of our former Mulatto tenants from GlenLynden, possessed a considerable quantity of live stock; but there were great numbers who were totally destitute of property of any description; destitute even of food for daily subsistence. Yet under these circumstances, although no aid whatever was given them by government, except arms for their defence, and a very small portion of seed-corn, even the most destitute abstained from theft, a crime to which in their servile state they are said by some, though I think unjustly, to have been prone. Those who had cattle assisted their poorer friends and relatives with a generous liberality which is characteristic of the race. Those who had neither food nor friends, lived upon veld kost, that is, wild roots and bulbs dug out of the soil, until the land they had planted returned them a harvest. Multitudes subsisted in this manner without a murmur for many months. Extraordinary industry was at the same time exerted. With the most wretched implements they cultivated an extent of land which astonished every one; and, independently of the labour required in culture, the various parties displayed extraordinary rivalship in the construction of canals to convey water for the irrigation of their fields and gardens. In some places those canals were carried through the solid rock; in others it was necessary to cut to the depth of ten or twelve feet to preserve the level; while their entire length through all the locations extended to upwards of 20,000 yards.* Meanwhile they had sustained many fierce attacks from the Caffers, generally made in the dead of night, and had bravely repulsed them, without ever indulging the spirit of retaliation or repaying evil for evil. When the winter was over, the Caffers ceased to harass the locations, and the neighbouring chiefs, especially Makomo, who had been driven out of this territory, ere long entered into the most friendly relations with the settlers. Their industry having been rewarded with an abundant harvest, especially of vegetables, their numbers continued constantly to increase by fresh accessions of their countrymen, until they at length amounted altogether to upwards of four thousand souls, of whom about seven hundred were armed with muskets. The governor, Sir Lowry Cole, visited the settlement the year after its establishment, and expressed himself highly gratified with the entire success of the experiment to which, much to his honour, he had Graham's Town Journ l, June, 1832, given his sanction. He then appointed the Rev. Mr. Thomson, who had previously been a presbyterian missionary in Cafferland, to the ministerial charge of the settlement; but left it for the present without any civil functionaries except the native field-cornets and heads of parties appointed by Captain Stockenstrom. I may observe, that although the prosperity of the settlement is doubtless mainly owing to the industry and docility of the people themselves, and to their manly determination to prove themselves worthy of their newlyacquired privileges, there can be no question that their success and good conduct are also to be in no small measure ascribed to the judicious arrangements and careful superintendence of Captain Stockenstrom; to the great and well-merited influence of Mr. Read, the missionary, who resided among them from the commencement; and likewise to the valuable labours of the presbyterian pastor, Mr. Thomson. In our next number we shall give some further extracts, containing pleasing information to a recent date. THE AMIABLE CHRISTIAN. WHILE your religion is impressive by its consistency, let it be attractive by its amiableness. Therefore, think upon and pursue whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. In excuse for the disagreeable tempers and the repulsive manners of some christians, it is said, that grace may be grafted on a crab-stock. Be it so. But instead of excusing improprieties, the metaphor condemns them. When a tree is grafted, it is always expected to bear fruit according to the scion, and not according to the stock: and "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Nothing recommends godliness more than cheerfulness. All men desire happiness; and if, while every other candidate for the prize fails, you succeed, your success may determine others to follow your Hence it is not desiraenvied course. ble that religion should be so often ex"seriousness." pressed by the word Among many people, as soon as ever a man is becoming religious, it is said, he is But does not relibecoming "serious." gion also make him humble, and benevolent, and hopeful, and blessed? Why, then, should we select so exclusively, for the designation of its influence, an attribute or an effect which is common with many others, but yet the least inviting, and most liable to an injurious construction? I never use it, and if I were obliged to use any other term than "religious" itself, I would rather say, the man was becoming happy.