strange modes of life, with descriptions of natural objects and magnificent scenery. The volume fills 687 pages, and is illustrated with maps by Arrowsmith, and a number of lithographs. The style is simple, and a little more practice at book-making would have enabled the traveller to condense his materials and present them in a better shape; but the solid value of the work is not surpassed by any book of travels of modern date. Dr Livingstone was admirably fitted for his mission. He was early inured to hardship. From his wages as a poor weaver, he put himself to college, and studied medicine. His ambition was to become a missionary to China, but the opium war was unfavourable, and he proceeded, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, to Africa. The most remote station from the Cape then occupied by our missionaries was Kuruman or Latakoo. Thither our author repaired, and excluding himself for six months from all European society, he gained a knowledge of the language of the Bechuanas, their habits, laws, &C., which proved of incalculable advantage to him. The Bechuana people were ruled over by a chief named Sechele, who was converted to Christianity. The people are social and kindly, and Dr Livingstone and his wife set about instructing them, using only mild persuasion. Their teaching did good in preventing wars and calling the better feelings into play, but polygamy was firmly established amongst them: they considered it highly cruel to turn off their wives. They excused themselves by thinking they were an inferior race. In a strain of natural pathos they used to say, 'God made black men first, and did not love us as he did the white men. He made you beautiful, and gave you clothing, and guns, and gunpowder, and horses, and wagons, and many other things about which we know nothing. But towards us he had no heart. He gave us nothing except the assegai (with which they kill game), and cattle, and rain-making, and he did not give us hearts like yours.' The rain-making is a sort of charm-an incantation by which the rain-doctors, in seasons of drought, imagine they can produce moisture. The station ultimately chosen by Dr Livingstone as the centre of operations was about three hundred miles north of Kuruman. In one of his expeditions he was accompanied by two English travellers, Major Vardon and Mr Oswell;* and the party discovered the great lake Ngami, about seventy miles in circumference, till then unknown except to the natives. About one hundred and thirty miles north-east from this point the travellers came upon the river Zambesi, a noble stream in the centre of the continent. In June 1852, he commenced another expedition, the greatest he had yet attempted, which lasted four years. In six months he reached the capital of the Makololo territory, Linyanti, which is twelve hundred miles above the latitude of Cape Town. The people were desirous of obtaining a direct trade with the sea-coast, and with an escort of twenty-seven men he set out to discover the route thither. The traveller's outfit was small enough: [An African Explorer's Outfit.] We carried one small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, filled with spare shirting, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilised life, and others in a bag, which were expected to wear out on the way; * Another English traveller, MR ROUALEYN GORDON CUMMING, penetrated into this region, following a wild sporting career, and has published Five Fears of a Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa, two volumes, 1850. another of the same size for medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a Nautical Almanac, Thomson's Logarithm Tables, and a Bible; a fourth box contained a magic lantern, which we found of much use. The sextant and artificial horizon, thermometer and compasses, were carried apart. My ammunition was distributed in portions through the whole luggage, so that, if an accident should befall one part, we could still have others to fall back upon. Our chief hopes for food were upon that, but in case of failure I took about twenty pounds of beads, worth forty shillings, which still remained of the stock I brought from Cape Town; a small gipsy tent, just sufficient to sleep in; a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse-rug as a bed. As I had always found that the art of successful travel consisted in taking as few 'impediments' as possible, and not forgetting to carry my wits about me, the outfit was rather spare, and intended to be still more so when we should come to leave the canoes. it injudicious to adopt this plan, but I had a secret Some would consider conviction that if I did not succeed it would not be for lack of the 'knickknacks' advertised as indispensable for travellers, but from want of 'pluck,' or because a large through whose country we wished to pass. array of baggage excited the cupidity of the tribes They ascended the rivers Chobe and Leeambye, and stopped at the town of Shesheke, where Dr Livingstone preached to audiences of five and six hundred. After reaching a point 800 miles north of Linyanti, he turned to the west, and finally reached Loanda, on the shores of the Atlantic. The incidents of this long journey are, of course, varied. The fertility of the country-the Barotze district, and the valley of the Quango, with grass reaching two feet above the traveller's head, the forests, &c., are described at length. There appeared to be no want of food, although the amount of cultivated land is as nothing with what might be brought under the plough. In this central region the people are not all quite black, some inclining to bronze-the dialects spoken glide into one another. Dr Livingstone confirms the statements by Mr Roualeyn Gordon Cumming with respect to the vast amount of game and the exciting hunting scenes in that African territory. The following is a wholesale mode of destroying game practised by the Bechuanas: [Hunting on a Great Scale.] Very great numbers of the large game-buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessébes, kamas or hartebeests, kokongs or gnus, pallas, rhinoceroses, &c.