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IN the jungles about Tillicherry, there is a large species of monkey, frequently tamed by the natives, and at a village a short distance from this celebrated seaport we had an evidence of the remarkable sagacity of this animal. A few yards from the house of the person to whom it belonged, a thick pole, at least thirty feet high, had been fixed into the earth, round which was an iron ring, and to this was attached a strong chain of considerable length, fastened to a band round the monkey's body. The ring being loose, it slid along the pole when he ascended or descended. He was in the habit of taking his station upon the top of the bamboo, where he perched as if to enjoy the beauties of the prospect around him. The crows, which in India are very abundant and singularly audacious, taking advantage of his elevated position, had been in the habit of robbing him of his food, which was placed every morning and evening at the foot of the pole. To this he had vainly expressed his dislike by chattering, and other indications of his displeasure equally ineffectual; but they continued their periodical depredations. Finding that he was perfectly unheeded, he adopted a plan of retribution as effectual as it was ingenious. One morning, when his tormentors had been particularly troublesome, he appeared as if seriously indisposed: he closed his eyes, drooped his head, and exhibited various other symptoms of severe suffering. No sooner were his ordinary rations placed at the foot of the bamboo, than the crows, watching their opportunity, descended in great numbers, and, according to their usual practice, began to demolish his provisions. The monkey now began to slide down the pole by slow degrees, as if the effort were painful to him, and as if so overcome by indisposition that his remaining strength was scarcely equal to such exertion. When he reached the ground, he rolled about for some time, seeming in great agony, until he found himself close by the vessel employed to contain his food, which the crows had by this time well-nigh devoured. There was still, however, some remaining, which a solitary bird, emboldened by the apparent indisposition of the monkey, advanced to seize. The wily creature was at this time lying in a state of apparent insensibility at the foot of the pole, and close by the pan. The moment the crow stretched out its head, and ere it could secure a mouthful of the interdicted food, the watchful avenger seized the depredator by the neck with the rapidity of thought, and secured it from doing further mischief. He now began to chatter and grin with every expression of gratified triumph, while the crows flew around, cawing in boisterous chime, as if deprecating the chastisement about to be inflicted upon their captive companion. The monkey continued for a while to chatter and grin in triumphant

mockery of their distress; he then deliberately placed the captive crow between his knees, and began to pluck it with the most humorous gravity. When he had completely stripped it, except the large feathers in the pinions and tail, he flung it into the air as high as his strength would permit, and, after flapping its wings for a few seconds, it fell on the ground with a stunning shock. The other crows, which had been fortunate enough to escape a similar castigation, now surrounded it, and immediately pecked it to death.

The animal had no sooner seen this ample retribution dealt to the purloiner of his repast, than he ascended the bamboo to enjoy a quiet repose. The next time his food was brought, not a single crow approached it.-Oriental Annual.

THE FUNERAL AT SEA.

DEEP mists hung over the mariner's grave,
When the holy funeral rite was read;
And every breath on the dark-blue wave,
Seemed hushed, to hallow the friendless dead.
And heavily heaved on the gloomy sea,

The ship that sheltered that homeless one,
As though his funeral-hour should be,
When the waves were still, and the winds were gone.
And there he lay, in his coarse, cold shroud,-
And strangers were round the coffinless;
Not a kinsman was seen among that crowd,-
Not an eye to weep, nor a lip to bless.
No sound from the church's passing bell
Was echoed along the pathless deep;
The hearts that were far away, to tell

Where the mariner lies in his lasting sleep.
Not a whisper then lingered upon the air,-
O'er his body, one moment, his messmates bent,
But the plunging sound of the dead was there,
And the ocean is now his monument!

But many a sigh, and many a tear,

Shall be breathed, and shed, in the hours to come,When the widow and fatherless shall hear

How he died, far, far from his happy home!-FINN.

LONDON.

JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. PUBLISHED IN WEEKLY NUMBERS, PRICE ONE PENNY, AND IN MONTHLY FARTS. PRICE SIXPENCE.

Sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in the Kingdom,

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No 212.

24TH, 1835.

OCTOBER

PRICE ONE PENNY.

UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

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THE VALLEY OF THE MOUOTTA,

IN SWITZERLAND.

THE Mouottathal is a valley of Switzerland, situated in the canton of Schwytz; it derives its name from the river Mouotta, by which it is watered, and which flows into the Lake of Lucerne, or the Waldstätter See, between three and four miles, in a direct line, to the westward of the town, or rather village, of Schwytz, the capital of the canton. The length of this valley is nine or ten miles, and its direction is pretty nearly from west to east. It has all the appearances of fertility, and its smiling landscape is set off by the contrast of a stupendous rampart of mountains, which screen it, though not too closely, on almost every side. Towards its eastern extremity is the village of Mouotta, a small collection of cottages, possessing a church, which, for a long time, held the second rank in the canton, and used to be visited by numerous pilgrims from the neighbouring territories of Uri and Unterwalden. The eastern boundary of the valley is the lofty mount Praghel, which stretches also along a portion of its northern side; this mountain here forms the limit between the cantons of Schwytz and Glaris, sloping down upon the side of the latter into the Klonthal, or valley of the little river Klon.

The entrance to this valley is between two and three miles from the town of Schwytz; it begins near a little village bearing the name of Schönenbuch. The most direct communication between the towns of Schwytz and Glaris, is by the Mouottathal; the road passes through the whole length of the valley, then to the summit of the Praghel, and down its opposite slope into the Klonthal, traversing the whole length also of this latter valley, which extends to within a short distance of Glaris. The difficulties of this route are very great; the passage of the mountain is an especially arduous task. Simond crossed it, and performed the whole journey between Glaris and Schwytz: he speaks in strong terms of the labour which attended its accomplishment. A considerable time was spent in the ascent of the Praghel, which rose from the Klonthal, " in all its pride, craggy, bare, and gray;" the summit was deserted by all living creatures except the birds of prey, "now hovering over its precipices, while their keen glance explored every secret recess; then gliding obliquely down on motionless wings, yet swift as thought in pursuit of some imperceptible object." The descent of the opposite slope, towards the valley of the Mouotta, is by a very steep winding path, or rather a succession of slippery steps coarsely cut into the rock; down this precarious way, horses and mules laden with a weight of more than two hundred pounds will manage to find a passage, often with their hind feet above the level of their ears, and occasionally, indeed, placed in such situations as to need the driver to assist them and hold them back by the tail.

Coxe mentions, in reference to this valley, a curious circumstance which was communicated to him by General Pfyffer, the same patient ingenious old man whose model in relief of a large portion of Switzerland we described in a notice of the town of Lucerne *. As a proof of the astonishing confidence mutually entertained by the inhabitants, the general pointed out to him, " on each side of the road that runs through the valley of Mouotta, in the canton of Schwytz, several ranges of small shops, uninhabited, yet filled with various goods, of which the prices are marked: any passengers who wish to become purchasers, enter the shops, take away the merchandise and deposit the price, which the owners call for in

the evening." We find no mention of this very comfortable mode of doing business in more recent writers; it passed away, probably, with those days of pastoral simplicity in which alone it could prevail, and which certainly did exist at no very remote period in some of the more retired among the Swiss valleys.

