together with himself, after burning two small towns, were put to flight and defeated by the Felatahs, at the siege of Musfeia. The situation of Major Denham, in his retreat from the pursuers, was dreadful in the extreme; both himself and his horse were badly wounded; and, after twice falling with the latter, and fighting singly against three or four assailants, he at length lay disarmed on the ground. "At that moment," he relates, "my hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded; and, incapable of making the least resistance, was as speedily stripped. My pursuers then made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in two places, and slightly my body, just under my ribs, on the right side; indeed, I saw nothing before me but the same cruel death I had seen unmercifully inflicted on the few who had fallen into the power of those who now had possession of me. My shirt was now absolutely torn off my back, and I was left perfectly naked. When my plunderers began to quarrel for the spoil, the idea of escape came like lightning across my mind; and, without a moment's hesitation, I crept under the belly of the horse nearest me, and started as fast as my legs could carry me for the thickest part of the wood: two of the Felatahs followed, and gained upon me; for the prickly underwood not only obstructed my passage, but tore my flesh miserably: and the delight with which I saw a mountain-stream gliding along at the bottom of a deep ravine cannot be imagined. My strength had almost left me, and I seized the young branches issuing from the stump of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water; when, under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil, as if in the very act of striking. I was horror-struck, and deprived, for a moment, of all recollection—the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath this shock, however, revived me: and, with three strokes of my arms, I reached the opposite bank, which, with difficulty, I climbed up, and then, for the first time, felt myself safe from my pursuers."

After dangers and disasters almost as appalling as those just related, Major Denham returned to Kouka, where he arrived in the beginning of May, in a state of extreme wretchedness and despondency. In his way back, he relates, that the little food he could procure "was thrust out from under Barca Sana's (the sheikh's-general) tent, and consisted generally of his leavings: pride," he continues, "was sometimes nearly choking me, but hunger was the paramount feeling; I smothered the former, ate, and was thankful." "Thus," he observes, on terminating his account of it, "ended our most unsuccessful expedition; it had, however, injustice and oppression for its basis, and who can regret its failure?" He, however, shortly after his return to Kouka, accompanied, with Dr. Oudney, a second

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expedition, headed by the sheikh in person, against the Mungowy; but that people making some concessions, he was not involved in any hostile encounter; and after visiting the Gambarou river, and collecting much curious information, (among other, that the monkeys abounding in that part of the country are called by the natives "the enchanted men,") he again returned to Kouka, where he remained till the termination of the rainy season in 1823.

In January, 1824, he obtained permission, and an escort, from the sheikh, to visit the Loggun nation, a country he had for eleven months previously been endeavouring to enter. On the 2d of February, he embarked at Showy in a canoe, and proceeded down the river Shary to Joggabah, a once inhabited, but then desolate, island; approaching it by a wide piece of water, which he called, from the beauty of the surrounding scenery, Bellevue Reach. Passing from Lake Shary, "into that sea of fresh water, the Tchad," which he named Lake Waterloo, he veered round to the northeast branch of Joggabah, and continued in that direction till he arrived at the mouth of the Shary; where, after discerning with his telescope nothing but a waste of waters before him, he commenced his return to Showy; on reaching which, he immediately set out for Loggun, by way of Gulphi, Willighi, Affadai, Alph, and Kussery; a route seldom traversed, and which he describes to be "a continued succession of marshes, swamps, and stagnant waters, abounding with useless and rank vegetation ;" and where "flies, bees, and musquitoes, with immense black toads, vie with each other in a display of their peace-destroying powers." On the 16th of February, he entered Kernuk, the capital of Loggun, by a street "as wide as Pall Mall;" but was only allowed to remain a few days in the city, in consequence of the approach of the Begharmi, against whom the Sultan of Loggun would not undertake to protect him. While in the city, he was much annoyed by the curiosity of the women, who examined even the pockets of his trowsers; "to give them their due," he observes, "they are the cleverest and the most immoral race I had met with in the black country."