-congregated at some fountains near Kolobeng, and the trap called hopo was The hopo consists of two hedges in the form of the constructed in the lands adjacent for their destruction. letter V, which are very high and thick near the angle. Instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to form a lane of about fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen in breadth and length. Trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the pit, and more especially over that nearest the lane where the animals are expected to leap in, and over that furthest from the lane where it is supposed they will attempt to escape after they are in. The trees form an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible. The whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit like a concealed and about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe pitfall. As the hedges are frequently about a mile long making a circle three or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening, and gradually closing up, are almost sure to enclose a large body of game. Driving it up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo, men secreted there throw their javelins into the affrighted herds, and on the animals rush to the opening presented at the converging hedges, and into the pit till that is full of a living mass. Some escape by running over the others, as a Smithfield market dog does over the sheep's backs. It is a frightful scene. The men, wild with excitement, spear the lovely animals with mad delight: others of the poor creatures, borne down by the weight of their dead and dying companions, every now and then make the whole mass heave in their smothering agonies. Dr Livingstone left Loanda on 20th September 1854, and returned to Linyanti, which was reached in the autumn of 1855. Excited by the account of what wonders they had seen, as told by the men who accompanied Dr Livingstone to the shores of the Atlantic, the Makololo people flocked to his standard in great numbers when he announced an expedition to the east coast of Africa. With a party of one hundred and fourteen picked men of the tribe, he started for the Portuguese colony of Killimane, on the east coast, in November 1855. The chief supplied oxen, and there was always abundance of game. He found that British manufactures penetrate into all regions. [English Manufactures in the Interior of South Africa.] When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo, one of my men picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture, and we were informed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross in coming to Masiko. Their visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks so carefully. These Mambari are very enterprising merchants; when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods into the heart of Africa: these cotton prints look so wonderful that the Makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands. On questioning the Mambari, they were answered that English manufactures came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore. To Africans our cotton-mills are fairy dreams. How can the irons spin, weave, and print so beautifully?' Our country is like what Taprobane was to our ancestors--a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond, muslin, and peacocks. An attempt at explanation of our manufactures usually elicits the expression, Truly, ye are gods!' After a journey of six months the party reached Killimane, where Dr Livingstone remained till July, and then sailed for England. One of the Makololo people would not leave him; 'Let me die at your feet,' he said; but the various objects on board the ship, and the excitement of the voyage proved too much for the reason of the poor savage; he leaped overboard, and was drowned. The great object of Dr Livingstone is to turn the interior of this fertile country and the river Zambesi, which he discovered, into a scene of British commerce. The Portuguese are near the main entrance to the new central region, but they evince a liberal and enlightened spirit, and are likely to invite mercantile enterprise up the Zambesi, by offering facilities to those who may push commerce into the regions lying far beyond their territory. The 'white men welcomed by the natives, who are anxious to engage in commerce. Their country is well adapted for cotton, and there are hundreds of miles of fertile land unoccupied. The region near the coast is unhealthy, and the first object must be to secure 800 are means of ready transit to the high lands on the borders of the central basin, which are comparatively healthy. The river Zambesi has not been surveyed, but during four or five months there is abundance of water for a large vessel. There are three hundred miles of navigable river, then a rapid intervenes, after which there is another reach of three hundred miles. Dr Livingstone proposes the formation of stations on the Zambesi beyond the Portuguese territory, but having communication through them with the coast. Shortly after the publication of his Researches, the doctor set out on another and more imposing expedition to the country of the Makololo. He reached the boundaries of civilisation in safety, whence he proceeded to the scene of his labours and triumphs with high hopes and undaunted courage. It may be long ere we learn the success of the