y. The following extract must
therefore be taken as a specimen of Irish Folk-lore in the twelfth
century:--

"There is also one thing, he says, that will seem wonderful, and it
happened in the town which is called Kloena [Cloyne]. In that town
there is a church which is dedicated to the memory of a holy man called
Kiranus. And there it happened one Sunday, as the people were at
prayers and heard mass, that there descended gently from the air an
anchor, as if it had been cast from a ship, for there was a cable to
it, and the fluke of the anchor caught in the arch of the church-door,
and all the people went out of church, and wondered, and looked up into
the air after the cable. There they saw a ship floating above the
cable, and men on board; and next they saw a man leap overboard, and
dive down to the anchor to free it. He appeared, from the motions he
made with both hands and feet, like a man swimming in the sea. And when
he reached the anchor, he endeavoured to loosen it, when the people ran
forwards to seize the man. But the church in which the anchor stuck
fast had a bishop's chair in it. The bishop was present on this
occasion, and forbade the people to hold the man, and said that he
might be drowned just as if in water. And immediately he was set free
he hastened up to the ship, and when he was on board, they hauled up
the cable and disappeared from men's sight; but the anchor has since
laid in the church as a testimony of this."

CORKSCREW.

* * * * *

GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.

(Vol. ii., p. 132.)

E.N.W. refers to Shelvocke's voyage of 1719, in which reference is made to
the abundance of gold in the soil of California. In Hakluyt's _Voyages_,
printed in 1599-1600, will be found much earlier notices on this subject.
California was first discovered in the time of the Great Marquis, as Cortes
was usually called. There are accounts of these early expeditions by
Francisco Vasquez Coronada, Ferdinando Alarchon, Father Marco de Nica, and
Francisco de Ulloa, who visited the country in 1539 and 1540. It is stated
by Hakluyt that they were as far to the north as the 37th degree of
latitude, which would be about one degree south of St. Francisco. I am
inclined, however, to believe from the narrations themselves that the
Spanish early discoveries did not extend much beyond the 34th degree of
latitude, being littl