vary their mode of dreffing both animal food and grain; occafionally boiling, broiling, or roafting the former, and fimply broiling the latter; or bruifing it into flour, and boiling it up with milk. Among the luxries of the appetite, tobacco feems to hold the highest eftimation. Both men and women are paffionately fond of drawing the fmoke of this narcotic herb through water, poured ufually into the horn of the cow or the eland, through the fide of which the tube of the tobaccopipe is inferted. Of fouff they are equally fond. This article is compofed of a variety of fimulant plants, dried and rubbed into duft, which is ufually mixed with wood afhes; of this mixture they take a quantity in the palm of the hand, and draw it into the noftrils through a quill or reed, till the tears trickle down their cheeks. Children even of four or five years of age may be observed taking snuff in this manBer. Their bodies they carefully ornament with devices painted with white pipe-clay and red ochre; their hair they fometimes cut in a peculiar manner, leaving a high tuft on the crown of the head, not unlike the fashionable crops of the present day, to which is frequently ap pended the tail of a hare, or a diftended bladder of this or fome other. fmall animal; or the wings of the Numidian crane. are fixed erect on each fide of the head. A triangular plate of copper is almost invari ably fufpended from one ear, and the teeth and the claws of lions and leopards are worn as necklaces. To thefe fpoils of the chase, the men add rings of ivory, cut from the elephant's tufk, round the upper part of the arm; and the women ufe thongs of leather, fometimes plain, and fometimes decorated with beads and bits of copper, round the legs and arms. Every man had a knife flung about the neck by a leather thong, and fitted into a fcabbard. The blade is generally about fix inches Tong, an inch broad, rounded at the end, and brought to an edge on each fide; the handle fometimes of wood, and fometimes of ivory; in the latter cafe, it is ufually carved into the fhape of the elephant's probofcis. The party had with them a quantity of common knives intended for barter, but the Boofhuanas held them very cheap, observing that their own were at least twice as good, because they were made to cut with two edges, whereas thofe of the white people only cut with one. The knife, in fact, is fo useful an inftrument to fuch as live by the chafe and on roots, that it may almost be confidered as an article of the first neceffity, and is valued accordingly. A Boofbuana is accounted wealthy according to the number of cattle, knives, and beads he may poffefs: these are the money and the currency of Leetakoo.P. 395. 396. The government is of a patriarchal kind, the chief or king ruling by his perfonal authority with the tribe. He names his fucceffor, and, on occafions of moment, confults the elders, who give him their own fentiments, and communicate to him those of the people. It appears that they have no fyftem of religious inflitution, no form of public worship, and fcarcely any notions of #eligion appear to have been traced among them. We are indeed told, told, that they circumcife their male children, and dance in a cir-. cle the whole night of the new moon; and these practices are imputed to fome religious motives, though we cannot difcover for what reafons. Mr Barrow, in this interefting part of his abridgement, forfakes the subject; and, instead of telling us precifely what facts the commiffioners' journal records, he gets into a declamation about thunder fhowers, good and evil fpirits, Jupiter, &c. with his ufual love of fine writing, and his usual inability to write well. All his fentences on this topic are of a vague, fermonizing fpecies, and bear no reference to the matter in hand. Indeed, were we to give our author a general advice for his goversment, in the great number of books which he writes, it fhould be, to curb his foaring genius; to keep himself a little more common, on common occafions; to learn, that true fenfe is fhewn by him who does ordinary things in an ordinary way: and. we should moreover infinuate, that his own flights are not only misplaced, but clumsy. It is impoffible to contemplate the picture of high comparative civilization which these accounts prefent to us of the Boofhuana nation, without remarking how important a confirmation is derived from it, to all the enlightened and benevolent views of our best statesmen, regarding the prefent condition and future improvement of Africa. As we approach the interior, it would appear, of that vaft continent, and leave the fpots most favourable to civilization and improvement, we gradually come among tribes more refined and happy than those who inhabit the maritime diftricts. In other countries, the fea coaft is the scene of cultivation and wealth; it