and tight shoe which peeped from beneath them-" bave a resting place prepared for him after death. When asked if the sight of the coffin did not excite mournful ideas, he replied, "No." A Mandarin, who was by, remarked, "His mouth says no, but it does not speak the language of his heart." The houses of the Chinese on the bank of the river, consisted generally of The hands of the Europeans had as a large and a small room; the former great an advantage over the natives in for general purposes, a reception room longevity as their faces. The ends of for company, a table, eating room and their forefingers, when the hands were bed-room; the latter, a very simple placed wrist to wrist, scarcely extended kitchen. The most remarkable piece beyond the first joints of Mr. Abel's, of furniture was a miniature temple, whose hands are not excessively large. like a shell-work grotto in England, The villagers are represented as civil with the picture of a fat old man in the and obliging, and the crowds on the centre, plentifully besmeared with gildriver, and course of the procession, ing and red and white paint, &c. only troublesome from their ardent Their gardens and court-yards were curiosity. The country is marshy and ornamented with many flowers, essterile beyond the mere banks of the pecially the Nelumbium Speciosum streams; and the author observes, that (Lien-wha,) so celebrated for its beau"much as the Chinese may excel in ty by the Chinese poets, and ranked for obtaining abundant products from lands its virtues among the plants which, naturally fertile, they are much behind according to their theology, enter into other nations in the art of improving the beverage of immortality. that which is naturally barren." The Temple at Kaou-yen-chow, The timid jealousy of their Empe- where the Embassy found two or three ror, Kea-King, and his weak and fear- hundred miserable wretches imprisoned ful disposition, account for the restraints from the night before, that they might placed upon the embassy, the edicts not abscond from the labour of tracking against the women being seen, the the junks, "is dedicated to the Mingvacillation and falsehood every where keen-ship-wang, or ten judges VOL. 4.] Dr. Abel's Narrative-China Wares-The Tea Plant. 155 Hades." It consists of ten apartments, One of the most respectable practitionwith a judge presiding in each, sur-ers in Canton, was entirely destitute of rounded by the ministers of punish- anatomical knowledge. He was aware ment, in the form of Demons, made of of the existence of such viscera as the clay, variously coloured and distorted heart, lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys, into hideous forms. Before the judge appear the former inhabitants of this world, awaiting their doom. "NANKIN.In the suburbs of Nankin, the cloth which bears its name was exposed for sale. The raw yellow cotton, from which it is supposed to be made, was in vain looked for; but the white was seen dressing [being dressed] in various places. but had no notion of their real situation, and through some strange perversity placed them all on the wrong side of the body [like Dr. Last.] He, however, made a clear distinction between those local diseases, which can be cured by mere topical applications, and those which can only be acted upon through the medium of the constitution. He had some vague notions PORCELAIN, &c.-The city of of a humoral pathology ;-talked of Nanchang-foo is famous for shops of ulcers being outlets to noxious matter, Porcelain, and gave us many opportu- and divided both his diseases and nities of examining splendid vases remedies into two classes, the hot and formed of the finest quality of this cel- cold. The only general fact ascerebrated ware. Many of these were tained respecting his practice was, that four feet high, and two in their largest he depended greatly on purgatives for circumference, of various colours, and driving out the heat of the body," covered with an immense number of and for producing a favourable change raised figures of plants well executed. on local disorders. Moxa, or Actual This imitation of sculpture was also Cautery, is esteemed one of the most practised on smaller pieces, as cups, effectual remedies for local pain. The basins, and stuff-bottles. On one of Moxa is prepared by bruising the these, whose surface could not be more stems of a species of artemisia in a than six inches square, the forms of a mortar, and selecting the softest and crowd of Chinese, executed with pre- most downy fibres. In this state it is cision and taste, were beautifully applied in small conical masses upon grouped. I have repeatedly seen on the part affected; the number being articles of this kind a display of skill proportioned to the extent or severity and accuracy in the delineation of the of the disease. These being set on human form, for which it is not usual fire, instantly consume, without, as the to give the Chinese credit. The porce- physician affirmed, producing any selain most valued by the Chinese, was vere pain." not, in our eyes, the most beautiful, This is a pretty way to cure being covered with lines intersecting vous headachs, and, if introduced each other in all directions, occasioning into our practice, might probably prea cracked appearance on its surface. vent the frequency of that disorder This is done perhaps to give it the among refined persons of both sexes: appearance of antiquity, as antique the Chinese, however, endure it, as is porcelain is in the highest degree valued amply witnessed by the round escars in China. Some of the representations on their heads, where these fires have on the cups and other vessels sold in been burnt. It is also employed in Nang-chang-foo give us the lowest liver complaints and internal diseases, opinion of Chinese sentiments of de- when expressed by external uneasicency. Although infinitely too gross ness. Pricking the part first with a to admit of any description, they golden pin, and inflaming the Moxa were not only exposed in the most with a lens of ice, are held to be the open manner on the shelves of the grand improvements ! shops, but were handed about by the salesinen as objects of peculiar interest. "MEDICINE. The practice of medicine in China is entirely empirical. ner TEA. Mr. Abel is of opinion that the green tea is the leaf of the same shrub with the black, only dried at a lower degree of heat. By far the |