of cocoa-nut and other large trees. The whole is diversified with small lakes and green marshes, skirted all round with rice and pasture fields. In one part, the intertwining cinnamon trees appear completely to clothe the face of the plain; in another, the openings made by the intersecting footpaths just serve to show that the thick underwood has been penetrated. One large road, which goes out at the west gate of the fort, and returns by the gate on the south, makes a winding circuit of seven miles among the woods. It is here that the officers and gentlemen belonging to the garrison of Columbo take their morning ride, and enjoy one of the finest scenes in nature.'-(pp. 336, 337.)

As this spice constitutes the wealth of Ceylon, great pains are taken to ascertain its qualities, and to pro pagate its choicest kinds. The prime sort is obtained from the Laurus Cinnamonium. The leaf resembles the laurel in shape, but is not of so deep a green. When chewed it has the smell and taste of cloves. There are several different species of cinnamon trees on the island; but four sorts only are cultivated and barked. The picture which we have just quoted from Mr. Percival of a morning ride in a cinnamon wood is so enchanting, that we are extremely sorry the addition of aromatic odours cannot with veracity be made to it. The cinnamon has, unfortunately, no smell at all but to the nostrils of the poet. Mr. Percival gives us a very interesting account of the process of making up cinnamon for the market, in which we are sorry our limits will not permit us to follow him. The different qualities of the cinnamon bundles can only be estimated by the taste; an office which devolves upon the medical men of the settlement, who are employed for several days together in chewing cinnamon, the acrid juice of which excoriates the mouth, and puts them to the most dreadful tortures.

(and the fact has been confirmed to us by the most respectable authority), that if it even pass over a bot tle of wine, however well corked and sealed up, the wine becomes so strongly tainted with musk, that it cannot be used and a whole cask may be rendered useless in the same manner. Among the great variety of birds, we were struck with Mr. Percival's account of the honey-bird, in whose body the soul of a common informer appears to have migrated. It makes a loud and shrill noise, to attract the notice of any body whom may perceive; and thus inducing to the tree where the bees have concealed their treahim to follow the course it points out, leads him sure; after the apiary has been robbed, this feathered scoundrel gleans his reward from the hive. The list of Ceylonese snakes is hideous; and we become reconciled to the crude and cloudy land in which we live, from reflecting, that the indiscriminate activity of the sun generates what is loathsome, as well as what is lovely; that the asp reposes under the rose ; and the scorpion crawls under the fragrant flower, and the luscious fruit.

ter ten men.

It is a natural umbrella, and is of as eminent service in that country as a great-coat tree would be in this. A leaf of the talipot tree is a tent to the soldier, a parasol to the traveller, and a book to the scholar. The cocoa tree affords bread, milk, oil, wine, spirits, vinegar, yeast, sugar, cloth, paper, huts, and ships.

The usual stories are related here, of the immense size and voracious appetite of a certain species of serpent. The best history of this kind we ever remem ber to have read, was of a serpent killed near one of our settlements, in the East Indies; in whose body they found the chaplain of the garrison, all in black, the Rev. Mr. -(somebody or other, whose name we have forgotten,) and who, after having been missing for above a week, was discovered in this very inconvenient situation. The dominions of the King of Candia are partly defended by leeches, which abound in the woods, and from which our soldiers suffered in the most dreadful manner. The island of Ceylon is completely divided into two The Ceylonese, in comparts by a very high range of mountains, on the two pensation for their animated plagues, are endowed sides of which the climate and the seasons are entire with two vegetable blessings, the cocoa-nut tree and ly different. These mountains also terminate comthe talpot tree. The latter affords a prodigious leaf, pletely the effect of the monsoons, which set in peri-impenetrable to sun or rain, and large enough to shelodically from opposite sides of them. On the west side, the rains prevail in the months of May, June, and July, the season when they are felt on the Mala bar coast. This monsoon is usually extremely violent during its continuance. The northern parts of the island are very little affected. In the months of October and November, when the opposite monsoon sets in on the Coromandel coast, the north of the island is attacked; and scarcely any impression reaches the southern parts. The heat during the day is nearly the same throughout the year; the rainy season renders the nights much cooler. The climate, upon the whole, is much more temperate than on the continent of ludia. The temperate and healthy climate of Ceylon, is. however, confined to the sea-coast. In the interior of the country, the obstructions which the thick woods oppose to the free circulation of air, render the heat almost insupportable, and generate a low and malignant fever, known to Europeans by the name of the Jungle fever. The chief harbours of Ceylon are Trincomalee, Point de Gallee, and, at certain seasons of the year, Columbo. The former of these, from its nature and situation, is that which stamps Ceylon one of our most valuable acquisitions in the East Indies. As soon as the monsoons commence, every vessel caught by them in any other part of the Bay of Bengal is obliged to put to sea immediately, in order to avoid destruction. At these seasons, Trincomalee alone, of all the parts on this side of the peninsula, is capable of affording to vessels a safe retreat; which a vessel THIS dismal trash which has nearly dislocated the from Madras may reach in two days. These circum-jaws of every critic among us with gaping, has so stances render the value of Trincomalee much greater alarmed Bonaparte, that he has seized the whole imthan that of the whole island; the revenue of which pression, sent Madame de Stael out of Paris, and, for will certainly be hardly sufficient to defray the ex- ought we know, sleeps in a night-cap of steel, and pense of the establishments kept up there. The agri- dagger-proof blankets. To us it appears rather an atculture of Ceylon, is, in fact, in such an imperfect tack upon the Ten Commandments, than the govern state, and the natives have so little availed themselves ment of Bonaparte, and calculated not so much to enof its natural fertility, that great part of the provisions force the rights of the Bourbons, as the benefits of necessary for its support, are imported from Bengal. adultery, murder, and a great number of other vices, which have been somehow or other strangely neglected in this country, and too much so (according to the apparent opinion of Madame de Staël) even in France.