is the region of manners, of fciences, of arts. In Africa alone, the coaft lies under a curfe; it is covered with darkness, and a prey to disorder and wretchedness. Commerce, the great refiner and improver of other nations, is known to the tribes of the African continent only as the confummation of all evil-the great engine of barbarifm-the arch enemy of man. To fee him in his natural ftate, you must feek the places leaft favourable to his existence; you must leave the coast of the fea, and the banks of rivers, and traverse sandy wastes, which the enterprize of commercial avarice has never paffed. In thofe deferts, you find, at vaft diftances from the abodes of other nations, and protected, by the furrounding fands, from the noxious intercourfe of Europeans, fpots of country made fertile by the industry of Africans-islands in the ftormy wafte,' inhabited by a people, innocent when we cannot reach them to corrupt their morals-and happy, at fuch a diftance as protects them from our violence and craft. Let it never be forgotten, that whether you penetrate into those remote countries from the western or the fouthern coaft; whether whether you trace the negro or the Hottentot race through their various gradations, you conftantly find both in the enjoyment of more felicity, and the practice of more virtue, in proportion as you recede from thofe places where they are fubjected to communication with the European colonifts and traders, to the horrors of the flave trade, and the brutal oppreffions of the Cape fettlers. Thefe obfervations derive confiderable illuftration from the very judicious statements of Mr Barrow on the subject, contained in the following paffages, which we extract the more willingly, because they do him much more credit for liberality than many of his general reflections are wont to do. To know that fuch focieties exift in this miferable quarter of the globe, as those above defcribed, muft be peculiarly interesting to thofe who have long been exerting their eloquence and their influence to me. liorate the condition of the fuffering African. They furnish a complete refutation of an opinion that has induftriously been inculcated, and which unfortunately is but too prevalent, that flavery is his unalterable lot, and that it would ftill exift, as it always had existed, were Europeans to discontinue their abominable traffic in these unhappy creatures. Such an opinion, in juftification of a crime against humanity, is just on a level with that of a Dutch boor, who told Governor Janfen, on remonftrating with him on his cruelty towards the Hottentots, that there could be no harm in maltreating those heathens, as the women evidently carried about with them the mark which God fet upon Cain. Not one of the tribes of natives between the Cape of Good Hope and the extreme point that has hitherto been difcovered in the interior of Southern Africa-not a fingle creature, from the needy and favage Bosjesman to the more civilized Boofbuana, has the moft diftant idea of a ftate of flavery. On the contrary, they have all been found in the full enjoyment of unbounded freedom. There is no compulfion ufed among thefe people, to oblige an individual to remain even in the horde to which he belongs, contrary to his inclination; being always at liberty to depart with his property, and join another fociety that may fuit him better. Even in war, the only booty is the cattle of the enemy. How far to the northward the country continues to be inhabited by free Kaffer tribes, remains yet to be determined; but the extent, it is to be feared, is not very great. It appears that the Portugueze flave-merchants have at length effected a communication across the con tinent, from Mofambique to their fettlements of Congo and Loango on the oppofite coaft; from which it may be inferred, that the line of flavery extends at least as far to the fouthward as the twentieth degree on the eastern, and to the fifteenth or fixteenth on the western coaft. It is probable, however, that, in the central parts of Southern Africa, the land of freedom may ftretch much beyond the parallels where flave.' ry prevails on the coaft. The Barroloes, from the above account, cannot be placed to the fouthward of the tropic of Capricorn; and it is pot very probable that a nation having made fuch progrefs as they are represented reprefented to have done, fhould border immediately on a nation of flaves. Thus, though Soffala, Mofambique, Quiloa, and Melinda, on the eastern coaft, and Congo, Loango, Benguela, and Angola, on the western, have long been doomed to all the evils and horrors of flavery, yet it is poffible that the Biri and Baroras of the charts, in the heart of the continent, may be a continuation of the fame free and happy people as the Boofbuanas and Barroloos, the former of whom extend eafterly even to the bay of De la Goa, where the Portugueze have in vain endeavoured to introduce among them a traffic in flaves. Luckily for the Kaffer nation, neither the Portugueze on one fide, nor the Cape boors on the other, have yet been able to convince them, that one set of men were created to be fold like cattle for the pleasure and the profit of another.' P. 405.