benighted land of the Negro; and their mission is the conveyance thither of peace, civilization, and Christianity.

Conducted by intelligence so eminent, and aiming to effect purposes so pure, so lofty, and so philanthropic, the Niger Expedition is surely well deserving of the attentive regard of every lover of humanity-of every one who feels that the ties which unite the one great family of man are not limited by the boundaries which separate particular regions, but extend throughout the whole of the habitable globe. To give a brief account of the objects of this expedition, and the prospects of their successful realization, is the purport of the present paper: but in order to consider either of these topics with advantage, it will be necessary to preface our remarks by a sketch of the geography of that portion of Africa to which it is directed. The preceding map will aid in rendering this sketch generally intelligible.

The Sahrá, or Great Desert, constitutes a belt of country extending, with the interruption only of the Valley of the River Nile, across the whole | of Africa from east to west: its breadth varies at different parts, but it may be described as being in general limited by the seventeenth and thirtieth parallels of north latitude. The vast tracts of country which lie to the south of this region, extending from the shores of the Atlantic on the west to perhaps the eighteenth or twentieth meridian of east longitude on the east, and stretching from the varying line of the Desert to the Gulf of Guinea, and the sixth or seventh degree of north latitude, possess a totally different character. Diversified by lofty mountains, alternating between hilly and broken regions and wide-spread plains, abundantly watered by rivers equal in size and volume of water to some of the finest in the old world; possessing gold in abundance, besides the more useful metals of iron and copper, and luxuriating in the most valuable tropical productions of the vegetable and animal kingdoms; they equal and in many respects surpass in natural advantages any of the countries included within the torrid zone. The succession of elevations called, in their western part, the Mountains of Kong (which seem to originate in the heights forming the watershed, or line of division, between the rivers which flow westward to the Atlantic and those flowing eastward towards the interior of the continent) extends in a general east direction, slightly inclining to the south, beyond the eighth degree of east longitude, and is generally believed to be continued in the same direction, under the name of the Mountains of the Moon, entirely across Africa; although there is no sufficient evidence to prove their existence in the more central parts of the continent, or to warrant any assumption beyond that of an elevated tract of country, perhaps the northern declivity of a central table-land, in that direction.

That part of the region we have been alluding to, which lies between the Sahrá and the above-mentioned chains of mountains, constitutes the country called Soudan or Nigritia (Negro-land), and is sometimes distinguished as Central Africa; while the portion extending between the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean bears the name of Western Africa, an appellation which also applies to the countries lying south of the equator as far as the fifteenth parallel, including Congo, Angola, and Benguela. The northern part of Western Africa is watered by the rivers Senegal and Gambia, and numerous streams of less length, although still important, and which are shown by the map, enter the Atlantic from the country which extends thence in a south-easterly direction to the coast of Guinea. The River Volta is the only stream of any importance which enters the sea along this coast until we come to the numerous broad outlets which occupy its most eastern portion, and which are now known to be the various mouths by which the Kawára or Quorra, the great river of Central Africa, empties itself into the sea. The coast throughout the part of Western Africa extending from the Senegal to the Kawára is in general low, the soil often light and sandy, and well suited for the cultivation; while further inland the country gradually rises and becomes more diversified, the soil is richer and capable of producing in abundance the sugarcane, coffee, various kinds of grain, including rice and Indian corn, and other tropical productions: in many places, particularly on the banks of the rivers, the country is covered with dense forests, which in some cases extend to the shores of the ocean. Gold is procured in abundance from the countries near the heads of the rivers Senegal and Gambia; and near the former of these, great quantities of gum of various kinds are obtained from the bark of a species of acacia. On the coast of Guinea, the names of the Grain (in allusion to the grains of a native species of pepper, now not much valued), the Ivory (consisting of teeth obtained from the numerous elephants both on the sea-shore and in the interior), the Gold and the Slave Coasts, specify the principal productions of those portions of it to which they belong; and in its eastern portion, occupied by the delta of the Kawára, the palm-nut, or tree from which the palmoil is procured, flourishes in the greatest luxuriance, and furnishes the chief article of commerce, although ivory is also found there in considerable quantities.

