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sickness, are suffered to remain there till the jackalls devour them. Surely this more resembles an account of an Abyssinian than an English city. Birds as well as beasts of prey infest Calcutta. M. Grandpré lost his dinner one day by one of these visitors. The cook was bringing a roasted fowl across the yard, and an eagle helped himself to the whole.

Having sold his ship, M. Grandpré made a speculating voyage to Mocha. This place he describes as having at first sight very much the appearance of a Spanish town, on account of the latticed balconies to every story. The religion of Mohammed exists here in full vigour of ignorance and intolerance. No fo reigner is permitted to pass through one of its entrances, which is called the Sacred Gate: should he attempt it he would probably be slain by the Bedouins who are encamped by it. The very children when they see an European in the streets, run after him, exclaiming, the Frank to the burying-ground! So deep a hatred has been generated by their struggle with the Portugueze.

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Upon these people M. Grandpré philosophizes with his usual wisdom and consistency.

"History shows us, that the succession of barbarism to more enlightened times, only compelled the arts and sciences to make the tour of the globe; and, in inquiring into the causes of their decline, we are obliged to admit, that the revolutions which overturn states are brought about solely by the extinction of religion and morals.

"In the enjoyment of a happier destiny, Arabia, instead of apprehensions of revoIntion, sees the period approaching when she will occupy in her turn the foremost place among the nations of the earth. Her attachment to her religion subsists in all its force; her morals are uncontaminated; she knows neither debauchery, gaming, luxury, nor avarice, and is perhaps the only country in existence where virtue is practised for its own sake."

What the religion of this country is, where "virtue is practised for its own sake," the reader has already seen. Let us now examine their morals, as M. Grandpré himself delineates them. The Arab, he says, is passionate and vin. dictive; nothing can stifle his desire of revenge; he will readily sacrifice himself, if he can involve his enemy in his destruction. Every man is capable of sac ificing his wife on the slightest sus picion: and with that disgraceful jealousy

which can only have originated in the most disgraceful lasciviousness, they will not permit their own children to enter their haram, after they have attained the age of puberty! These are the people, who, according to M. Grandpré, stand in no need of a general reformation, while they preserve their religion and manners! these are the only people in existence who practise virtue for its own sake!

On his return to the coast of Malabar a violent storm arose; his vessel leaked, and the pumps were out of order: the expedient by which he contrived to make one of them work, we shall transcribe for its ingenuity, and use his own words, for the instruction of those seamen into whose hands this book may fall.

fixed upon a moveable body called the upper "The pumps work by two valves, one box, containing a hole which this valve her metically closes, and the other fixed to an immoveable body called the lower box. The upper box, in descending, presses the column of water upon the valve of the lower box, and keeps it shut, while the same pressure raises the valve of the upper box, and gives a passage through it to the water. In valve shuts by the weight of the column of the re-ascent of the upper box, when its water above it, that of the lower box opens and affords a passage to the water below it, which is thus drawn up by the suction. It thus appears, that the effect of the pump depends on the operation of the valves, and that without valves it could not be worked. These, however, we had lost; yet I contrived notwithstanding to put my pumps into a condition for working. I had to find the means of supplying the loss of the valves, and to substitute something which would answer their purpose; that of completely stopping the holes of both the boxes, agree ably to the action of the pump. To effect this, I heated two four-pound shot, and ap plied. them red-hot to the mouths of the valves, where I let them burn the wood so as to bury themselves half-way in it; I then cooled them, and without any other ргераration put them into the pump. Their weight did not prevent them from giving way to the water, as much as was necessary, both in the ascent and descent of the upper box; and these two motions acting succes sively upon them, brought them back to their position in the holes which they had burnt, and which of course they exactly filled. By this contrivance the pump worked

as well as ever."

The method by which the Hindoos raised his vessel in order to repair it, is equally ingenious. They dig a bason near the water side, of a fit size to con

tain the ship, open the dam at low water, and float it in with the tide; the dike is then closed; the next labour is to fill the bason to the brim by baling in water. The dam is then raised, and filled and raised alternately, till the vessel floats at the height required; they then fill the bason with earth, by which means the water rises above the dam and runs off, and the vessel is left bedded in soft mould; this they drain by holes at the bottom, and leave it for six weeks or two months, till they judge the earth to have acquired a sufficient solidity. They then dig round the vessel, placing supports and stocks as they go on, till they have cleared

all the earth away, and left the ship so propped that they can repair her bot

tom.

The useful information contained in this work might have well been comprised into an article for a magazine, where it would have appeared more respectably than in the large type of two thin volumes. The prints are very worthless; dresses indifferently deline ated, and views of European buildings in Hindostan, not of the buildings of the country, for they would have required more skill than was necessary to describe the straight lines of common masonry.

