the language, and give it a very quaint sound, and the names are excessively harmonious.

In the first case which was taken, the plaintiff, as I said before, was not quite satisfied with the decision of his own local magistrate, and had therefore come here to re-state his case. The story was slightly complicated by the plaintiff having two distinct names by which he had been known at different times of his life; one," Tevula," he averred, was the name of his boyhood, and the other, "Mazumba," the name of his manhood. The natives have an unconquerable aversion to giving their real names, and will offer half-a-dozen different aliases, making it very difficult to trace them if they are wanted," and still more difficult to get at the rights of any story they may have to tell. However, if they are ever frank and open to anybody, it is to their own Minister, who speaks their language as well as they do themselves, and who fully understands their mode of reasoning and habit of mind.

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Tevula told his story extremely well, I must say; quietly, but earnestly, and with the most perfectly respectful, though manly bearing. He sometimes used graceful and natural gesticulation, but not a bit more than was needed to give emphasis to his oratory. He was a strongly-built, tall man, about thirty-five years of age, dressed in a soldier's greatcoat (for it was a damp, drizzling day), bare legs and feet, and with nothing on his head except the curious ring into which the men weave their hair. So soon as a youth is considered old enough to assume the duties and responsibilities of manhood, he begins to weave his short crisp hair over a ring of grass, which exactly fits the head, keeping the woolly hair in its place by means of wax. time the hair grows perfectly smooth and shining and regular over this foundation, and the effect is as though it were a ring of jet or polished ebony worn round the brows. Different tribes slightly vary the size and form of the ring, and in this case it was easy to see that the defendant belonged to another tribe, for his ring was half the size, and worn at the summit of a cone of combed back-hair which was as thick and close as a cap, and indeed looked very like a grizzled fez.

In

Anybody in court may ask any

questions they please, and in fact what we should call cross-examine a witness, but they did not do so whilst I was present. Every one listened attentively, giving a grunt of interest whenever Tevula made a point, and this manifestation of sympathy always seemed to gratify him immensely. But it was plain that whatever might be the decision of the Minister, who listened closely to every word, asking now and then a short question, which evidently hit some logical nail right on the head, they would abide by it, and be satisfied that it was the fairest and most equable solution of the subject. Here is a résumé of the first case, and it is a fair sample of the intricacies attending Kafir lawsuits.

Mamusa had cows,

Our friend Tevula possessed an aged relative, a certain aunt called Mamusa, who at the present time appears to be in her dotage, and consequently her evidence is of very little value. But once upon a time, long, long ago, Mamusa was young and generous. and she gave or lent-there was the difficulty-a couple of heifers to the defendant, whose name I cannot possibly spell, on account of the clicks. Nobody denied that of her own free-will these heifers had been bestowed by Mamusa on the withered-looking little old man squatting opposite, but the question is, were they a loan or a gift? For many years nothing was done about these heifers, but one fine day Tevula gets wind of the story, is immediately seized with a fit of affection for his aged relative, and takes her to live in his kraal, proclaiming himself her protector and heir. So far, so good. All this was in accordance with Kafir custom, and the narration of this part of the story was received with grunts of asseveration and approval by the audience. Indeed, Kafirs are as a rule to be depended upon, and their minds, though full of odd prejudices and quirks, have a natural bias towards truth. Two or three years ago Tevula began by claiming, as heir at law, though the old woman still lives, twenty cows from the defendant, as the increase of these heifers. Now he demands between thirty and forty. When asked why he only claimed twenty, as nobody denies that the produce of the heifers has increased to double that number, he says naively, but without hesitation, that there is a fee

