the attacks of scepticism: by the same train of thought, the most knowing of the medical tribe are rendered loth to discredit the pretended efficacy of specifics, lest the habit of inquiry thus engendered should bring into question the divinity of regular practice.

THE SEA-BIRD WANDERING

INLAND.

HATH the summer's breath, on the south wind born,
Met the dark seas in their sweeping scorn!
Hath it lured thee, Bird, from their sounding caves
To the river shores where the osier waves?

Or art thou come on the hills to dwell,
Where the sweet voice-echoes have many a cell-
Where the moss bears print of the wild deer's tread,
And the heath like a royal robe is spread?

Thou hast done well, oh! thou bright sea-bird!
There is joy where the song of the lark is heard,
With the dancing of waters through copse and dell,
And the bee's low tune in the fox-glove's bell.

Thou hast done well:-Oh! the seas are lone,
And the voice they send up hath a mournful tone;
A mingling of dirges, and wild farewells,
Fitfully breathed through its anthem-swells.

The proud Bird rose as the words were said:
The rush of his pinion went o'er my head,
And the glance of his eye, in its bright disdain,
Spoke him a child of the haughty main.

can perceive no difference in his innate faculties, for man at heart is the same, and he can only mark by comparison the changes wrought on him by civilization.

These men come from a country south of Sierra Leone, to which they resort for employment. They are, generally speaking, tall, strong-built, muscular men, active and more intelligent than their neighbouring tribes. Their countenances are open and manly, their foreheads high and welldeveloped; they are not so dark as the more inland African; the skin is in almost all of a deep brown, but in several of a copper-colour. In their manners and habits they bear a resemblance to the watercarriers in Lisbon. They are strongly attached to their own country, and to each other, so much so, that when torn from their homes and their friends, for the purpose of slavery, they have frequently been known to destroy themselves, and invite death by the most cruel privations. They make the worst of all slaves; they become dull, and, moreover, fall off in grief, and never forget their freedom, of which they have the highest opinion. Ask a Krooman what he is, and he naturally answers, me freeman;" tell him he is a slave, and he resents it. They came to Sierra Leone, previous to 1826, in great numbers, creeping along the coast in canoes, hollowed out of the trunks of trees. In that year Sir Neil Campbell

66

To his pride of place on the billow's crest! Oh! who shall say to a spirit free, "There lies the pathway of bliss for thee!"

SIERRA LEONE IN 1827.+

BY AN OFFICER IN THE ARMY.

IN October, 1827, I embarked at Gravesend with a volunteer for Sierra Leone. The 23d of November brought the Gold Coast to our sight, and in less than an hour Cape Sierra Leone appeared from the deck like a cloud in the distance. During the time we were becalmed, numerous canoes, filled with Kroomen, came alongside, seeking employment from our captain, or offering themselves to us as domestiques, and after obtaining permission, these industrious boarded us. To a person unaccustomed, as I was, to such scenes, nothing can be more interesting, and if he be contemplative, many reflections arise and occupy his mind : he sees for the first time beings, as it were, of another world, and has an opportunity of observing man in his simplest state; yet he

men

back to their own country, in consequence, I believe, of want leading to the commission of many crimes of a serious nature. As many as it was thought would be sufficient for the service of the colony, were allowed to remain, and supplied with tin tickets, numbered as our porters. They are the people principally employed in lading ships with teak up the river, and by the merchants in the town; they work hard, and, with few exceptions, are honest; they are careful of their money, and seldom spend it on spirits. They have occasional feasts among themselves, and a head-man of their own number on whom they seem to place the most implicit confidence: all grievances are generally referred to and settled by him. Their chief game is wrestling, and they seem to rely more on strength than art, though some are very dexterous. At Sierra Leone they generally remain only three or four years, if successful; they then purchase some articles of European manufacture, and returning home become traders, and men, it is said, of some influence in their country. The height of a Krooman's ambition, when at Sierra Leone, is to have a hat and jacket; procure him these and you make him happy. It is amusing to see some of them on a Sunday, strutting along with all the self-dignity of a Bond Street buck, dressed in a worn-out

chapeau and cloth jacket, without nether garments, with no other article of clothing, except a loin-coverer.