ART. IX. The History of New South Wales; including Botany Bay, Port Jackson, Paramata, Sydney, and all its Dependencies; from the original Discovery of the Island; with the Customs and Manners of the Natives, and an Account of the English Colony, fom its Foundation to the present Time. By GEORGE BARRINGTON, Superintendant of the Convicts. 8vo. pp. about 500,

An Account of a Voyage to New South Wales. By GEORGE BARRINGTON, Superinten dant of the Convicts. To which is prefixed a Detail of his Life, Trials, Speeches, &c. 8vo. pp. 470.

THE publisher of these books has, with great propriety, attributed them in the title page to a pickpocket; since the former is for the most part a piracy of Captain Collins's History of New South

Wales, and the latter of Mr. Barrow's
Account of the Cape of Good Hope,
and Sir G. Staunton's History of the
British Embassy to China.

ART. X. Travels of Four Years and a Half, in the United States of America, during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802. Dedicated by Permission to Thomas Jefferson, Esq. President of the United States. By JOHN DAVIS. 8vo. PP. 454.

MR. DAVIS has misnamed his book, it is rather the memoirs of his own life in America, than the history of his travels there. Such a title indeed would have attracted little attention, for who is John Davis? The vanity of self-biography never fails to excite the sarcasm and contempt of those, who themselves indulge a far less pardonable vanity; who, being by nature inferior, counteract the painful consciousness of inferiority, by looking in every man, and in every author for his faults, nor is this author's account of himself such as will conciliate the favour of the world; he went to America to be "the architect of his own fortunes." He was an adventurer, an itinerant schoolmaster; add to the crime of poverty that he is a man of genius, and that he knows his own worth, and it will be evident that Mr. Davis is guilty of every thing that can provoke envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness.

On his arrival at New York, Mr. Davis found his letters of recommendation

useless. He became acquainted with a friendly bookseller, and obtained a present supply, and some reputation, by translating Bonaparte's campaign in Italy. In the infant state of American literature, such was the celebrity of this translation, that Mr. Burr, the present vice-president of the United States, sought out the writer in his obscure lodg ings, and invited him to his house.

From New York the traveller soon removed to Philadelphia; the character of the hotels in that city is well introduced.

"Mr. Pecquet received me with a bowing mien, and called Jeannette for the passepartout to shew me his apartments. He exercised all his eloquence to make me lodge in his hotel. He observed that his house was not like an American house; that he did not in summer put twelve beds in one room; but that every lodger had a room to himself, and Monsieur, added he very solemnly, "Ici il ne sera pas necessaire de sortir de votre lit, comme chez les Americains, pour aller à la fenétre, car Jeannette

n'oublie jamais de mettre un pot de chambre sous le lit."

Here the yellow fever broke out. One evening, Mr. Davis had met an acquaintance in the street.

"I accompanied him, he says, into Archstreet, where taking possession of the porch of an abandoned dwelling, we sat conversing till a late hour. The most gloomy imagination cannot conceive a scene more disinal than the street before us: every house was deserted by those who had strength to seek a less baneful atmosphere; unless where parental fondness prevailed over selflove. Nothing was heard but either the groans of the dying, the lamentations of the survivors, the hammers of the coffin-makers, or the howling of the domestic animals, which those who fled from the pestilence had left behind, in the precipitancy of their flight. A poor cat came to the porch where I was sitting with the doctor, and demonstrated her joy by the caresses of fondness, An old negro-woman was passing by at the same moment with some pepper-pot on her head. With this we fed the cat that was nearly reduced to a skeleton; and prompted by a desire to know the sentiments of the old negro-woman, we asked her the news. God help us, cried the poor creature, very bad news. Buckra die in heaps. By and bye nobody live to buy pepper-pot, and old black woman die too."

What a picture! the effects of pesti

lence have never been so well delineated since Daniel Defoe's history of the plague of London. '

Leaving Philadelphia to escape from this dreadful visitation, the author sailed for Charlestown, and for a short time officiated there as assistant tutor in the college. His next removal was to undertake the tuition of a wealthy planter's children, at Coosohatchie, a village about half way between Charlestown and Savannal, consisting of a blacksmith's shop, a court-house, and a jail. The sesquepedalian deformity of

ne

riean names was well noticed in a paragraph which Mr. Davis quotes from the Aurora gazette; "Exult ye white hills of New Hampshire, redoubtable Monadnock and Tuckaway! Laugh ye waters of the Winiseopee and Umbagog lakes! Flow smooth in heroic verse ye streams of Amorioosack and Andros. coggin, Cockhoka and Coritocook! and you Merri-Merrimack be now more Herry." Yet these barbarous and wig. wam names are far better than the mean and ridiculous appellations with which

Englishmen so often nick-name the objects of nature; one of the highest mountains in the island is called the Cobler, and in one of our finest lakes we have Shoulder-of-Mutton Bay. A similar name is introduced very happily by Mr. Davis. After walking a mile and a half, I met a boy sauntering along, and whistling, probably, for want of thought. "How far my boy," said I, "is it to Frying Pan." You be in the pan now, replied the oaf. "I be, be I, said I; very well." On the Indian words he writes with feeling.

