principally from their not having attended to the tradition of the few existing testimonies of the Tultecas, Chiapanecos, and Yucataneses, and the few historical fragments produced by writers of the greatest authority on the other continent, who have been similarly contemned by the most celebrated modern authors. The Indians carefully preserved the remembrance of their origin, and of their ancestors' early progress from the voluntary or the forced abandonment of Palestine on the ingress of the Hebrews; but these incidents have been, in my opinion, erroneously interpreted by authors. I will here introduce what the advocate Joseph Antonio Constantini advances on this subject. In the second volume of his Critical Letters, in that entitled On the Origin of the Americans, he says: by a lord who left them here, and to whom all were subject. A long time after, this lord came again, and found that our grandfathers had married with the women of this country, had settled and peopled it with a numerous posterity, and would not accompany him back to his country, or receive him here as the chief of this. He then went away, saying he would return with, or send such a power as should overcome them, and reduce them to his service. You well know we have always expected him, and according to the things which the captain has told us of the king who sent him to us, and from the part he says he comes from, I think it certain, and you cannot fail to be of the same opinion, that this is no other than the chief we look for, particularly, as he declares that, in the place he comes from, they have been informed about us. As "We are indebted to Gemelli for some valuable our predecessors did not do what they ought to have information which he obtained, during his residence done by their chief, let us do it, and let us give thanks in Mexico, from Don Carlos de Siguenza y Gonzora, to our gods that in our time has come to pass the event into whose possession it came, as being testamentary which has been so long expected. As all this is mani-executor of Don Juan de Alva, a lineal descendant fest to all of you, much do I entreat you to obey this from the king of Tezcuco, who received it from his great king henceforward, as you have hitherto obeyed ancestors: this is, therefore, the most authentic docuand esteemed me as your lawful sovereign, for he is ment which Gemelli procured, and he has carefully your natural lord, and in his place I beseech you to preserved it in his sixth volume by a plate. This enobey this his great captain." graving displays a table or itinerary, on which are delineated the voyages of their progenitors who peopled Mexico; it consists of different circles, divided into a hundred and four signs, signifying one hundred and four years, which they say their forefathers spent in their several domiciles before they reached the lake of Mexico; there are numerous and various representations of mountains, trees, plants, heads of men, animals, birds, feathers, leaves, stones, and other objects descriptive of their different habitations, and the accidents they met with, but which at present cannot be understood." He proceeded by desiring that such tributes and services as had usually been paid to and performed for him, should in future be transferred to Cortes, as the representative of their king; saying, that he would himself pay contributions to him, and serve him in whatsoever he should command. The assembled chiefs confirmed the tradition, and replied, "that they had always considered him as their lord, and were bound to perform whatever he should command them, and for this reason, as well as for the one he had just given them, they were content to do it." (Let this expression, they were content, &c. be This itinerary I have never had an opportunity of noted.) All this, says Cortes, passed before a notary, seeing, although very desirous of obtaining that adwho reduced it to the form of a public act, and I re-vantage, nor the book which Botturini says was written quired it to be testified as such in the presence of many Spaniards. Cortes, wishing to keep Montezuma in the error which he supposed him to have fallen into, says in his first letter:-"I replied to all he had said in the way most suitable to myself, especially, by making him believe your majesty to be the chief whom they have so long expected." It is surprising that the unvarying tradition of the first occupiers of America having come from the east, should not have been examined or attended to by Cortes, and that it should have been unobserved by subsequent writers, and by the introduction of the following notes into the republication of Montezuma's discourses, is not less astonishing. "The Mexicans, by tradition, came from the northern parts of the province of Quivira, and the particular places of their habitations are known with certainty; this affords an evident proof that the conquest of the Mexican empire was achieved by the Tultecas, or people of Tula, which was the capital. This was an erroneous belief of the Indians, because