Minstrels, by the Rev. F.A. Cox, L.L.D. Miss Mitford has contributed one
of her inimitable sketches, Little Moses; but the most staple articles
in the volume are The Battle of Bunaania, one of the Georgian Islands,
by Mr. Ellis, the missionary; Notices of the Canadian Indians, by Dr.
Walsh; a Journey over the Brocken, by Mr. Coleridge; and a Fragment, by
Miss Jane Porter. Our prose selection is from the last of these
articles; but we intend transferring a portion of Dr. Walsh's "Notices"
to our next "Manners and Customs."

* * * * *


THE SOUTH SEA CHIEF.

_By Miss Jane Porter_.


While in the north of Europe, I met with a rather extraordinary person,
whose account of himself might afford a subject for a pretty romance; a
sort of new Paul and Virginia; but with what different catastrophe, it
is not fair to presage. He described himself as a Frenchman, a native of
Bourdeaux; where, at an early age, he was put on board a merchant ship,
to learn the profession of a seaman. About that time war broke out
between Great Britain, and the lately proclaimed Republic of France;
and the vessel he was in, being attacked, and taken by an English
man-of-war, he was carried a prisoner into England. When there, his
naturally enterprising character would not submit itself to a state of
captivity; and, soon making his wishes understood, he entered on board a
British sloop, bound to New Holland. While gazing with rapt astonishment
on the seeming new heavens which canopied that, to him, also, new