Between the cape and the town, and forming one extremity of the bay, there is a projecting tongue of land called King Thom's Point. Between this point the scene is truly beautiful. The beach, at one part perfectly white, consisting of large round pieces of rock, and shelving gradually up from the sea, is backed and flanked by a copse of brushwood and jungle; rising far above which are seen numerous palm-trees, spreading out their long weeping leaves. The contrast between the dark-green in the back ground and the white shore is truly fine, and the whole has more the appearance, though none of the stiffness, of what one may conceive exists in an ingeniously laidout Chinese garden.

Immediately on reaching this point, seve ral boats, with acquaintances of my trading companions on board, came alongside. Their number was no greater than usual as no ship from England had arrived for six or eight months before, and the eagerness for news nearly drew out the whole of the white population. With two exceptions the unhealthiness of the climate at once pourtrayed itself in their countenances. The sickly season had just terminated, and the pale, sallow, ghastly faces that presented themselves, failed not to exhibit its effects. A volunteer of the royal African corps, who was then acting fort-adjutant, boarded us for the government despatches. He had just recovered from fever, but his convalescence was slow, and he looked wretchedly ill. My fellow tyros, who were about to be initiated, could not help noticing these ill-omens: they were but too evident, and one gentleman was so much affected, or in the language of seamen, taken aback, that he determined on returning home by the next ship.

Eager as our visitors were for news, the returning absentees on shipboard were not less inquisitive, and, after the usual greetings were exchanged, the first question I heard asked was, "who are dead?" The sickly season, I have already mentioned, had just terminated, and, considering the many deaths that then occur, the question, though a damper to the new-comer, was ery naturally the first, and one not to be wondered at. Here followed a long, melancholy list, at the head of which stood poor Sir Neil Campbell. Among the number was a gentleman of the medical staff, whom I had seen in all the gaiety of youth ten weeks before in London. He died, I was informed, three weeks after his arrival. We were at college together for two sessions; I knew him well, and his death affected me very much. Rigid abstinence, his diet consisting principally of

vegetable food, predisposed him to the endemic fever, and a few days' illness sufficed to terminate his short and mortal career. In this climate, it is infinitely the best to steer a middle course as to diet, and neither to live too abstemiously, nor too freely.

Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, is situated at the mouth of the Mitomba, or Sierra Leone, on its left or southern bank, in long. 12 deg. 30 min. W. lat. 8 deg. 30 min. N. The whole town is enclosed in a semicircular ridge of mountains, rising not far from the river, and at the town, taking a turn backwards, they form a kind of crescent, appearing from the anchorage to terminate in the Cape. Behind the town they are thickly wooded, and in many places clothed to their very summits in brushwood and jungle. I had formed a very erroneous opinion of the scenery of this portion of Western Africa, and expected, in common with others, to see nothing but a bleak and barren country, at once betraying its inhospitality. In this I was much deceived. The bright blue sky; the luxuriance of intertropical vegetation, appearing to cover almost every untrodden spot, and producing colours vying with each other in richness and beauty; the lofty, green mountains in the distance varying in shape and size, and the stately palm-trees, here and there waving their spreading leaves, conspire in forming a scene that beggars description. On approaching Sierra Leone in the dry season, all idea of its unhealthiness vanishes; you think it a paradise, and say, here may I live to a good old age: but it is as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he that lives in it two or three years, is one of the few who make a miraculous escape.

