On reaching the final slope of which I have just spoken, we directed our steps towards a black rock, situated near the edge of the crater, about the middle of its south side. At about ten minutes past ten o'clock, Lieut. Stone was standing on the edge of the crater, and before the rest of us had arrived he had already fastened the stars and stripes to his staff, and planted them on the very loftiest peak of the mountain-the highest point of our continent. Mr. Baggally arrived soon after, and placed close by, the cross of St. George.

could see the white cap of the snow mountain | The odour of sulphuretted hydrogen is the most of Toluca, and towards the South our view ex- distinct and unpleasant. From many different tended over a vast succession of hills and valleys, circumstances we all agreed in rejecting, as pergradually growing less and less distinct, until at fectly absurd, the idea of any body's ever having length all seemed to vanish in a boundless sea, decended by any means whatever to the bottom At this elevation the snow lay a few inches of this crater. The only foundation for such a deep. We were about one mile in distance, and story is Carter's statement that he procured about seven hundred feet perpendicularly, below sulphur from a mountain that burned with fire the Pico del Frayle. At half-past eight o'clock and smoke. But as a mountain may mean any we reached that point. From it we could see mountain, we are quite sure that Popocatapetl the extreme peak about a thousand feet above was not the mountain. We had splendid views us. Leaving the Frayle, we followed, for about towards the east and north, but clouds had begun two hundred yards, the ridge on which it is situat- to accumulate around the mountain, and were ed; then, quitting this ridge, we descended to hanging over the other quarters. We saw the small valley, or rather ravine, which sepa- Orizaba very plainly, and had it not been for rates the ridge of the Pico from the next ridge heavy clouds flying about its summit we believe towards the East, and followed this ravine to its that we might have seen the Gulf. Our view head. This brought us to the final ascent. of Mexico was intercepted by clouds, but we The snow was now much above our knees, and could see Puebla as if at our very seet. The this, with the extreme rarefaction of the air, unpleasant effects of the gases did not permit caused our progress to be very slow. It was us to remain long on the edge of the crater, and not possible to walk more than twenty steps a few minutes after eleven o'clock we commenced without stopping to recover breath. We felt no our descent, and at half-past two were again at difficulty or pain whatever in breathing when our camp, having been just twelve hours in acnot exerting ourselves. complishing the ascent, and descent. The thermometer stood at 26 Fahrenheit on the highest peak-that is warmer by several degrees than it had been two thousand feet lower down on the day that we failed. Others who have ascended to the crater were either less fortunate in their route than we, or else they magnified the difficulties of the ascent vastly; but we followed their descriptions exactly, and, therefore, could not have gone far out of their way. They speak of having to pull themselves over crags and precipices with ropes. We met no such obstacles. They did not encounter snow until after passing Frayle; we fell upon it nearly a thousand feet below, therefore we had more to contend with. They also give nearly double what we give as the dimensions of the crater. They call it nearly a mile in diameter, and twelve or fifteen hundred feet deep. We place both these dimensions at about half, and think it grand enough at that, without needing exaggeration. There are no traces or signs of the crater having undergone any material change for centuries back. The elevation of the crater above the valley of Mexico is about ten thousand feet. This is about equally divided by the parts above and below the limit of vegetation. Without becoming at all stunted in their character or appearance, the pines cease suddenly at about twelve thousand feet; very good and luxuriant grass grows also at this point. Beyond vegetation, and to about the line of eternal snow, is a belt of deep volcanic sand; and above the sand hard compact lava extends to the crater. The elevation of the crater above the level of the sea is, according to various measurements that have been made and which agree very closely, about 17,840 feet.

Now for a peep at the crater. It appears to be perfectly cylindrical in form, and nearly half a mile in diameter. The plane of its mouth inclines from the south to the north, making the northern side about sixty feet lower than the southern. Its depth is from six to eight hundred feet, and its sides are as perpendicular as the walls of a house. In its bottom on the north side are fifteen or twenty chimneys, apparently about five feet high, and a foot in diameter at their mouths. From these there is constantly emitted a dense yellowish smoke. The chimneys appear to be pure sulphur, and all that portion of the crater is covered with a crust of the same. From a great many crevices and fissures in the sides of the crater, smoke and gaseous vapors are ascending. From some they pour in continuous streams; from others they come in regular and sudden puffs, as though caused by water dripping on burning matter. The smoke which comes from the chimneys is generally so dissipated before it reaches the mouth of the crater that it is not distinctly perceived there; but I have on some occasions seen it from the valley of Puebla ascending quite densely. There is a suffocating stench of gases about the crater.

The precautions that we had taken this time

saved us from feeling any ill consequences, and | preceded by a point of meandering water, pickwe came down unscathed and delighted.

From the British Friend.

STATEBURG.

