lifted our anchor at eleven o'clock. Very faint breeze, and that rather against us. The ship was to be searched at the Headsthe last searching. It is over. The man five feet ten in stature, with dark hair, was recognized by no enemy; and we cleared the Heads about four o'clock; and a fresh breeze sprung up from the north; and now the sun is setting beyond the Blue Mountains; and the coast of New South Wales, a hazy line upon the purple sea, is fading into a dream. Whether I was ever truly in Australia at all; or whether in the body or out of the body—I cannot tell; but I have had bad dreams.

After three weeks of quiet sailing over the Pacific Ocean, which on this occasion showed itself worthy of its name, they reached Tahiti. There the Orkney Lass stayed nearly three weeks discharging cargo. The "Journal" has an amusing description of the social condition of Tahiti, the Cyprus of Polynesia. The ladies of Tahiti, said not to be over-strict in their morals, are thus described :

The women have great black eyes; long, smooth, black hair ; and on every glossy head a wreath of fresh flowers. They wear nothing but the parieu, a long robe of some bright-coloured fabric (made for them in world-clothing Manchester), gathered close round the neck, and hanging loose to the feet, without even a girdle. I am not reconciled to this dress, though they generally have forms that no barbarity of drapery can disguise-nor to their wide mouths, though their teeth are orient pearls.

And again, a page or two further on :—

Sunday Evening.-Strolled up with Bonnefin to Queen Pomare's palace or cottage. It has been a gala evening. The admiral and governor are in the queen's verandah; the delightful band of the frigate playing polkas and schottisches. The maids of honour (of whom there are six or eight, all in pure white parieus, with flowers radiant in their dark hair), and scores of other Tahitian maidens, some of them splendidly dressed, were dancing on the lawn in front with the young French officers. Mr. Warren is pained to say that the feet of the girls are broad; figures other

1853.]

TAHITI.

29

wise faultless, eyes supernatural, and the carriage of the head and neck, of that proud and fierce beauty that you see in the bearing of the desert panther.

On the 13th of September, just as the Orkney Lass was getting ready to leave Tahiti, a barque was reported in sight off the reefs. She proved to be the Julia Ann with Mitchel's family on board. She did not enter the harbour, but sent a boat ashore expressly to see if Mr. Warren was there. In an hour or so, Mr. Warren was on board the Julia Ann, and became once more John Mitchel. The wish he had so often expressed in Van Diemen's Land was accomplished at last. He had got from under the shadow of the British flag, and he took off his hat in homage to the stars and stripes.

On October 9, 1853, nearly a month after they left Tahiti, they arrived at the Golden Gate. The next three weeks were spent in California; partly at San Francisco, partly at San José, and partly in the country. Mitchel was prepared to meet a warm welcome from the Irish in America, but his reception at San Francisco was a surprise to him. The enthusiasm with which he was received was not confined to the Irish; it was largely shared by the American population. There were various honours and festivities, and finally, shortly before Mitchel's departure for the east, there was a grand reception banquet, by much the greatest thing of the kind which had as yet taken place at San Francisco. In a copy of the San Francisco Herald for November 1, 1853, I find a very glowing description of the dinner, and, what is more important, a full report of Mitchel's speech thereat. The governor of the state presided, and the mayor of San Francisco assisted him as vice-president. Covers were laid for four hundred persons; and nearly all the leading citizens of San Francisco were present, as well as not a few leading

men from the neighbouring territories. As a matter of course, Mitchel's reception was enthusiastic. His speech was characteristic; plain and terse in language-and in this respect a decided contrast to some of the other speeches delivered-but evidently animated throughout by intense though suppressed feeling. The concluding sentences may be given here as suggesting the nature of the feeling which animated him, and the view which he took of his duty as an intending American citizen :