On landing at Sierre Leone, the first building that arrests the attention is the Commissariat store. It is a large stone structure, scarcely more than fifty feet from the beach, built on arches, and consisting of three floors, the upper of which is furnished with a broad veranda, and divided into apartments occupied by the officers of that department. In going into Freetown from this, the usual landing-place, you ascend a flight of stone steps, or keeping to the right an irregular rocky footpath. If you take the steps, you have close, on the right, the Commissariat store, and, at the top, on the left, Government House, a hired stone building, presenting nothing peculiar, pretty capacious, and constructed like most houses in Sierra Leone, with verandas, and, with a few exceptions, windows without sashes. The next edifice of any consequence is the church. It is a plain, rather neat structure, built in the gothic style, with a coarse seasand stone abundant everywhere. Only the mason-work was finished in 1827, and the walls had been standing for many years, with little addition to the interior. It seemed destined never to be completed, although it had already cost government 60,0001. and time was beginning even then to work a change on it. Passing the church on the left hand, and going towards the barracks, you have at about sixty yards distant on the opposite side of the street, or, to speak more correctly, of the road, a neat white-washed building, with green painted jalousies, the residence of the principal medical officer. Proceeding in this direction you come upon the fort, an almost dilapidated work, mounting six or eight guns. Close to it, and on the right, is the " Pavilion," a round building, rapidly falling into decay, formerly the mess-room of the African Corps, and now the quarters of one or two staff medical officers. Rather more than half-way between the fort and barracks, and situated at the bottom of the hill on which they are built, stands the hospital for the white troops, an oblong square stone building, consisting of two large wards with broad verandas, and capable of containing upwards of sixty beds. The barracks are considerably elevated, being built on a rising piece of ground, four hundred feet above the level of the sea. They have rather an imposing effect from the bay, and the approach to them, though fatiguing, is good. They consist of three detached buildings, one occupied by the officers, one by the European, and one by the black troops of the African corps. Their material is English brick, and, I believe, American fir, and the expense of building them was enormous. Their site, though perhaps one of the best that could be selected, has many objections, not the least of which is, that there is no spring in the immediate vicinity, and the supply of water is rolled up every morning, in casks, with immense labour, from a spring near the shore at one end of the town; they are also enveloped in a thick mist (a circumstance which in a climate of this sort is a weighty objection), that rolls down from the mountains in the neighbourhood and fills the deep ravine immediately in the rear. There can be no doubt, among those acquainted with the topography of Sierra Leone, that the best of all situations for the barracks would be the flat at King Thom's Point. Here they would be nearly surrounded by the sea, and fully exposed to the breeze before it passes any track of land; water could be obtained in abundance; and had they been built on this spot, Government would have saved, I have heard it stated, a fifth of the expenditure incurred in selecting the other.

The following appears to be the strength of the coloured population of Sierra Leone, agreeably to the returns of 1826:

While in Sierra Leone, time hung heavily on my hands. The scene is one of unvarying monotony, and a person who is at all careful of his health must confine himself to his room from eight o'clock in the morning till five in the afternoon. There is no society, except that afforded by your few brother officers who are able to leave their rooms; and melancholy is the daily meeting at the mess, for the conversation invariably turns on the ever-present sights of death and sickness. There is, to be sure, a library, but of such trash!-and then the deep gloom that hangs on all completely unfits the mind for any salutary exertion. All think only of home and the ill-fate that sent them to the "charnel-house of Africa." Nostalgia is a universally reigning disease among all classes of the military; and the desire once more to plant the firm footstep on dear England's sunny land, can be equalled only by the anxiety with which the expectant criminal, day after day, waits a reprieve.

A few days' residence in Freetown, and a ride in the neighbourhood, soon undeceive you as to the apparent fertility of Sierra Leone. You no longer observe that luxuriance of vegetation so striking and beautiful from shipboard. The soil is barren and rocky, except in some spots " few and far between." Here and there the coarse red granite, forming the rocks and hills in and about the town, peeps above a thin stratum of a reddish-brown earth, strongly resembling ironrust, and staining every article of dress with which it comes in contact. In the town and on the way to the barracks this is remarkable, and during the dry season scarcely a trace of vegetation is to be seen anywhere. Long rank grass is, however, abundant, wherever it is allowed to take root during the rains, and as long as the earth remains moist; and at the road-side, by the fort, you see plenty of the indigo plant growing unheeded. There are some orange-trees in the town and environs, and their fruit is of the most delicious richness. There are, also, numerous lime-trees in the wooded surrounding hills; and pine apples, the largest and most delicately flavoured I have ever seen, are so plentiful in season, that you may procure them in the market-place for a penny and three halfpence each.

will ever know or care whether M. Caillié has or has not visited Timbuctoo, and will concern themselves still less about the "glory" which France imagines herself to have reaped from his travels.

