attack nothing capable of making resistance, this moment D—advanced. The lion saw him, unless driven by absolute starvation. To this and with one paw on my wounded thigh couched general character, however, must be excepted ready to spring at his new assailant. If Dthe "man-eater"-a lion who has once tasted' had fired I should have run great risk of being human flesh. This seems to work a change hit; I halloed to him to wait till I could veer my in his whole nature. "I have no particular head a little. I succeeded in doing so, and the dread," says Mr. Andersson, "of lions; nor next instant heard the click of a gun, but no ream I, generally speaking, a particularly nervous port. Another instant, and a well-directed ball man; but I do dread and fear such a monster as taking effect in his forehead laid the lion a a man-eater; a skulking, sneaking, poaching corpse alongside my own bruised and mutilated night-prowler, whose cat-like movements no body. Quick as lightning I now sprang to my ear can detect; whose muscular strength ex- feet and darted toward my companions. Once ceeds that of the strongest ruminating animal; or twice I felt excessively faint, but managed to who will pass through your cattle, and leave keep my head up." The mutilated hunter was them untouched, in order to feast on human borne to camp, retaining perfect self-possession; flesh, is, I think, a creature which may reason- but the moment his wounds were dressed he ably inspire terror. There is something hide- swooned, and remained for three weeks comons in the thought of lying down nightly in ex- pletely unconscious. He finally recovered his pectation of such a visitor." Mr. Andersson is general health, but his left arm was totally the only traveler, as far as we recollect, who crippled. speaks of eating lion's flesh. He tried it for the first time on this expedition, and found it palatable and juicy—not unlike veal, and very white. Rhinoceros hump, another article which will not soon be found on our "Bills of Fare," was a favorite dish with him. While awaiting the close of the dry season, Mr. Andersson was for some time in company with a Damara caravan of four hundred persons, bound for the Ovambo country for the purpose of trade or plunder, or rather of both, as occasion served. At first, his companions behaved Still there is danger in attacking a lion under tolerably well; but finally, as game grew scarce, any circumstances. One is never sure whether they became perfect nuisances, especially at "feedhe will slink away or turn upon his assailant. ing time." He had to fight for a share of the Every African hunter relates instances of hair- game which he had himself killed, sometimes breadth escapes. One of the narrowest was he was forced to threaten his black friends with told to Mr. Andersson by the hero of it. In his gun before he could secure needful food. company with several others he had gone out "To say nothing," he says, "of screams, vocifin search of several lions who had broken into erations, and curses, which were deafening, astheir kraal the preceding night. The lions, segai stabs and knob-kurrie blows were adminisfive in number, were tracked to a thicket of dry tered indiscriminately and remorselessly-all for reeds. This was set on fire, and the beasts the sake of a lump of meat. Imagine one or dashed out. One took the direction in which two hundred starving and ferocious dogs, laying two of the hunters were stationed. The nar- hold of a carcass, each tearing it away in his own rator fired, but only inflicted a slight wound. particular direction, at the same time biting and The lion sprang upon him. We abridge his snarling incessantly, and you will have a faint account of what followed: "To escape," he notion of these beastly scrambles. I have seen said, "was impossible; I could only thrust the human blood flow as freely at these feeds as had muzzle of my gun into the extended jaws. In flowed that of the animal we were devouring. an instant the weapon was demolished. At this All the revolting qualities of man in a barbarmoment D fired and broke the lion's shoul-ous condition were brought out on these occader. He fell, and I scampered away; but my assailant had not yet done with me. Despite his crippled condition he soon overtook me. My foot caught in a creeper, and I fell to the The dry season at length came to a close, and ground. In an instant he had transfixed my early in January, 1859, Mr. Andersson set out right foot with his murderous fangs. With my for the northward in search of the Cunene, or left foot I gave him a kick on the head which rather of a river to which the Bushmen gave compelled him for a few seconds to suspend his the name of Mukuru Mukovanga, which they attack. He next seized my left leg, when I re- said was the great river. We pass briefly over peated my former dose on the head with my the incidents of the next two months. There right foot. He dropped the foot, and grasped was the same intense heat, the same want of my right thigh, working his way up to the hip, water, the same unreliable guides, the same slow where he endeavored to plant his claws, tearing progress over craggy ridges and through dense my clothing and grazing the skin. I seized thorn forests, which marked the previous journey. him by the ears, and with a desperate effort The wagon, too, was continuaily breaking down. managed to roll him over on his side, which In the course of one hundred and fifty miles the gave me a moment's respite. He next laid hold axle had to be renewed six times. It happens, of my left hand, which he bit through and too, that in this region the trees are of a pecuthrough, smashing the wrist, and tearing my liar character. The wood of most of them is right hand, rendering me totally helpless. At hard enough to turn the edge of any axe, yet so sions into startling relief. Human nature seemed lower than that of the brute creation, while at