What I have said to-night is no more than what I said in the criminal's dock before the false judge-no more than what I have printed again and again in the public newspapers of Van Diemen's Land. Thank Heaven, my head has been always high, my heart has been always free, and I wore my fetters lightly as wreaths of roses. When my enemies sought to kill me by long and rigorous confinement in an unwholesome den, what, think you, sustained me and kept life in me?—rage and scorn, and a firm reliance on God's justice and the immortal thirst of vengeance. I thank my enemies now that they refused to release me; I am glad they waited for contrition; I am proud that I was liberated, not by their Queen's pardon, but by the disloyal aid of some of her Majesty's subjects in Australia, and by the daring and energy of my brave confederate and brother-rebel who sits at this table. Enough, then, of the past. I fling it behind me from this night, and look forward, forward. I have commenced in your state my novitiate in order to become an American citizen. Before Heaven, I declare that I will be a true and thorough American, as my naturalized countrymen generally are. But I believe America will not hold it disloyal to her if we Irish-Americans look anxiously out for an opportunity, and if we one day dash at the opportunity, to wipe off the dishonour of the old mother-land, and to dry her tears, and staunch her wounds, and make her a participator in that noble republican freedom that your fathers have shown all the world the way to win.

Mitchel was strongly pressed by his friends in California. to stay in that state. They wanted him to settle at San

1853.]

SAN FRANCISCO-NICARAGUA.

31

Francisco, and to resume the practice of his profession. They assured him that he might be confident of making a large income from the very start. But New York was Mitchel's objective point. New York was the great worldcity of America, and moreover (and this was its chief attraction to Mitchel), it was within reasonable distance of Ireland. Mitchel had not yet by any means abandoned hope of effecting something in that country; and in those days there were no railroads across the Rocky Mountains, and the journey from San Francisco to Ireland took a much longer time than it does now.

On the Ist of November, Mitchel and his family left San Francisco by the steamship Cortez, bound for New York, by the Nicaragua route. It took them some ten days to reach the place of disembarkation in Nicaragua. Thence the whole party had to travel on mules to the lake. They crossed Lake Nicaragua in a steamer, and then floated down the San Juan to Greytown. At Greytown they were delayed four days, waiting for the steamer which was to take them to New York. Here the first news reached them of that invasion of Turkey by the Czar, which eventually led to the Crimean war. This was what Mitchel called "portentous and thundering news." Several pages of the "Journal" are devoted to speculation as to what the outcome of this portentous news might be. Mitchel foresaw clearly enough that this move of the Czar's must lead to a great European war; and he had vague hopes that in the general melée something good might turn up for Ireland. His thoughts were not of a kind likely to prove edifying to the members of the Peace Preservation Society. Here is a specimen :

I dwell to-night on the hopes and fears of these foreign lands, and am afraid to breathe the name of Ireland, or to write it down, even in my secret tablets, as the name of one of the nations that

have a destiny to achieve, and wrongs (how matchless and how bitter!) to avenge.

The very nation that I knew in Ireland is broken and distroyed; and the place that knew it shall know it no more. Το America has fled the half-starved remnant of it; and the phrase that I have heard of late-"a new Ireland in America," conveys no meaning to my mind. Ireland without the Irish-the Irish out of Ireland neither of these can be our country. Yet who can tell what the chances and changes of the blessed war may bring us? I believe in moral and spiritual electricity; I believe that a spark, caught at some happy moment, may give life to masses of comatose humanity; that dry bones, as in Ezekiel's vision, may live; that out of the "Exodus" of the Celts may be born a return of the Heraclidæ.

I

Czar, I bless thee. I kiss the hem of thy garment. drink to thy health and longevity. Give us war in our time, O Lord!

On the 19th of November, they left Greytown in the Prometheus, for Havana and New York. They reached Havana on the 22nd, and stayed there a day. Mitchel went to explore the city with Smyth and an American friend, whose acquaintance he had made on the steamer. Partly his own observation, partly the conversation of the American, who had a patriotic hatred of the Spanish government, induced Mitchel to conclude that Cuba was "another Ireland." He contemplated the palace of the captain-general with feelings the reverse of friendly :—

Passed on to the palace of the captain-general, a very handsome and massive-looking house, near the quay. In front of it is a shady court, open on all sides to the streets. There I stood awhile, and looked up at the palace with horror and hatred, as at another Dublin Castle. Those two strongholds of hell! When will they be razed and swept away, and the places where they stand sown with salt!

On the evening of the 23rd, they left Havana for New