complaints are unknown, and as for malaria, it has been my experience that with good food, regular habits, mosquito bars and coffee, it is a myth. The night, popularly supposed to be the worst time in which to be exposed, was the time frequently selected for travelling upon the river, in order to avoid the heat and glare of the day. To save time I have repeatedly spent several successive nights upon the river, sleeping as best I could in a small canoe, the intervening days being spent in the woods reconnoitering, and have experienced no ill effects.

The mosquitoes so lavishly described by some travellers are by no means the unavoidable torments that many suppose. During the day there are absolutely none, and at night, if camped on a sand-bank in midriver, or travelling in canoe, they give no trouble. If camped upon the bank a bar is indispensable, but then no one who understands anything about travelling in these countries ever goes without his bar, and it is not the slightest trouble to keep the torments out of this.

The maximum temperature noted on the river during six months, from the middle of Dec., '87, to the middle of June, '88, was 92°, the minimum 64°. The water of the river, though warm and often muddy, is pure and sweet, and, after it has settled and cooled itself in the earthen jars of native make, is by no means disagreeable.

Some reader may ask, How does it happen that in a country so little known in geographical detail as the interior of Central America, there exists such definite knowledge of this river?

It is because from the time men recognized the fact that there is no natural strait across the American

Isthmus, it was seen that at Nicaragua nature had indicated in the most unmistakable way where an artificial passage should be cut.

Twice, as we have already seen, the noble river has borne a rich commerce upon its bosom, once with the tide setting eastward, once westward; and for years, through every vicissitude of despotism intrigue and perverted judgment, it has waited for the day, certain as the recurrence of the seasons, when, between its fertile banks, the stream of the world's commerce shall flow eastward and westward, from ocean to ocean, in constantly increasing volume.

Unless all signs fail this time is close at hand, and in a few years the San Juan and Lake Nicaragua will be alive with white sails and the throbbing propellers of a mighty traffic.

THE RUSSIAN TRAVELLER PRJEVÁLSKY.

BY

EUGENE SCHUYLER.

On the first day of last November (1888), according to our calendar, General Nicholas Michailovitch Prjeválsky (this name is properly transliterated Przheválsky, but it is best to follow the received English and French spelling) the great Russian traveller, the explorer of Eastern Central Asia, and probably one of the last of the adventurous travellers, died of typhoid fever in the little town of Karakól on the road from Vierny to Kashgar. In his last moments he asked to be buried on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, in a spot which, surrounded by mountains covered with eternal snow and close to the blue waters of the lake, presents itself as vividly to me now as when I first saw it 15 years ago.

Personally, I met Prjeválsky but twice; once when he spoke before the Imperial Russian Geographical Society at St. Petersburg in 1874, when he received the gold medal; and a few days afterwards at the house of a friend. But even before that his name was known to me from his travels, and since that has become familiar to every one who interests himself in the geography of Central Asia.

Before speaking of his work as a traveller and explorer it is interesting to touch on his early life; and for this we fortunately have some auto-biographical sketches

written in 1881, and recently published in the Rússkaya Stariná.

Prjeválsky was born on April 12, 1839, in the little village of Otradnoe in the Province of Smolensk. He was the eldest son of a family comprising two other sons and a daughter, and was left fatherless at the age of

Although of Catholic and Polish origin his parents both belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother was a woman of strong character, strict and severe, who believed in the rod as the best method of bringing up children. As the family possessed about 3000 acres of land and 135 serfs, they were neither rich nor poor. Prjeválsky's early education was, as was the custom of families in those days, conducted entirely at home, with teachers competent and incompetent-most of them young theological students sent out from Smolensk. He was a wild, unruly child, always escaping to the woods, his passion being sport. When he was ten years old he was sent with his brother to the high school or gymnasium at Smolensk, where he was left under the charge of a tutor, who took him to school, carried his breakfast to him, and then brought him home and strictly supervised him. At that time teachers in the country schools in Russia were not always up to the mark, and were frequently coarse and brutal; and these boys, in common with others, suffered much. Prjeválsky says however that one advantage was that they all remained boys and did not ape the fashions of men as school-boys do nowadays; and as their summer vacations were very long-because it was always necessary to repair or alter in some way the school buildings-they were enough at home to prevent their being spoiled by town life. His