Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/202

192 bad attendance at the best hotels, nor of the difficulty and sometimes of the impossibility of getting servants. But the Kisawlee ladies, though not very strong in music, painting, or languages, can make an apple-pie or a bed with any one; necessity, if a hard, is a good master, as many a gently-nurtured Englishwoman has found out in places compared to which Kisawlee is a bed of roses.

Englishmen will penetrate into the most out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the earth, and their wives — who have been brought up in luxury such as no other nation dreams of — will go with them, and brave hardships, dangers, and troubles which would reduce an American, who has never trodden on a carpet, to a helpless and trembling heap of tears and groans. Truly we are an eccentric nation; but at all events we do not require a standing army of half a million to make us respected in regions and by men who have never heard of the emperor of Germany, and to whom the very name of the czar of all the Russias is a closed book. Shebauticon.

 

  Cape Monthly Magazine for September contains an article of Dr. Bleek’s on his Bushman researches, the proofs of which he was to have revised and enlarged the very day of his death. It adds little to what he had said on the subject in his last official report; perhaps one of the most curious pieces of new information contained in it is a reference to a Bushman legend, in which “the rain-maker is asked to milk a nice female rain which is gentle, the rain being her hair.” Comparative mythologists have sometimes been ridiculed for seeing merely the rain-clouds in the cattle of Geryon or the long-haired swan-maidens, and they will appreciate the illustration of their views which comes from the savage tribes of southern Africa. Another point of interest is the proficiency attained by the Bushman in painting and rock-carving, reminding us of the artistic skill of the modern Eskimaux, or of the ancient inhabitants of the Dordogne caves. Dr. Bleek says –

has written home to announce his arrival at Athens, and the successful beginning of the German excavations at Olympia. All the necessary preparations had been made for the work before Dr. Hirschfeld’s arrival by Dr. Athanasius Demetriades, the commissioner appointed by the Greek government to co-operate with the German directors. The operations are being begun in a line with the excavations made by the French in 1829, when they came upon the spot at which the character of the broken friezes and portions of the roof found indicated the site of the temple of Zeus. It is hoped by Drs. Hirschfeld and Demetriades that by following this track they may discover some of the numerous other buildings which were enclosed within the boundary-walls of the ancient Altis. It is understood that the German work of exploration will be carried on with the proper degree of efficiency for two years, at the end of which time its further prosecution will have to be determined by a commission at Berlin, presided over by Professor Curtius. In the mean while we wish Dr. Hirschfeld all possible success, and shall watch with interest for the appearance in print of the journal which he has undertaken to draw up of the progress of the undertaking.