-Jay's Christian Contemplated. HEBREW POETRY. years after the language had ceased to be spoken; and is "discordant, in many instances, from the imperfect remains of a pronunciation of a much earlier date, and better authority, that of the Seventy, of Origen, and other writers ;" and "it must be allowed, that no one, according to this, has been able to reduce the Hebrew poems any kind of harmony." to It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme; the termination of the lines, when they are most distinct, never manifesting any thing of the kind. Acrostic, or alphabetical arrangement, as in the 119th Psalm, is found in several instances; and was adopted, no doubt, for the purpose of aiding the memory of the learner, or the reciter. Parallelism is a principal feature in Hebrew verse :— 9. WE conclude that poetry, in its technical form, must be verse. Verse is of various kinds, according to the language, the taste, and degree of civilization among the people who employ it. The most ancient and simple (apparently) is the Hebrew; presuming, as we must, that the psalms, prophecies, and certain other portions of the sacred scriptures, are not poetical in substance only, but that they are metrical in the original. The secret, however, "He spake, and it was done; He comwherein their rhythm consisted, is irrecover-manded, and it stood fast."-Psalm xxxiii. ably lost; the language itself being only preserved in the skeleton form of consonants, with a very inadequate supply of vowels; and the words (independent of the masoretic points) resembling, if the figure may be allowed, those decayed leaves which we find in the forest in winter, of which nothing but fibres remain, like curious and delicate net work. But in the artful structure of the sentences, in their melodious movement at times, and more especially in their corresponding members, (as though every clause had its tally, every sound its echo, every image its reflection, and every thought its double,) we may discover that the poetical portions of the Old Testament are in verse, of which the precise laws are no longer remembered. Bishop Lowth, the greatest authority on this subject, says:- "The harmony and true modulation depend upon a perfect pronunciation of the language, and a knowledge of the principles and rules of versification; and metre supposes an exact knowledge of the number and quantity of syllables, and, in some languages, of accent. But the true pronunciation of the Hebrew is lost-lost to a degree far beyond what can be the case of any European language preserved only in writing: for the Hebrew, like most Oriental languages, expressing only the consonants, and being destitute of the vowels, has lain now for two thousand years mute, and incapable of utterance. The number of syllables in a great many words is uncertain; the quantity and accent are wholly unknown."-"The masoretical punctuation," which professes to supply the vowels, was formed a thousand "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”—Isaiah Ív. 7. Every phrase, indeed almost every word, has its response in these quotations. I have chosen the common version, in preference to that of the learned prelate, because it is more simple, (in the foregoing and following cases,) and, from being familiar, is more easily intelligible when addressed to the ear. That organ, though marvellously quick in apprehending sounds, and their collocation, to which it has been accustomed, finds it exceedingly difficult to follow (in verse especially) new phrases and strange thoughts. On the other hand, in reading, the eye can dwell more intensely on the distinct verbiage; having, in this respect, the advantage of the ear, because in moving along the little horizon of the page, it catches glimpses of words to come, while it retains the receding traces of those that are passed; and thus is enabled to gather up the meaning, as it unfolds, from the scope both of the text and the context: for sight, like "The spider's touch, so exquisitely fine, Feels at each thread, and lives along the line." Essay on Man. Whereas the ear can only connect the successive sounds as they are pronounced, with those that are gone by, which are often imperfectly caught, and more faintly remembered, as the discourse proceeds. I make the remark here, but apply it generally to the passages of verse which I may quote in these papers; having (for the most part) deliberately chosen those which may be deemed common-place, because such will be best understood by the hearers, from my ineffective recitation. Bishop Lowth exhibits various forms of Hebrew stanzas, (manifestly such to the eye, and not altogether imperceptible by the ear,) consisting of two, three, four, and even five lines, admirably implicated and symmetrical, from the disposition of the parallelisms, and other poetic symbols. Antithesis is the second characteristic of Hebrew verse. The Book of Proverbs abounds with this figure. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."-Prov. xiii. 12. "The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed."-Isa. liv. 10. - Amplification is the third prevailing fea ture. "As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more."- Job. vii. 9, 10. "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth; as gardens by the river side; as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters."-Numb. xxiv. 5,6. Compare the harmonious cadences of this fine prose in our own old version of holy writ, with the halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs in Macpherson's Ossian.