"In journeying through America, the Indian names of places have always awakened in my breast a train of reflection; a single word will speak volumes to a speculative mind; and the names of Pocotaligo, and Coosohatchie, and Occoquan, have pic tured to my fancy the havoc of time, the decay and succession of generations, together with the final extirpation of savage natious, who, unconscious of the existence of another people, dreamt not of invasions from foreign enemies, or inroads from colonists, but believed their power invincible, and their race eternal.”

Of the treatment of slaves in South Carolina, Mr. Davis has communicated some interesting particulars. Negur day for night, because they are then at time is the term these poor wretches have

leisure.

"It is indeed grating to an English man to mingle with society in Carolina; for the people, however well-bred in other respects, have no delicacy before a stranger in what relates to their slaves. These wretches are execrated for every involuntary offence; but negroes endure execrations without emotion, for they say, when Mossa curse, he break no bone. But every master does not confine himself to oaths; and I have heard a man say, By heaven, my Negurs talk the worst English of any in Carolina : that boy just now called a bason a roundhave a dozen! something: take him to the driver! let him

"Exposed to such wanton cruelty the negroes frequently run away; they flee into the woods, where they are wet with the rains of heaven, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter. Life must be supported; hunger incites to depredation, and the poor

wretches are often shot like the beasts of
When taken, the men are put in
prey.
irons, and the boys have their necks encir-
cled with a " pot-book."

"The Charlestown papers abound with advertisements for fugitive slaves. I have a curious advertisement now before me

*Tripe seasoned with pepper.

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Stop the runaway! Fifty dollars reward! Whereas my waiting fellow, Will, having eloped from me last Saturday, without any provocation, (it being known that I am a humane master) the above reward will be paid to any one who will lodge the aforesaid slave in some jail, or deliver him to me on Will may my plantation at Liberty Hall. be known by the incisions of the whip on his back; and I suspect has taken the road to Cosoohatchie, where he has a wife and five children, whom I sold last week to Mr. Gillespie."

A. LEVI.

Yet in this country where even the women exercise the most detestable cruelty, they usually give their children to be suckled by negro-women. It is not uncommon, we are told, to hear an elegant lady say, Richard always grieves when Quasheebaw is whipped, because she suckled him! What a perversion of all natural affection is here! The child is to be taught to harden his heart against the cries of her who suckled him!-What hope is there of the man? We have felt it our duty to select and dwell upon these circumstances, in the hope and belief that no good man can peruse them without indignation. The cause of the abolition is not yet to be abandoned. England indeed may resolve upon it too late, for the work of retribution is begun.

We will turn to more chearful topics, to the delineation of natural objects.

The mocking-bird is the pride of the American woods; it is perfectly domestic, and the natives hold it sacred..

His

"But there is a bird called the loggerhead that will not bear passively its taunts. cry resembles clink, clink, clank; which, should the mocking-bird presume to imitate it, he flies and attacks the mumic for his insolence. But this only incurs a repetition of the offence; so true is it that anong birds as well as men, anger serves only to sharpen the edge of ridicule. It is observable, that the loggerhead is known to suck the eggs of the mocking-bird, and devour the young ones in the nest."

When weary of mocking others, the bird falls into its own strain, and so joyous a creature is it, that it will jump and dance to its own song; by day and by night it sings alike. The author was listening to one by moonlight that usually perched within a hundred yards of his log-hut. A negro was sitting on the threshold of the next door, smoaking the stump of an old pipe. "Please God Almighty," exclaimed the old woman,

"how sweet that mocking bird sing! he never tire!"

"Eagles were often seen on the plantation. The rencounter between one of them and a fish-hawk is curious. When the fish-hawk has seized his prey, his object is to get above the eagle; but when unable to succeed, the king of birds darts on him fiercely, at whose approach the hawk, with a horrid cry, lets fall the fish, which the eagle catenes in his beak before it descends to the ground."

The writer of this article has seen the same thing happen in a contest between two sea-birds for their prey. Mr. Davis has given us but few observations on natural history: a study, which, he says, he has ever considered subordinate, when compared to that of life. This undue depreciation of a most interesting pursuit is to be regretted, because this author evidently possesses a quick and observant eye, and those everwakeful talents that could enliven any science. He disbelieves the tales of the fascinating power attributed to the eye of the snake, accounting by fear for the effects said to be so produced. It is well known, he says, that birds will flutter their wings, and exhibit the utmost agitation at the approach of a fox near the tree on which they are perched. There is a reprehensible petulance in the manner wherewith Mr. Davis asserts, that this fact could not escape the observation of any man, who, incited by the desire of knowledge, has made a tour into the country, and that it must be known to every one who has not passed his life in the smoke of London, Salisbury, or Bristol. Foxes are not such common animals that every traveller should see them at the foot of a tree. We will venture to affirm, that a man may walk from one end of England to the other, and not see a fox during the whole journey, unless there be a pack of hounds at his heels.

