THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF MOTHER SEACOLE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume XII, Issue 1283, 18 November 1857, Page 4

THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF MOTHER SEACOLE.

The adventures of Mother Seacole, ® a name known and almost venerated by the returned heroes from the Crimea, officers and men, form a chapter of no slight interest in the history of th? Crimean war. Her earlier life appears tc have been just such an one as best calculated to form and mould her to the experiences of her later years,—experiences that have stamped her as a prominent figure in that moving panorama before Sevastopol. The daughter of a Creole doctress in Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, she studied, while yet a child, the science of medicine and the divine art of nursing, her doll in all cases being her quiescent patient. Grown to woman’s estate, she had sterner experience when the cholera swept over that island, which she left soon afterwards for Cruces, Panama, where a brother kept an hotel. The shifting scenes of life were picturesque to a degree. One remarkable fact strikes her in connexion with this outlandish, cutthroat place, where desperadoes ball on their way to and from California. She finds here, as everywhere else, those two übiquitous specimens of the genus homo, porters and lawyers, and makes a mem. thereon. As exhibiting samples of the kind of people found in Panama, and ihe sort of life led there, we give the following paragraphs :— PANAMA JUSTICE. “1 generally avoid declaiming the protection of the law whilst on the Isthmus, for I found it was —as is the case in civilized England from other causes —rather an expensive luxury. Once only I took a thief caught in the act before the alcadi, and claimed the administration of justice. The court-house was a low bamboo shed, before which some dirty Spanish-Indian soldiers were lounging, and inside the alcaid, a negro was reclining in 3 dirty hammock, smoking coolly, hearing evidence, and pronouncing judgment upon the wretched culprits, who were trembling before bis dusky majesty. I had attended him while suffering from an attack of cholera, and directly he saw me be rose from his hammock, and received me in a ceremonious grand manner, and gave orders that coffee should be brought to inc. He had a very pretty white wife, who joined us ; and then the alcaid politely offered me o cigarito— having declined which, be listened to my statement with great attention. All ibis, however, did not prevent my leaving the necessary fee in furtherance of justice, nor bis accepting it. Its consequence was, that the thief, instead 0* being punished as a criminal, was ordered to pay me the value of the stolen goods ; which, after weeks of hesitation and delay, she eventually did, in pearls, combs, and other curiosities. Whenever an American was arrested by the New Granada authorities, justice had a hard struggle for the mastery, and rarely obtained it. Once I was present at the court-house, when an American was brought in heavily ironed, charged with having committed a highway robbery—if I may use the term where there were no roads—on some travellers from Chili. Around the frightened soldiers swelled an angry crowd of brother Americans, abusing and threatening the authorities in no measured terms, all of them indignant that a nigger should presume to judge one of their countrymen. At last their violence so roused the sleepy alcaid, that he positively threw himself from his hammock, laid down his cigarito, and gave such very determined orders to bis soldiers that he succeeded in checking the riot. Then, with an air of decision that puzzled everybody, he addressed the crowd, declaring angrily, that, since the Americans camp, the country had known no peace, that robberies and crimes of every sort had increased, and ended by expressing his determination to make strangers respect the laws of the Republic, and retain the prisoner, and if found guilty, punish him as be deserved. The Americans seemed too astonished at ihe audacity of the black man, who dared thus 10 beard them, to offer any resistance ; but 1 believe that the prisoner was allowed ultimate’,y to

escape.” While at Panama, war broke out between England and Russia, and Mother Seacole, after remaining at her hotel duties come time, ia unable to resist the desire, inherent in her good nature, to go to the Crimea for the purpose ol discharging those kindly offices, in waiting upon the sick and wounded soldiers, to which she feels herself equal. She proceeds to Jamaica, and thence to London, where she besieges the various forts of official inactivity, the occupantsol which she finds herself unable to influence. They ore astonished at the persistency of the “yaller woman,” but do nothing to advance her petitions. The same result follows an application to the lady conservators of the Crimean fund for for-