precipitated on the concealed party, in which case the destruction of every one of them was certain. Each of our adventurers felt the danger of his situation in a manner peculiar to his individual character and circumstances.

"Come forth, old trapper," shouted Paul, "with your prairie inventions, or we shall be all smothered under a mountain of buffalo humps !"

The old man who had stood all this while leaning on his rifle, and regarding the movements of the herd with 10 a steady eye, now deemed it time to strike his blow. Leveling his piece at the foremost bull, with an agility that would have done credit to his youth, he fired. The animal received the bullet on the matted hair between his horns, and fell to his knees; but shaking his head, he instantly arose, the very shock seeming to increase his exertions. There was now no longer time to hesitate. Throwing down his rifle, the trapper stretched forth his arms, and advanced from the cover with naked hands directly towards the rushing column of the beasts.

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The figure of a man, when sustained by the firmness and steadiness that intellect can only impart, rarely fails of commanding respect from all the inferior animals of the creation. The leading bulls recoiled, and for a single instant there was a sudden stop to their speed, a 2 dense mass of bodies rolling up in front, until hundreds were seen floundering and tumbling on the plain. Then came another of those hollow bellowings from the rear, and set the herd again in motion. The head of the column, however, divided; the immovable form of the 30 trapper cutting it, as it were, into two gliding streams of life. Middleton and Paul instantly profited by his example, and extended the feeble barrier by a similar exhibition of their own persons.

For a few moments the new impulse given to the animals in front served to protect the thicket. But, as the body of the herd pressed more and more upon the open line of its defenders, and the dust thickened so as to obscure their persons, there was at each instant a renewed danger of the beasts' breaking through. It became necessary for the trapper and his companions to become still more and more alert; and they were gradually yielding before the headlong multitude, when a furious bull darted by Middleton, so near as to brush his per-10 son, and at the next instant swept through the thicket with the velocity of the wind.

"Close, and die for the ground!" shouted the old man. All their efforts would have proved fruitless, however, against the living torrent had not Asinus, whose do-15 mains had just been so rudely entered, lifted his voice in the midst of the uproar. The most sturdy and furious of the animals trembled at the alarming and unknown cry, and then each individual brute was seen madly pressing from that very thicket which the moment be-20 fore he had endeavored to reach, with the eagerness with which the murderer seeks the sanctuary.'

As the stream divided, the place became clear, the two dark columns moving obliquely from the copse to unite again at the distance of a mile on its opposite 25 side. The instant the old man saw the sudden effect which the voice of Asinus had produced, he coolly commenced reloading his rifle, indulging at the same time in a heartfelt fit of his silent and peculiar merriment.

"There they go, and no fear of their breaking their 30 order; for what the brutes in the rear didn't hear with their ears they'll conceit they did; besides, if they change their minds, it may be no hard matter to get the donkey to sing the rest of his tune."

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XLIII.

THE CITY OF IS.

BY MINOT J. SAVAGE.'

In the weird old days of the long agone
Rose a city by the sea;

But the fishermen woke, one startled dawn,
On the coast of Brittany,

To hear the white waves on the shingle hiss,
And roll out over the city of Is,'

And play with its sad débris."

For the town had sunk in a single night!

And 'twas only yesterday

That the bride had blushed in her young delight,

That the priest had knelt to pray,

That the fisher cried his wares in the street,
And all the life of the city complete

Went on in its old-time way.

And still the city lies under the sea,
With each square and dome and spire
Distinct as some cherished fair memory
Of a vanished heart's desire,

That once like a beautiful palace stood
Rock-based to defy the wind and the flood,
Time's crumble and tempest's ire.

And as the sweet memory, buried deep,
O'erswept by the flooding years,
Will still all its shadowy old life keep
With ghosts of its joys and tears,

So still, in the wave-drowned city of Is,
The people live over, in care or bliss,
Their shadowy hopes and fears.

When the sea is rough-so the sailors say

And the sunny waves are green,

And the winds with the whitecaps are at play,
The tips of the spires are seen,

And peering far down through the lucent deep,
They glimpses catch of the city asleep,
Agleam with its fairy sheen.

Or on boats becalmed, when the lazy swells
Sleep, lulled by the idle air,

They hear, sweet-toned, the low music of bells.
Roll, calling the town to prayer.

So ever the shadowy joy of old

Rings on, and forever the bells are tolled

To echo some soul's despair.

Each life is a sea still sweeping above

Some sunken city of Is

The long cherished dream of a cherished love
That only in dreams we kiss.

What yesterdays are sunk deep in the soul
Above whose lost treasures to-day's waves roll
To mock what our sad hearts miss!

Oh, the glimpses rare of the submerged past!
They gleam in the light a while,

To mock us with visions, that may not last,
Of faces that used to smile.

And now and then from the busy to-day
The echoing tones of the far away

Our listening hearts beguile.

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But not in the sunken city of Is
Shall the heart its treasures see.
No pilgrims forlorn to an old-time bliss
And a vanished past are we;

For all the glad music of olden times.
Is only faint echoes of grander chimes
That ring in the time to be!

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XLIV.

A VISIT TO NIAGARA.

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.'

In the car for Niagara was an Englishman of the receptive, guileless, thin type, inquisitive, and overflowing with approval of everything American-a type which 10 has now become one of the common features of travel in this country. He had light hair, sandy side-whiskers, a face that looked as if it had been scrubbed with soap and sandpaper, and he wore a sickly yellow travellingsuit. He was accompanied by his wife, a stout, resolute 15 matron, in heavy boots, a sensible stuff gown, with a lot of cotton lace fudged about her neck, and a broadbrimmed hat with a vegetable garden on top. The little man was always in pursuit of information, in his guidebook or from his fellow-passengers, and whenever he 20 obtained any he invariably repeated it to his wife, who said "Fancy!" and "Now, really!" in a rising inflection that expressed surprise and expectation.

The conceited American who commonly draws himself into a shell when he travels, and affects indifference, 25 and seems to be losing all natural curiosity, receptivity,