and other rubbish, and slung over the shoulder with a belt of the skin of a snake. The features of these sculptured figures, instead of being Negro, as might be expected, were entirely Egyptian; the nose aquiline, and the forehead high.'

But costume, fetiches, and all, were of less account with these gentry, than the brandy bottle. For the sake of this they stuck to the ship day and night. In quest of the same luxury more 'gentlemen' came off to the ship, but were forced to go back ungratified, and forced also, much to the mortification of both the gangs, to take with them the sots and coxcombs who had too long infested it.

It was found, as indeed Capt. T. says he expected to find, that in the most recent charts the coast is very erroneously laid down from Loango Bay to the mouth of the Zaire. As the expedition was now approaching the destined scene, the Captain very properly issued a paper of orders and admonitions, highly appropriate and judicious, with an exception which every reader of moral principle will be compelled to make. In cautioning against any conduct toward the females, inconsistent with the established regulations in the native communities, be suggests, as if for the very purpose of averting any imputation of a moral intention in instruction, that the men of these communities would probably be ready with voluntary offers of their female relatives. As to the philosophical objects of the expedition, the orders were carefully and minutely framed to afford every possible facility and security to the operations in the department of the scientific gentlemen.

The arrival of the Zaire in the channel, was indicated, somewhat sooner than the Captain had expected, by the ship's passing, in the short interval between two casts of the plummet, from a depth of eighteen fathoms to one in which no bottom was found at a hundred and fifty. If this was a depth surpassing every description and expectation: the velocity of the current was, on the other hand, very inferior to what he had reason to anticipate, not exceeding two miles an hour. A fresh breeze carried him across this fathomless channel, in about an hour, to soundings in twenty-three fathoms, as suddenly found as those on the other side had been lost. By currents, mud-banks, eddies, ground-swells, and fickle breezes, it was rendered a matter of considerable difficulty to get fairly into the river; while the visits of dirty tippling insolent Masooks, and the sight of slave ships, administered but little of the nature of heroic stimulus in the labour,

Whatever offensive and noxious properties might be expected to be encountered in the physical state of such a region, were fully rivalled by those of its moral climate, as displayed in a combination of popery and paganism, between which it would be difficult to decide the excess of vileness.

• Several of the Sonio men who came on board were Christians, after the Portuguese fashion, having been converted by missionaries of that nation; and one of them was even qualified to lead his fellow negroes into the path of salvation, as appeared from a diploma with which he was furnished. This man, and another of the Christians, had been taught to write their own names and that of St. Antonio, and could also read the Romish litany in Latin. All these converts were loaded with crucifixes, and satchels containing the pretended relics of saints, certainly of equal efficacy with the monkey's bone of their pagan brethren. Of this we had a convincing proof in each vociferating invocations to their respective patrons, to send us a strong wind, neither the fetiche nor Saint Antonio having condescended to hear their prayers. The Christian priest was however somewhat loose in his practical morality, having, as he assured us, one wife and five concubines; and added, that St. Peter, in confining him to one wife, did not prohibit his solacing himself with as many handmaids as he could manage.

• All our visitors, whether Christians or idolaters, had figures raised on their skins, in cicatrices, and had also the two upper front teeth filed away on the near sides, so as to form a large opening, into which they stuck their pipes, and which is so perfectly adapted to the purpose, that I thought it expressly formed for it; until on enquiry I learned, that, as well as the raised figures on the skin, it was merely ornamental, and principally done with the idea of rendering themselves agreeable to the women, who, it seems, estimate a man's beauty by the wideness of this cavity, which in some measured near an inch, the whole of the teeth, and particularly the two front ones, being enormously broad, and very white.

• Our Sonio visitors were almost without exception sulky looking vagabonds, dirty, swarming with lice, and scaled all over with the itch, all strong symptoms of their having been civilized by the Portuguese." They are, into the bargain, very sharp and very exorbitant in their traffic, and prompt and certain to seize every roguish advantage.

The method of closing a bargain, and giving a receipt, is by the buyer and seller breaking a blade of grass or a leaf between them; and until this ceremony is performed, no bargain is legally concluded, though the parties may have possession of each other's goods; this we only learned by experience, for having bought, and as we thought, paid for a couple of fowls, they were immediately slaughtered for dinner, but the owner taking advantage of the omission of the ceremony, pretended that he had not concluded the bargain, and insisted on another glass, which we were obliged to give him, but profited by the lesson.'

It being found almost impossible to make the 'detestable 'transport,' the 'brute of a transport,' ascend the river, a hasty transhipment was made to the Congo and the double boats, in order to push the expedition forward. Though a very noble stream, the Zaire did not appear, as the explorers advanced, to correspond to the reports and descriptions which had placed it in the very first class of rivers. The profound channel at the outlet is not to be considered as merely the river-course;

-the true mouth of the river being at Fathomless Point, where it is not three miles in breadth; and allowing the mean depth to be forty fathoms, and the mean velocity of the stream four and a half miles an hour, it will be evident that the calculated volume of water carried to the sea has been greatly exaggerated.'

Nor does it perform the last stage of its progress to the ocean, in the form of a magnificent single mass of waters; on the contrary, the expedition soon entered among a number of islands and sand banks, where, for a space of many leagues, the river is divided and diverted into a variety of channels and windings. For a considerable way up from the outlet, perhaps ten leagues on the north side, and a greater length on the south, the banks or shores consist of a wide swamp, covered with mangrove trees, and bounded, at the distance of seven or eight miles inland, by a line of bigh hills. This mangrove tract is entirely impene'trable, the trees growing in the water, with the exception of a * few spots of sandy beach.'

