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FRANK LESLIES NEW YORK JOURNAL. 23
Their astronomy is merely considered as suvsev-
ient to astrology, and they regularly consult Kamel
Jajid Ben Aslam’s Treatise of Algebra, because
it contains references to astrology, and oneiro-
mancy or the interpretation of dreams. TDlessed
ignorance! It looks quite innocent! Such a
people has not yet arrived at the age of quackery
and adulteration; and if it is deceived, it is not
by the deceiver but by the true believer, who is
himself deceived as well as his dupe. It is a
beautiful thing—innocence ; when the deceiver and
the deceived are alike imposed upon, who then
can blame? But such romantie times are coming
to an end in Turkey. Faith is doomed; and sci-
ence, with all her kindred arts, will prove the source
of innumerable impositions when conscience is
smothered. And smothered it will be. One of the
first lessons of western enlightment is deception.
Even merchants, with all their pretended honor in
meeting their engagements, do not seem to consider
it any sin to deceive a Turk as they would a child.
Thus, for instance, the conscience of a Turk would
forbid him to eat white lump sugar, because it 1s pu-
rified with blood. The sugar merchants, therefore,
procure a written certificate from the sugar refiners
that no blood has been used in refining! This, ac-
cording to Professor Brande, in his lectures, lately
published, is a falsehood; but the Turk’s conscience
is satisfied, and the responsibility rests on the sugar
refiners. The Turk himself will soon learn to con-
nivye at the practice, and reap the profits. When he
has acquired courage enough to drink wine openly
and eat pork boldly, and even taste black pudding
occasionally, where, then, will be his conscience }—
where the conscience of a Jew is who sups on
oysters, and takes lobster-sauce to his fish; where
the conscience of a publican is who puts salt in his
beer to make his customers thirst; and where the
conscience of a christian sugar refiner is who uses
bullock’s blood in refining his sugar, and then, for
the sake of getting a price for it, swears that he did
not. We.live in the land of adulteration — the
Turks do not. What is adulerated in Turkey comes
from the Giaours. The honest Turks have not yet
learned the sciences sufficiently to practice such arts.
But their day is coming—enlightment is approach-
ing—the sun of the West is rising on the East;
and every dodge that it has revealed to the clever
tricksters of Christendon will be taught in Islam.
Alas, for the crescent! It will then be new moon;
for it will go out altogether in the blaze of meridian
splendor, -
Thus passes the glory of the world; but such is
“destiny—kismet, as the Turks call it. Every nation
must succumb to its fate, and go through its various
transmigrations. - All will be right at last. We
cannot go back ; but, like the descending river, we
hurry onwards, over rapids and cataracts, just as
they present themselves, We cannot shape our
course,
a
Bear-Hunting in Russia.
Everybody knows that the bear sleeps or dozes
all through the winter months, eating nothing, but
sucking his paws, with a low moaning sound.
Then is the time when, if you be at St. Petersburg,
you will be invited, as we were, to join many such
expeditions. The various hunting clubs of that
capital employ peasants to discover the retreat of the
animal. When this is reported to be found, the
party start, and the same peasants proceed to rouse
, the bear with shouts and blows—for the danger is
not so great until his blood is actually drawn.
Then a most extraordinary fact has been observed,
which is this; if twenty rifles be fired at him
simultaneously, and only one ball touches him,
he secms to be guided by some mysterious in-
stinct to the very person among the whole party
who has aimed that ball. Four or five out of
twenty can verify the experiment by agreeing that
they alone shall fire, and only one, again, out of
their number loading with ball—the other three or
four burning powder, ‘The rest must reserve their
charges for the sake of security, and must be ready
to knock the bear over in the midst of his rush. It
then becomes evident whose shot has told, if the
bear be hit at all; and if he be, it will be found that
he will make no mistake himself about the individ-
ual to whom he owes his wourd.* In such cases
his charge is exceedingly rapid—far more rapid
than is generally supposed ; for it is imagincd that
there is quite a contrast between the slowness, or
at least the sluggishness, of the bear's movements,
and the almost winged spring and bound of some
_ other wild beasts of the larger class. It would be
better for any one belonging toa hunting party—
such as that of which we speak—ot to reckon too
confidently on this presumed inferiority of the bear,
While we were at St. Petersburg, an English
gentleman had fearful occasion to learn the brute’s
agility. He had gone about the end of December,
with a company of ten or a dozen, to hunt bears in
Finland for a few weeks. One morning, the sports-
men received word from a mujik thata fine specimen
was ruminating in the dell of a rather clear wood
of fir-trees—and thither our hunters repaired. The
quarry was soon roused from those sad and solitary
meditations in which he would have passed the
winter, Finding after he had made a few sham-
bling paces, that there was around him a distant
ring of men, he halted, and doubtingly eyed the
array. Wishing to make a surer shot, the sports-
men called to ea¢h other, and slightly narrowed the
diameter of their circle, all advancing a few steps
simultaneously towards the centre. It was at this
moment that three or four guns rose to as many
shoulders; the English gentleman to whom we re-
fer was among those who fired. For about ten sc-
conds it scemed uncertain whether any of the shots
had taken effect, so perfectly still stood the bear.
