any person, who has not a competent knowledge of the subject; and I fear that colonel Mooring and Mr. Thompson were deceived; for a circumstance of so much importance to the individual, and the public, could not have remained enveloped in obscurity to this day. For the government of those who are unacquainted with the determinate characters of antimonial ore, I will subjoin a short account of that which is most commonly found, and from which the antimony of commerce is obtained. Its geognostic situation is always in veins, both in primitive and transition mountains, it is generally accompanied with one or more of the following ores: lead glance, martial pyrites, sulphuret of zinc and arsenic, and with carbonate of lime and quartz. Its colour is generally a light lead gray, and it not unfrequently displays a tempered steel-coloured tarnish, its fracture is brilliant, and exhibits a broad or narrow stallitece radiation, it is a degree harder than black lead, and like it, flies off in small particles when cut with a knife, it is easily melted, and emits a sulphureous smell, accompanied with white smoke; if its external characters should be insufficient to develop it, let a small quantity of the ore be dissolved in nitric acid; into the solution, pour rain or river water, if it is antimony, a considerable white precipitate will be formed. FOR THE PORT FOLIO. DISCOVERY OF A REAL AND ENTIRE MAMMOTH. THE account of this interesting discovery is given by a Mr. Adams, an Englishman, long resident at St. Petersburg, whose love of science was not to be controled by dangers and difficulties, and all the horrors of a distant journey to the frozen regions of Asiatic Russia. Having remained a few days at Jakousk on the river Lena, and provided him self with recommendatory letters to the agents of government, and to some wealthy traders in fur, whom the love of gain keeps wandering for years on the borders of the Frozen Ocean, in the most uncomfortable of all climates, he proceeded to descend the river, sometimes in boats, and sometimes on a reindeer, which he describes as the most disagreeable substitute for a horse he was ever condemned to. The people inhabiting those wild regions where the Lena falls into the sea, call themselves Tongoux, and their country Angerdam. To the north of the embouchure is an Istmus, which, though faintly marked on our maps, is of considerable extent, and here it is usual for the neighbouring tribes to assemble during the short summer they are favoured with in quest of fish, and of mammoth teeth, or horns, (they may be called either) which are frequently found scattered upon the strand. It was in one of these excursions that a Tongoux chief, called Soumachoff, perceived in the summer of 1799, an unknown mass, incased toward the upper extremity of a block of ice, which had been thrown ashore, and left by the waves. In the succeeding summer he could distinguish one side, and afterwards the feet of an animal of great size, which he soon conjectured to be the mammoth, but on his return home to communicate the good news, the seers of the tribe alarmed him by denouncing the vengeance of heaven, if he proceeded any further in his enterprise. A similar monster had appeared but once before, they said, and all who had presumed to examine it, and thus pry into the secrets of nature, had fallen victims to a contagious disorder; as all wisdom and all power of communication with the gods in these barbarous countries resides in a few old men, Soumachoff reproached himself with his impiety, and had nearly died of a violent illness, with which he was shortly after seized. Finding himself alive however at the end of five years, and that his hunting and fishing excursions had been more than usually successful, he determined to pursue his projects in defiance of the seers. It fortunately happened too, that the interval of summer having been longer than usual in the year 1804, the ice immediately about the mammoth was melted, and the body of the animal, being extricated from the case where it had been, for many centuries probably, contained, and impelled by its enormous weight, rolled down upon the strand below, where Soumachoff and his friends were assembled; delighted with their prize, they immediately proceeded to saw off the teeth, which weighed upwards of four hundred pounds, and were sold for fifty roubles, and the carcass was then abandoned to those who chose to feed their dogs with it, and to the wild beasts of the desert. It was two years after this, in the year 1806, that Mr. Adams arrived at the spot, where the skeleton of the animal covered by the hide was still extended. His first care was to have the hide taken off, and the united efforts of ten men were necessary to drag it along, and stretch it open to the sun. He then separated the bones in such a manner as to be able to put them together again, and returned after a few excursions into the neighbouring country, which he has related in a very interesting manner, perfectly repaid, he says, for all the fatigue he had undergone, and the expense he had incurred. The mammoth in question appears to have been nine feet high, and fourteen feet in length, with a long and shaggy mane, but with no tail as the elephant has, and differing in some other less important particulars from that animal; they are probably varieties of one species; the bones of its head weighed four hundred and fifty pounds. I shall conclude the very imperfect extract I have given of Mr. Adams's account in his own words: "On comparing the mammoth in my possession with the description of the one discovered near New-York, there appears to be a considerable difference between them: this last, to judge by the indication of its teeth, must have been a carniverous animal, which was not the case with mine; the thick fur of mine would imply that it had been a native of the colder regions, but still it would be difficu to conceive how it became incased in ice. As to the remains of mammoths which have been discovered in the southern parts of Europe, the probability is, that they have been transported there at a very distant period by the violence of some great inundation." It is added in a note, that Mr. Adams proposes to sell his skeleton of a mammoth, and to apply the proceeds to the expenses of an excursion which he hopes to make to the islands of Jachou and of Sichou, not without some expectation of finding there a part of the American continent. FOR THE PORT FOLIO. THE TABLE D'HOTE.