seen.'


The most beautiful and affecting incident I know, associated with a
shipwreck, succeeds this dismal story for a winter night. The
Grosvenor, East Indiaman, homeward bound, goes ashore on the coast
of Caffraria. It is resolved that the officers, passengers, and
crew, in number one hundred and thirty-five souls, shall endeavour
to penetrate on foot, across trackless deserts, infested by wild
beasts and cruel savages, to the Dutch settlements at the Cape of
Good Hope. With this forlorn object before them, they finally
separate into two parties - never more to meet on earth.

There is a solitary child among the passengers - a little boy of
seven years old who has no relation there; and when the first party
is moving away he cries after some member of it who has been kind
to him. The crying of a child might be supposed to be a little
thing to men in such great extremity; but it touches them, and he
is immediately taken into that detachment.

From which time forth, this child is sublimely made a sacred
charge. He is pushed, on a little raft, across broad rivers by the
swimming sailors; they carry him by turns through the deep sand and
long grass (he patiently walking at all other times); they share
with him such putrid fish as they find to eat; they lie down and
wait for him when the rough carpenter, who becomes his especial
friend, lags behind. Beset by lions and tigers, by savages, by
thirst, by hunger, by death in a crowd of ghastly shapes, they
never - O Father of all mankind, thy name be blessed for it! -
forget this child. The captain stops exhausted, and his faithful