observed a couple of bunches, each consisting of two stripes of white deer skin and a long piece of sinew, attached to the back of his coat. These we had not seen before, and were informed that they had been sewn on by the Tornga while he was below.' Captain Lyon's Journal. The familiar which was on this occasion called up from the vasty deep,' was a female ; but Toolemak had a much more extensive acquaintance in the world of spirits. He boasted of possessing the confidence of ten superior genii, including a very knowing bear who roams among the polar ices, besides influencing an immense mob of inferior sprites. Of all these, the most eminent is Ay-willi-ay-oo, the Tornga to whom Capt. Lyon had the honour of an introduction. This Titania of the northern world is of gigantic stature, and has but one eye, the place of the other being occupied by a profusion of black hair; she has the control of all the inhabitants of the sea, and sometimes keeps them up so close as to put the Eskimaux in jeopardy of famine. In these cases, the magician is generally despatched on a visit to her abode, and his object is to cut off the hand in which she holds the spell that enthrals the ocean tribes. If he succeeds in the entire amputation, of course complete liberation is the result; but if he have only partial success, there seems to be a graduated scale of gaol delivery. If her nails only are lopped away, the bears get loose; the abstraction of the first joint sets at liberty the smaller seal; that of the second, the larger species. The separation of the knuckles brings up the heads of the walrus ; and at the division of the metacarpal bones,' the whales float on the surface. This female Polypheme' has a father, Nappayook, a dwarf with but one arm. On another occasion, Capt. Lyon was present at a more public and elaborate performance of the same mummery. The lamps were extinguished one by one, and the clamours of the surrounding natives were added to the mystic chaunt of the Tornga, and the * load monotonous song' of the Annatko's wife. • Toolemak, with shouts and strange noises, soon joined us, and his return to the world was hailed with great delight. A lamp being brought, the pale and exhaused Annatko crawled from behind his skreen, and seated himself among us. I could not but remark throughout the whole of the performance, which lasted about an hour and a half, the wonderful steadiness of our wizard, who, during his most violent exertions of voice, did not once appear to move; for, had be done so, I was so close to the skin behind which he sat, that I must have perceived it. Neither did I hear any rustling of his. clothes, or even distinguish his breathing, although his outcries were made with great exertion. Once however, and once only, a short cough, barely audible even to me, occurred while the old man was supposed to be in the other world. --Capt. Lyon's Journal. ... These exhibitions'-as Capt. Lyon, by rather an unusual application of the word, terms them-are by no means of common occurrence. Their value and importance are enhanced by their rarity; and though there does not appear to be any bond of fraternity among the few professors of the black art, there is a tacit compact that their secret shall not be betrayed, nor their incantations made cheap by frequent repetition. When questioned by the Kabloonas on the subject, the conjurors maintained a mysterious silence, till, on one hapless day,- in vino veritas,-Tooleniak so far forgot his dignified associations as to get drunk, and initiated Capt. Lyon into the whole routine of his jugglery. • In the evening Toolemak rolled very jovially into my cabin, telling me, that having drank four glasses of hot water at the Fury, he was come to do the same with me. He was immediately accommodated, and together with what he obtained from the officers, as well as myself, in about ten minutes gulped down five glasses and a half more of raw rum, which he designated as above. Nine glasses and a half of spirits were, however, too much for him, and in a short time he became most noisily drunk. Mr. Fife, who had been a little unwell in his stoinach, quite delighted the old fellow by asking his assistance as a conjuror, and being shut up in a darkened cabin, he made the ship echo with his bellowings and exorcisms. All his familiar spirits were summoned in a bunch; and I could not but observe that the sage immortals were as drunk as the potent Annatko, who constrained them to answer for themselves. In fact, poor Toolemak was so overcome, and at the same tiine so little aware of it, that he made some curious mistakes, and betrayed all the secrets of bis art, which I had in vain tried to learn from him in his sober moments. I found that his diving or retiring voice was, as I had before suspected, regulated entirely by speaking in his hands, and gradually covering his face with his jacket, until the toves were rendered indistinct and ultimately smothered. He made but an indifferent dive, yet, when I spoke to him, as I sat by his side, he assured me he was under the earth, and that not Toolemak, but his favourite spirit Pamiooli, was now talking with me. While the conjurations were going forward, which lasted about half an hour, he frequently slapped Mr. Fife's stomach; and the latter being a very fat man, the hollow reverberation added not a little to the oddness of the ceremonies, for, at each beating, our Annatko, in an authoritative voice, commanded the pain to leave him. Our friend committed a thousand good-humoured extravagancies on being led back to my cabin, where he was carefully laid on a couch of skins. His own voice having entirely-left him, he did nothing but chaunt in the tones of Tornga, no doubt fancying himself highly inspired. An occasional outcry for something to eat, was immediately succeeded by his falling on whatever wood was at hand, and biting it deeply with his short and strong teeth. One of the officer's doors was quite disfigured by these starts of frenzy. I never, indeed, saw a drunken man more good-humoured, and he chaunted out his terms of friendship to all around him, while to myself he occasionally turned with great gravity, saying that I was his son, and, as well as himself, was a great Annatko.' Captain Lyon's Journal. The farce was concluded by a still more extraordinary feat, in the rapid disappearance of eleven pints of water down the parched throat of Toolemak. After each of the seventeen tumblers, he proudly patted his belly, exclaiming-anatko • onanga (I'm a conjuror).' But when the last was with difficulty emptied, and he could swallow no more, he gave in, with the humiliating confession, · I'm no conjuror, I can drink • no more.' In a few minutes, to the astonishment of all around him, he rose and walked to his sledge with little assistance, and reached it after a few tumbles in the snow, and in a perfect elysium of drunken gayety. It is remarkable that, though he had taken enough raw spirit to kill a Europeanwhat excuse can be made for so desperate an experiment ?