Then, suddenly uttering a strange sound, he rushed
straight towards that one individual—whom we
shall call Mr. Horner—quite disregarding and dis-
claiming the rest of the field. astily discharging
his other barrel, the hunter, of course turned and
fled. We may remark that after the beast is killed,
it is generally ascertainable by the position of the
leaden messengers in his body, and*by his own
place in the field, from what direction they must
have came, and who, therefore, were the successful
marksmen. In the present case, from the strength
and yelocity of the bear’s charge, an inexperienced
spectator would have certainly concluded that no
wound had yet been inflicted. The fact was other-
wise. Both the barrels of the man now running
for his life had been well and truly aimed, and
the wild beast, which seemed to have wings, so
rapid was his course, was bearing at that moment,
nevertheless, two balls in his bedy, back to him
from whom he had received them. Torner’s first
shot had pierced the lower part of the bear’s neck
crosswise, making two very sma!) opposite holes,
corresponding with each other exactly, only that
the puncture on the left or near side was plastered
and lined at the edges, with some of the hair drag-
ged into the orifice by the entering bullet, and that
the further orifice bled a litle more. The second
ball, fired after the bear had begun his dash, hit the
breast-bone slantingly, curved round beneath the
hide, and lodged in the left flank, producing a long,
ragged and formidable interior damage.
Iforner was fast loosing his distance, when his
left-hand comrade in the hunting ring, getting an
opening, sent a crashing ball from forty-five yards
into the centre of the bears rib’s. A short, savage
howl acknowledged the recerpt; and fora second
the brute scemed slightly to reel—but only for a
second, He took up the pursuit with fresh energy
and speed; for even the last blow could not now
induce him to forsake for another enemy his first
assailant. Not more than ten yards separated Mr,
Tforner from the brute, whose very breath, he after-
wards declared, he felt upon his shoulder, when at
that instant his foot struck the transverse root of a
tree, and he fell headlong.
When a bear cannot hug you, or before he does, he
strikes out with his paw, aiming at your forchead,
and where his paw descends, the scalp of your head
parts, and he drags it down, peeling off the forchead,
the eyes, the nose, and the entire skin and flesh of
the face, like a mask. And so incredibly quick
and sudden is the operation, that a person standing
by would not know what had happened till he saw
the effect. :
The movement itself is as rapid as a-flash of
lightening —and then “the human face divine”
has entirely disappeared. One would think that
the brute, awed by the countenance of man, was
obliged to remove it before proceeding to suck the
bones of his victim, which is what he does at lei-
sure, if victorious and unmolested, beginning often
with the little finger of one of the hands. . He does
not bite off that finger, but makes a small puncture
in the tip of it, and so draws forth his repast.
Horner, endeavoring to rise, half-faced the bear ;
and instinctively raised an arm to guard his head.
In that decisive and fearful emergency, a ball, more
effective than any of the rest, struck the animal be-
hind the ear and entered the brain. Nevertheless,
this timely shot arrested not wholly that tremendous
coup de patte, or paw-stroke, which was weakencd,
indeed, and deadened. The arm of the gentleman
whom we haye called Horner, for the convenience
of naration, was fractured by the descending blow,
which he had tried to intercept; his guard was
beaten down like a roll of thin paper, and he fell
back, scalped to the eyes, the dead bear rolling over
him. It might have been worse.. A skilful ope-
ration was performed in Lordon, whither he re-
paired at once, and he recovered his former health
in a few months, though not his former appearance.