This valley, however, derives its chief interest from the sanguinary scenes of which it was the theatre at the close of the last century; like many other parts of Switzerland, till that time as little known, its peaceful retirement was then rudely disturbed by the fierce encounter of hostile armies. At the close of the year 1798, the ancient government of the Swiss was no longer in existence, and their territory was in the hands of the republican soldiers of France. Soon afterwards war was renewed between the French and Austrians; and the latter, having gained the decisive victory of Stockach, in Suabia, on the 21st of March, 1799, passed on to the westward, and entered Switzerland in force, with the intention of following up their success and expelling their enemies from that country. Its poor inhabitants suffered severely in the struggle which ensued; their inclination in general led them to support the Austrians, but many were compelled by the French to take up arms against them. To use the words of a national historian, Zschokke, "Swiss fought against Swiss, under the banners both of Austria and France; tumults and revolts, sometimes occasioned by carrying into effect the act of conscription, sometimes from the desire of favouring the Austrian arms, prevailed in every direction. **** In the mean time, in the valleys in the highest Alps, and on the shores of the lakes, the din of foreign arms was heard; one field of battle was left reeking close to another, and men and horses were seen traversing mountain-ridges known hitherto only to the chamois-hunter. Never, since the occupation of the country by the Romans, the Allemanni, and Burgundians, had Switzerland experienced such overwhelming misery."

The success of the contending armies was varied; the Grison country, and that mountain-chain which includes the sources of the Rhine, were successively lost and won by both. In the month of June the Austrians, everywhere victorious, had advanced on the south to the pass of the St. Gothard, and on the north to the town of Zürich and the borders of the Rhine. By the middle of August they were again driven back on the southern part of their line; and the French remained undisputed masters of the St. Gothard, and of nearly the whole of the Cantons of Schwytz and Uri. The Mouottathal was one of the districts from which the Austrians were thus expelled, and their efforts to retain it were among the most strenuous which they displayed. They took post on the bridge at the village of Mouotta, and bravely repulsed the body of French troops sent to attack them by the right bank of the river; of course, when a second came up along the left bank, and placed them between two fires, they could hold their station no longer. Soon afterwards the mass of the Austrian forces quitted Switzerland, with the Archduke Charles, to take the field in Germany; their place was supplied by 30,000 Russians, who succeeded to the position which they had occupied in the town of Zürich, on the northern border of the lake of that name, and on the northern bank of the river Limmat. General Hotze, with the remainder of the Austrian force, 29,000 men, continued the line to the south, on the banks of the Linth. Immediately to the westward were the French, under their able leader,

* See Saturday Magazine, Vol. VII., p. 99.

Massena; their principal strength was gathered upon the Albis, and upon the high ground whence they could watch their opponents about Zürich.

For more than three weeks after the change had been effected, both armies remained in a state of inactivity; but, in the mean while, the allies had been occupied in the formation of a project, which they fondly hoped would lead to the expulsion, if not the annihilation of the French force. The famous Suwarrow, the conqueror of the Poles and the Turks, was then, with nearly 20,000 Russians, in the north of Italy, where he had been reaping fresh laurels from his successes against the French; if he could be brought with his veteran troops into Switzerland, it was thought that the most sanguine results might fairly be anticipated. Accordingly it was arranged that he should cross the Alps by the pass of the St. Gothard, and march at once northward into Massena's rear; the troops in his front were to remain quiet until this manœuvre was executed, when the French would find themselves placed between two

armies.

Suwarrow forced the St. Gothard on the 24th of September, driving before him the French troops who attempted to obstruct his passage; he arrived on the 26th at Altorf, and finding the banks of the Lucerne or Waldstetten lake to be impracticable, he boldly determined to force his way across the mountains into the valley of the Mouotta, which would lead him to the heart of the canton of Schwytz. There was no known route by which he could traverse the intervening tract of country; but the bold Russian was not to be deterred, and he resolved to explore one. He first penetrated through the Schachenthal then through the Kientzigthal; next he crossed the mountain called the Kientzighoulm, and descended into a narrow valley, or rather water-course, which led him into the Mouottathal, through the opening which lies opposite to the village of Mouotta. "The shepherds of the Alps," says Ebel, "never speak but with admiration of the passage of the Russians over the Kientzighoulm,-a summit on which no other beast is accustomed to tread but the goat, and which is visited by no human being save the herdsman and the chamois-hunter." "Probably no traveller," said a Swiss guide to a writer we have before quoted, "had ever before passed the Kientzighoulm from Altorf to the Mouottathal; the very shepherds take off their shoes, and hold by their hands, where armies marched during that memorable campaign. The precipices were strewn with bodies of fallen soldiers; not a mossy rock beside a running spring, that had not been chosen by some of them to lay down his head and die; and when, in the ensuing year, the melting of the snows left the corpses uncovered, the ravenous birds of prey became so dainty that they fed their young only with the eyes!"