mission, and we can only bid him God-speed on his patriotic enterprise. THE ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. Expeditions to the arctic regions were continued after the fruitless voyage of Sir John Ross, 1829-33. The interval of 160 miles between Point Barrow, and the furthest point to which Captain Franklin penetrated, was, in 1837, surveyed by MR THOMAS SIMPSON and the servants of the Hudson's Bay lent their valuable assistance to complete the Company. The latter had, with great generosity, geography of that region, and Mr Simpson was the summer of 1837, he, with his senior officer, Mr enthusiastically devoted to the same object. In Dease, started from the Great Slave Lake, following the steps of Franklin as far as the point called Franklin's Farthest, whence they traced the remainder of the coast to the westward to Point Barrow, by which they completed our knowledge of this coast the whole way west of the Coppermine River, as far as Behring's Straits. Wintering at the northeast angle of the Great Bear Lake, the party descended the Coppermine River, and followed the coast eastwards as far as the mouth of the Great Fish River, discovered by Back in 1834. The expedition comprised the navigation of a tempestuous ocean beset with ice, for a distance exceeding 1400 geographical or 1600 statute miles, in open boats, together with all the fatigues of long land-journeys and the perils of the climate.' In 1839 the Geographical Society of London rewarded Mr Simpson with a medal, for advancing almost to completion the solution of the great problem of the configuration of the northern shore of the North American continent.' While returning to Europe in June 1840, Mr Simpson died, it is supposed, by his own hand in a paroxysm of insanity, after shooting two of the four men who accompanied him from the Red River colony. Mr Simpson was a native of Dingwall, in Ross-shire, and at the time of his melancholy death was only in his thirty-second year. His Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America, effected by the Officers of the Hudson's Bay Company during the years 1836-39, was published in 1843. In 1845 the Admiralty commissioned two ships, the Erebus and Terror, to prosecute the problem of the North-west Passage. Captain Sir John Franklin had returned from Tasmania, and the expedition was placed under charge of that experienced and skilful commander, Captain Crozier being the second in command. The expedition was seen in Davis Strait by some whalers, and it was discovered that they passed the winter of 1845-46 in a small cove between Cape Riley and Beechey Island, facing [Graves of the English Seamen in the Polar Regions.] The graves, like all that Englishmen construct, were scrupulously neat. Go where you will over the globe's surface-afar in the east, or afar in the west, down among the coral-girded isles of the South Sea, or here, where the grim North frowns on the sailor's grave -you will always find it alike; it is the monument raised by rough hands but affectionate hearts over the last home of their messmates; it breathes of the quiet churchyard in some of England's many nooks, where each had formed his idea of what was due to departed worth; and the ornaments that nature decks herself with, even in the desolation of the frozen zone, were carefully culled to mark the dead seaman's home. The good taste of the officers had prevented the general simplicity of an oaken head and footboard to each of the graves being marred by any long and childish epitaphs, or the doggrel of a lower-deck poet, and the three inscriptions were as follows: Lancaster Sound. In this spot were found remains of abundance of animal life in the polar regions is the observatory, carpenters' and armourers' working- remarkable. Rein-deer, hares, musk oxen, with places, old clothing, &c., and, lastly, the graves of salmon, and other fish were found, and furnished three of the crew of the Erebus and Terror. The provisions to the exploring ice-parties. In 1854 Dr latter interesting memento is thus noticed in Stray Rae learned from a party of Esquimaux that in the Leaves from an Arctic Journal, by Lieutenant S. spring of 1850 about forty white men were seen on OSBORN, 1852. the shore of King William's Land. They appeared thin, and intimated by signs that their ships had been lost in the ice, and that they were travelling to where they hoped to find deer to shoot. They were dragging a boat and sledges. The Esquimaux further stated that later the same season, before the ice broke up, the bodies of thirty white men were discovered on the continent a day's journey to the west of the Great Fish River, and five more bodies on an adjacent island. In 1857, Lady Franklin organised another searching expedition, and Captain M'Clintock, with a crew of twenty-four men, sailed in the Fox yacht. They spent the winter of 1857-58 in the ice, drifting about 1200 miles. In the spring they resumed operations, and in August reached Brentford Bay, near which the ship was laid up for winter-quarters. In the spring of 1859, Captain M'Clintock and Lieutenant Hobson undertook sledge expeditions, embracing a complete survey of the coasts. At Point Victory, upon the north-west coast of King William's Island, Lieutenant Hobson found under a cairn a record, dated April 25, 1848, signed by Captains Crozier and Fitzjames, stating that the Erebus and Terror were abandoned on the 22d of April 1848, in the ice, and that the survivors, in all one hundred and five, under the command of Captain Crozier, were proceeding to the Great Fish River. Sir John Franklin had died on the 11th of June 1847. The unfortunate party had expected to be able to penetrate on foot southwards to some of the most northerly settlements of the Hudson's Bay Company. Traces of their progress were further found a large boat fitted on a sledge, with quantities of clothing, cocoa, tea, tobacco, and fuel, with two guns and plenty of ammunition. Five watches, some plate, knives, a few religious books, and other relics were discovered; but no journals or pocket-books. The gallant band, enfeebled by three years' residence in arctic latitudes, disappointment, and suffering, had no doubt succumbed to the cold and fatigue, sinking down by the way, as the Esquimaux had reported to Dr Rae, and finding graves amidst the eternal frost and snow. 