The great geographical feature of Central Africa is the river which Europeans have been accustomed, perhaps erroneously, to regard as identical with the Niger of ancient writers. As this is the stream to which the expedition forming the subject of this paper is directed, it will be desirable to describe its course in greater detail. The source of the great river of Negro-land is placed, according

to information received by Major Laing, who succeeded in reaching within little more than a day's journey of it, in about latitude 9° 25′, and longi- | tude, 9° 45′ W., where it springs from a lofty hill, called Loma, at an elevation of about 1600 feet above the level of the Atlantic. It flows then in a general north-easterly course, under the name of the Joli-ba, to the neighbourhood of Tombúktu, (lat. 17° 10′), on the southern skirts of the desert, passing in its way through the lake of Dibbia or Debo. Below Tombúktu, whence to the sea it bears the name of the Kawára or Quorra, it turns gradually to the east and south-east, and was navigated in that direction as far as the town of Busah by the celebrated Mungo Park, in the year 1806, in the journey which terminated in his death near that place. Throughout these parts of its course the country through which it flows appears to consist in general of extensive plains, which are frequently inundated by the rising of the river during the rainy season. At Baumakú, (long. 6° 50′ W.), where it was reached by Park in his second journey in 1806, it was in the rainy season a mile in breadth, and flowed at the rate of five miles an hour; and at Sego, lower down the river, that traveller describes it as being "as broad as the Thames at Westminster (about 400 yards), and flowing slowly to the eastward."

Near Búsah the channel of the Kawára is obstructed and narrowed by rocks, which interrupt the navigation, by forming a succession of rapids: below Búsah it again spreads into a broad stream, and thence to the sea takes a more southerly course, breaking through the range of the Kong mountains, which on the banks of the river rise to an elevation of between two and three thousand feet. In latitude 7° 50′ the Kawára is joined from the east by its great tributary the river Chadda, which is here larger than the main stream, being about a mile and a half wide, while the Kawára is scarcely half a mile. Below the junction of the Chadda the river passes, by a beautiful reach of fifteen miles in length, into a chasm of about 1500 yards wide, of which the stream itself seemed to Mr. Laird to occupy 700. "A romantic valley" between hills, which rise about 400 feet above the water, giving "the scenery a bold and picturesque character," and of which those on the western bank have the highest elevation, extends thence to the town of Attah or Iddah, seated on an elevation of two or three hundred feet. Between Attah and Kirrge the Kawara is a wide and deep stream, the country on its banks gradually diminishing in height, until below the latter place it becomes flat and open, although still elevated fifteen or twenty feet above the river. The Kawára here begins to separate into numerous channels, the three principal of which, the rivers Benin, Nun, and Bonny, separate near the town of Eboe or Ibú: the central one of the three, the river Nun, is that by which the Ka

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wára is generally entered, and is therefore regarded as the continuation of the main stream. It becomes narrower and more winding as it approaches the sea, diminishing from 1000 to 1200 yards at the town of Eboe, to not more than thirty near its entrance, the country on its banks being flat and extending in marshy swamps, covered with a dense vegetation, which, above the limits of the tide, consists chiefly of palm trees of various kinds, and, within the reach of the salt water, is mostly composed of mangroves. This description applies to the whole of the country which forms the delta of the Kawára, and through which it pours its waters into the sea by twenty-two mouths, extending from the river Benin on the west, to the old Calabar on the east. The greater number of these branches are small, and only navigable by canoes.

The course of the river Chadda is only known as far eastward as the town of Dagboh, at a distance of 104 miles from its confluence with the Kawára, up to which point it was navigated by Messrs. Allen and Oldfield, in the steamer Alburkah, in 1833. According to the accounts of the natives, it flows from Lake Chad, in the interior: this, however, is a point perfectly undecided, and it may, perhaps, derive its waters from the highlands extending to the south of Central Africa. At the furthest point reached it is still a broad and navigable stream; but though its width in many places exceeds that of the Kawára, it seems in general to be shallower than that river, and, therefore, to be less fitted for interior communication. Of the many other rivers which enter the Kawára, the only one to which we need direct the reader's attention is the Kwarana, or Zirme, which flows past the city of Sakatu, and is supposed to enter the great river a few miles to the north of Yauri.

In the eastern part of Soudan, the great freshwater lake Chad forms the receptacle of numerous rivers: the dimensions of this lake vary much with the seasons of the year, since tracts of many miles in extent, which are inundated during the longcontinued rains, are covered on the return of the dry season with long grass, or with dense thickets, which afford a shelter to great numbers of elephants, lions, panthers, hyænas, and other wild animals. Of the rivers which enter it the principal are the Yeau and the Shary. The former of these rivers, which joins it on the west, seems to vary greatly in width, depth, and velocity of current, in different parts of its course: at its entrance into the lake it is described by Denham as being, in the rainy season, a considerable stream, running at the rate of three miles an hour, and about 100 yards in width. The Shary, which flows into the Chad from the south, is about half a mile broad near its mouth, with a current of three or four miles an hour: at Loggun, about forty miles up its course, it is a wide and majestic stream.