at the house of the British minister, to celebrate the passage of the Alps by Suwarrow. Yet, in spite of this bad news, the boldness and energy of Suwarrow did not forsake him; he wrote to Korsakow, and his generals, that they should answer with their heads for every further step that they retreated;—" I am coming." he added, "to repair your faults." marched quickly towards the opening of the Mouottathal, with the intent of passing round towards the east, and doing something to retrieve the posture of affairs; but his active enemies met him at its very mouth, not far from the town of Schwytz.

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A desperate battle ensued, the chief scene of contention being the bridge which is represented in our engraving; the carnage at this point was terrible, and the torrent was encumbered for several days with the bodies of the dead of both nations." The guide who conducted Simond to the top of the Mount Righi, gave him an animating description of these conflicts; from that summit, the entrance to the Mouottathal-" a narrow gorge between high mountains, with a torrent issuing out of it,"—was distinctly visible. The bridge was, he says, taken and retaken many times; "the mingled blood of the two nations crimsoned the stream which carried down their floating bodies." Suwarrow strove hard, and was very near forcing his way; at length he desisted, and turning round, sought a passage by the difficult route we have already described, over the Praghel to Glaris, harassed all the while by his enemies, who kept his rear continually fighting. When he reached the outlet of the valley of Glaris, he found it already occupied by the French; and having, therefore, explored another mountain route, he managed to reach the town of Coire in the Grisons, on the 4th of October, having lost one-fourth of his numbers in the eleven days which he had spent in marching and fighting since his departure from Italy.

The inhabitants of the Mouottathal were grievously injured by this war; Ebel tells us that at the commencement of the year 1800, between six and seven hundred of them—that is, three-fourths of their whole number-were reduced to such a state of indigence as to be obliged to inscribe their names on the list of the poor. The same was the case with onefourth of the remainining population of the canton, so completely had its prosperity," the work of 500 years of peace,"-been destroyed in two short years of warfare. Many resorted to emigration; and hundreds of children were dispersed into other parts of Switzerland, there to find the shelter of which they had been deprived in their native valleys. Yet all this misery has now passed away; "Time," says Simond, "and patient industry, have effaced all traces of calamities seemingly so recent, and Schwytz appears at present one of the most prosperous of the Swiss cantons.'

Suwarrow reached the village of Mouotta, with the FOR that conceit, that learning should undermine the revemain body of his army, on the 27th of September; and bitter must have been his mortification then, to depravation and calumny, without any shadow of truth. rence for laws and government, it is assuredly a mere learn that all his combinations had been ruined; that For to say that a blind custom of obedience should be a Massena, well apprised of the project of getting into surer obligation than duty taught and understood, is to his rear, had put 50,000 troops into motion on the affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide, than very day the St. Gothard was forced, and attacked a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all conthe armies in his front-that Hotze was killed, and troversy, that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, his successor Petrarch in full flight to the Rhine,makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance and that Korsakow, leaving Zürich, had been defeated evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that in a murderous conflict, and was also retreating in the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been the direction of that river. The defeat of this latter most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.-LORD general was, indeed, complete,-thousands of his Russians being slain; and so unexpected was it, that

Massena and his staff are said to have sat down to a sumptuous dinner which had been prepared in Zürich

Ir is so pleasant to talk of one's self, that one had rather talk of one's faults than not talk of one's self at all.HANNAH MORE.

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.... The dread rattling thunder Rifts Jove's stout oak with his own bolt,

the devastation which the shock occasions is most surprising.

