have followed as a natural consequence; but such was not the case, for, although the Crusaders established Baldwin Count of Flanders as Emperor of the East, the hostility of the mass of the Greeks towards the Latins prevented their acquiescing in the settlement. They elected Theodore Lascaris Emperor of the Greeks, and established his throne at Nice in Asia Minor. There were now, for upwards of half a century, two sovereigns claiming the title of Emperor of the East, the Latin Emperor at Constantinople, and the Greek Emperor at Nice. In the year 1261 however, the Greek Emperor Michael Palæologus succeeded in recovering possession of Constantinople, and compelled the Latin Emperor Baldwin II. to abandon his throne, and take refuge in Italy. The Latin Emperor of the East now ceased to exist, but the Greek Emperors, at least the most long-sighted of them, became soon aware of the great advantage the Eastern Empire might derive, from the re-union of the Churches, were such an arrangement possible. The growing power of the Turkish Sultans, and the hostile attitude which they maintained towards Constantinople, soon convinced the Greek Emperors, that the only hope of existence for the Empire, lay in the assistance of the chivalry of the Latin nations, to their obtaining which, the difference of religion presented a formidable obstacle. Shortly after the recovery of Constantinople, the Emperor Michael Palæologus attempted to negociate with the Pope, for the alliance or union of the Churches, and similar attempts were made during the following century, by the Emperors Andronicus II., John Palæologus I., and Manuel, but without success. A more promising attempt was that of John Palæologus II., in the fifteenth century, about sixteen years before the final conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. Attended by a numerous and splendid body of Greeks, both lay and clerical, the Emperor was present at the Latin Council, which met first at Ferrara, and subsequently at Florence, at which latter city, a formal treaty of union of the Churches was finally. signed by the Emperor and the Greek Ecclesiastics who accompanied him on the one hand, and by the Pope and his Latin supporters on the other, in the year 1438. But the return of the Greeks to Constantinople showed at once the utter futility of the whole proceeding. The Emperor and his prelates were received with such a universal expression of indignation, that the treaty of union became at once a dead letter, and in the year 1453, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and the consequent extinction of the Imperial dynasty, put an end to such attempts for the future. Since then, although Roman missionaries have succeeded in bringing scattered fragments of the Eastern sects, Syrians, Armenians, and even Greeks, into nominal communion with the head of Latin Christendom, yet the separation between the Greek and Roman Churches, and the hostile feelings of the adherents of each, towards those of the other, remain as inveterate as ever. ADRIFT. O'ER a calm sea, beneath the sun's fierce heat, Drifted a fragile raft, extended there, Crouched a pale group in sullen deep despair, Touching the red cross on the snowy sheet, Told of His bleeding brows, pierced hands and feet: A ship, and standing towards them, see, a light, C. T. AT HOME WITH THE BLACK-FELLOWS. (Concluded from p. 64.) PERHAPS there is no better horseman in the world than the Blackfellow, though he is by no means a graceful rider like the Arab, or the horse-Indian of the plains, but on the contrary clings to his steed very much after the fashion of a monkey. No matter how vicious or untamed the animal, he will mount him; and I have seen a black man put many a white first-class rider to shame in this way. On one occasion a station owner offered any one of his stock-riders ten guineas to break in a vicious black horse upon whom he had bestowed the name of "Beelzebub." The brute had already killed one man and injured two more, and in spite of the proffered reward not one of the station hands could be induced to mount him. They were all surprised when a black lad of nineteen attached to the station, halloed out, "Tommy break he in for bottle rum!" His offer was accepted, and Tommy did break in the horse, and made him quiet as a lamb in about a week. Many of the blacks are employed in the native police, and very well they look in their smart blue uniforms, of which they are inordinately proud. Their services in this department are chiefly valuable in tracking criminals who have taken to the bush. They will follow the runaway for hundreds of miles with the untiring patience and unerring accuracy of the bloodhound, and all the extraordinary powers of following a trail, attributed in the glorious romances of Fennimore Cooper and Captain Mayne Reid to the Red Indian and the American scout, are equally possessed by the black tracker of Australia. The native police however are useful for other purposes than merely hitting off and following up a trail. I have known a black trooper arrest and bring in captive a white man of nearly double his size, and I know one too who has pursued and exchanged shots with "Thunderbolt," the most bloodthirsty bushranger, next to the notorious Morgan, that ever disgraced himself, his family, or his native land. He made Thunderbolt bolt from him into the bargain. These things all of them go to prove that the Australian Aboriginal is not the coward that he has been represented to be. Drunkenness has also been set down as amongst the black man's vices, but if so, it is the Christian and civilized white who has set the example, and taught him to follow it. The blacks are certainly fond of spirits, but although I have seen many of them who have been made drunk by the white man behave themselves