-6. After refiding fome time at Leetakoo the capital, the commiffioners made a tour through feveral diftricts of the Boofhuana country, and vifited a number of other towns. Every where they found the fame orderly, innocent, and happy people. But it is very much to be lamented, that they fuffered themselves to be deterred from proceeding into the country of the Barroloos, lying to the north of the Boofhuanas. This they very impru dently, we had almost faid thoughtlessly defifted from, in confequence of certain reprefentations of the King of Leetakoo, who appears to have prevented their journey from motives of policy. Afterwards, when it was too late to return, they found that he had imposed on their credulity, that the Barroloos were the best disposed and most hofpitable of all the African tribes,-much more numerous and civilized than the Boofhuanas,—more wealthy and ingenious. They were faid to have made no fmall progrefs in the arts, to have furnaces for fmelting copper and iron, -to be skilful in carving ivory and hard woods,-to have one eity fo large that it was a day's journey to walk through it. The commiffioners were very much to blame, when, within two day's march of fo interefting a country, they ftopt fhort on account of the King of the Boofhuanas telling them fome ftories, under circumftances which, even to themfelves, muft have given the whole a very fufpicious appearance (See p. 400.) Men who fuffer themfelves fo eafily to be taken in or intimidated, are not made of the ftuff of which travellers fhould be moulded, who undertake to explore unknown countries. And Meffrs. Trutter and Somerville were the more culpable on this occafion, that they not only were called upon to push as far as possible our knowledge of thofe new tribes, but bore a commiffion from the government to effect a certain purpofe, fubfervient to the public intereft. Their imprudent conduct not only fruftrated the juft curiofity of their countrymen, but rendered nearly abortive the whole object of their expedition. They They returned nearly by the fame route by which they had gone, and the narrative of their adventures does not merit fur ther abridgement. It is interfperfed with incidents of a common defeription, and only diverfified by the account of the adventures of Stephanos, a Polifh refugee, who, after committing all forts of crimes, fet up for a robber; which trade not thriving well in fo poor a country, he exchanged it for that of a prophet; perfuaded the natives that he was the founder of a new religion, and then fet up for a god at once, till the purfuit of the officers of justice forced him to fly and refume his old and human vocation of a freebooter. The latter part of this work is, with the exception of this man's adventures, naturally dull; and Mr Barrow has thought fit to render it ftill more fo, by introducing a long digreffion on the practice of pithing cattle, or killing them by piercing the fpinal marrow. This he reprobates and refutes, bý quoting long reports of experiments made in our naval victualling houfes; from all which he draws the following patriotic and fentimental inference, that it is to be hoped that, while Britons have firmness of nerve to face an ox, and ftrength of muscle to grasp the pole-axe,' they will never flaughter their cattle by the new mode of pithing. The travellers returned to the Cape fafely about the middle of April, having been abfent on their painful and perilous expedi tion upwards of fix months. ART. XVI. A brief Account of the Proceedings of the Committee appointed in the Year 1795 by the yearly Meeting of Friends of Penfylvania, New Jersey, &c. for promoting the Improvement and gradual Civilization of the Indian Natives. Phillips & Fardon. 1806. London. THE HE Indians of North America, like almost all the favage tribes, among whom more civilized nations have fettled, owe very few obligations to their European neighbours. After attacking them in open war, exterminating a great part of their race, attempting to enflave the reft, and, either by violence or by fraud, getting poffeffion of their lands, the new fettlers have always multiplied fo rapidly, and fpread fo regularly over the face of the American forefts, that the natives, whofe only fubfiftence was derived from the chafe, have foon found their fole occupation becoming more and more unproductive, as the encroachments of the Europeans advanced. While the diminution of their fupplies was thus fowing the feeds of decay, the leffons |