From hence, taking a fouth direction, the ftream is augmented in velocity, and forms a cascade interrupted by huge rocks; and at a distance further down, of five hundred yards, a fimilar effect is produced. After thus exhibiting a grateful variety throughout its courfe, the river is precipitated in an almoft perpendicular direction, over a rock of the height of two hundred and forty-fix feet, falling, where it touches the rock, in white clouds of rolling foam, and underneath, where it is propelled with uninterrupted gravitation, in numerous flakes, like wool or cotton, which are gradually protracted in their defcent, until they are received into the boiling, profound abyfs, below.

Viewed from the fummit of the cliff, from whence they are thrown, the waters, with every concomitant circumftance, produce an effect aw fully grand, and wonderfully fublime. The prodigious depth of their defcent, the brightnefs and volubility of their courfe, the fwiftnefs of their movement through the air, and the loud and hollow noise emitted from the bafin, fwelling with inceffant agitation from the weight of the dafhing waters, forcibly combine to attract the attention, and to im prefs with fentiments of grandeur and elevation, the mind of the fpectator. The clouds of vapour arifing, and affuming the prifmatic colours, contribute to enliven the scene. They fly off from the fall in the form of a revolving fphere, emitting, with velocity, pointed flakes of fpray, which fpread in receding, until intercepted by neighbouring banks, or diffolved in the atmosphere.

The breadth of the fall is one hundred feet. The bafin is bounded by fteep cliffe, compofed of grey lime flate, lying in inclined ftrata, which, on the east and weft fides, are fubdivided into innumerable thin fhivers, forming with the horizon, an angle of forty-five degrees, and containing between them, fibrous gypfum and pierre à calumet. Mouldering inceffantly, by exposure to the air, and to the action of the weather, no furface for vegetation remains upon these substances.' p. 76—78.

If we except the various descriptions of falls, hills, lakes and woods, the first part of this volume contains little that deserves notice. The enumeration of different townships, or districts nominally settled and only begun to be cultivated and cleared, are in the highest degree uninteresting to all but persons having estates in those parts. Here and there the author falls in with a spot where a few families of Indians reside, and gives a passing sketch of their situation and manners. We wish he had been more full in such detaiis, as they touch upon an interesting topic, the effects produced on savage tribes, by the neighbourhood of gradually extending civilization. The following extract is all we can spare room for; it will show our readers what sort of things Indian chapels and assemblies are.

The chapel is fmall, but neat, and the parish extending to a confiderable way around, the Canadians, who form the greatest number of

parishioners,

parishioners, have lately procured a church to be erected for their accommodation, about a quarter of a mile from the village. The Indians attend, with fcrupulous obfervance, to the performance of their devotions. The women are placed in the centre of the chapel, and the men arrange themselves on each fide, and on the rear. The former have in general good voices; and both fexes feem to evince a confiderable degree of fervency in the exercise of their religious duties.

They live together in a ftate of almoft uninterrupted harmony and tranquillity; the miffionary has a great influence over them; and they have exchanged, in fome degree, the manners of favage life, for thofe of the Canadians, in whofe vicinity they refide.

The quantity of land they occupy in cultivation, is about two hundred acres, which they plant with Indian corn, or maize. A number of the men pursue the chafe, during the winter feafon. The French language is fpoken by them with confiderable cafe; and the men, in general, notwithstanding their partial civilization, maintain that independence, which arifes from the paucity and limitation of their wants, and which conftitutes a principle feature in the favage character.

This nation originally frequented the vicinity of lake Huron, near a thousand miles from Quebec. It was once the most formidable and fierce, of any tribe that inhabited thofe quarters, dreaded even by the Iroquois; who, however, found means to fubjugate, and almost to extirpate it, by pretending to enter into an alliance: the Hurons, too blindly relying on the proteftations of the Iroquois, the latter feized an opportunity to furprise and flaughter them. The village now defcribed, was compofed of a part of the Hurons who escaped from the deftruction of their tribe, and is occupied by the defcendants of that people.