in a very disorderly manner, they are not generally so bad as the civilized white savage when in the same condition. How different the treatment of the two the following passage from the leading article of a Queensland daily paper will show. It says, "If the drunken black man, who can only get drunk by the assistance and encouragement of the white man, breaks the law or disturbs the peace of the neighbourhood, or shakes his waddy over the head of any one, (it must be a white man's though,) it is at once decreed by common consent that he ought to be shot there and then. But if a white man gets into the same state, knowingly and deliberately, and then threatens his neighbour. with knife, pistol or bludgeon, he at once becomes a hero and a man to be feared and respected, and even to dream of shooting him is thought almost worthy of hanging. A strange code of morals is our colonial creed, 'Do as you like, and do to others what you would not like others to do to you.' This paragraph from a paper published in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, only six years ago, will I think bear out all my own observations. In most of the colonies now, there exists a law prohibiting publicans from selling intoxicating liquors to the natives, and this rule should be followed everywhere. The black seems to know his inability to resist the fascinations of strong drink, for before he indulges in a single glass he will generally deposit everything that he has of value about him in some place of safety. The Australian native is very shrewd and difficult to be imposed on, indeed his general intelligence is far above mediocrity. His virtues may be said to be negative, his vices passive. He does not do much harm, and is very useful on very many occasions, and when no other assistance can be got, the squatter and the settler are very glad of his existence. He is by no means a thief, that is if the English law be correct, and that “ a felonious intention must accompany the act of taking." Whatever he appropriates belonging to another he does from a mistaken notion of the rights of possession. No wonder that he possesses some curious ideas of the laws of meum et tuum when he finds that the settler appropriates his land, his kangaroos, and his game birds with impunity, but that he dare not in like manner take even one of the white man's myriad sheep and cattle. A Queensland Magistrate who had frequently had natives brought before him charged with petty thefts, and who had lived amongst them for many years, thus describes their habits, and his opinion of their character. He says, While a black man may be trusted into the scrub with a tommyhawk or a knife (the things they prize above all others) without the slightest fear of his running away with them, anything that is left for a time, however short, apparently without an owner, is carried off without compunction, and very probably offered for sale or barter in the same house from the back yard of which it may have been taken. When living in Moranish I saw a cigar-case offered for barter at a store; the tradesman being busy gave a small equivalent, and threw the case, which was a fancy one, on the shelf. A man came in shortly after stating that he had met with a great misfortune that morning, 6 having lost a gold and silver watch which he had hidden some days previously under the back of his humpy,' and that the watches were enclosed in a cigar-case. The case in question was thereupon examined and the watches were found, while the blacks who had brought it in stood apparently unconcerned and wondering what it was all about that there was such a 'jabber.' When questioned they de scribed where they had found the article, on a spot which happened to be exactly outside the humpy where it was concealed, and where it would naturally have fallen from any movement of the bark forming the roof. The instances of theft by force or intimidation are very rare, and if a white man happens to be attacked, you will always find that the cause is some supposed breach of bargain and want of honesty on his own part. In dealing with the Aboriginal never make promises which you cannot certainly fulfil, for they make no allowance for conditions or eventualities. Sugar is sugar, and bullock is bullock, no matter whether you have it or not; you have promised it, and if you do not give it, they will take it from the first white man's hut or land that they come across. I have now been nine years amongst them, and only one authenticated case of an apparent intention to commit an assault has come under my observation; and the sole ground for the supposition that an assault was intended lay in the fact that a digger who was armed with a pick saw a black-fellow armed with a tomahawk following him, and knowing that in the matter of a lubra (black woman) some days before a black man had been 'gammoned' (cheated) by not receiving the stipulated price for her, the digger got frightened and took to his heels." The religion of the Australians is rather a peculiar one. They believe in a Supreme Being, and also in an evil spirit, of whom they have a great dread, and who they fancy stalks about of a night. On this account they always encamp before it is quite dark, and thereafter never leave their camp fires till daylight. This was a great source of comfort to the early settlers, who even in the most outlying and disturbed districts were never afraid of a night surprise from their sable foes. Even now a native is never encountered in the bush after dark, and I do not think that an offer of all the rum in the world would induce one of them to approach the vicinity of their burial places at night. Their funeral rites vary in different parts of Australia; in some places they burn their dead, in others they bury them; and should a |