(To be continued.)

Art. IV. Dissertations on various interesting Subjects, with a View to illustrate the admirable and moral Spirit of Christ's Religion; and to correct the immoral Tendency of some Doctrines at present popular and fashionable. By the Rev. Thomas Watson. 8vo. pp. 194. London.

THESE Dissertations, for such, we suppose, we must call them, remind us how completely an author's intentions may outstrip his capabilities, and how the thing which he designs in the simplicity of his heart, may be the very last thing for which his resources and his habits fit him. Unless we greatly mistake, we have occasionally met with the fact in the case of men not otherwise distinguished by self-importance or by arrogant pretensions; yet it must be granted, that, generally, it bespeaks a mind not reduced to a sober estimate of its own powers and attainments. But when an author advances the bold pretension of correcting a considerable proportion of the reflecting part of mankind, upon many fundamental matters, concerning which they have egregiously erred, some inquiry might not unwisely be instituted by himself into his superior qualifications for the ambitious enterprise. It evidently requires no smail degree of self-confidence, accompanied with a proportion somewhat more than usual, of that negative but inspiring quality called ignorance, to tempt a man of utter incapacity, to set up as a proficient in any science, with all the totalities and omnifics of an empiric, when the liability to immediate detection, and the impossibility of ultimate impunity, meet him at every turn. In these circumstances it is not a little surprising, that a man's courage and consistency prove sufficient to bear him up under the oppressive consciousness that he really possesses very little, if any, valid claim to the distinction at which he aims. Yet, we have no doubt that, by a little practice, the difficulty of retaining self-possession, and of exhibiting all the ordinary marks of sincerity, may be easily surmounted. We are disposed to think that the state of mind produced in such situations, approaches very near to that most extraordinary of all intellectual phenomena, a complete self-imposed, mental fraud, or a state of sincere credence, growing by degrees out of a false conception, of whose falsity the mind must be either fully or in part conscious, when it is first admitted. By familiarity with the illusion, those sensations of disgust and disapprobation which accompanied its first reception, are lost; and when this association between the object and its appropriate emotion is dissolved, the object itself will appear to the apprehension, divested of those qualities which were the original basis of the association, and come at last to be contemplated in a light the very reverse, and possessed of qualities the complete opposites, of those with which, at first, it stood connected. It is obvious that this process is greatly facilitated whenever interest, or passion, or prejudice, or inveterate habits, incapacitate the judgement for its full exercise, and invite the heart into the snare.

The case may admit of many palliations, in reference to sciences purely human. A man, though he may suspect the fact, may not be thoroughly aware how distant he is from any thing bordering on proficiency, in the science he professes to teach; the materials of a sounder knowledge may never have fallen in his way; they may occupy a wide extent, and be attended, in the acquisition, with many difficulties, which he is naturally incapacitated to surmount. These things may have aided the imposition which he has practised upon himself, and therefore ought at least to soften the censure which judges may be disposed to pass upon him. There are many tendencies and temptations to take up with superficial knowledge in secular sciences. But this is not the case with that science which is purely Divine. Similar palliations cannot be found in this case, as in the other, for the man who, with an utter ignorance of the very first principles of Divine truth, sets up, either with or without the important consideration of being an authorized teacher, for a proficient, because the great and exclusive depository of Divine truth, is equally accessible to all it is the first and the last thing, by way of an authority, which its disciples have to consult; and it is so constructed, as to be completely within the compass of ordinary powers. These things, therefore, make ignorance less excusable, and detection more certain; while they place all men who consult the original source of information, in an equally advantageous situation for judging, upon the principles of common sense, how far a teacher's views are, or are not, regulated by the ultimate standard. We would not be understood to say that no one man possesses greater advantages than another, for acquiring a critical or minute acquaintance with Divine truth; but simply, that the import of the word of God, in general, upon all the fundamental articles, is attainable with the utmost facility by all who are in the disposition required by Christ : "Except " ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter into the "kingdom of heaven."

That the New Testament is neither an ambiguous nor a subtile book, we must be allowed to maintain, notwithstanding the painful consequence of being obliged to infer from it the mental guilt of many, who sincerely misinterpret its meaning. There is an error that may lie deeper in the heart, than in the intention. He who denies that any man can be culpably erroneous who is sincere, is driven to the necessity of denying, that revelation contains any distinct and definite disclosure of truth, or that it was intended for the common benefit of mankind. It may be to many minds, as it certainly is to our own, a distressing result, to be compelled to infer, in the case of an individual otherwise amiable and trustworthy, that notwithstanding he professes to have made revelation the subject of his careful and constant study, he is yet in a state of profound misapprehension of the essential dictates of Divine truth. Yet this has always appeared to us an inevitable consequence of having any definite views of truth; and it is surely an incomparably less evil, than affirming that revelation is so obscure, and so subtile, as to present insurmountable difficulties to the formation of any definite theory of truth; or that opposite theories may with equal plausibility be grounded upon it; or that no theory at all, or every theory, may be held with equal advantage to the moral and religious character. In some parts of these Dissertations, the Author seems to hold the latter of these principles, that is, when treating of the character of Christ. He thinks it of no importance whether he is believed to be man, or God; a Divine, or a human being: he is still a Saviour, in either case. But when he speaks of what he is pleased to call the popular and fashionable doctrines of grace, sudden conversion, death-bed repentance, separation from worldly amusements, &c., he then loses all his indifference, and does not hesitate boldly to declare his persuasion, that both teachers and taught are in an error as palpable as it is pernicious. Their perversity, and prejudice, and misinterpretation of the language of Scripture, and the guilt of their mental errors, are all charged upon them again and