• We affembled together in the evening, a number of males and fe males of the village, who repeatedly performed their feveral dances, defcriptive of their manner of going to war, of watching to enfnare the enemy, and of returning with the captives they were fuppofed to have furprised. The inftrument chiefly in ufe in the dances, is a calibafh filled with small pebbles, called chichicoué, which is fhaken by the hand in order to mark the cadence for the voices and the movements. They are ftrangers to melody in their fongs, being totally unacquainted with mufic. The fyllables which they enounce, are yo, he, waw. Thefe are invariably repeated, the beholders beating time with their hands and. feet. The dancers move their limbs but a little way from the ground, which they beat with violence. Their dancing and their mufic, are uniformly rude and difgufting; and the only circumftance which can recompenfe a civilized fpectator, for the penance fuftained by his car, amid this boisterous roar, and clafh of difcordant founds, is, that to each dance is annexed the reprefentation of fome action, peculiar to the habits of favage life; and that, by feeing their dances performed, fome idea may be acquired, of the mode of conducting their unimproved fyltem of warfare. p. 80-83.

The internal carriage of North America occupies a consider able portion of our author's attention. The subject is not void of

interest,

interest, but it has already been fully handled by one who knew it most thoroughly, Mr Mackenzie; in noticing whose Travels, we have formerly described this clumsy and tedious mode of communication, in which the vessel sometimes carries the navigator and at other times is carried by him. Mr Heriot seems to know the general course of the business well enough; but we wish he had spared the silly remark upon oaks in page 156. He is struck with sentiments of regret at seeing the numbers of fine oak trees daily cut down and burnt in clearing the lands for cultivation. A native of Naples might as well regret to see the waste of ice in Greenland, or an Arab weep over the quantity of fine water thrown away at Gravesend.

The chapter on the climate of Canada, if not very learned or novel, is at least sufficient to give us a full and satisfactory view of the subject. Upon the modes of husbandry our author is not equally copious; and the notices which he has given of the progress of cultivation and commerce in this colony, are unfortunately but scanty in proportion to what he might have collected, and what the interest of the subject required. We shall note a few particulars; which may serve to show how rapidly the wealth and industry of the colony are increasing. Before the conquest, it exported, at an average, goods to the value of 80,0001. Sterling. In 1769, the exports were worth 163,0001., employing 70 vessels; and 12 were occupied in the fisheries of the St Lawrence. In 1795, the trade of Canada employed 128 vessels, containing 19,953 tons, navigated by 1067 seamen. In 1802, its exports, chiefly of grain, employed 211 vessels, of about 36,000 tons, and navigated by 1850 men. So great an augmentation of trade, must arise from the rapid clearing of this exte: sive country; and, accordingly, we find everywhere symptoms of this going quickly on. The improvements (says Mr Heron in another part of his work) of every description, in which for a few years past the province has been rapidly advancing, have, in some situations, already divested it of the appearance of a.new-settled colony, and made it assume the garb of wealth and of long-established culture. The roads in the settled parts of the country, are, in the summer season, remarkably fine, and two stage coaches run daily between Niagara and Chippawa, or Fort Welland, a distance of eighteen miles. '

The whole of the remaining division of this volume, being about three hundred and thirty pages, should, beyond all question, have been left out. It is entitled, Manners and customs of the American Indians; and contains chapter after chapter of scraps of description, and remarks collected from all the most common writers on the savage state. Raynal, Robertson, (may the conjunction