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The country of Bournou, lying to the west and

zone.

south-west of Lake Chad, consists in general of extensive plains, in which the rudest agriculture suffices for the production of considerable crops of a kind of millet, which forms the principal food of the inhabitants, and which are capable of growing all the finest vegetable productions of the torrid The extensive region of Houssa, or Hausa, which extends further westwards towards the Kawára, is a hilly and broken region, more diversified in its appearance, climate, and productions, since its greater elevation, and consequent diminution of temperature, renders it capable of affording many of the vegetables and fruits of the temperate zones; thus the fields are in many places covered with large crops of wheat, two of which are raised in the year. In the districts of Yauri and Nuff (or Nyffé), reaching south-westward from Hausa to the banks of the Kawára, the climate and productions become again more strictly tropical, rice, cotton, and indigo being extensively grown; and similar productions extend throughout the country of Eyeo, or Yarriba, on the west side of the river. Borgoo, to the north of the latter state, consists, on the contrary, in great part of rugged and hilly tracts, although interspersed with fertile and beautiful valleys. Scarcely anything is known of the districts bordering on the Kawára, between Borgoo and Tumbúktu ; the observations made by Park in his journey down that part of the river never having reached Europe. The countries near and above Tumbúktu, lying on the verge of the desert, partake more of its arid character, and the city of that name owes its celebrity rather to its commercial character than to any natural advantages ;-it having been for ages the emporium of the traffic carried on in gold, slaves, and other commodities, between Northern and Central Africa. Bambarra, along the upper course of the Joliba, is a fertile and well-cultivated territory.

EASTERN MODE OF MAKING SLAVES.

H.

THE Oriental manner of making slaves, and securing a property in them, is this:-Any fellows who join an expedition as volunteers, for plunder of this kind, enter a house, and after setting fire to it, and killing generally the adult males, they carry off the property, with the females and boys. They then proceed to the next custom-house, and having paid twenty piastres, or about ten shillings, they take out a teskerai, or ticket, which certifies the slavery, and the persons of the unfortunate family become the property of the captors for ever, with all their posterity! if any of them is disposed to sell the whole or part, he gives up with them their teskerai, which transfers the property to the purchaser in perpetuity.-Dr. R. Walsh.

ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAVELLERS.

CARDAN commenting upon Saint Augustine's opinions concerning the power of witches to change men into other forms, as asses, apes, wolves, bears, mice, &c, very sensibly observes, "that how much Augustine saith he hath seen with his own eyes, so much he is content to believe ;" and, truly, if tales of wonder were always received with the like caution, the world would have escaped the baneful consequences of many acts, not only of mere folly, but of desperate wickedness, which have taken their origin in the indulgence of a foolish fantasy.

That insatiable curiosity which from the beginning has stimulated mankind to enterprize, and which craves unceasingly the healthy diet of true knowledge, is apt to degenerate, with the more indolent and the uninstructed, into the unnatural longing of a gaping credulity.

"Why should I carry lies abroad?" has been the defence of many a traveller and author, who although, unlike his prototype Autolycus, he may have been a truly honest man, (such as Marco Polo and the much-abused Sir John Mandeville,) has, like the auditors of that worthy, swallowed all he heard. The ancients, whose inquiries on natural subjects were chiefly directed towards the East, received accounts all coloured by that imagery and exaggeration, without which, like cayenne in a curry, a plain story is unpalatable to those children of the sun. Egypt, and at the furthest Syria, were the extent of the travels of the philosopher; who, writing like Pliny in the luxurious retirement of his villa, recorded many facts, attested by his own experience; much sound reasoning, the result of a highly cultivated intellect; and overwhelmed the whole in a mass of false data,-whose fallacy when discovered has overturned many an elaborate argument—accumulating a multitude of fictitious absurdities all gravely stated on no better authority than the simplicity of a Mopsa or the knavery of an Autolycus, or, worse still, the voice of manytongued Rumour, "stuffing the ears of men with false reports."