they came from the north; but, had they proceeded from the peninsula of Yucatan, it might with truth be said that they came from the east with respect to Mexico. In the whole of this discourse, Cortes obviously took advantage of the erroneous notions of the Indians." The natives were not mistaken, but Cortes was in error from disregarding their traditions, which, to say the least, he ought to have kept in recollection, and carefully examined, when a little industry would most unquestionably have satisfied him; but, as it was known, on the other hand, that the Mexicans and other nations occupying the desolated kingdom of the Tultecas, descended from the northern regions, he took no pains to search out from whence and in what manner they came. This nelgigence of Cortes occasioned the error in authors who wrote after him; and it arose by the celebrated Mexican astronomer Huematzin, and called by him Teomoxtli: the divine book; wherein, by means of certain figures, he shows the origin of the Indians, their dispersion after the separation of nations subsequent to the confusion of tongues, their wanderings, their first settlement in America, and the foundation of the kingdom of Tula, (which, I suspect from the mistakes of writers is not that of Amaguemecan,) and their progress down to his time: these incidents appear to be the same as those which happened to the Canaanites generally, and to the Hivites in particular, along the whole coast of Africa, until their passing into America and arrival at the lake of Mexico. The hundred and four years of domicile described by him were in Africa, and not for the space of one year each, but of many years, according to the exigence of circumstances in the progress of population; for it is evident the peopling of the earth, after the general dispersion of the human race, advanced but slowly, as colonies could not be settled without surmounting great difficulties in clearing the ground from trees and thickets which covered it in every part. This was boring the ground, in the meaning of Votan, when he says, he went by the road that his ancestors the Culebras had formerly bored. Calmet, in his dissertation on the country to which the Canaanites retired when they were expelled by Joshua, concurs in affirming this to be true. This enlightened writer, after relating various opinions which he proves to be ill-founded, says, the one most generally received, most consonant with truth, and also conformable to the Gemarra Hierosolemitana, is that which supposes the Canaanites went into Africa. He adds that Procopius, lib. 2, cap. 10, of the Vandalic War, says they first fled into Egypt, where they increased in number, and then pursued their course to the remotest regions of Africa; they built many cities, spread themselves over the adjacent countries, occu pying nearly all the tract that extends to the columns of Hercules, and retained their ancient language, although in some degree corrupted. To support this opinion, he adduces a monument erected by this nation, which was found in the city of Tangier it consisted of two columns of white marble, with this inscription in Phoenician characters: "We are the children of those who fled from the robber Jesus, the son of Nave, and here found a safe retreat." These columns may very possibly be the marks that Votan says he left behind him on the road that his ancestors had bored; but they were considered apocryphal by Feyjoo, from the expression of the inscription, that Jesus or Joshua was the son of Nave, whereas it is stated in the scriptures, that he was the son of Nun; it seems therefore to have escaped Feyjoo's recollection, that Joshua is indiscriminately called the son of Nave or of Nun in different places of Holy Writ. Although we cannot fix to a certain epoch the time of the Canaanites occupying the coasts of Africa, inasmuch as it did not take place at one period, but gradually, as they found themselves oppressed by the Hebrew wars; and because many of the Hivites, as we have already said, abandoned their dwellings before Joshua entered Palestine; there is no doubt that all these colonies existed prior to the Trojan war; because Greeks returning from thence found that every part of the coast of Africa where they landed had been already peopled by the Phoenicians. On this point the Greek and Latin writers agree, according to the testimony of Bochart, in his work entitled Canaan; and of Hornius, on the origin of the people of America. Lib. 2, cap. 3, 4: quoted by Calmet. The era of the Trojan war is fixed at two hundred and forty years after the death of Joshua. Taking this for granted, and comparing the epoch when the aforesaid colonies were established in Africa, with that which I shall presently show concerning the foundation of the first colony in America by the grandfather of Votan, it will clearly appear, that each of the hundred and four signs in the itinerary of Gemelli does not correspond with a residence of one year, but of many. This itinerary, supposed by many historians as appertaining