Our run homeward was quite as successful as our run out.  The magnificent Neva, her captain and her officers, were what these Royal Mail steamers and their crews are—­without, I believe, an exception—­all that we could wish.  Our passengers, certainly, were neither so numerous nor so agreeable as when going out; and the most notable personage among them was a keen-eyed, strong-jawed little Corsican, who had been lately hired—­so ran his story—­by the coloured insurgents of Hayti, to put down the President—­alias (as usual in such Republics) Tyrant—­Salnave.

He seemed, by his own account, to have done his work effectually.  Seven thousand lives were lost in the attack on Salnave’s quarters in Port au Prince.  Whole families were bayonetted, to save the trouble of judging and shooting them.  Women were not spared:  and—­ if all that I have heard of Hayti be true—­some of them did not deserve to be spared.  The noble old French buildings of the city were ruined—­the Corsican said, not by his artillery, but by Salnave’s.  He had slain Salnave himself; and was now going back to France to claim his rights as a French citizen, carrying with him Salnave’s sword, which was wrapped in a newspaper, save when taken out to be brandished on the main deck.  One could not but be interested in the valiant adventurer.  He seemed a man such as Red Republics and Revolutions breed, and need; very capable of doing rough work, and not likely to be hampered by scruples as to the manner of doing it.  If he is, as I take for granted, busy in France just now, he will leave his mark behind.

The voyage, however, seemed likely to be a dull one; and to relieve the monotony, a wild-beast show was determined on, ere the weather grew too cold.  So one day all the new curiosities were brought on deck at noon; and if some great zoologist had been on board, he would have found materials in our show for more than one interesting lecture.  The doctor contributed an Alligator, some two feet six inches long; another officer, a curiously-marked Ant-eater—­of a species unknown to me.  It was common, he said, in the Isthmus of Panama; and seemed the most foolish and helpless of beasts.  As no ants were procurable, it was fed on raw yolk of egg, which it contrived to suck in with its long tongue—­not enough, however, to keep it alive during the voyage.

The chief engineer exhibited a live ‘Tarantula,’ or bird-catching spider, who was very safely barred into its box with strips of iron, as a bite from it is rather worse than that of an English adder.