to free it from its pernicious qualities,' sugar-cane, capsicum and tobacco, were among the alimentary plants of secondary importance. The most valuable fruits observed were the plantain, the papaw, limes and oranges, pine-apples, pumpkins, the tamarind, and a fruit about the size of a small plum, called Safu. The plant, however, of most importance to the natives, is the Elaeis guiniensis, or the oil-palm, from which is extracted the best palm-wine, though this beverage is procured from two other species, the Raphia vinifera, and that which Professor Smith supposed to be an Hyphæne. These palms are to the natives of Congo what the cocoa-tree is to many of the Asiatic islanders. The indigenous fruits are, the Anona Senegalensis, Sarcocephalus, a species of cream-fruit, Chrysobalanus Icaco, a species of Ximenia, and another of Antidesina.

It is particularly deserving of attention,' Mr. Brown observes, that the greater part of the plants now enumerated, as cultivated on the banks of the Congo, and among them nearly the whole of the most important species, have probably been introduced from other parts of the world, and do not originally belong even to the continent of Africa. Thus it may be stated with confidence, that the maize, the manioc, or cassava, and the pine-apple, have been brought from America, and probably the papaw, the capsicum and tobacco; while the banana or plantain, the lime, the orange, the tamarind and the sugar-cane, may be considered as of Asiatic origin.' (Ap. p. 469.)

The observations which follow on the dispersion of plants, and the arguments made use of in tracing some of the most remarkable ones to their native country, are highly ingenious and interesting. Indeed the essay of Mr. Brown, containing nearly seventy pages, is arranged in so clear and perspicuous a manner, is so abundant in facts and philosophical reasoning, and displays such depth of research, as will, we think, establish his character as the first botanist of the age. Mr. Brown is friendly to the system of natural orders, as more philosophical and more capable of giving a broad and extended view of the vegetable part of the creation than the artificial arrangement of Linnæus; in this, as an English botanist, we believe he is singular, and we are not sorry for it. The Linnæan method, artificial as it is, must be considered as the best dictionary of nature that has yet been made, and the best adapted for assisting in the study of her language: it is, besides, the most perfect index that has ever been invented for tracing the object of which we are in search: it has its anomalies, but the system of natural orders has more; both, however, are worthy of cultivation, and may on most occasions be brought in aid of each other—but we cannot afford to digress. The general statement of the propor

The comparative merits of the two systems are fairly and ably stated by Sir James Smith in the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica,' Article Botany.'

tion of new genera and species, contained in Professor Smith's Herbarium, is thus given by Mr. Brown:--

The whole number of species in the collection is about six hundred and twenty; but as specimens of about thirty of these are so imperfect as not to be referable to their proper genera, and some of them not even to natural orders, its amount may be stated at five hundred and ninety species.

Of these about two hundred and fifty are absolutely new nearly an equal number exist also in different parts of the west coast of equinoctial Africa, and not in other countries; of which, however, the greater part are yet unpublished: and about seventy are common to other intratropical regions.

'Of unpublished genera there are thirty-two in the collection; twelve of which are absolutely new, and three, though observed in other parts of this coast of equinoctial Africa, had not been found before in a state sufficiently perfect, to ascertain their structure; ten belong to different parts of the same line of coast; and seven are common to other countries. 'No natural order, absolutely new, exists in the herbarium; nor has any family been found peculiar to equinoctial Africa.'—Ap. p. 485. And he adds,

The extent of Professor Smith's herbarium proves not only the zeal and activity of my lamented friend, but also his great acquirements in that branch of science, which was his more particular province, and to his excessive exertions in the investigation of which he fell a victim, in the ill fated expedition to Congo.'-Ap. p. 485.

The animals appear to be those chiefly which are found in every part of this great continent, lions, leopards, elephants, buffaloes, antelopes, wild hogs, porcupines, hares, monkeys, &c. A long list of birds, fishes, and inferior animals, is given in the Appendix, by Doctor Leach, many of which appear to have hitherto been unknown. The river abounds with good fish; and it abounds also with those huge monsters, the hippopotamus and the crocodile of the Nile.

Domestic animals are of few species and scarce. The natives have hogs, goats, fowls, muscovy ducks and pigeons; a few sheep, generally spotted, and with hair instead of wool. They appear to be uncleanly feeders, being seldom at the trouble of picking the feathers from the fowls, or removing the skin, much less the hair, from the flesh of goats, which they devour when scarcely warmed by the fire, tearing it in pieces with their teeth.

Few of the villages seen along the line of the Zaire contained more than a hundred huts; these were mostly placed amidst groves of the palm and adansonia. They consist generally of six pieces; the better kind being constructed of palm leaves matted together with considerable skill; their bedding is also of palm leaves, as are their baskets; they have gourds or calabashes for bowls,

earthen

earthen vessels for boiling their victuals, and wooden spoons for eating them. A piece of baft or of grass matting, bound round their loins, is their only clothing; but the women wear rings and bracelets of beads or cowrie shells, or the seeds of certain plants their canoes are the hollowed trunks of the bombax or cotton tree, each being from twenty to twenty-four feet long, and from eighteen to twenty inches wide. A rude hoe, or piece of iron stuck through a short wooden handle, is the implement in use for agricultural purposes. The climate is so fine that little is required beyond that of putting the seed into the ground; and so temperate, that all the European fruits, grains, and culinary vegetables might here flourish together. The winter,' says the missionary Carli, of the kingdom of Congo is the mild spring or autumn of Italy; it is not subject to rains, but every morning there falls a dew which fertilizes the earth.' Captain Tuckey found the atmosphere 'cool, dry, and refreshing;' the sun so seldom shining out, that for four or five days together they were unable to get a correct altitude. From Embomma upwards the temperature seldom exceeded 76° by day, and was sometimes as low as 60° by night. Fine, however, as the climate certainly is, it was every where apparent that the general condition of the people was that of extreme poverty. The population too was far more thinly scattered along the banks of the river than could have been supposed. Those vast masses of people mentioned by Carli, Merolla, and most of the missionaries, had no existence in this part of the country; and it would almost seem that those armies, counted by hundreds of thousands, were so many fictions, unless we are to conceive that, in the course of two centuries, wars, pestilence, famine, and the slave trade, have swept them away. The country, however, was evidently improving, both in appearance and population, where the party were compelled to abandon the further prosecution of the journey.