THE FLOOD IN THE MACQUARIE. Sir Thomas Mitchell, in his Journey into the interior of Australia, in 1845–6, was witness to a natural phenomenon of a remarkable, and to his suffering party, of a peculiarly seasonable kind. The drought had been uninterrupted, and the ground was so parched as almost to preclude travelling, and also to bring on severe attacks of ophthalmia. But on the 18th of the Second month, 1846, an extraordinary change took place, which is thus related:

6

ing its way, like a thing of life, through the deepest parts of the dark, dry, and shady bed of what thus again became a flowing river. By my party, situated as we were at that time, beating about the country, and impeded in our journey solely by the almost total absence of water, suffering excessively from thirst and extreme heat, I am convinced the scene can never be forgotten. Here came at once abundance, the product of storms in the far off mountains that overlooked our homes. My first impulse was to have welcomed this flood on our knees, for the scene was sublime in itself, while the subject, an abundance of water sent to us in a desert, greatly heightened the effect to our eyes. Suffice it to say, I had witnessed nothing of such interest in all my Australian travels.

"The river gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high, while the living cataract tra velled onward, much slower than I had expected to see it, so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after its first arrival, the sweet music of the head of the flood was distinctly audible from my tent, as the murmur of waters, and the dia pason crash of logs travelled slowly through the tortuous windings of the river bed. I was finally lulled to sleep by that melody of living waters, so grateful to my ear, and evidently so unwonted in the dry bed of the thirsty Macquarie."

FAMILIES OF LITERARY MEN.

The Quarterly Review, in discussing the copy right bill of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, which was taken by Sir Edward Sugden, gives some very curious particulars about the progeny of literary

men.

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"To my most important question, What water was to be found lower down in the rive,' the reply was very satisfactory, namely, Plenty, and a flood coming down from the Turòn mountains.' The two policemen said they had travelled twenty miles with it, on the day previous, and that it would still take some time to arrive near our camp. About noon, the drags arrived in good order, having been encamped where there was no water about six miles short of our camp, the whole distance travelled, from Cannonbà to the Macquarie, having been about nineteen miles. In the afternoon, two of the men taking a walk up the river, reported on their return that the flood poured in upon them when in the river bed, so suddenly, that they narrowly escaped it. Still the bed of the Macquarie before our camp continued so dry and silent, that I could scarcely believe the flood coming to be real, and so near to us, who had been put to so many shifts for want of water. Towards evening, I stationed a man with a gun a little way up We are not," says the writer, "going to the river, with orders to fire, on the flood's ap- speculate about the causes of the fact, but a fact pearance, that I might have time to run to the it is, that men distinguished for any extraordipart of the channel nearest to our camp, and nary intellectual power of any sort, rarely leave witness what I had so much wished to see, as more than a very brief line of progeny behind well from curiosity as urgent need. The shades them. Men of genius have scarcely ever done of evening came, however, but no flood, and the so; men of imaginative genius, we might say, man on the look-out returned to the camp. almost never. With the one exception of the Some hours later, and after the moon had risen, noble Surrey, we cannot at this moment point a murmuring sound like that of a distant water- out a representative in the male line, even so far fall, mingled with occasional cracks as of break-down as in the third generation, of any English ing timber, drew our attention, and I hastened to poet; and we believe the same is the case in the river bank. By very slow degrees the sound France. The blood of beings of that order can grew louder, and at length so audible as to draw seldom be traced far down, even in the female various persons besides from the camp to the line. With the exception of Surrey and Spenriver-side. Still no flood appeared, although its ser, we are not aware of any great English approach was indicated by the occasional rend- author of at all remote date, from whose body ing of trees with a loud noise. Such a pheno- any living person claims to be descended. There menon in a serene moonlight night was quite is no other real English poet prior to the middle new to us all. At length, the rushing sound of of the eighteenth century, and we believe no waters and loud cracking of timber, announced great author of any sort, except Clarendon and that the flood was in the next bend. It rushed Shaftesbury, of whose blood we have any into our sight, glittering in the moonbeams, a heritance amongst us. Chaucer's only son died moving cataract, tossing before it ancient trees, childless; Shakspeare's line expired in his and snapping them against its banks. It was daughter's only daughter. None of the other

dramatists of that age left any progeny; nor | basis for an amicable adjustment of differences, Raleigh, nor Bacon, nor Cowley, nor Butler. which would otherwise have been irreconcilable. The grand-daughter of Milton was the last of his It may be a vain hope to expect to harmonize blood. Newton, Locke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, those who are now so wide apart; but if it prove Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Walpole, Cavendish, a delusion, it may nevertheless be profitable to (and we might greatly extend the list,) never indulge it. It may, at least, serve to moderate married. Neither Bolingbroke, nor Addison, the tone of discussion. nor Warburton, nor Johnson, nor Burke, transmitted their blood. M. Renouard's last argument against a perpetuity in literal property is, that it would be founding another noblessee. Neither jealous aristocracy nor envious Jacobinism need be under much alarm. When a human race has produced its bright consummate flower,' in this kind it seems commonly to be near its end."