'Sacred to the Memory of Wm. Braine, R.M., of H.M.S. Erebus, died April 3, 1846, aged 32 years. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve."-Josh. xxiv. 15. Sacred to the Memory of J. Torrington, who departed this life, January 1, 1846, on board of H.M.S. Terror, aged 20 years. Sacred to the Memory of J. Hartwell, A.B., of H.M.S. Erebus, died January 4, 1846, aged 25 years. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways."-Haggai i. 7.' I thought I traced in the epitaphs over the graves of the men from the Erebus the manly and Christian spirit of Franklin. In the true spirit of chivalry, he, their captain and leader, led them amidst dangers and unknown difficulties with iron will stamped upon his brow, but the words of meekness, gentleness, and truth were his device. Three years elapsed without any intelligence of the voyagers, and the Admiralty organised searching expeditions by sea and land. Of these we have interesting accounts in the Narrative of an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847, by JOHN RAE, 1850; Journal of a Voyage in 1850–51, performed by the Lady Franklin and Sophia under command of Mr W. Penny, by P. C. SUTHERLAND, M.D., two volumes, 1852; Papers and Despatches relating to the Arctic-searching Expeditions of 1850-1-2, by JAMES MANGLES, R.N., 1852; Second Voyage of the Prince Albert in Search of Sir John Franklin, by W. KENNEDY, 1853; The Last of the Arctic Voyages, being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance, under the command of SIR EDWARD BELCHER, C.B., in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1852-3-4, two volumes, 1855; The Discovery of the North-west Passage, by H.M.S. Investigator, CAPTAIN R. M'CLURE, 1850-54, published in 1856. The last of these voyages was the most important. Captain M'Clure was knighted, and parliament voted him a sum of £5000, with an equal sum to his officers and crew. The gallantry and ability displayed by the officers of the various expeditions, and the additions made by them to the geography of the Polar Seas, render these voyages and land-journeys a source of national honour, though of deep and almost painful interest. The ADDENDA. During the progress of this work through the press, some of the names mentioned in its pages have dropped off from the file of living authors. DR EDWARD MALTBY, died July 3, 1859. His valuable library, with funds for the endowment of a librarian, he left to Durham University. The REV. CHARLES HARDWICK, archdeacon of Ely, met with a melancholy death, August 19, 1859, while ascending the mountain called Col du Port de Venasque, in the Pyrenees. He had declined the services of the guide, being a bold and intrepid climber, but in his descent he fell down a shelving mass of rock through a distance of about two hundred feet, and must have been instantaneously killed. Of humble descent, Mr Hardwick owed his high position in the university of Cambridge to his varied attainments and spotless character. The veteran poet and essayist, LEIGH HUNT, died August 28, 1859, aged seventy-five. CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. nomical facts and discoveries, and professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow, died at Rothesay, September 19, 1859, aged fifty-five. SIR JAMES STEPHEN-long the able Under-Secretary for the Colonies, the accomplished essayist, and professor of modern history in the University of Cambridge-died at Coblentz, September 16, 1859, aged seventy. His fine fancy and lively interest in literature and social events remained with him to the last. Only the very day before his death,' says a friendly eulogist in the Daily News, he requested a friend to read to him, as he lay in his sick-bed, a review which had appeared in a weekly contemporary of Mr John Stuart Mill's new work. Another of his predilecA new poem from the pen of MR ALFRED tions shewed itself even nearer still to the close of all. He was a passionate lover of music, especially of that which belongs to what may be called the land of TENNYSON deserves commemoration. In July 1859, music; and only three or four hours before his death appeared Idylls of the King, a series of four idylls or was listening with great delight to some Italian legends selected chiefly from the body of romance airs which his daughter was singing in an adjoining known as the Morte d'Arthur. These four tales of He signified his approval of these in a tone love and chivalry are in blank verse, and possess of voice so firm and loud that any apprehensions dramatic force and unity of fable and style. The which had been previously felt were in some degree versification is soft and flowing, occasionally defiremoved; but shortly afterwards he fainted. On cient in energy and condensation, but presenting recovering, he said to one of his sons, who was seated many eminently beautiful pictures and descriptions, by his bedside, "I don't think I shall get over this," with passages of true pathos. The work sustains and almost immediately passed away.'-DR JOHN the reputation of Mr Tennyson, but cannot be said PRINGLE NICHOL, a popular illustrator of astro-to form the 'crowning glory' of his genius. room. |