conjunction of names so different be pardoned, for Mr Heriot, who takes indiscriminately from both, has forced us ;) and a variety of other authors, whose works are in the most constant state of perusal by every one who reads any books at all, are made to contribute, frequently in their own words, a sufficient stock of sentences, which being tacked together by our author, and confused together until all arrangement is utterly lost, eke out what should naturally have been a small octavo, into a most spacious quarto, containing about a stone (jockey weight) of description; and this stone is all the bread we get for our two or three guineas, and our two or three days labour!-Nor let the reader imagine that this is only a clumsy appendix to the description of Canada; it is an excrescence infinitely more misplaced; it bears no more reference to Canada than to the Tierra del Fuego; it gives you nothing about the North American Indians or the EsKimaux, more than about the Charaibs and the Peruvians. You open a chapter expecting to learn what sort of tribes are subject to the British government in North America; or by what kind of neighbours our countrymen there are surrounded. The Protestant reader, for example, would fain know whether a pious sovereign reigns over any Pagans in Canada; and if so, he is anxious to learn whether care is taken to prevent their increase, by due and proper castration of the males, and the other experiments so well exemplified in Irish history. He naturally wishes, too, to be set at ease about the civil state of the said Pagan subjects; whether the proper means are used for speedily converting them; whether, in the mean time, they are not tied hand and foot, shut up in caves, scourged from time to time, and roasted or parboiled at slow fires, in the established, wholesome, British and constitutional manner, practised in other parts with such happy fruits. All these points a good subject is naturally anxious about; and he, not unreasonably, expects light upon them in a large volume which he has purchased as treating of Canada. But he is soon balked in any such expectations; for every time he opens a chapter, he finds himself carried away to Mexico, and Peru, and Chili; to the worship of the sun and the painted letters, to Manco Capac, and all the stories so often told about the Incas and their people. Thus is the bookmaking art carried on in this our country, to a perfection which it hath nowhere else attained, not even in the land of letters, Germany itself.

- We shall, of course, not attempt to give any abstract of this preposterous addition to Mr Heriot's book; but shall content ourselves with extracting from one page of it a pleasing account of the notions which some Indian tribes entertain of a future state. Our author does not tell us what tribes; nor are we at all certain

that

that he has not taken the passage from some former author; and, as we have no inclination to read over Raynal and the Lettres edifiantes et curieuses,' in order to detect him, we acknowledge, that in quoting it we are exposing ourselves to the risk of reprinting with admiration some well known description. But the picture is so pleasing, and even poetical, that we are willing e'en to take our chance of being brought to shame, for the sake of attracting notice to what may possibly turn out to be original.

Many of the Indian nations believe that the foul, after its feparation from the body, enters into a wide path, crowded by spirits, which are journeying towards a region of eternal repofe. That in the way thither, an impetuous river must be croffed by means of a bridge made of wicker, which continually trembles under the feet, and from whence the paffengers incur much hazard of falling into the current. They who are fo unfortunate as to be thrown from this paffage are swept away by the ftream, and can never return. The fpirits which have paffed the river direct their courfe for a confiderable way along its banks, making provifion of fish, which they dry, until they gain an extenfive meadow, whofe extremity is terminated by precipitous rocks, over which there is a long and narrow path, with a barrier of two large logs of wood, alternately raifed and depreffed. Thefe are intended to crush the living who might attempt to force a paffage, but not as an impediment to the progrefs of the dead. The foul afterwards arrives at a beautiful meadow, boundless to the fight, filled with every fpecies of animals, and abounding with the most delicious fruits; here is heard the found of drums and of other mufical inftruments known to favages; from hence it is ufhered into the abode of happiness and joy, where its journey is concluded, where it is invefted with beautiful raiment, and where it mingles with an affembly of kindred spirits in the dance.' p. 361.

If all the notions of the savages were as agreeable as this, and all their modes of thinking as refined, we should be less surprised to read the accounts which our eloquent Postmaster has collected, of the fancy which some civilized Europeans have had for diving among them, and becoming savage like themselves.

We have thus brought to a close, the account which we deemed it worth our while to give of this huge, but not altogether useless, piece of bookmaking. When men of sense and educa tion, like Mr Heriot, after residing in distant countries, which every man of inquiry is eager to read about, think fit to publish the result of their observations, it is really provoking that they so very seldom take the most obvious means of making their books valuable or interesting. In all countries, (except perhaps Germany), it is customary for authors, who step forward to instruct mankind on any subject of art or science, first to learn it themselves. But it should seem, that books of travels may be written without any preparation whatever; that a man has only to be, or to have been, bodily in a country, in order to be qualified for de

scribing