may, that familiarity with danger and death seldom produces a softening, monitory effect, except upon the mind of a Christian, but rather induces a moral hardiness and effrontery, that steels the mind against lessons of mortality, and casts an ominous gloom upon the prospects of the soul. There is a remark of Butler in the "Analogy," which I have never seen exemplified except in the case of those, whose habits have been formed as the children of God. It is this-that at the same time our own exposure to danger, and the daily instances of men's dying around us, give us daily a less sensible passive feeling or apprehension of our own mortality, such instances greatly contribute to the strengthening a practical regard for it in serious minds; that is, to forming a habit of acting with a constant view to it. Let me never get so obtusely used to danger and death, as not to mind it; but may I always live looking upward and recollective, "As ever in my great Task-master's eye;" calmly self-possessed and ready, through faith in my Lord, for his summons, whether it shall come in sunshine or storm, in a form grateful or appalling to the natural man. Death will then have no sting, the grave no victory. And a sepulchre in the sea, till the sea give up its dead, will be as safe and easy, as to die among kindred, and lie peacefully under the sod, till the morning of the resurrection. A true poet has interpreted, in the Psalm of Life, SAD STORY OF ANOTHER DISASTER. 159 what the heart of the young man said to the Psalmist, and what is often brought to remembrance by the escapes and vicissitudes of our mortal pilgrimage: And thou, too, whosoe'r thou art, O fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long- The channel we have crossed, and all the passages between these Islands, are often the scene of disasters in native canoes. A Frenchman attached to the French sloop of war Bonite, on a visit to this Archipelago in 1836, tells the following story, which we have heard for substance also from a missionary: One day, a native, accompanied by his wife and two small children, put off in a canoe from the northern point of Lanai, with the design of landing on the southern part of Molokai, a distance of seven or eight leagues. When he had put to sea the weather was fine; but suddenly a dark cloud blackened the sky, a gale commenced, and the sea became very rough. For a long time the skill with which the Islander guided his frail skiff in the midst of the waves preserved it from being wrecked; but at length a sea broke the outrigger, and the canoe capsized. The children were too young to be able to swim. He seized them at the moment when the sea was about to swallow them up, and placed them upon the canoe, which, being made of light wood, floated, although bottom up. Then he and his wife, swimming at its side, undertook to urge it along to the nearest shore; they being then near the middle of the channel. After many hours of fatiguing exertion, and when they had almost reached the shore, they met a very strong current, which urged them back into the open sea. To struggle against the force of the current would have been to expose themselves to certain death; they therefore decided to direct their canoe towards another part of the island. Yet the night came on, and they began to feel cold. The woman was the first to complain of fatigue; but the desire so natural to escape death, and the sight of her children, whose life depended upon the preservation of her own, gave her courage, and she continued. to swim near her husband, pushing the canoe before them. Soon the poor children became fatigued; for they could not long cling to the round and polished surface of the canoe without a continued effort, and they were also chilled with cold. At length they relinquished their hold, and fell, one after the other, into the sea. Their parents seized them and placed them again upon the canoe, striving, at the same time, to encour PARENTAL LOVE-AFFECTING ISSUE. 161 age them. But their little hands could no longer retain their grasp, and the sea engulfed them for the third time. It was no longer necessary to think of preserving the canoe; the parents, therefore, took the children upon their backs and swam towards the land, which was scarcely visible in the darkness. An hour later, the woman discovered that the child which she was carrying was dead, and she broke forth into bitter lamentations. In vain did her husband persuade her to abandon the child and to take courage, pointing out to her the shore, which now seemed near. The unhappy mother would not separate from her lifeless child, and she continued to carry her precious burden until she felt her strength nearly exhausted, when she told her husband that she must die, for she could swim no further; yet, notwithstanding her husband's earnest entreaties, she would not relinquish her burden. He then endeavored to sustain her with one hand and to swim with the other; but nature could not prolong the struggle, and she disappeared beneath the waves. The husband continued to swim on in sad ness, the desire to save his surviving child alone keeping him up. At length, after many hours of unspeakable hardship, and when almost dead himself, he reached the shore. But it was only to fall senseless upon the sand, when he discovered that the darling boy on his back was dead. In this condition he was discovered at daybreak by some fishermen, lying on the sand. By their atten tions he revived, but died soon after from grief and suffering, having been in the water eighteen hours. It was only a few years ago, in a part of Polynesia further south than these Islands, that a company of chiefs and people, thirty-two in number, were passing from one island to another, in a large double-canoe like that in which we have just escaped such peril. They, too, were overtaken by a wind, the violence of which tore their canoes from the horizontal or curved spars by which it will be remembered, in our previous description* of a double-canoe, that I have said they are united. It was in vain to endeavor to right them or empty out the water, for, without out-riggers, they could not prevent their incessant overturning. As their only resource, therefore, they collected the scattered spars and boards, and, with the help of cord taken from the wreck, they constructed a raft, on which it was barely hoped they might drift to land. The weight of the whole number, however, who were collected on the raft or hanging to it, was now so great as to sink it below the surface, so that those upon it often stood above their knees in water. Hence of course they made little progress towards land, and they soon became exhausted with fatigue and hunger. In this defenceless condition they were attacked by a number of prowling sharks. One after another was seized and devoured by the rapacious monsters, or * Island World of the Pacific, p. 248. |