Once the traveller saw a negro-woman quiet her child by shaking the rattles of a snake. These little traits which the painter or the poet would have seized, he has seldom overlooked; he tells us of the long and beautiful moss, that spreading from the branches of one tree to those of another, extends through whole forests. This moss, when dried, serves many useful purposes: it is sold at Charlestown to stuff mattrasses and chairs; the hunters always use it for wadding. The axe of the negro chop

ping wood is noticed as a sound delight- ably fine, and with a profusion of raven

ful to the foot traveller in America, for it lets him know some human habitation is near. The following picture has evidently been sketched from nature.

"My recreation after school in the evening was to sit and meditate before my door, in the open air, while the vapours of a friendly pipe administered to my philosophy. In silent gravity I listened to the negro calling to his steers returning from labour, or contemplated the family groupe on the grassplat before the dwelling-house, of whom the father was tuning his violin, the mother and daughters at their needles, and the boys ruaning and tumbling in harmless mirth upon the green. Before me was an immense forest of stately trees; the cat was sitting on the barn-door; the fire-fly was on the wing, and the whip-poor-will in lengthened cries was hailing the return of night.

"I was now, perhaps, called to supper, and enjoyed the society of Mr. Ball and his family till the hour of their repose, when I returned to my log-hut, and resumed my pipe before the door. The moon in solemn majesty was rising from the woods; the plantation-dog was barking at the voices of the negroes pursuing their nightly revels on the road; while the mocking songster mimicked the note of every bird that had sung during the day."

The poetry with which the volume is interspersed is very inferior to the prose. It is introduced with peculiar impropriety, in the history of captain Smith and the female Indian Pocahontas. This history, Mr. Davis assures us, has been related with an inviolable adherence to truth, every circumstance being rejected that had not evidence to support it: but by attributing his own verses to one of the personages, he has given a character of fiction to a story which was in itself too romantic to be believed without a solemn affirmation of its authenticity. For this very interesting tale we must refer to the volume itself. One Indian scene which the author himself witnessed our limits will permit us to notice. On the north bank of the Occoquan, is a pile of stones heaped upon the grave of an Indian warrior. The Indians who pass near never fail to turn from the main road into the woods and visit this grave, and if a stone be thrown down, they religiously restore it to its place. A party, while the author resided at Occoquan, came to this spot; it consisted of an elderly chief, twelve war captains, and two squaws, the younger a girl of seventeen, her person remark

hair.

"When I saw the squaws a second time, they were just come from their toilet. Woman throughout the world delights ever in finery; the great art is to suit the colours to the complexion.

"The youngest girl would have attracted notice in any circle of Europe. She had fastened to her long dark hair a profusion of ribbons, which the bounty of the people of Occoquan had heaped upon her; and, the tresses of this Indian beauty, which before had been confined round her head, now rioted luxuriantly down her shoulders and back. The adjustment of her dress one would have thought she had learned from some English female of fashion; for she had left it so open before, that the most inattentive eve could not but discover the rise and fall of a bosom just beginning to fill.

"The covering of this young woman's feet rivetted the eye of the stranger with its novelty and splendour. Nothing could be more delicate than her mocassins. They were each of them formed of a single piece of leather, having the seams ornamented with beads and porcupine quills; while a string of scarlet ribbon confined the mocassin round the instep, and made every other part of it bright yellow, and made from the skin of a

sit close to the foot, The mocassin was of a

deer.

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It has often

"Here rests the body of a chief of our nation, who, before his spirit took its flight to the country of souls, was the boldest in war, and the fleetest in the chace. The arm that is now mouldering beneath this pile, could once wield the tomahawk with vigour, and often caused the foe to sink beneath its weight. (A dreadful cry of whoo! whoo! grasped the head of the expiring enemy, and whoop! from the hearers.) often with the knife divested it of the scalp, (a yell of whoo! whoo! whoop!) It has often bound to the stake the prisoner of war, and piled the blazing faggots round the victim, singing his last song of death. (A yell of whoo! whoop!) The foot that is now motionless, was once fleeter than the hart that grazes on the mountain; and in danger it was ever more ready to advance than retreat. (A cry of whoo! whoo! whoop!) But the hero is not gone unprovided to the country of spirits. His tomahawk was buried with him to repulse the enemy in the

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