In the present case, however, we must be permitted to say, that, whatever "glory" there may be due to him who first reached Timbuctoo, that glory belongs not to M. Caillié, but to the unfortunate Laing, who arrived there three years before this person set out on his travels; and if truth had been the object of his panegyrist, he would have added, that the "personal resources," scanty or otherwise, were solely afforded to the French traveller by the generosity of MajorGeneral Turner, the governor of Sierra Leone. The case is this:-Baron Roger, the Governor of St. Louis, on the Senegal, had sent Caillié, with some articles of traffic, among the Bracknas. On his return, he found the baron had gone to France, and when he solicited the means of making a fresh journey, " he could obtain neither money nor the countenance of the acting governor." Every thing, he says, concurred to overwhelm him. The Moors and a Maraboot, who came down with him, and to whom he had feigned a zeal for their religion, now looked upon him as an impostor; by his own countrymen he was exposed to all kinds of ridicule; " nay," says he, "some went so far as to assert that I had undergone the initiatory operation of Islamism." The allowance of a common soldier was granted to him out of compassion, and the governor offered him fifty francs a month, as overseer of negro labourers. While in this office, he heard of the return of Baron Roger, to whom he hastened with the journal which he had kept while among the Bracknas, and a fresh application for assistance-" it was not granted." With a hundred francs in his pocket, he now set out for Albreda, a French factory on the Gambia, from whence he proceeded to Sierra Leone, "where," he says, "General Turner, governor of this English settlement, received me with kindness; and, in order to keep me in the colony, he offered me the superintendence of an indigo factory, and attached to the situation (which he created for me) a salary of three thousand six hundred francs-about 1501. On the death of General Turner, he applied to Sir Neil Campbell to advance him six thousand francs, to enable him to undertake his journey. Sir Neil, of course, refused, and M. Caillié, having saved two thousand francs, or about 801., "thanked heaven he was now able to break off his engagement with foreigners, who might, in return, have laid claim to the glory of a discovery, with which he hoped to do honour to France."

Thus we see the same kind of cant attaches itself to M. Caillié, who also talks about the jealousy of the "eternal rival" of France, pretty much in the same strain as that of his vain and arrogant panegyrist. Major Gray, he observes, "failed in all his attempts, not without injuring the French commerce, a species of success which can have made but poor amends for the enormous loss which he has occasioned to England; for his enterprise, and those of Peddie, Campbell, and Tucken (meaning Tuckey), have, it is said, together, cost England eighteen millions in French money" -to wit, 720,000l.!

Whether this nonsense be the result of gross ignorance, or an intentional departure from the truth, in either case it ought to put his readers on their guard, how far they may feel disposed to take the statements contained in his book as entitled to credit. Indeed, M. Caillié himself seems to entertain a feeling that his veracity may be called in question; but we are perfectly at a loss to understand the grounds on which he proposes to " silence" those apprehended doubts. " I reflected," says he, "that if I should return by the way of Sego, Sansanding, and our establishments at Galam, those who might envy the success of my enterprise, the very undertaking of which had created for me many enemies, would pretend to doubt the fact of my journey, and of my residence at Timbuctoo; whereas, by returning through the Barbary States, the mere mention of the point at which I had arrived would reduce the most envious to silence." What the poor man means by envy, and enemies, we pretend not to know; but it strikes us, that to have returned to the very spot from whence he set out would have been the most likely mode of convincing his countrymen and all others of the truth of his story-and so he must have thought afterwards; for, having arrived at the "point proposed," and addressed himself to M. Delaporte, the vice-consul at Tangiers, this officer's reply was :-" les informations que vous me donnez sont insuffisantes pour que je puisse y ajouter foi; vous savez combien d'imposteurs peuvent nous tromper;" and he demands further proofs, and more precise information. And no wonder; for, by Caillié's own admission, his notes, written with a pencil, were "tellement fatiguées, tellement effacées par le temps," that all the tenacity, he tells us-all the scrupulous fidelity of his memory-was necessary, to restore and reproduce them, as the basis of his observations, and the materials of his narrative.

We have little confidence, we confess, in journals, embracing a period of fifteen or sixteen months, written from memory. It seems, however, that a committee of the