The banks of the Zaire are not the part of Africa where the slave trade at present is carried on with much activity: on the first arrival of the expedition, three Portugueze schooners and four pinnaces were at Embomma; and a schooner under Spanish colours, with an English mate on board of the name of Sherwood, slipped out of the river as the Congo entered it. The chiefs were all intent on trade, and were angry and disappointed when they learned that slaves were not the objects of the expedition; and one of them, on being told that they neither came to trade nor make war, asked, 'What then come for; only to take walk and make book?' It would seem, however, that the saleable slaves are chiefly confined to such as have been taken in war, or kidnapped in the interior, or such as may have

had

had a sentence of death commuted into that of foreign slavery. Domestic slavery exists, but only in a slight degree, and the objects of it are not transferable to foreign traders; but the gradation from domestic to foreign slavery is too short and easy, we should conceive, to afford much security to those who are placed in this humiliating condition. It is stated by Mr. Fitzmaurice that, while he was at Embomma, a man had been condemned to suffer death; that he was taken to Sherwood, the mate of the slave-ship before mentioned, and offered for sale; but that, on being rejected, those who had charge of him bound his hands and feet, and without further ceremony threw him into the river.

The state of society, among the tribes of Congo, appears to be pretty nearly the same as that of all the negro nations; but in their moral and physical character they ought probably to be placed at the lower end of the scale of Africans. The women cultivate the land, carry the produce to market, range the woods for food and firing, manage the canoes in catching fish, and perform all the laborious duties, while the men saunter about, or lie at full length stringing beads or strumming on some musical instrument; or, if they exert themselves at all, it is in dancing by moonlight. They are represented, however, as lively and good humoured, hospitable to strangers, ready at all times to share their pittance with the passing traveller; and, considering the low state of civilization, far inore honest thau could have been expected. Their features are neither so strong nor their colour so deep as those of the more northern negroes, and they are said to indicate great simplicity and innocence. The discovery of some burnt human bones, and of skulls hanging on the branches of trees, on the first entering of the party into the river, made an injurious impression on those who landed, as indicating the practice of eating human flesh; but it was soon discovered that this was the place of public execution. Nothing could be more abhorrent from their practice; and, in fact, a negro cannibal, we verily believe, does not exist.

We cannot be surprized that a people so ignorant should be superstitious. Every one wears about him, and keeps also in his dwelling, a charm against evil, and there is nothing so vile in nature that does not serve for a negro's fetiche;-the horn, the hoof, the hair, the teeth, and the bones of all manner of quadrupeds—the feathers, beaks, claws, skulls, and bones of birds-the heads and skins of snakes-the shells and fins of fishes-pieces of old iron, copper, wood, seeds of plants--and sometimes a mixture, of all or most of them strung together on the same string. They are generally guided, however, by the priest in the choice of a fetiche as a protection against any particular danger; and if it should unfortunately happen

that

that the wearer perishes by the very means against which the charm had been adopted, it is not for want of power in the fetiche, but for the possessor having offended it. On this account, when a man has predetermined to commit an act, which may be displeasing to his fetiche, or which his conscience tells him he ought not to do, he lays aside his guardian deity, and covers him up, that he may not behold the wickedness which he is about to commit. This may be superstition; but it is not confined to the African savage. Louis the Eleventh, a faithless, rapacious, and cruel despot, is said to have covered his whole body with reliques and scapularies, to which some supposed virtue was attached; but his favourite fetiche was a leaden image of the Virgin, which he always wore on his hat, and such was the veneration which this tutelary guardian exacted from the monarch, that, whenever he was about to perform a wicked or unjust act, he always put it aside. It is worthy of remark that the word fetiche, which extends throughout the whole of the negro coast, is Portugueze-fetiço, a charm or witchcraft; and we perhaps shall not be far amiss in supposing this nation to have encouraged, rather than used any endeavour to suppress, the superstitious notions of the ignorant natives.

The language of Congo, it would appear from some observations of Mr. Marsden, extends quite across the continent, and many of its words are found to correspond not only with the language of Mosambique, but also with that of the Caffres, near the Cape of Good Hope; but it does not appear to possess any of that complicated mechanism which some authors have assigned to it, or to have required that meditative genius, foreign to the habitual condition of the people,' which Malte-Brun seems to have discovered in its construction. A copious vocabulary of the Malemba and Embomma languages, collected by Captain Tuckey, is contained in the Appendix.

We now proceed to lay before our readers a brief biographical notice of each of the sufferers on this ill-fated expedition, the melancholy catastrophe of which has added so largely to the catalogue of martyrs to the spirit of African discovery.

JAMES HINGSTON TUCKEY, the youngest son of Thomas Tuckey, Esq. of Greenhill, near Mallow, was born in 1776, went to sea in 1791, served on board the Suffolk as master's mate at the capture of Trincomallee, when he received a slight wound in his left arm; and assisted at the surrender of Amboyna, famous,' as he observes in a letter to his friends, for Dutch cruelty and English forbearance.' Here, when in the act of firing a gun, it burst, and broke his right arm. Having no surgeon on board,' he writes, "I was obliged to officiate for myself, and set it in a truly sailor-like fashion,