the same time almost diabolical." brittle that it shivers like glass at a sudden blow. | dense thickets. Mr. Andersson once calculated Only one tree, the acacia giraffe, is fit for axles; the number of bushes to be cut down. The reand of these scarcely one in a thousand is sound. sult was 1000 to a mile. Each bush required They look fair enough when standing, but al- four strokes of the axe; there were 200 miles most every one is either rotten at heart or so of this country to be traversed, and to hew a perforated by worms as to be useless. To break path through it required 2,400,000 strokes of the an axle in such a region is no slight misfortune. axe, delivered upon 200,000 bushes. This work A great part of the way had to be hewn through was actually performed. January, February, and a part of March pass ed away in forcing a path through such a country. In all this time not a single permanent stream of water was encountered. But the reports of a great river became day by day more definite. At last he was told that it was only a day's journey ahead. of the Okavango, and turn his course homeward. That day he had to bury another of his men. This is all that we now know of the Okavango River. It must be navigable for a considerable part of its course, and its banks are inhabited by tribes who may be considered civilized when compared with the Ovambos, Damaras, and Namaquas. Mr. Andersson believes that an exploration undertaken in any other season than the spring might be prosecuted with little danger from the unhealthiness of the climate. The homeward journey was not to be accomplished without peril and privation. It was the He pressed forward, and on the border of the horizon saw a distinct dark-blue line. This must be something more than a periodical water-course. Soon he beheld a broad sheet of water, and in twenty minutes found himself on the banks of a noble river two hundred yards broad. This could be only the Mukuru Muko-dry season again. The wagon, loaded with a vanga of the Ovambo, flowing westward to the sea. He looked at the course of the water. It was flowing with a steady current, two or three miles an hour, directly eastward, straight into the very heart of the continent, instead of emptying itself into the Atlantic on the west. It is somewhat singular that Mr. Andersson does not give the date of the discovery of the Okavango River. It must have been in March, 1859, a year from the time when he set out from Otjimbingué in search for the Cunene. Whence this great river comes, and whither it goes, is as yet matter for conjecture. Mr. Andersson thinks that it is lost in the immense marshes around Lake Ngami. If Dr. Livingstone carries out his present expedition to Central Africa, he will be able to solve the problem. Mr. Andersson at once set about inquiries as to the region. He sent a message to Chicongo, the principal chief of the Ovaquangari, who inhabit the country on the northern bank of the river. He was, after some delay, furnished with a canoe to convey him to the residence of the chief. The boatman proved to be a great blackguard. He kept close along shore, stopping at every werft or hamlet, and calling out to the inhabitants to come and have a look at the white man. This gave Mr. Andersson an opportunity to observe the country and the people. The country on the northern bank presented a cultivated aspect. There were great corn-fields and groves of fruit trees. The inhabitants were not attractive. The women were especially hideous, thick-set, broad-lipped, and smeared over with grease and ochre. Chicongo received him kindly, and promised to aid him in his projected explorations. part of the sick, had to be sent on one station, and then return for the remainder. It took six weeks to accomplish the regular journey of six days. Then, by sending men on in advance, it was found that the vleys ahead were all dried up; no water was to be had, and a stay of five or six months, until the next rainy season, was necessary. Kane was not more absolutely imprisoned in the Arctic ice than was Andersson in the waterless deserts. To add to this distress came tidings that the Ovambo had laid plans to destroy the intruders into their country. Once the dry grass around their encampment was ablaze; they supposed that the savages had tried to burn them out. This was in August. About this time Mr. Andersson dispatched the most trusty of his men to the settlements, with tidings of his perilous position. A single man could traverse a region impracticable for a caravan encumbered with sick. The messenger encountered Mr. Green, the old traveling associate of Andersson. He resolved to set out at once, to rescue his friend if living, or avenge him if dead. It is no easy work for one party to find another in these deserts, where the distance of a hundred miles without water forms a barrier almost insurmountable. But Mr. Green pushed forward, and at length, about the end of November, 1859, the two parties effected a junction. The meeting was a joyful one, though great perils yet awaited the travelers. Before them was an uncouth country, abandoned by man and beast. The sandy soil yielded to the foot at every step; thorn thickets abounded, through which the way must be cut, and above all, water was hardly to be found for man or beasts, while overhead blazed a tropical sun. Of this homeward journey Mr. Andersson gives us no specific account. It must, however, have taken some months, and he can hardly have returned to his starting-point before the spring of 1860-two years from the time when having set These plans of exploration were cut short by illness. First Andersson was attacked by a malignant fever. The earliest symptoms were slight-only a little quivering of the body-but he knew what it betokened. For mere pain he cared little; but he was aware that it foretok-out to reach the Cunene, he discovered the Okaened a complete prostration of bodily and mental activity. Soon, of his six attendants, five were prostrated by the same malignant sickness. One died in two or three days. The disease was intermittent. There were intervals of relapse, during which he could look forward with hope. But each alternation left him worse rather than better; and at last, early in June, he reluctantly decided to abandon his efforts for the exploration VOL. XXIV.