ln the same reign still, and within three
years of this disaster, the American brig,
Tyrel, sailed from New York for the Island
of Antigua. She was a miserable tub,
grossly unfit for sea, and turned bodily over
in a gale of wind, five days after her departure.
Seventeen people took to a boat,
nineteen feet and a half long, and less than
six feet and a half broad, They had half a
peck of white biscuit, changed into salt dough
by the sea-water; and a peck of common
ship-biscuit. They steered their course by
the polar-star. Soon after sunset on the
ninth day, the second mate and the carpenter
died very peacefully. "All betook themselves
to prayers, and then after some little
time stripped the bodies of their two
unfortunate comrades, and threw them overboard."
Next night, a man aged sixty-four who had
been fifty years at sea, died, asking to the
last for a drop of water; next day, two more
died, in perfect repose; next night, the
gunner; four more in the succeeding four
and twenty hours. Five others followed in
one day. And all these bodies were quietly
thrown overboard—though with great
difficulty at last, for the survivors were now
exceeding weak, and not one had strength
to pull an oar. On the fourteenth or fifteenth
morning, when there were only three left
alive, and the body of the cabin boy, newly
dead, was in the boat, the chief mate
'' asked his two companions whether they
thought they could eat any of the boy's
flesh? They signified their inclination to try;
whence, the body being quite cold, he cut a
piece from the inside of its thigh, a little
above the knee. Part of this he gave to the
captain and boatswain, and reserved a small
portion to himself. But, on attempting to
swallow the flesh, it was rejected by the
stomachs of all, and the body was therefore
thrown overboard." Yet that captain, and
that boatswain both died of famine in the
night, and another whole week elapsed
before a schooner picked up the chief mate,
left alone in the boat with their unmolested
bodies, the dumb evidence of his story. Which
bodies the crew of that schooner saw, and
buried in the deep.

Only four years ago, in the autumn of
eighteen hundred and fifty, a party of British
missionaries were most indiscreetly sent out
by a Society, to Patagonia. They were seven
in number, and all died near the coast (as
nothing but a miracle could have prevented
their doing), of starvation. An exploring
party, under Captain Moorshead of her
Majesty's ship Dido, came upon their traces,
and found the remains of four of them, lying
by their two boats which they had hauled up
for shelter. CAPTAIN GARDINER, their super-
intendent, who had probably expired the last,
had kept a journal until the pencil had
dropped from his dying hand. They had
buried three of their party, like Christian
men, and the rest had faded away in quiet
resignation, and without great suffering. They
were kind and helpful to one another, to the
last. One of the common men, just like Adam
with Franklin, was " cast down at the loss of
his comrades, and wandering in his mind"
before he passed away.

Against this strong case in support of our
general position, we will faithfully set
four opposite instances we have sought
out.

The first is the case of the New Horn,
Dutch vessel, which was burnt at sea and
blew up with a great explosion, upwards of
two hundred years ago. Seventy-two people
escaped in two boats. The old Dutch captain's
narrative being rather obscure, and
(as we believe) scarcely traceable beyond a
French translation, it is not easy to understand
how long they were at sea, before the
people fell into the state to which the ensuing
description applies. According to our
calculation, however, they had not been ship-
wrecked many days—we take the period to
have been less than a week—and they had
had seven or eight pounds of biscuit on board.
"Our misery daily increased, and the rage of
hunger urging us to extremities, the people
began to regard each other with ferocious
looks. Consulting among themselves, they
secretly determined to devour the boys on
board, and after their bodies were consumed,
to throw lots who should next suffer death,
that the lives of the rest might be preserved."
The captain dissuading them from this with
the utmost loathing and horror, they reconsidered
the matter, and decided " that should
we not get sight of land in three days, the
boys should be sacrificed." On the last of
the three days, the land was made; so,
whether any of them would have executed
this intention, can never be known.

The second case runs thus. In the last year
of the last century, six men were induced to
desert from the English artillery at St. Helena
—a deserter from any honest service is not a
character from which to expect much—and
to go on board an American ship, the only
vessel then lying in those roads. After they
got on board in the dark, they saw lights
moving about on shore, and, fearful that they
would be missed and taken, went over the
side, with the connivance of the ship's people,
got into the whale boat, and made off:
purposing to be taken up again by and by,
when the ship was under weigh. But, they
missed her, and rowed and sailed about for
sixteen days, at the end of which their
provisions were all consumed. After chewing
bamboo, and gnawing leather, and eating a
dolphin, one of them proposed, when ten days
more had run out, that lots should be drawn
which deserter should bleed himself to death,
to support life in the rest. It was agreed to,
and done. They could take very little of
this food.

The third, is the case of the Nottingham
Galley, trading from Great Britain to America,