-NO. II. Aversion to Matrimony. MANY of the young females in Greenland have such a deep-rooted abhorrence to matrimony, that when they are much importuned by suitors, and are afraid of the compulsory interference of their parents, they elope into the woods, and cut off their hair. The disgrace attendant on the loss of this elegant ornament of the head, is so great in that island, that it effectually secures them from further importunity, by VOL. III. P scaring away their lovers. Our American ladies cannot be charged with such an odious violation of the first and most imperious command issued by the Almighty, in the twenty-eighth verse of the first chapter of Genesis. Education epitomized. THERE are numberless books extant on the subject of education, and many of them possessed of very considerable merit. I have, however, lately met with two lines of a venerable old writer, which appear to me to embrace the quintessence of the moral education of children. They are in a work of great merit, which is very scarce, a copy whereof is to be found in our city library. It is called "Introductio ad Prudentiam-by Thomas Fuller." Be it observed, that although the title is in Latin, the work is in English. The lines are-" Let your first lesson to your children be OBEDIENCE. The second may be what you please." I should consider it an affront to the reader's understanding to suppose a comment necessary. A cruel fair one. PERHAPS a more wanton exposure of the life of a brave man, and a faithful lover, has never occurred, than in the case I subjoin. In the reign of Francis I, M. de Lorges, a man of great merit, paid his addresses for a considerable time to a young lady, by whom they were favourably received. The lovers were present at a fight of lions, given on some grand occasion by the monarch. The lady, with a hideous degree of levity, folly, and cruelty, threw her glove into the arena, and told her lover, if his affection for her was sincere, he must go and bring it to her. Without a moment's hesitation, he undauntedly descended-put his cap over one hand-and took his sword in the other. Very fortunately the lions made no attempt to molest him; and he was therefore enabled to obey the hard-hearted fair without injury. When he returned, he threw the glove at her with a high degree of resentment for the wanton and unfeeling manner in which she had exposed his life to such imminent hazard. He never renewed his suit. A striking contrast. To the preceding story I shall furnish a very remarkable and striking contrast. About the beginning of the last century, when it was fashionable in Spain for gentlemen of the first respectability to take a part in the bull fights, as a point of honour, a young cavalier having learned that a number of the most ferocious bulls of the mountains were to be exhibited at a bull feast, resolved to engage with one of them in honour of a young lady, to whom he was betrothed. She used every possible means to prevent him-begged, prayed, and implored. It was all in vain. He was inflexibly determined to carry his purpose into execution. On the day appointed, he advanced into the arena, and had hardly begun the attack, when an elegant stripling rushed in and stepped between him and the bull. In a few minutes the bold assailant received a mortal wound, and in falling discovered so much of the visage, as satisfied the distressed cavalier that it was his beloved fair one, who in the fruitless attempt to rescue him from destruction, had fallen a victim herself. He then made a still more desperate attack upon the bull, which he killed-but in the combat received several mortal wounds. He was taken away, and laid in the same chamber with the faithful but unfortunate fair. They were both consigned to one common grave. Sense and understanding. THERE appears considerable confusion in the use of these terms. They are sometimes employed as if they were synonimous-but generally as conveying meanings very different. The latter, I believe, is the correct mode. So far from their being synonimous, or the possession of the one quality implying the co-existence of the other, I am persuaded that the instances of persons being endowed with the one, and being nearly or totally devoid of the other, are much more numerous than those in which they are combined together. I have in vain sought in Piozzi's British Synonimy, for any explanation that would reflect light upon the subject. By sense is implied that sober quality, which is sometimes styled prudence, or discretion, and whose operations are principally directed to just opinions, and correct conduct, in the common affairs of life. It is likewise termed good sense, and common sense. Understanding is a faculty of a higher order. It implies considerable intellectual endowments-quick perceptions-nice discrimination -brilliant imagination, &c. &c. To exemplify this theory. A man may not only possess intellectual powers of the first class, but have those powers cultivated to the highest degree by education, and intercourse with society-he may be profoundly skilled in all the arts and sciences-be a first rate poet and painter-be equal as an orator to Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Burke, or Curran-and yet be so totally void of sense, as to render himself not merely ridiculous, but contemptible. He may, in fine, exemplify what the witty Rochester wrote of Charles II: Who never said a foolish thing— |