-No. 139.-D vango-the great river heretofore unknown to civilized man, flowing directly into the heart of Central Africa. Other explorers, with happier auspices, will doubtless soon take up the search from the point where Andersson was forced to leave it. But no future success can take from him the honor of having been one of the most adventurous and praiseworthy explorers of Southern Africa. A WIFE'S STORY. dead beside her six children in the church-yard. It will be hale and young still when I have been "IIFT me up, Katherine," said my father, sleeping a hundred years by her side. What do in the low, faint voice of extreme weakness. “I want to look out of the west window once more. If I ever see these hills again it will be with eyes that can not be sealed by death or dimmed by old age." I lifted him up, aided by the young physician who had had the care of him during his six weeks' illness, and who seldom left him now. My father was the oldest medical practitioner in Woodstock. In fact the town contained but one other, a man of nearly the same age. Perhaps the rivalry of half a lifetime had not made them any better friends. At all events, I believe that my father, though he permitted me to send for Dr. Greene at the commencement of his severe illness, was not sorry to learn that he was temporarily out of town. In this emergency I had recourse to Dr. Bartholemew-a young man, not more than thirty, who was rusticating during the summer months at the village hotel, enjoying the kindred pleasures of retirement and trout-fishing. From the first my father had been pleased with his manners and satisfied with his skill; though he had asserted that he needed no physician, and that the illness which was upon him was beyond the reach of earthly aid. Dr. Bartholemew had, in fact, filled for six weeks the post of nurse rather than medical adviser. Besides mine, his was the only face that did not seem to bring confusion and disquiet into the sick-room. I was only eighteen, though my father was nearly seventy. I was the child of his old age, the last of seven, and my six brothers and sisters slept in sight of our windows, where the church spire cast its long shadow, and the light streamed lovingly over a sunny hill-side. My mother had died so long ago that I only cherished a memory of a sweet, kind face, a low, soft voice, a memory as dim as our childish fancies about saints and angels. Since her death I had been my father's all, as he had been mine. When he was gone I could see no love or hope for me in the world—no friend, no comfort. But my heart struggled desperately against admitting for an instant the idea of his death. I read no encouragement in Dr. Bartholemew's eyes, yet for a long time I strove to persuade myself that there were signs and possibilities of recovery which only watching as anxious as mine could discover. We piled pillows behind and around him, and placed him, as he requested, in a position where his eyes could take in the range of the outside landscape. He looked forth long and silently. At length his gaze rested on a tall elm whose branches overshadowed nearly half the yard, and he spoke, in a dreamy, absent voice: "How large it is, Kathie! I planted it fortyfive years ago the very day I brought your mother home a bride. See how young and fresh it looks! Birds sing in its boughs; the sun loves its greenness. It lives, and Rachel is still and I say? Perhaps she and I will be young also. It is not all of us, Kathie, that you leave under the ground. There is another part that feels, and thinks, and loves. We call it soul, for want of a better name. Perhaps Rachel's soul is waiting for mine-now-out there." He lapsed again into silence, but his eyes were looking very far off, striving, it seemed, to pierce through clouds and sky to seek the soft beauty of a face as far away from his vision as time is from eternity. How far is that? Sometimes I think a breath would lift the curtain between us and the invisible ones beyond. I thought so then. The truth came home to me that he must go. I felt that his aged, trembling feet had reached the brink of that sea which flows forever toward the ocean of eternity-on this shore earth, on that—what? No bridge spans those tideless waters, no voyager has ever returned to reveal the secrets of that land. Not even an echo floats back to us across the waves. I almost held my breath to listen; but I heard no summons, no oar-plash from the ferryman of death. Did my father read my thoughts? He sank back against the pillows, and turned his eyes on me fondly. As if answering my fears, he said: "The messenger has come, Kathie; he is waiting. I must go. It will not be long before I shall understand all the mystery. I think I shall see Rachel. Good-by, dear child, good child. There is a love beyond the earth that will not leave you desolate." His eyes lingered with a holy, clinging tenderness upon my face. His hand fluttered softly to and fro over my hair. This had been from my infancy his one habitual caress; but the thin, shaking hands moved very feebly now. At length they grew still. I thought his eyes were losing their look of recognition. I clasped my arms about him close, close. I tried to call to him, to beseech his blessing, to implore him to stay with me, but my lips refused to move. I could not speak one word. I dared not look into those eyes, growing so frightfully dim and glassy. I buried my face in his bosom. Soon the Doctor said, gently, "God pity you, poor child! he is dead." My father had