to Asia, or the northern parts of America, has been the means of augmenting our historical difficulties so much, that we encounter nothing but confusion, doubts, and queries: this will be seen by referring to the works of Clavigero, Torquemada, and all others who have treated on this subject. It nevertheless confirms the narrative of Votan, and the suppositions I have ventured to make, as will hereafter appear. As it has been already proved that Valum Chivim, where Votan landed in his four voyages to the old continent, is Tripoli in Syria, it is now requisite to examine what was the situation of Valum Votan, from whence he took his departure. In order to discuss this important question, which will have the effect of drawing from the depths of obscurity and uncertainty into which time and revolutions upon the old continent have plunged them, those historical records that remained in ancient traditions, we shall derive sufficient assistance from Calmet, in his dissertations before mentioned, relative to the country in which the Canaanites, when expelled by Joshua and the Judges his successors, took refuge, as also from the excellence of the Hebrew history. This celebrated writer recites the opinions of the most classic authors on the discovery of America, and the origin of its inhabitants, to which, however, he does not always assent, and among them produces that of Hornius, who, supported by the authority of Strabo, affirms as certain, that voyages from Africa and Spain into the Atlantic ocean were both frequent and celebrated, adding from Strabo, that Eudoxius sailing from the Arabian gulf to Ethiopia and India, found the prow of a ship that had been wrecked, which, from having | the head of a horse carved on it, he knew belonged to a Phenician bark, and some Gaditani merchants declared it to have been a fishing vessel: Laertius relates nearly the same circumstance. Hornius says, (continues Calmet,) that, in very remote ages, three voyages were made to America, the first by the Atlantes, or descendants of Atlas, who gave his name to the ocean and the islands Atlantides; this name Plato appears to have learned from the Egyptian priests, the general Custodes of antiquity. The second voyage, mentioned by Hornius, is given on the authority of Diodorus Siculus, lib. 5, cap. 19, where he says: The Phoenicians having passed the columns of Hercules, and being impelled by the violence of the wind, abandoned themselves to its fury, and after experiencing many tempests, were thrown upon an island in the Atlantic ocean, distant many days' navigation to the westward of the coast of Lybia; which island, possessing a fertile soil, had navigable rivers, and there were large buildings upon it. The report of this discovery soon spread among the Carthagenians and Romans; the former being harrassed by the wars of the latter, and the people of Mauritania, sent a colony to that island with great secrecy, that, in the event of being overcome by their enemies, they might possess a place of safe retreat. THERE are in mythology some strange contradictions. One of these consists in the assertion that Cybele was the wife of Faunus, and the wife of Saturn. Another consists of the different accounts given of her. Diodorus Siculus says she was the daughter of Meon, the king of Phrygia, and Dyndime his queen, and was exposed by them upon mount Cybele soon after she was born, from which circumstance she derived her name. She was for some time nourished by leopards and other wild beasts through divine instinct. Afterwards, some shepherds' wives discovering her, took care of her, and educated her. She surpassed the other virgins of the country in beauty, prudence, and ingenuity. She invented the syrinx or flute, consisting of several tubes, and introduced the use of the cymbal and drum (tympanum) at dances. She also invented several remedies for the diseases of children and the maladies of cattle. These remedies consisted chiefly of certain charms, in which she was so successful, especially in the case of children, that her reputation spread all over the country, and she was styled the Mother of the Mountains. Hesiod says she was the daughter of further. Cœlus and Terra, (Heaven and Earth.) Orpheus | race of the gods. This distinction should be kept in calls her the daughter of Protogonus, or the First Fa- view; and in the progress of this department of the ther. It is, however, fully agreed on all hands, that Magazine, we shall have occasion to notice it still she was born in Phrygia. And it was on this account that she was denominated the Phrygian goddess. She was called the Syrian goddess, because she was chiefly worshipped in that country. Cybele, it will be kept in mind, was the Great Goddess, the wife of old Saturn, and the illustrious mother of Jupiter himself. But when it is said she was the mother of all the gods, the term mother is used in its more general sense; as when it is said of Eve, she is the mother of all living, that is, the great maternal ancestor of all. For Cybele was the immediate