O one who has made a voyage up

N° the Hudson can forget the Cat

skill Mountains, situated about 140 miles from New York. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed every hour of the day, produces some alteration in the magical hues and shapes of these wonderful hills. It has been my good fortune often to visit this fairyland when the thermometer stood at zero, and many a day have I roamed on their enchanting hillsides. A strange wild charm is produced by the intense cold and utter stillness and universal brilliant whiteness of midwinter in the Hudson, and very beautiful indeed are the trees and flowers in their spangled robes of silvery snow, relieved here and there by the dark hem

lock which the sun has insisted on keeping green, and masses of russet and copper-red oak-leaves to which the tall slim silver-birches form a pleasing contrast. Beautiful, too, are the waterfalls frozen into pillars of ice. The upper

fall during my last visit looked like a massive column of fretted snow, towering 180 feet from the basin to the shelving roof of the great amphitheatre, along the edge of which hung suspended in mid-air

UPPER FALL.

a huge fringed curtain of ice resplendent with a thousand varied hues of colour, violet and emerald predominating, while a soft musical dropping and bubbling of water bore evidence to the life-current ever flowing through the frozen cascades, from

scape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountains, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys!

In olden times, according to Indian traditions, a kind of spirit haunted the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes it would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary

VIEW FROM THE BACK OF THE FALL.

chase through tangled forests and among ragged rocks, and finally leave him stranded on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent. The favourite abode of this spirit is still shown to strangers. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and, from the flowery vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighbourhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once, however, a hunter who had lost his way penetrated to the Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson and continues to flow to the present day; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-Kill.

F the small band of veteran cricketers who recollect the days when round-arm bowling was still a lawless innovation, Herbert Jenner-Fust is perhaps the oldest, and unquestionably the most distinguished. Herbert Jenner (as he was then called) first appeared at Lord's in 1822, and at the early age of twenty-seven was elected President of the Marylebone Club; he retired from first-class cricket twelve years before W. G. Grace was born.

He was a splendid wicket-keeper,

although his style differed widely from that which suits the changed conditions of the present day. Sixty years ago, when grounds were ill-kept and fast bowlers at times rather erratic, a long stop was indispensable. Jenner would have laughed at the rule laid down in Badminton Cricket (p. 255), that a wicket-keeper is "never to move the feet till the ball has passed him or is in his hands, or has been hit by the batsman." He generally stood half a yard further back than is now the custom, but shifted his ground like lightning if occasion arose. Felix, writing of a stroke now obsolete, thus refers to him :-"All who had the

pleasure (though often to their cost) to witness the wonderful activity and judgment of Herbert Jenner, Esq.,' acknowledge his superiority over all and any, however competent; and not amongst the least of his feats was that in which he prepared himself for the chance of the draw." The Rev. J. Pycroft speaks of the marvellous quantity of ground he could cover, "serving as a near point, leg, and slip, as well as wicket-keeper." And Mr. Denison, writing in 1846, considers that he had an advantage over Box "by his astonishing

HERBERT JENNER-FUST.

facility in bringing his left hand into play, and taking and covering leg balls.' Often I have seen him, when long past fifty, keeping wicket without pads or padded gloves, for he never used them, and though when the bowling was fast he saved his hands somewhat, he seldom missed a chance.

Jenner was very often successful with his bowling; it was underhand, and broke a good deal, the ball being delivered with the elbow close to the side. He was also a first-rate bat. He had already been two years in the Cambridge eleven when, in 1827, he played as captain in the first match against the sister University.

On

this occasion he made forty-five runs and bowled five wickets, among them that of Charles Wordsworth, now Bishop of St. Andrew's. Curiously enough the bishop had bowled Jenner both times when they

were opposed to each other in the Eton. and Harrow matches of 1822 and 1823. At the Jubilee dinner their names were thus coupled together:

"Fifty years have sped since first,
Keen to win their laurel,
Oxford round a Wordsworth clustered,
Cambridge under Jenner mustered,

Met in friendly quarrel."

On June 25, 1827, he was one of the seventeen gentlemen who defeated the players, and from that time till he retired no gentleman team was complete without him.

In his younger days he days he lived with his father, the eminent judge, at Chislehurst, and here between 1830 and 1838 annual matches were played, under the titles of Kent v. England, Gentlemen of Kent 7. M.C.C. with given men, or West Kent v. M.C.C., in which, thanks chiefly to his skill and energy, the local side only once came off second best.

In 1835 he married, and soon afterwards, on account of his practice at the bar of Doctors' Commons, he ceased to play at Lords, but for many years he reigned supreme in one-day matches, excelling all whom I have known in the difficult post of captain. In 1864 he gave up cricket and left Kent to live on an estate in Gloucestershire which his father had inherited from the ancient family of Fust, whose name he added to his own; but was persuaded to play once more, in 1880, for his parish of Hill against Rockhampton. The bat he used on this memorable occasion had been made in 1829, and presented to him in 1831 by Benjamin Aislabie, secretary of the Marylebone Club. Though sprung from time immemorial, it has never been spliced, and the thickness of the handle is such that it may last for centuries.

Mr. Jenner-Fust, as I should now call him, bowled at one end throughout, kept wicket, and managed. The only thing he did not do was to run for himself, and from this cause he was run out after making eleven, by a too eager youth who had volunteered his services. In various ways he got ten wickets, besides running out two: his side won by twenty-one runs. Since then he has put up his cricketing things, but still takes the keenest interest in the game, and is president of the West Kent Cricket Club, to which he has belonged for sixtyfive years.

г

THE

de

HE ingenious writer of an article on The Position of Dickens, which was published in the Standard newspaper one day in day in the month of August last, clared, with a boldness surprising even in a latter-day critic, that the author of Pickwick has become to a large section of the rising generation little more than a name, and that "there is no cause for wonder or regret in the waning popularity of Dickens." It appears, oddly enough, that this waning of popularity began a long while ago, "as the novelty began to to wear off;"

MARSHALSEA PRISON.

COSWELL STREET.

The Opposite Side

Gorwell S

exaggeration his failure was still more conspicuous; " that "it was impossible to keep up a constant succession of Pickwicks, and Wellers, and Fat Boys, and Tom Pinches, and Mrs. Gamps; the vein was worked out at a comparatively early date in Dickens's career; and that, "though the sale of his books continued to increase, his hold on public taste was loosened."

Why, if the public ceased to care for the books, they went on buying them, is a paradox which the critic did not explain. That the "increasing numbers" are a remarkable fact, even

to