-Montgomery. INSECTS. No. XXVIII. (Escape of Perfect Insects.) THE release of the perfect insect is sometimes effected principally by its own exertions, and, at others, by the efforts of its own kind; a few instances of this are now to be selected. As the texture of the cocoon of the silk-worm moth is uniform in every part, and the layers of silk are equally thick at both ends, the moth makes its way out by cutting or breaking these threads at the end opposite to its head; an operation which, as it destroys the continuity of the silk, those who breed these insects are particularly careful to guard against, by exposing the cocoon to suffi cient heat to destroy the included pupa. How this escape is effected has not been satisfactorily determined. Reaumur, indeed, infers that the eyes, which are the only hard organs of the head, are the instruments by which the threads are divided, their numerous minute facets serving the purpose of a fine file; though it must be confessed that other kinds of silkworms make their escape by means of a fluid. Thus, when one creature is prepared to become a perfect insect, it discharges from its mouth a large quantity of liquid, with which the upper end of the case is so perfectly softened, as to enable the moth to make its way out in a very short space of time; an operation which, it is said, is always performed in the night. The most probable supposition is, that the silk-worm first moistens and then breaks the threads of its cocoon. In those that are of a slighter texture, a mere push against the moistened end is perhaps sufficient. The puss-moth has to pierce the solid walls of its wood-thickened case, and here the eyes are clearly incompetent; nor could any ordinary fluid assist their operation ; but what an aqueous solvent cannot effect, an acid is competent to; and with a bag of such acid the moth is furnished. She pours out the contents of this as soon as she has forced her head through the skin of the chrysalis, and upon the opposite end of the cocoon. The acid instantly acts on the gum, loosens the cohesion of the grains of wood, and a very gentle effort suffices to push down what was a minute before so strong a barrier. How admirable and effectual a provision! It would seem too that a vessel, to contain so potent an acid, ought to be of glass; but the moth has only a membranous bag, yet this is of so wonderful a fabric as not to be acted on by it! An exception to the general rule—that the rupturing of the cocoon is the business of the inclosed insect itself -is met with among ants; the workers of which not only feed the young, but actually make an aperture in their cocoons, cutting the threads with their mandibles with admirable dexterity and patience, one by one, at the time they are ready to emerge, the precise period for which these indefatigable nurses are well aware of, that they may meet with no obstacle. Without this aid, the young ant would be unable to force its way through the strong and dense coating of silk that infolds it. "I noticed," says the younger Huber, "three or four of the labourer-ants mounted of hind-legs of these animals may render such assistance necessary for their extrication. IGNORANCE OF THE HEATHEN AS TO THE Calmucs tell us there was a vast on one of the cocoons, endeavouring to | had already, by its own efforts, got its head, It was open it with their teeth at that extremity thorax, and anterior legs out of it. answering to the head of the pupa. They then joined by two male flies, which, with began to thin it by tearing away some their anal forceps and posterior legs, taking threads of silk when they wished to pierce hold of the pupa-case, appeared with their it, and at length, by dint of pinching and mouths and anterior legs to push the little biting this tissue, so extremely difficult to prisoner upwards, moving her backwards break, they formed in it a vast number of and forwards; and, as they kept raising apertures. They afterwards attempted to her, shifting their hold of the skin till she enlarge these openings, by tearing or draw was entirely extricated; when they left her ing away the silk; but these efforts proving to recover her strength by herself. Proineffectual, they passed one of their mandi-bably the extreme length of the two pair bles into the cocoon through the apertures they had formed, and by cutting each thread, one after another, with great patience, at length effected a passage, of a line in diameter, in the superior part of the web. They now uncovered the feet of the prisoner to which they were desirous of giving liberty, but before they could effect its release, it was absolutely necessary to enlarge the opening. For this purpose, these guardians cut out a portion in the longitudinal direction of the cocoon, with their teeth alone, employing these instruments as we are in the habit of employing A considerable degree a pair of scissors. of agitation prevailed in this part of the ant-hill. A number of labourer-ants were occupied in disengaging the winged individual from its envelope; they took repose and relieved each one by turns, evincing great eagerness