Our own elder travellers and writers derived their ideas of unknown lands chiefly from the reports of the ancients, and the wild stories brought home by the rude crusader or the light-hearted troubadour, those inveterate importers of "Travellers' Tales," who delighted to "astonish the natives" with stories how Richard Cœur de Lion supped off a Saracen's head, and the little old Man of the Mountains always rode pick-a-back. Hence, on their return they were looked upon as nought,— nay, even suspected of pretending to adventures they had never achieved, did they not confirm all the tales of their predecessors, and add considerably thereto from the stores of their own budget. Accordingly we find few of them at all deficient in their contributions to the general stock of marvels

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Those misguiding words IT IS SAID have been as a very grave to man's understanding. They have made us the dupes of misrepresentation and falsehood, and led us at length to regard our distant brethren as monsters fit only to be laughed at, plundered, and abhorred.

The extravagant ideas entertained of other nations, and unhesitatingly subscribed to on the authority of these Hearsay Travellers' Tales, is nowhere better evinced than in a very curious volume, a small quarto of 559 pages, published in 1653, by John Bulwer, a physician, a man of learning, of sound natural sense, as is exhibited in many parts of his book, which in others displays an almost childlike credulity, and particularly distinguished by his exertions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, a subject on which he appears to have prided himself since he signs himself Chirosophus.

His book, which is entitled "The Artificial Changeling," was mainly intended to ridicule and correct the many absurdities which are practised even among civilized nations" in fashioning and altering their bodies from the mould intended by nature," setting forth their "foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy finenesse, and loathsome lovelinesse" in these practices; in the course of which by the way he inveighs severely, and in a style of good sense, that would not disgrace the medical writer of our own day, against the pernicious practices of swathing infants and binding their heads, and of tight-lacing by women. But although in his reports of these artificial monstrosities, the extreme credulity of an age, sceptical enough in some subjects, is strangely, even amusingly, apparent,-if we can attribute the involuntary smile that will arise on the contemplation of such evidences of our imperfect nature to amusement yet it is to another part of his work, "The native and national monstrosities that have appeared to disfigure the human fabric," that we would turn for an illustration of our previous remarks.

Here we read, among a thousand others of a more wonderful character that we dare not extract, that there are found in the Indies (as cosmographers testifie) men who have but one eye, and that planted in their foreheads;" then follow a host of authorities, among others Pliny, who "reports of the Arimaspi to be an unocular nation, and he places them not far from that climate which is under the very rising of the north-east

which that wind is said to issue: and "These maintaine war ordinarily about the metall mines of gold, especially with Griffons, a kind of wild beasts that fly, and use to fetch gold out of the veines of those mines." He closes his list with no less a voucher than St. Augustine himself, who asserts positively that when he travelled in Ethiopia, he saw in the lower parts of the country "men having only one eye in their foreheads." The saint we apprehend made a slip, and should have substituted "It was said, for I saw."

Again we hear that "Megasthenes reports that there is a nation among the Indian Nomades having holes only in the place of the nostrils;" with the touching reflection, " that face must needs be plain that wants a nose ;-that there are "islands and a nation called Lanesii, whose eares are dilated to so effuse a magnitude, that they cover the rest of their bodies with them, and have no other clothing, then as they cloth their members with the membranes of their eares. Plinie also makes report, and in his seventh book proves that there are such nations, who, being otherwise naked, have eares so large that they invelope their whole bodies with them. Isidor affirms as much of them. The testimonies of these men are very ancient, but there are not wanting store of later witnesses. That in the island of Iambuli the inhabitants exceed us foure cubitts in stature, and have a cloven tongue, which is divided in the bottom, so that it seems double from the root; so they use divers speeches, and do not only speake with the voice of men, but imitate the singing of birds. But that which seems most notable, they speak at one time perfectly to two men, both answering and discoursing, for with one part of the tongue they speak to one, and with the other part to the other." That in the "Isle of Penguin". there are men who have "dogs' aspects," or else "really have dogs' heads;" and, upon the authority of Sir Walter Raleigh, among others, that there exist "strange headlesse nations, whose heads appeare not above their shoulders."

