rivers, but not with as much ease on land. When excited, it puts forth
its full strength, which is prodigious. "I have seen," says a mariner,
as we find it in Dampier, "one of these animals open its jaws, and
seizing a boat between its teeth, at once bite and sink it to the
bottom. I have seen it on another occasion place itself under one of our
boats, and rising under it, overset it, with six men who were in it, but
who, however, happily received no other injury." At one time it was not
uncommon in the Nile, but now it is no where to be found in that river,
except above the cataracts.

* * * * *




THE COSMOPOLITE.

A CHAPTER OF BULLS.

I confess it is what the English call _a bull_, in the expression,
though the sense be manifest enough.--POPE.


We are friends to the exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch
as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends
to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as
stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however,
be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these
vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen,
to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments--from Homer to