After enduring many vicissitudes and dangers, and witnessing, at Angala, the last moments of Mr. Tooke, who had accompanied him in nis expedition to Loggun, Major Denham returned, on the 2d of March, to Kouka, where he was attacked by a slight fever; and, shortly after, received intelligence of the death of Dr. Oudney, at Murmur. Notwithstanding, however, the disheartening circumstances attending his former excursions, he, on his recovery, joined another expedition against the Begharmies, in the hope of making himself further acquainted with their country; but a temporary defeat of the Bornouese, whom he accompanied, rendering it unsafe for him to continue with them, he once more returned to Kouka, whence, after an interview with Mr. Clapperton, then in a very ill state of

health, he set out, by way of Lari and Woodie, for Tripoli, carrying with him several presents from the Sheikh of Bornou to the King of England. On the 25th of December, 1824, the fourth Christmas-day he had passed in Africa, he arrived at Temesheen; on the 5th of January, 1825, reached Sockna; and, on the 26th of the same month, entered Tripoli; whence, in a few days, he embarked for Leghorn, and arrived in England, accompanied by Captain Clapperton, on the 1st of the following June. "Our long absence," he says, in his journal, "from civilized society, had an effect on our manner of speaking, which, though we were unconscious of the change, occasioned the remarks of our friends. Even in common conversation our tone was so loud as almost to alarm those whom we addressed; and it was some weeks before we could moderate our voices so as to bring them in harmony with the confined space in which we were now exercising them."

From the moment of his arrival at home, he became an object of public interest and private regard; which, on the publication of his travels and discoveries, were increased to a peculiar degree; Earl Bathurst frequently invited him to his table; and, in testimony of the high sense he entertained of his courage and intelligence, offered to his acceptance "a new and experimental appointment to Sierra Leone, just then decided on, at the suggestion of General Turner, then governor of the colony." Accordingly, he was appointed superintendent, or director-general, of the liberated African department at Sierra Leone, and the coasts of Africa; and, on the 8th of December, 1826, having, in the previous month, been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, he embarked for that colony, where he arrived in the January of the following year. After occupying some months in surveying the vicinity of Free Town, he, in the latter end of 1827, made a voyage of inspection to Fernando Po; on the coast of which, he met with Richard Lander, who informed him of the death of Captain Clapperton, intelligence of which he was the first to send to England. In May, 1828, he returned to Free Town, where he received the king's warrant, appointing him lieutenant-governor of the colony, and shortly afterwards held a levee, a few days after which he was attacked by the fever of the country; but hopes were entertained of his recovery till the 8th of June, when the symptoms became so malignant that he died on the following day.

Few men have gone to their graves more lamented by friends and acquaintances than Lieutenant-colonel Denham; his lively, buoyant, and benevolent heart, and the ardent and confident spirit with which he undertook his useful, but hazardous enterprises, have endeared him not only to the people of his own civilized country, but to many a barbarous chief and wild savage of the remote and pestilential countries he visited in the course of his wanderings. His journal contains an account of perils and adven

tures which, in the days of Bruce, would have been denounced as incredible; it is, nevertheless, written in a simple and impressive style, that seems to warrant its truth; and the most eccentric and extraordinary facts are accompanied with observations too reverent and profound to admit of ridicule at, or a question as to, the truth of them. An anonymous biographer thus concludes his memoir:-"If this sense of amply doing the duty he was sent out to perform, animating the natural strength of his fine constitution, could have kept the warm blood unvenomed in that benevolent heart; could have preserved the bright health which one hour glowed on that manly cheek, and in the next was extinguished in livid paleness; if all this could have sufficed to compass with security the life of man in that colony, Denham would not have died! But the good, the brave, has indeed fallen

APTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON, son of a surgeon at Annan, in Scotland, and one of twenty-one children, was born in that town in the year 1788. At an early age, he was placed under the care of Mr. Downie, a celebrated mathematician, under whom he made himself acquainted with practical mathematics, including navigation and trigonometry. In 1805, he became cabinboy to Captain Smith, commander of a trading ship called the Postlethwaite, in which he made many voyages to North Ame rica, and distinguished himself by his skill and intrepidity. Being at Liverpool, at a time when rock salt was very dear, and with which his vessel was laden, he was detected bringing on shore a few pounds of it in his handkerchief, and was immediately seized by the custom-house officers, who released him only on his consenting to go on board the Tender, in which he was conveyed to the Renommée frigate, at the Nore, and ranked As a man before the mast. On representing his situation, however, to a friend at Annan who wrote to Captain Briggs, the commander of the Clo