in seconding their companions in the task. To expedite the work, some raised up a little slip cut out in the length of the cocoon, whilst others drew the insect gently from its imprisonment. When the ant was extricated from its enveloping membrane, it was not like other insects, capable of enjoying its freedom, and taking flight; it could neither fly, nor walk, nor, without difficulty, stand; for the body was still confined by another membrane, from which it could not, by its own exertions, disengage itself." This, however, was at length removed, and the insect needing food, had it promptly administered by its vigilant guardians. In every part of the ant-hill some were employed in these acts, and the remnants of the coverings were collected and placed aside in one of the most distant lodges of their habitation; for these insects observe the greatest order and regularity. Captain Percy, who was in the habit of attending to the motions of insects, noticed, one day, those of a number of crane-flies, busily engaged in depositing their eggs amongst the roots of grass. While observing these proceedings, he, at the same time, saw one quitting its pupa-case, which space or chaos, of the origin of which they know nothing, but the width and depth of it they estimate 6,116,000 of their miles. In this expanse, gold-coloured clouds collected themselves together, which poured such a continual rain, that an immense ocean arose. On this ocean, a seum was formed, on which all living beings, and among them man, began to crawl, and from the middle of it, the burchans, or gods, were produced! The inhabitants of the Moluccas, and other isles in the vast Indian ocean, generally believe themselves to be derived from inanimate substances; while the American tribes of Indians be lieve that beasts were their creators, or their first progenitors! Without a revelation from Heaven, what can man know even of himself? What feelings of gratitude should live in the How attentively should it be read, corbreasts of those who possess the Bible! dially believed, and practically regarded! While it instructs us in the original dignity of our nature, how anxiously ought we to seek the salvation which is brought to us by Christ Jesus, that thus we may attain the blessedness of heaven! HUMILITY. Look on the good in others, and the evil in thyself; make that the parallel, and then thou wilt walk humbly. Most men do just the contrary, and that foolish and unjust comparison puffs them up.-Leighton. JOHN DAVIS, 56, Paternoster Row, London. Price d. each, or in Monthly Parts, containing Five Numbers in a Cover, 3d. W. TYLER, Printer, 4, Ivy Lane, St. Paul's. THE BALTO WEEKLY VISITOR. FREE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1834. {ONE NUMBER CXIX.] Vol 2 LIBRARY PRICE HALFPENNY. THE above is the present appearance of this celebrated pool of water, the name of which implies something sent, or one who sends. It is not above a hundred paces from the spot where it is thought that Isaiah was sawn asunder by his savage countrymen. Since the christian era a church has been erected on it, but of that no vestige now remains. The other fountain just below Siloam is called the fountain of the Holy Virgin, but it seems anciently to have been supplied from the same spring. Epiphanius suggests that God gave this fountain at the intercession of the prophet Isaiah, but there are strong reasons, (see Josh. xv. 7, 8; xviii. 16; 2 Sam. xviii. 17; and 1 Kings i. 9,) to conclude that it is there mentioned as the En-Rogel, or the fuller's fountain. Josephus says that the waters of Siloam increased during the sieges of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and Titus, and that in the last instance it abundantly supplied the Roman army, and also yielded enough to water the gardens in and about their encampments. The water is brackish, of an indifferent taste, but is said to assist the digestion of animal food, to which its saltness might contribute. About a century ago, Maundrell informs us, it was used VOL. II. by a tanner to dress his hides. The stream flowed on very gently and without noise, hence the prophet says, Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly," Isaiah viii. 6. Jerome asserts that it was the only spring in or near Jerusalem, but this appears to have no countenance from scripture. Reland observes, that it was customary for the Jewish priests to draw water from Siloam, and to pour it out before the Lord at the time of the evening sacrifice to this the beloved disciple, appears remotely to allude, John vii. 37. The supposition that this fountain was the nearest one to the temple, enables us more easily to comprehend the story of the man blind from his birth, whom the Lord directed to go and "wash in the pool of Siloam." Connecting the last words of John viii. with the first of the next chapter, it would read thus, "but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. And as Jesus passed by he saw a man," &c. "And said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam." ver. 7. Now, if the Redeemer went out of the temple by one of the western gates into the city, he might meet with this blind man near to the temple, and of course sent him 3 N |