been buried a week when Dr. Bartholemew came to bid me good-by. He had prolonged his stay in Woodstock a month beyond his intentions-at first, because of my father's illness; and since his death, in order to afford me all the comfort and assistance that was in his power. I knew this, and felt something as nearly approaching to gratitude as a heart so stupefied by grief could experience. All positive emotion seemed swallowed up for the time by the one great wave which had ingulfed my life. A fire smouldered in the grate, for it was a chilly evening in September, but I had not enough energy to stir it into life. I sat with my head upon my hands, trying morbidly to recall every instance in which I had ever failed in duty to my dead father; every sorrow I might have shared and did not; every pang I had failed to assuage. I did not even look up when Dr. Bartholemew came in. More than any one I ever knew he had the habit of respecting the moods of others. He took a chair and sat down quietly at the other side of the hearth. Neither of us spoke for a while, until I had begun to feel soothed by his silent companionship, and find it rather pleasant than intrusive. Then he said, in those quiet tones I had learned in my father's sick-room to know so well, and obey so cordially and instinctively, "Kathie, this is not good for you, sitting here in the dark with the fire burning low, and thinking, as I know you are, about a past which death has sealed up forever. I shall not like you to do so when I am gone. You know I leave Woodstock to-morrow." This roused me. It "To-morrow! So soon?" I said, sadly. seemed to me as if my last friend would be gone, and I thought I could not bear it. He stirred the fire till it burned up brilliantly, lit a lamp, and placed it in the little round table in the centre of the room, and then came and sat down near me. "Yes, Kathie, to-morrow." He looked at me searchingly, with his grave, truthful eyes. "I came to Woodstock because I had had a hard winter, and was in need of rest. I have staid already much longer than I intended, and I should be tempted to stay longer still, but it is impossible. The friend who took my practice during my absence is imperatively called away, and I am needed at once in Philadelphia. am sorry to leave you, Kathie, while the wound in your heart is still so fresh and sore." lead you. I will not have your answer until, through months of absence, you have learned to know your own heart. But this winter I shall write to you-may I not?—and in the spring I shall come to hear what message your soul has for mine." I could not have answered him if I would; he had put it out of my power. Nor do I think I was prepared to tell him then that I loved him with my lifetime's love; the idea was too new too strange. So I sat silent till he spoke again, on another theme. "You must not live here alone, Kathie. Have you thought of any plan? I could wish all might be settled before I go." "Yes, I have arranged that. Miss Willis?" You know "What, the pattern old maid-the best woman in Woodstock? Yes." "To-day I saw her. She is boarding with strangers now. You know she has been for many years an orphan, without any near ties— like myself. I have asked her to come to me for the winter, and I think she is glad to do so. She will be here on Monday." "This relieves me, Kathie, of much anxiety. If Miss Willis is not very original or amusing, she is good, and will take good care of you. With her and old Janet you will do very well." We did not talk long after that. I was tired and excited, and Dr. Bartholemew saw it. Soon he rose to go. "I shall write you every week," he said, as we stood side by side before the fire, "and you must tell me all about your life-all that troubles, all that pleases you; and in any doubt or perplexity be sure I shall not fail you. I only want one promise. It is sin to rebel against God's will-to give our whole hearts and lives up to despair because any human friend is taken away, even the dearest. We have always Heav Ien's work to do, and it is no human being's right to unfit himself for it. Promise me, then, that you will try to struggle against grief-to think of your father only as he would wish to have you think. You should keep busy that is the sovereign antidote for undue grief; read, and study, and keep house, and make yourself useful wherever sorrow is." He paused for me to answer him, but my tears came instead of words. After a while I faltered, "You were so kind to him. I can not thank you, but I shall indeed feel as if I had lost all when you are gone." Again that searching look, as if he would pierce through my words to my thought, and know my whole meaning. Then a light, a gleam of something I had never met in any man's eyes before came into his, and I heard the first words of love that had ever fallen upon my maiden ears. : "You are right, I know," I answered, as I met the kind eyes bent upon me with a look of entreaty more controlling than a command; "I will do my best to obey you." "And now I must go, Kathie." He took both my hands in a strong, close pressure. He looked into my face; I could not read through my tears the language of his eyes, but the tenderness of his voice thrilled me. "Good-by, Kathie, dear and good child! Remember, when you are sad and lonely, that there is one heart to which you are the nearest thing on earth." "I shall feel as if I had left all in leaving you. I did not mean to say it to-night, Kathie, but in these past weeks of sorrow you have grown into my heart; it is full of you. Some day I shall ask if you can give me love for love; if you will share my home and my future-some time, but not to-night. You are lonely and The next moment he was gone. I heard the sorrowful now; you think you have reason to outer door close after him while I still stood be grateful to me; and these things might mis- | dreamily by the fire. I knew that for the pres |