to be paid of a shilling a head on such a claim if established, and that he only had twenty shillings in the world, so, as he remarked with a knowing twinkle in his eye, "What was the use of my claiming more cows than I had money to pay the fee for?" But times have improved with Tevula since then, and he is now in a position to claim the poor defendant's whole herd, though he generously says he will not insist on his refunding those cows which do not resemble the original heifers, and are not, as they were, dun and red-and-white. This sounded magnanimous, and met with great applause until the blear-eyed old defendant remarked hopelessly, "They are all of that color," which changed the sympathies of the audience once more. Tevula saw this at a glance, and hastened to improve his position by narrating an anecdote. No words of mine could reproduce the dramatic talent that man displayed in his narration. I did not understand a syllable of his language, and yet I could gather from his gestures, his intonation, and above all from the expression of his hearers' faces, the sort of story he was telling them. After he had finished Mr. S turned to me and briefly translated the episode with which Tevula had sought to rivet the attention and sympathies of the court. Tevula's Tevula's tale, much condensed, was this Years ago, when his attention had first been directed to the matter, he went with the defendant out on the veldt to look at the herd. No sooner did the cattle see them approaching than a beautiful little dun-colored heifer, the exact counterpart of her grandmother, Mamusa's cow, left the others and ran up to him, Tevula, lowing and rubbing her head against his shoulders, and following him all about like a dog. In vain did her reputed owner strive to drive her away: she persisted in following Tevula all the way back to his kraal, right up to the entrance of his hut. "I was her master, and the inkomokazi' knew it," cried Tevula, triumphantly, looking round at the defendant with a knowing nod, as much as to say, Beat that, if you can!" Not knowing what answer to make, the defendant took his snuff-box out of his left ear and solaced himself by three or four huge pinches. I started the hypothesis that Mamusa

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might have had a tendresse for the old gentleman, and might have bestowed these cows upon him as a love-gift, but this idea was scouted even by the defendant, who said gravely, “ Kafir women don't buy lovers or husbands: we buy the wife we want." A Kafir girl is exceedingly proud of being bought, and the more she costs the prouder she is. She pities English women whose bridegrooms expect to receive instead of giving money, and considers a dowry as a most humiliating arrangement.

I wish I could tell you how Mamusa's cows have finally been disposed of, but although it has occupied three days, the case is by no means over yet. I envy and admire Mr. S's untiring patience and unfailing good temper; but it is just these qualities which make his Kafir subjects (for they really consider him as their ruler) so certain that their affairs will not be neglected nor their interests suffer in his hands.

Whilst I was listening to Tevula's oratory my eyes and my mind sometimes wandered to the eager and silent audience, and I amused myself by studying their strange head-dresses. In most instances the men wore their hair in these waxen rings to which I have alluded, but there were several young men present who indulged in purely fancy headdresses. One stalwart youth had got hold of the round cardboard lid of a collar box, to which he had affixed two bits of string, and had tied it firmly but jauntily on one side of his head. Another lad had invented a most extraordinary decoration for his wool-covered pate, and one which it is exceedingly difficult to describe in delicate language. He had procured the intestines of some small animal,—a lamb or a kid,—had cleaned them, and tied them tightly at intervals of an inch or two with string. This series of small, clear bladders he had then inflated, and arranged them in a sort of bouquet on the top of his head, skewering tufts of his crisp hair between, so that the effect resembled a bunch of bubbles, if there could be such a thing. Another very favorite adornment for the head consisted of a strip of gay cloth or ribbon, or even a few bright threads, bound tightly like a fillet across the brows, and confining a tuft of feathers over one ear. But I suspect all these

fanciful arrangements were only worn by the gilded youth of a lower class, because I noticed that the chieftains and "indunas," or head men of the villages, never had recourse to such frivolities. They wore indeed numerous slender rings of

brass or silver wire on their straight, shapely legs, and also necklaces of lions' or tigers' claws and teeth round their throats, but these were trophies of the chase as well as personal ornaments.— Evening Hours.

Of the thousands of tourists who every summer pass through Geneva, how many bring away any other recollection of it than that of a semicircle of sumptuous hotels, pensions, cafés, and shops. fringing the end of a smiling lake, with the blue and arrowy Rhone' rushing through it, and flanked on the one side by the forest-clad Jura, on the other by the long ridges of the Salève and the Voirons, with the distant mass of Mont Blanc shining between the two lastnamed mountains? And yet those who, either from choice or from necessity, have sojourned there for a while know that behind the busy quays and the Rue du Rhône, and all the turmoil of arriving and departing tourists, there rises a mediæval city, with its tortuous lanes, its lofty houses and high-pitched gables; its recollections of old ecclesiastical days, when a Prince-Bishop endeavored -not always successfully-to control a wild democracy; its Rue de l'Enfer, leading through the Rue du Purgatoire into the Rue de Paradis; its Rue des Chanoines, where Calvin lived after the canons had shaken the dust off their feet as they quitted the rebellious city; its streets, many of them far too steep for any vehicle to ascend: all leading up to the Vatican of Protestantism, the historic St. Pierre, more impressive in its stern simplicity than if it glowed with all the glory of the ancient worship.