mother only of Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, Vesta, and Ceres; the rest of the gods and goddesses being their offspring and descendants. It should be further observed, that it was only the modern race of the gods that were her descendants. She was not, of course, the mother of Saturn, her husband, nor of Cœlus and Terra, her father and mother, nor of any of the ancient There seems to be a degree of confusion in the case of Cybele and her mother. Both are said to represent the earth, and yet the one is said to be the daughter of the other. But the true solution of this seeming paradox appears to be this: Terra was the symbol of the earth among the ancient, and Cybele among the modern race of the gods. Thus Oceanus was the ancient god representing the ocean, but Neptune was its modern representative, and so on. Cybele was sometimes represented as riding on a lion, as well as being drawn by lions in a chariot. The cut in this number is a representation of the former; that in our last of the latter. The present cut exhibits her without her turret crown. În her left hand she holds a tympanum. The sun on the one side of her, and the moon on the other, show that the earth has her fertility from their influence. "This animal resembles the tiger in its habits, and age aspect. So rapid are his movements that few anithe leopard in its skin. Like the tiger, it has an insa-mals can escape him, and such is his agility that he tiable thirst of blood, and an untameable ferocity; like climbs trees in pursuit of his prey, and is sure of seizthe leopard, its skin is spotted, but is less beautiful ing his victim. The flesh of animals is said to be his than the skin of that animal. It seems, in truth, only favourite food; but when pressed by hunger, he makes a large variety of the leopard. The Panther is usually his attacks without discrimination. more than six feet in length. In Africa, one was killed by Major Denham, which was more than eight feet in length. His hair is short, sleek, and mossy, and his colour is in general of a bright tawny yellow, elegantly marked with black spots, disposed in circles of four or five each, with a single spot in the centre: his chest and belly are white. He has short and pointed ears, fierce and restless eyes, a strong harsh cry, and a sav-largest size. "In the time of the Romans, Panthers appear to have been very numerous, and at present the species is said to extend from Barbary to the remotest parts of Guinea. "The following narrative of an encounter with a Panther, which is copied from the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, will abundantly prove the formidable nature of the Panther, even when the animal is not of its "I was at Jaffna, at the northern extremity of the top, to frighten the tiger out, by worrying it an easy island of Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819, operation, as the huts there are covered with cocoa(says the writer,) when, one morning, my servant call-nut leaves. One of the artillery-men wanted to go in ed me an hour or two before my usual time, with to the tiger, but we would not suffer it. At last the "Master, master! people sent me for master's dogs-beast sprang; this man received him on his bayonet, tiger in the town!" Now, my dogs chanced to be some which he thrust apparently down his throat, firing his very degenerate specimens of a fine species, called the piece at the same moment. The bayonet broke off Poligar dog, which I should designate as a sort of wiry- short, leaving less than three inches on the musket; haired greyhound, without scent. I kept them to hunt the rest remained in the animal, but was invisible to jackals; but tigers are very different things: by the us; the shot probably went through his cheek, for it way, there are no real tigers in Ceylon ; but leopards and certainly did not seriously injure him, as he instantly Panthers are always called so, and by ourselves as well rose upon his legs, with a loud roar, and placed his as the natives. This turned out to be a Panther. My paws upon the soldier's breast. At this moment, the anigun chanced not to be put together; and while my ser- mal appeared to me about to reach the centre of the vants were doing it, the collector and two medical men, man's face; but I had scarcely time to observe this, who had recently arrived, in consequence of the cho- when the tiger, stooping his head, seized the soldier's lera morbus having just then reached Ceylon from the arm in his mouth, turned him half round staggering, continent, came to my door, the former armed with a threw him over on his back, and fell upon him. Our fowling-piece, and the two latter with remarkable blunt dread now was, that if we fired upon the tiger, we hog-spears. They insisted upon setting off without might kill the man: for the moment there was a pause, waiting for my gun, a proceeding not much to my when his comrade attacked the beast exactly in the same manner as the gallant fellow himself had done. "The tiger (I must continue to call him