The measure before us contemplates an act of legislation; it proposes a law containing provisions to be enforced and to control the inhabitants of a district of country more than two hundred thousand square miles in extent. By this act we are literally laying the foundations of a future empire.

The questions to which the discussion of the bill has given rise, are of the highest moment. They concern the power of Congress over the territory belonging to the United States, and especially in regard to slavery in such territory. Nor is this all. They involve not only the authority of Congress, under the Constitution, to regulate the domestic concerns of the persons inhabiting or occupying the public domain beyond the limits of the States, but they may affect, for an indefinite period, the social and political condition of entire communities. They may vitally concern the prosperity of the future millions who are to fill the valleys and cover the hills of Oregon; and it is due to the magnitude of the subject, that it should be discussed with calmness and without asperity either of feeling or of language.

Conducted in such a spirit, discussion, even if it were unnecessary, could do no harm, however widely we may differ, or however delicate the questions with which it has to deal. Indeed, it is always possible the very conflict of opinion may strike out light and truth, and furnish a

In the course of the debate on this and other kindred topics, various propositions have been advanced; and they have been sustained with distinguished ability.

There is a question which lies beyond all the propositions, and which, if it can be satisfactorily answered, must be decisive of them all, because it includes them all. Has Congress the right, under the Constitution, to legislate for the territory of the United States, organize governments for the inhabitants residing in such territory, and regulate within it all matters of local and domestic concern? I believe this question can be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative; that the power, to this unlimited extent, can be sustained-1st, by cotemporaneous exposition of the meaning of the constitution and the intention of its framers; 2d, by judicial interpretation; and 3d, by the whole practice of the government, from its foundation to the present day.

On the 13th of July, 1787, the Congress of the Confederation passed the celebrated ordiwest of the Ohio river. nance of 1787, in relation to the territory North

The opinion of Mr. Madison has been quoted to prove the illegality of this ordinance. This being conceded, it cannot by any supposed consequence or analogy have any bearing on the power of legislation by Congress, under the constitution, in respect to the prohibition of slavery in the territories of the United States. The ordinance, as we know, was passed by Congress under the Articles of Confederation, though it was ratified by the first Congress which assembled under the constitution. Any inference from the proceedings of the one, so far as the question of power is concerned, would be wholly inapplicable to the other. But I hold, and shall endeavour to show, that the very argument in which Mr. Madison denied the authority of Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, to pass the ordinance of 1787, had for its object to prove the necessity of such a power in Congress under the constitution, and that it proceeded upon the supposed existence of the power.

Let me now call the attention of the Senate to the acts of Congress by which this construction of the Constitution is supported, for the purpose of exhibiting the force it derives from legislative precedents.

I. The ordinance of 1787 was recognized by chapter 8, 1st session, 1st Congress. The preamble recites that "it is requisite certain provisions should be made," &c., in order that the said ordinance" may continue to have full effect."

There was no division in either house upon its | in 1787, and in continuing it in force in the first passage. There seems to have been no objection to it.

1. Neither the framers of the ordinance nor the first Congress considered the perpetual pro-ritory of Orleans. hibition of slavery in the northwest territory inconsistent with the admission of the states to be formed out of it into the Union on "an equal footing with the original states." Neither the actual tenure of slaves, nor the right to hold them, could have been considered essential to the full fruition of the political liberty which the states possessed as members of the Union.

2. The prohibition was not considered inconsistent with the terms of cession of the territory by Virginia in 1784, which required that the States to be formed out of it should be "repub- There cannot be a stronger case to show the lican states, and admitted members of the Fede-control Congress has exercised over the subject. ral Union, having the same rights of sovereignty, Slavery existed in Louisiana when it was ceded freedom and independence." These rights of to the United States. Congress did not impose sovereignty, freedom, and independence, therefore, which the members of the Federal Union enjoyed, were by the Congress of the Confederation, and the first Congress, deemed fully possessed, although the right to hold slaves was prohibited. Virginia concurred in passing the ordinance in the Congress of the Confederation

but to prohibit their introduction from the States | believed to be wholly inconsistent with all the of the Union, excepting when accompanying received laws of population. The tendency of and belonging to citizens of the United States moving into the territory to become residents. This was to impose restrictions upon its extension, even within the territory in which it existed. It was a direct prohibition of the domestic slave trade. It was an exercise of power, in respect to the territories, which Congress did not possess in respect to the States. It was an anticipation, by four years, of the time at which Congress was authorized to prohibit the importation of slaves into the original States. This act was signed by Jefferson.