Geneva, indeed, boasts a history such. as few European cities can rival. And in our modern days, when the old idea of the city as an independent State is being forgotten, it may be instructive to look back upon the incessant struggles for liberty, now against the Bishop, now against the Pope, now against the Duke of Savoy, now against the French invaders, and almost in our own day against an intestine oligarchy, which have been witnessed on this narrow yet not ignoble

stage. The following sketch is intended simply as an attempt to interest English readers and travellers in something more than the outward beauties of Geneva.

It is curious that a man who played a really prominent part in the history of his time should owe his celebrity in modern times to a poem based on an incident in his life to which in his autobiography he scarcely alludes, and written in apparently entire ignorance of his history. Yet so it is. Byron wrote the 'Prisoner of Chillon' when confined to his inn by wet weather, after a visit to the famous dungeon, when he was aware only of the fact-which is all that most people know now-that Bonivard was chained to a pillar for four years by order of the Duke of Savoy. On this modest foundation of historical fact the poet raised the superstructure of his 'Prisoner of Chillon.'

Mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith,

I suffer'd chains and courted death: That father perish'd at the stake For tenets he would not forsake; And for that same his lineal race In darkness found a hiding place. To represent Francis Bonivard as an hereditary Protestant, as suffering imprisonment rather than betray the faith for which his father suffered martyrdom, is as grotesque a perversion of the truth as could well be imagined. He was, in fact, himself a signal instance of the abuses of the Church which produced the Reformation; and though in his later years he acquiesced in the changes which had come about, yet it was not till after the hope of his gains was gone, and even to the last he seems to have been as lax in his religious observances under Calvin as he probably had been under the Pope; he was, in fact, a man of the world, accommodating himself as

well as he could to the religion which happened to be uppermost, 'Parcus cultor et infrequens,' whether the cult was Catholic or Protestant, in his heart preferring the old régime, because under it he had a rich priory, and could do as he liked, whereas under the new he was dependent on the generosity of the Council at Geneva, and was, moreover, liable to have his domestic arrangements made the subject of inconvenient investigation;* clear-sighted enough to see which way the world was going, and with enough of nobility of nature to take the side of the many against the few, but not made of the stuff from which martyrs are produced. And, further, the two brothers whom Byron makes the sharers of his dungeon, and whose lingering death he watches in helpless agony, are an entire invention. It is a pity that Byron should have written with so little knowledge of his subject, for there was in the life of Bonivard plenty of material for a poem.

Francis Bonivard was born in or about the year 1497, at Seyssel, then apparently, as now, forming part of the Genevese territory. At the end of the fifteenth century Geneva possessed the advantages, and was exposed to the dangers, of an independent state surrounded by more powerful neighbors. For many years the Emperor had acknowledged its independence under the sovereignty of its elective Bishop; but the Pope was continually intriguing to secure the nomination of the Bishop, and the Bishop to transfer the supreme authority from the people to himself. But the Republic had a more formidable enemy than Emperor, or Pope, or Bishop in the Duke of Savoy. The very position of Geneva, as commanding the route between Savoy on the one hand and Burgundy and the Pays de Vaud on the other, made the Duke grudge its independence; and a turbulent democracy is always an unwelcome neighbor to an autocratic sovereign. He had by some means succeeded in gaining a footing in the Republic as holding a court of justice there, and had

* Extraits du Registre du Conseil de Genève, Jan. 29, 1537.