so) had taken He struck his bayonet into his head; the tiger rose at refuge in a hut, the roof of which, as those of Ceylon him-he fired; and this time the ball took effect, and huts in general, spread to the ground like an umbrella; in the head. The animal staggered backwards, and we the only aperture into it was a small door, about four all poured in our fire. He still kicked and writhed; feet high. The collector wanted to get the tiger out at when the gentlemen with the hog-spears advanced, and once. I begged to wait for my gun; but no-the fowl- fixed him, while some natives finished him, by beating ing-piece (loaded with ball of course) and the two him on the head with hedge-stakes. The brave artillehog-spears were quite enough. I got a hedge-stake, ry-man was, after all, but slightly hurt: he claimed the and awaited my fate, from very shame. At this mo- skin, which was very cheerfully given to him. There ment, to my great delight, there arrived from the fort was, however, a cry among the natives that the head an English officer, two artillery-men, and a Malay cap- should be cut off: it was; and, in so doing, the knife tain; and a pretty figure we should have cut without came directly across the bayonet. The animal meathem, as the event will show. I was now quite ready sured scarcely less than four feet from the root of the to attack, and my gun came a minute afterwards. The tail to the muzzle. There was no tradition of a tiger havwhole scene which follows took place within an en- ing been in Jaffna before; indeed this one must have closure about twenty feet square, formed on three sides either come a distance of almost twenty miles, or have by a strong fence of palmyra leaves, and on the fourth swam across an arm of the sea nearly two in breadth; for by the hut. At the door of this, the two artillery-men Jaffna stands on a peninsula on which there is no jungle planted themselves; and the Malay captain got at the of any magnitude." taste. THERE is a power and a beauty; I may say a di- | leaping from rock to rock, and winding, foaming, and nity, in rushing waters, felt by all who acknowledge glancing through its devious and stony channels, arany sympathy with nature. The mountain stream, rests the eye of the most careless or business-bound tra veller; sings to the heart and haunts the memory of the man of taste and imagination, and holds, as by some undefinable spell, the affection of those who inhabit its borders. A waterfall of even a few feet in height will enliven the dullest scenery, and lend a charm to the loveliest; while a high and headlong cataract has always been ranked among the sublimest objects to be found in the compass of the globe. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that lovers of nature perform journeys of homage to that sovereign of cataracts, that monarch of all pouring floods, the Falls of Niagara. It is no matter of surprise, that, although situated in what might have been called, a few years ago, but cannot be now, the wilds of North America, five hundred miles from the Atlantic coast, travellers from all civilized parts of the world have encountered all the difficulties and fatigues of the path, to behold this prince of waterfalls amidst its ancient solitudes, and that, more recently, the broad highways to its dominions have been thronged. By universal consent, it has long ago been proclaimed one of the wonders of the world. It is alone in its kind. Though a waterfall, it it not to be compared with other waterfalls. In its majesty, its supremacy, and its influence on the soul of man, its brotherhood is with the living ocean and the eternal hills. I am humbly conscious that no words of mine can give an adequate description, or convey a satisfactory idea, of Niagara Falls. But having just returned from a visit to them,* with the impression which they made upon my mind fresh and deep, I may hope to impart at least a faint image of that impression to the minds of those who have not seen them, and retouch, perhaps, some fading traces in the minds of those who have. And if I can call the attention of any to this glorious object as a work of God, and an echo of the voice of God; if by any thing which I may fitly say of it, I can quicken the devotion of one breast, I shall feel that I have not unworthily expressed my sense of obligation for having been permitted to behold it myself. I will not begin my description with the cataract itself, but take you back to the great lake from which the Niagara flows, so that you may go down its banks as I did, and approach the magnificent scene with a knowledge regularly and accumulatively gained of its principal accessaries. For the river and the lake, nay, the whole superb chain of rivers and lakes, should be taken into view, when we would conceive as we ought of the Falls of Niagara. As we approach the town of Buffalo, which is situated near the eastern extremity of Lake Erie, that wide-spread sheet of water opens to the sight. If the traveller has never seen the ocean, he may here imagine that