Then we have the story of the men of Strood, near Rochester, who for some affront to St. Augustine, or Thomas à Becket, it does not appear quite clear which, were cursed by the infliction of tails upon all their posterity. "And," continues our author, "I am informed by an honest young man of Captaine Morris' Company, in Lieutenant General Ireton's Regiment, that at Cashell, in the county of Tipperary, in the province of Munster, in Carrick Patrick Church, seated on a hill or rock, stormed by the Lord Inchequine, and where there were neare seven hundred put to the sword, and none saved but the Mayor's wife and his son, there were found among the slaine of the Irish, when they were stripped, divers that had tailes near a quarter of a yard long: the relator being very diffident of the truth of this story, after inquiry,

But our Kentish and Irish friends are not alone presented with this caudal appendage, for we hear of "tribes in the mountainous and remote places from the sea, in the island of Borneo," who are equally well furnished. Again we hear of a nation in India, beyond the Ganges," that have feet of such monstrous bignesse, that when they lie down in the sun, or are exposed to the raine, they serve them for umbrelloes to shade them from the heat and wet;" and, to repeat no more," of many nations, endowed with six armes, and as many hands, with asses' ears and men's faces, and who run like harts."

We here see the disposition there has been in all ages, from the days of Alexander to the reign of Elizabeth, from Aristotle to Bacon, from far earlier days to our own times-for that disposition still exists to make a wonder of what was little known, and in the eager delights of a mystery which invested the traveller with a sort of undefinable, but flattering consequence, the degradation of his fellow-man was held as a light matter, and when it began to turn to profit was stoutly asserted, and all fellowship disowned.

Thus from early antiquity the popular belief in regard to distant nations, founded on such narratives of the state of man, and there were no other, has been such as to induce the idea that these were of another blood: dangerous or despicable varieties -hordes of monsters and horrible beings, to be either held at a distance as dangerous, or subjugated to the yoke like a herd of wild cattle. This feeling detained Columbus ten years in the ports of Spain a suitor to indifference; and this same feeling when he returned with the news of another world sent back his successors, lusting for the wealth of Cathay and Cipango, to subjugate, to plunder, to destroy, the "one-eyed," "long-eared," "unnatural wretches"'-our murdered brethren of the West Indies.

Because men had long been filled with the idea that all distant nations must be more or less monstrous, the very colour of the skin was held as sufficient evidence of a monstrous origin. The Indians were considered and treated both by Spanish and English as sons of Azrael; and the Carolinian slaveholder, who was taxed with the impiety of holding the image of God in slavery, turned upon his opponent with the startling question, "Man, do you mean to say that God is black?" To the Jesuits, who, in their benevolent endeavours to ameliorate the bodily and spiritual condition of the Indians, laboured to convince their countrymen that red men, as well as whites, had indeed souls to be saved, and were of one blood and one nature

* A fact which occurred not many years ago.

system was based upon a false foundation, and fell; and their labours and their knowledge, alike kept hidden from public observation, produced no perceptible effect beyond the narrow sphere of their immediate influence.

Captain Cook at length appeared to dissipate the mists of prejudice and ignorance which Dampier and succeeding adventurers had but partially uisturbed; and in his artless narratives was the first to prove to an awakening world the fact that God hath indeed "made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Succeeding voyagers, naturalists, and philosophers have amply verified this proof, by ascertaining beyond a doubt that no organic distinction exists in all the human family.

At length a spirit of inquiry was abroad which led to research and energetic action in the political and scientific world, and whose influence was strongly felt in the renovated zeal manifested in the cultivation of religious principles. A boundless field was thrown open to the earnest propagator of gospel truth. The ship Duff sailed with the flag of peace, instead of the ensign of war, hoisted at the mizen peak, and English missionaries throughout the world still press far ahead among the forest wilds, anticipating even the enterprizing emigrant and the roaming squatter. From the mouth of the herald of truth we learn the true condition of our fellow-men,-and thus their wants, their capabilities, and their rights are brought home to our hearts and consciences; while the institution of the Royal Geographical Society, affording a central point for the concentration of isolated facts, which but for that would have been comparatively useless, or perhaps never recorded at all, has given a scientific value to the labours of these or other wanderers over many lands.

Thus excited, purified, educated for the acquisition of truth, the world is all a-foot: steam lends its wings to the great movement, and now in place of the powdered son of noble blood making once in his life the tour of fashionable life, and returning home to be a geographical lion to the end of lis days, we have a thousand men traversing the globe; searching out the hidden sinuosities of coasts; tracing the sources of rivers; cataloguing the crea tive wonders of virgin forests and untrodden wilds; digging up the foundations of ancient worlds; piercing the confines of aboriginal tribes, and measuring the physical and moral maladies of the whole human race. But these men have no worthy chronicle-no depository for their precious miscellanea no publication which belongs to them and to the world-open to all, and accessible by all. It is true, many of them record their discoveries in memoirs which are read before the learned societies; but not a tithe of them, and those only the most technical, are ever published in the