Genève et les Suisses. Par Amedée Roget. Also an article on Genève au 16me siècle, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1869.

placed a Vidomne (vice-dominum) on the island in the Rhone. But the election of the Bishop by the citizens was the key of their position; and at last, by the aid of the Pope, the Duke had succeeded in wresting this from them. He caused a kinsman of his own,* the illegitimate son of a prelate, to be made Bishop; and now the unhappy citizens found themselves between the upper and the nether millstone. But the spirit of liberty was too strong to be crushed out. Bands of patriotic youths, unable to resist openly, kept up a spirit of secret insubordination in the city, and, under the title of Enfans de la Ville, annoyed the Duke's functionaries by small acts of lawlessness, while they were careful to give no handle for proceedings against them. Among these was Francis Bonivard. It is indeed greatly to his credit that he was found on the, side of the people, for all his interests lay in the direction of the Duke and the Bishop. His uncle had been Prior of the important monastery of St. Victor; and before his death he resigned this apparently wealthy preferment in favor of the youthful Francis, then only thirteen years old. But although, besides the Priory of St. Victor, Bonivard held also a Canonry of St. Pierre, he was never ordained; he might have had a voice in the chapter if he would have been made priest, but this he always refused, and held his preferments, as was common at that time, as mere beneficia. As prior, he ranked next to the Bishop; his private and ecclesiastical property made him an important personage; yet he risked both his preferment and his liberty in the popular cause. At last, in 1519, the Duke visited Geneva in person; in conjunction with the Bishop he set about to restore tranquillity and order by imprisoning, torturing, beheading, and hanging the supporters of the popular party, en sorte que c'était une pitié.' At this juncture the connection between Bonivard's head and his shoulders was very far from secure; but he escaped disguised as a monk (though he was a prior, the monastic dress seems to have been an unusual one with him), and thus

* In 1513, Genève, par R. Rey. ↑ Roget. Genève et les Suisses.

saved his life, though he lost his priory. After some years, indeed, he succeeded by an appeal to the Pope in getting his priory restored; but as the Duke refused to allow him to receive its revenues, which unfortunately arose from lands in the territory of Savoy, it is probable that he set but little value on the title and the ecclesiastical position. At this time, indeed, he appears to have been in considerable straits; his own property being practically lost to him, his only ostensible means of living consisted in a small allowance which he received from the Genevese Republic; and it is hardly likely that he received any assistance from his own family, with whom his intercourse seems for a long time to have almost ceased.

At last, however, in 1530, Bonivard applied to the Duke of Savoy for a safe conduct to go to visit his aged mother at Seyssel. During his absence a slanderous story was circulated in Geneva, that he had gone to carry on an intrigue with the Duke against the liberties of the Republic. The calumny so far succeeded in its object, that Bonivard was afraid to return, and outstayed the six months for which his safe conduct was available. He applied for a renewal, which was given, apparently in ambiguous form; he left Seyssel, probably intending to go to Freiburg, at that time closely allied to Geneva, but in passing through the territory of Vaud he fell into an ambuscade of the Duke's retainers, by whom he was carried off to Chillon.

And now began the six years' imprisonment which, though to the prisoner himself it may well have seemed, as he wrote his autobiography in his old age, simply an incident in an adventurous and chequered life, has by a curious caprice of fortune rescued his name from oblivion some three centuries later, and drawn thousands of visitors to the dungeon where he was confined. For the first two years he seems to have been treated with respect and consideration, and to have lived with the governor of the castle; but in 1532 the Duke himself visited Chillon, and ordered him to be confined in the well-known 'souterrain,' somewhat below the level of the lake, into which scanty rays of light struggle through the barred windows, and where the tourist with difficulty de

he

Helde after the newe world the trace; he saw that the cause of liberty was destined to prevail, he chose his side accordingly, and he had nobility of mind enough not to desert it when to be faithful to it entailed suffering and loss. At length, on March 29, 1536, the castle was taken by the united forces of Berne and Geneva; in the words of the Genevese Registers, Nos gens y ont trouvé Messire F. Bonivard et autres pris sur la foi des gentils, et le peuple s'est bien réjoui de leur libération.'* Bonivard was brought in triumph to Geneva; but it was to a very different Geneva from that which he had quitted some seven years before the Reformation. The Reformation, like one of those torrents which, long pent up in the recesses of the mountains, at length burst their barriers and carry all before them, had in those few years passed over Geneva, and swept away well-nigh all the old landmarks. The Bishop was gone; the canons, priests, monks were gone; the Duke's Vidomne was gone; and the ecclesiastical benefices, of which Bonivard had enjoyed a comfortable share, were gone also. There was no more Priory of St. Victor, no more Canonry of St. Pierre for him; henceforth he must

Registre du Conseil, 1536.