floor. Along two sides stand the keelers with their 'meals' of milk in order. They stand strangely long before they are skimmed, till the milk is sour and thick, and then the cream stands from two days to a week before it is churned. . . . As soon as a keeler is emptied, it is scalded in hot water, well laid on with a broom of heather, and then with cold water in the open air. The churning seems an easy affair enough, the butter coming in half an hour, and never keeping the people waiting more than an hour. . . . It is washed three times. Others say that it takes five times to leave the water perfectly clear. It is salted in the proportion of half a stone (seven pounds) to fifty pounds of butter. When made, the butter is pressed down into a firkin, still of bog-oak, salted over the top, and covered close with a cloth. When more is ready to be put into the firkin, the salted surface is scraped off, and the butter below so broken up, as that the new portion may mix well with the old. The ten cows yield a firkin of butter, that is, half a hundredweight per week. . . The firkins are emptied on their arrival at the warehouse in the port. Turned upside down after the head is removed, and well slapped, the cask yields up its contents. The

butter, as it stands, is then scraped with a wooden knife, its soiled corners and seams removed, and put away to make ointment for sheeps' backs, and its hollows filled up with fresh butter. It is then powdered with salt of the purest kind, the firkin is replaced over it, it is raised on its right end, and the other is scraped and salted, and when the hoops are put on, and the firkin ready for closing, covered with a piece of muslin, which is made to fit accurately, and finally salted. When the head is knocked in, and the weight is proved, there remains nothing but the branding.*

Where does all this butter go to? Much of it to London, much to Liverpool, much to the Continent.

VOYAGE OF S. LOUIS FROM ACRE TO HYÈRES, A. D. 1254.†

(JOINVILLE.)

ALL through Lent, the king caused his ships. to be armed for returning to France, of which

* Branding, marking the merchant's name with a hot iron.

†The Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, were undertaken in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries by

E

he had thirteen in all, including galleys.* The ships and galleys were in such manner made ready that the king and queen went on board their ship on the vigil of S. Mark, and we had a fair wind for our departure. On S. Mark's-day the king said to me that on that day he was born; and I said to him that he might well say also that he was born again, since he had escaped from that perilous land.

On Saturday we saw the Isle of Cyprus, and a mountain which is in Cyprus, which they call the mountain of the Cross. On this Saturday a mist arose, and came down from the land upon the sea, wherefore the sailors desired that we had been farther from the Isle of Cyprus, in order to see the mountain above the mist. For this cause they rowed violently, whence it came to pass that our ship struck on a strip of sand which was in the sea. Now it so happened, that if we had not found this little sand-bank where we struck, we various Christian kings, with a view of recovering the Holy Land, and especially the city of Jerusalem, from the Turks. Louis IX. of France, surnamed S. Louis, was one of the leaders in the eighth and ninth Crusades. This voyage is the return from the eighth. He died on his way to Palestine, in the ninth Crusade.

Galleys, ships driven by oars.

should have struck full upon the rocks beside it, when our ship would have gone to pieces, and we must all have perished and been drowned.

Directly a great cry arose in the ship, for each cried Alas!' and the sailors smote their hands together, every man in fear of drowning. When I heard this, I arose from the bed where I lay, and went on the upper deck with the sailors. When I came there, Brother Remon, who was a Templar, master over the sailors, said to one of them, 'Cast the lead,' and he did so. When he had cast it, he cried out and said, 'Alas! we are aground.' When Brother Remon heard this, he rent his clothes down to his girdle, and began to tear his beard, and cried, 'Ah me! ah me!' At this point, one of my knights, named my Lord John of Monson, did me a great courtesy, which was this. He brought to me, without speaking, my furred upper coat, and cast it on my back, because I had on only my vest. And I cried out, 'What have I to do with an upper coat, that you bring it to me when we are drowning?' And he said, 'By my soul, sire, I would rather that we were all drowned, than that you took your death-sickness from cold!'

The sailors cried, 'Ho there! the galley'. to take the king on board; but of four galleys that the king had there, not one came near. And they acted wisely, for there were full 800 persons in the ship, who, to save their lives, would all have leaped into the galleys, and so have caused them to sink.

He who had the lead cast it the second time, and came back to Brother Remon, telling him that we were aground no longer. Then Brother Remon went to tell the king, who was praying on the deck of the ship, barefoot and in his vest only, as one who indeed thought to be drowned.

As soon as it was day, we saw the rock on which we should have struck, if the ship had not touched the sandbank.

The next day, the king caused the sailing masters of the ships to be brought to him, who sent down four divers: they dived down into the sea, and when they came back the king and the sailing masters heard them speak, one after the other, in such wise that no one of the divers knew what the others had said. Notwithstanding, the four men agreed that the ship, in striking against the sand, had rubbed off fully 24 feet off her keel.