-it did not produce drowsiness, and that in the short space of one hour, though unable, at first, to support himself on his legs, he recovered their use. On the following morning, he had neither nausea nor headache. This second winter appears to have been injurious to the health of the officers and crew, scurvy appearing among the former, and a greater liability to disease among the latter; and though serious consequences were prevented by prompt and judicious medical and dietetic treatment, there was reason to fear that, in the event of a longer sojourn in these inhospitable climates, the symptoms would return with increased force. This, with other cogent reasons, induced the commanders of the expedition to reverse a plan for the execution of which they had made preparation, by shifting a large proportion of the Hecla's provisions to the Fury. It had been arranged, that, as the stores were too far exhausted to allow of the further prosecution of the enterprise in both vessels, the latter should appropriate as large a quantity as possible of the provisions and equipment of the former, and proceed singly on the business of discovery. Nothing, however, was lost by the abandonment of this scheme, since the barrier of ice in the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, the sole outlet, on this coast, into the Polar sea, was found absolutely impenetrable. The ships left their ailchorage at Igloolik on the 8th and 9th of August, 1823, and made the Orkneys on the 9th of October, after having enVOL. XXII. N.S. K countered, in addition to the usual casualties of Arctic navigation, the perils to which we referred at the commencement of the article, and which nearly made. Lyon Inlet the termination of their homeward voyage. The period of detention, both while seeking a passage through the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, and in the winterquarters, was actively employed in boat surveys and in land expeditions. The result of these exertions has given an accurate outline of the coasts, bays, islands, and inlets in this direction, and determined the junction of the strait just named with the ocean. The Jatitude of Igloolik is 69o. 21'. N., and its longitude 810.36', 34". W. The extreme points reached in the course of the voyage may be stated in general, at nearly the 70th degree of latitude, and the 84th of longitude. It may now, we suppose, be considered as an established point in geography, that a North-west passage exists;-- whether practicable or not, is a different question ;- and the discoveries of Hearne, Mackenzie, Franklin, and Parry, have made it all but certain, that the northern coast of the American continent does not extend beyond the 70th or 71st parallel of latitude. Captain Parry, notwithstanding former failures, is still sanguine in his expectation of ultimate success, and expresses his hope that Regent's Inlet may be found to afford the desired communication. Of the two volumes before us, the Quarto, in particular, betrays marks of haste in the getting up. Some of the plates are good, and all are well adapted to the purpose of illustration; but the aquatints are, with one or two exceptions, of inferior and inadequate execution. The maps are good, though by no means highly engraved. The composition of the narrative is creditable to Captain Parry as a writer, though the necessarily minute information abates something from its interest to general readers. In this respect, Captain Lyon's Octavo volume will be more generally acceptable. Written for the perusal only of his own family, it is stripped of those professional particularities that are indispensable in an official narrative ; and the quaintness and dry humour of the style, give a raciness to the narrative. It bas a valuable chart for general purposes, but we would willingly have given up all the plates of costume for a map of more specific detail. a Art. II A Mentoir of Central India, including Malwa, and the adjoin ing Provinces ; with the History and copious Illustrations of the past and present Condition of that Country. By Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G. C. B. K. L. S. & vols. 8vo. Second Edition. Map. pp. 1127. London, 1894. IT seems now to be a settled point, that every ruler in British India, from the prince who commands the resources of an extensive kingdom, to the petty rajah of some score or two of villages, is to hold his temporalities on terms of allegiance and feudality to the musnud of Leadenhall-street. This policy, however, has not been adopted without much hesitation ; and, at one time, even after it had been acted upon to a considerable extent, it appeared to be rejected in favour of a more moderate and unambitious system. Two of the British governors of India, one an experienced soldier, the other conspicuous for wisdom in civil life, made considerable sacrifices, and abandoned settled alliances and contracts, in preference to maintaining a dominion so gigantic and so unsafe. They were of opinion, not only that the East India Company were masters of quite as much territory as could be governed with advantage to themselves and to their subjects, but that they occupied a station so well adapted both for defence and menace, as to give them an efficient control over the restlessness and turbulence of the native powers. The Marquesses Wellesley and Has . tings, in their splendid—we believe this is the established formula-administrations, went into the opposite extreme, and adopted a system of federation which placed the whole surface of India under their inspection, and all its resources at their command. The result of this has been, such an arrangement and extension of territory, as to insulate and overawe the more formidable of the native states, and to support the petty rajahs whose fortresses hem in the frontiers of Malwa and Berar, in their independence on their former masters, and their consequent dependence on British supremacy. But its effect has also been, to impose the absolute necessity of maintaining this dominion in its complete and unbroken extent, and of watching with unrelaxing vigilance every wheel and lever of this immense machinery. Every native court has been virtually compelled to admit an English garrison, and, specifcally, to hold its contingent in readiness for English service. The residents at the different capitals of the Nizam, the Nagpoor Rajab, Holkar, and Scindia, are surrounded by efficient guards, which, in two remarkable instances, have been proxed folly equal to the defeat of the native armies by which they were assailed. As we shall probably have to bring this part of K ? |