Ife will always earry that day’s mark, and be able
to preface his story by saying; «See what I got
once, when bear-hunting in Finland!”
At Balaklava an important arrival occurred late-
ly; two vessels, one freighted with gunpowder,
the other with shot. Had it not been for this sup-
ply we should have been destitute of. ammunition
forthe larger guns by the morrow night, even at
the present rate of firing, one discharge every seven
minutes. Many of the Russian round-shot have been
collected and returned. The Russian gunnery has
been very good. In the 21-gun English battery, a
hollow shot was thrown into the muzzle of one of
the guns; the shot, however, was broken, and the
gun uninjured. Another solid shot entered the
muzzle of one of the guns, and broke and disabled
the .
Wear Anp TEanr.—The effect of heat is living too
fast, the effect of stimulating is living too fast, the
effect of overwork is living too fast, and the effect
of living too fast is premature decay and early death.
European fruit-trees transported to the topics are
proverbially prolific.in the amount of their leafy pro-
uctions—two or three crops in one year—but there
is a lamentable paucity in the amount of fruit, and
the natural period of their lives is much curtailed.
The unfortunate bird, the Strasburg goose, affords
an apt illustration of the effect of uiminished re-
spiratory powers and large consumption of food,
composed of hydrogen and carbon, on the liver.
By warmth and inactivity its respiration is reduced
to a very low degree, and at the same time it is fed
on materials containing a very large amount of ole-
aginous matter. ‘The consequence is, that the liver
is stimuJated to exertion; it hypertrophies from
work, Like the muscles of a blacksmith’s arm, it
gets no rest, but goes on working like a mill-horse,
to try and get rid of the large amount of carbon in
the system; but it is unable to accomplish the
Iferculean task required of it, and its cells become
gorged with hiydro-carbon in the shape of oily parti-
cles, and the mass of disease is the delightful dish
in which epicures luxuriate under the designation .
pate de foie gras. The effcct of over-taxation in the
amount of work may be seen every day in the bat-
tered limbs and broken constitution of race-horses,
and the rapid destruction of eye-sight in those en-
gaged in very fine work is proverbial. A watch-
maker employed his time in writing the Lord's
Prayer on a space about the size of the wing ofa fly,
in which all the t's were crossed and all the i’s dot-
ted. - While so engaged he worked in a bright light;
it occupied him about a fortnight, but in that short
time his sight aged thirty years.
“Gop Hers Toss Wio Herp Tremsetres.”"—
It has pleased Providence to bless this country with
an abundant harvest; but that favor has not been
confined to America alone—it extends also to lands
in which the climate and the soil are infinitely more
favored by nature than our own. But to make a
dilligent use of that harvest—to extend its produce
through a thousand productive channels of nation-
al prosperity——to enrich the agriculturist, and,
through the increase of his profits, to give a fresh
stimulus to trade—to make new demands on man-
ufactures—to pour new energies into the various
investments of enterprise and capital—that is the
merit of the American people, and that is the way
in which the civilisation of man assists the bounty
of the Creator, in other countries that I might name
—such, for instance, as Spain and Sicily, once the
granary of Europe—lands infinitely more favorable
than our own—tor want of roads, for want of mar-
kets, or facilities for interchange—in one word, for
want of civilization, the corn in many places will
rot uncut where it stands, and the whole harvest
pass away, enriching no trade, recruiting no man-
ufactures, rewarding no industry, affording no sur-
plus capital to energy or enterprise; and that is the
way in which uncivilised nations frustrate the be-
nevolence of Providence, .
Gas 1x Cuina.—Small gas-works are being sent
out to Hong Kong, for the supply of fifty lights.
This is the first introduction of gas into the Chinese
Empire. .
Exrcrricity AND Curonororu.—aA distinguished
physician of Paris—Dr. Robert de Lambelle—an-
nounces that a shock of electricity, given t» a pa-
tient dying from the effects of chloroform, imme-
diately counteracts its influence, and restores the
sufferer to life. .
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