he sees it. If he has, he will say that it is a sea view which here lies before him. As he looks to the west, the horizon only bounds the liquid expanse; and it is not till he descends to the shore, and marks the peculiar, quiet, and exact level of the even and sleeping lake, that he will find any thing to remind him that he is not on the coast of the salt and swelling sea. Four miles north from Buffalo we come to the village of Black Rock, and it is here that the boundaries of the lake contract, and its waters begin to pour themselves out through the sluiceway of the Niagara river. The river is at this place about a quarter of a mile broad; and, as I gazed on its dark, and deep, and hurrying stream, I felt a sensation of interest stealing over me similar to that which I have experienced in reading of the preparations of men for some momentous expedition. Opposite Black Rock, on the Canada side, is the village of Waterloo, to which we were ferried over, and from which we commenced our ride This visit was made with some friends in July, 1831. According to Mr. Featherstonhaugh, Editor of the Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science, the and patches of dark-coloured chert contained in the beds of seams carboniferous limestone," have furnished its name to this village. down the river, which runs north into Lake Ontario. There is also a road on the American side, from Buffalo to the Falls, a distance, either way, of about fifteen miles. From Waterloo we pass on by a level road, immediately on the western bank of the Niagara, and observe that the river continually becomes wider, till at length it divides into two streams, which sweep round an island several miles in length. They then unite again, forming one stream as before, only that it is increased in breadth and swiftness. And now the interest thickens, and begins to grow intense. Hitherto we had been travelling on the side of a large river, it is true, but one not much distinguished otherwise, either by its motion, its shape, or the beauty of its borders. We are obliged to call on ourselves to consider where we are, and whither we are going; for Niagara itself seems unconscious of the grand associations with which it is freighted. It moves on as if unmindful, or as not caring to put the traveller in mind, that its waters have come down through the whole length of Erie from the far away Huron, Michigan, Superior; that they are just about to rush over the wondrous precipice below, and then are to hasten forward into another majestic lake, and from it are to pass through the portals of a thousand islands, and the alternate rapids and lakes of a noble and romantic river, washing the feet of cities, and so to flow on into the all-receiving sea. We are obliged to remember this, I say; for the unpretending waters, though pressing forward continually and intently, have thus far told us nothing, themselves, of their long pilgrimage behind, or the yet more eventful journeys before them. But here, as they are meeting round Grand Island, they break their silence and speak, and the whole scene becomes full of spirit and meaning. Here, about three miles from the Falls, you see the white-crested rapids tossing in the distance before you. Here, even in the most unfavourable state of the weather, you hear the voice of the cataract, pervading the air with its low, monotonous, continuous roar. And here you see a column of mist rising up, like a smoke in distant woods, and designating the sublime scene over which it is immediately hanging. I know not that I was afterward more strongly affected, even by the Falls themselves, than I was by the sight of this ever changing and yet never absent guide, this cloudy pillar, this floating, evanescent, and yet eternal testimony, which pointed out to me the exact spot which had been for so many years as a shrine to thousands; which I had heard of and read of so long, and which I had myself so often visited, though not in person, yet with my reverential wishes, with my mind, and with my heart. Childhood came back to me, with its indistinct, but highly wrought and passionate images, maps were unrolled, books were opened, paintings were spread, measurements were recalled; all the efforts which the art of man had made, all the tributes which his spirit had offered, at the call of the great cataract; all these associations, with other dream-like thoughts of the wilderness, the lake, and the stream, rose up unbidden and with power within me, as I steadfastly regarded that significant, far off mist, and knew that I, too, was soon to stand on the consecrated spot, and see, and feel. [To be continued.] BIOGRAPHY. LORENZO DOW.—Continued. THE peculiarities of this individual were exhibited in almost every thing. He must needs originate new names for some things. So he denominated Calvinists A-double-L-part people. The latter term needs some explanation to render it intelligible to some of our readers. It should be observed, then, that Arminians Montreal and Quebec are both on the St. Lawrence. |