The

A short time after the accident, I saw, at Pinner, the ruins of a very fine oak, not arrived at maturity, perfectly sound and of the strongest kind, which had been struck by lightning during a violent tempest in July, 1828. The shock had entirely severed the whole of its majestic arms, just at their junction with the trunk, and scattered them around. tree, which was about ten feet in girth, was completely stripped of its bark, and the body shivered from the cyme into the root. Perpendicular clefts passed into the heart-wood, and rent through the trunk in many places, so that splinters of six, eight, or ten feet long, by three or four inches thick, might be pulled out as billets would be pulled out of a faggot.

The wood of trees sometimes suffers more than the

bark; at others the bark is entirely stripped off, with little comparative injury to the wood. Occasionally the branches chiefly suffer, but more frequently they escape, while the trunk (as in this case,) is absolutely shattered, and the whole of its bark rent off, that of the boughs, and even the leaves, being wholly

unaffected. In a similar manner we find the clothes of persons consumed by lightning, while their bodies remain unhurt; their bones shivered, while the softer parts are little injured; or the blade of a sword struck, while the scabbard escapes.

Of the force required to produce such destruction in less than a second of time, and to scatter fragments of wood of several pounds' weight each, to the distance of sixty, or even of eighty yards, some faint idea may be conceived, when it is known that a strip of good oak, three feet long, and only one inch square, will support a weight, suspended at the central point, of 330 pounds. Part of one of the splinters of the Pinner oak just mentioned, the cohesion of which was much diminished, and its strength, of course, much lessened, by the force of the thunder-shock, two feet long, and one and a quarter feet between the fulcral points, only one inch and a. half by half an inch thick, and two and a half inches deep, easily supported 686 lbs. ; 7 cwt. bent it slightly, and by adding three quarters more to the 7 cwt. it curved, though without fracture, about an inch downwards. To break a piece five inches square, and seven feet long, between the fulcral points, demanded a force of four tons, three quarters, and

seventeen pounds. Such was the result of a trial made on some oak of New Forest growth, at the command of the First Commissioner of His Majesty's Woods; the lightning having, in the storm already noticed, struck a fine oak in an elevated part of Ytene, and rent out a very long strip, of about two inches wide by one in thickness, from its very heart; nearly one quarter of the tree was forced away from the body, and several of the massy limbs of the upper part driven, as it were, from the sockets, a

distance of several feet.

Trees thus casually struck by lightning have sometimes excited much astonishment, from letters, figures, &c., being found engraven in the heart-wood, often at a foot from the surface, and as much from the centre. Crucifixes, images of the virgin, and other extraneous matters, have been also found in the like situations. In the church of the White Nuns, of the order of St. Augustin, at Maestricht, there is preserved the figure of a crucifix, said to have been found in the heart of a walnut-tree on its being split by lightning.

Trees which have been felled for economical purposes, often exhibit the same curious circumstances. In the year 1816, when some trees were removed on the enclosure of the waste land at Smallberry-green, bordering the footway of the great western road, and nearly opposite the mansion of the late Sir Joseph Banks, a gold ring about the weight of a wedding ring, rather flat and broad, with the following inscription, Constancy is a noble vertu,

rudely engraven on the inside, was found embedded had in his museum a log of wood, brought from the East Indies, which, on being split, exhibited these words in Portuguese, Da boa ora, i. e., Det (Deus) bonam horam. Jacobus Jaffarellus, among his unheard of curiosities, tells of a tree found in Holland, “ which being cut to pieces by a wood-cleaver, had in one part of it the figure of a chalice, in another that of a priest's albe, in another that of a stole, and in a word there were represented very near all the ornaments belonging to a priest. Furthermore, Hayman Rooke mentions, that on cutting down some trees in the Hays of Birkland and Bilhagh in Sherwood Forest, letters, &c., were found within the wood of several, marking the king's reign; and fac-similes of his figures are given in our engravings. In one tree were found several letters, and among them I. R., for James Rex. The following cut shows the hollow

in the root of an elm-tree. Sir Hans Sloane also

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