Ceylon produces the elephant, the buffalo, tiger, elk, wild-hog, rabbit, hare, flying-fox, and musk-rat. Many articles are rendered entirely useless by the smell of musk, which this latter animal communicates in merely running over them. Mr. Percival asserts

We could with great pleasure proceed to give a further abstract of this very agreeable and interesting the public. It is written with great modesty, entirely publication, which we very strongly recommend to without pretensions, and abounds with curious and important information. Mr. Percival will accept our best thanks for the amusement he has afforded us. When we can praise with such justice, we are always happy to do it; and regret that the rigid and independent honesty which we have made the very basis of our literary undertaking, should so frequently compel us to speak of the authors who come before us, in a style so different from that in which we have vindicated the merits of Mr. Percival,

DELPHINE. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1803.) Delphine. By Madame de Staël Holstein. London. Mawman. 6 vols. 12 mo.

*All books are written upon it in Ceylon.

It happens, however, fortunately enough, that her | vers between them, besides hæmoptoe, hemorrhage, book is as dull as it could have been if her intentions deliquium animi, singultus, hysteria, and faminei ululahad been good; for wit, dexterity, and the pleasant tus, or screams innumerable. Now, that there should energies of the mind, seldom rank themselves on the be a reasonable allowance of sickness in every novel, side of virtue and social order; while vice is spiritual, we are willing to admit, and will cheerfully permit eloquent, and alert, ever choice in expression, happy the heroine to be once given over, and at the point of in allusion, and judicious in arrangement. death; but we cannot consent, that the interest which ought to be excited by the feelings of the mind should be transferred to the sufferings of the body, and a crisis of perspiration be substituted for a crisis of passion. Let as see difficulties overcome, if our appro bation is required; we cannot grant it to such cheap and sterile artifices as these.

The story is simply this.-Delphine, a rich young widow, presents her cousin Matilda de Vernon with a considerable estate, in order to enable her to marry Leonce Mondeville. To this action she is excited by the arts and the intrigues of Madame de Vernon, an hackneyed Parisian lady, who hopes, by this marriage, to be able to discharge her numerous and press ing debts. Leonce, who, like all other heroes of novels, has fine limbs, and fine qualities, comes to Paris -dislikes Matilda-falls in love with Delphine-Delphine with him; and they are upon the eve of jilting poor Matilda, when, from some false reports respecting the character of Delphine (which are aggravated by her own imprudences, and by the artifices of Madame Vernon), Leonce, not in a fit of honesty, but of revenge, marries the lady he came to marry. Soon after, Madame de Vernon dies-discovers the artifices by which she had prevented the union of Leonce and Delphine-and then, after this catastrophe, which ought to have terminated the novel, comes too long volumes of complaint and despair. Delphine becomes a man-runs away from the nunnery with Leonce, who is taken by some French soldiers, upon the supposition that he has been serving in the French emigrant army against his country-is shot, and upon his dead body falls Delphine as dead as he.

Making every allowance for reading this book in a
translation, and in a very bad translation, we cannot
but deem it a heavy performance. The incidents are
vulgar; the characters vulgar, too, except those of
Delphine and Madame de Vernon. Madame de Stael
has not the artifice to hide what is coming. In travel-
ling through a flat country, or a flat book, we see our
road before us for half the distance we are going.
There are no agreeable sinuosities, and no specula-
tions whether we are to ascend next or descend; what
new sight we are to enjoy, or to which side we are to
bend. Leonce is robbed and half murdered; the apo-
thecary of the place is certain he will not live; we
were absolutely certain that he would live, and could
predict to an hour the time of his recovery. In the
same manner we could have prophesied every event
of the book a whole volume before its occurrence.
This novel is a perfect Alexandrian. The two last
volumes are redundant, and drag their wounded
length it should certainly have terminated where
the interest ceases, at the death of Madame de Ver-
non; but, instead of this, the scene-shifters come and
pick up the dead bodies, wash the stage, sweep it,
and do every thing which the timely fall of the cur-
tain should have excluded from the sight, and left to
the imagination of the audience. We humbly appre-
hend, that young gentlemen do not in general make
their tutors the confidants of their passion; at least we
can find no rule of that kind laid down either by Miss
Hamilton or Miss Edgeworth, in their treatises on edu-
cation. The tutor of Leonce is Mr. Barton, a grave old
gentleman, in a peruke and snuff-coloured clothes. In-
stead of writing to this solemn personage about se-
cond causes, the ten categories, and the eternal fitness
of things, the young lover raves to him, for whole pa-
ges, about the white neck and auburn hair of his Del-
phine; and, shame to tell! the liquorish old peda-
gogue seems to think these amorous ebullitions the
pleasantest sort of writing in usum Delphini that he
has yet met with.

By altering one word, and making only one false
quantity, we shall change the rule of Horace to
Nec febris intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit.'

Delphine and Leonce have eight very bad typhus fe-
Perhaps a fault of all others which the English are least
disposed to pardon. A young man, who, on a public occa-
sion, makes a false quantity at the outset of life, can sel-
dom or never get over it.

The characters in this novel are all said to be drawn from real life; and the persons for whom they are intended are loudly whispered at Paris. Most of them we have forgotten; but Delphine is said to be intended for the authoress, and Madame de Vernon (by a slight sexual metamorphosis) for Talleyrand, minister of the French republic for foreign affairs. As this lady (once the friend of the authoress) may probably exercise a considerable influence over the destinies of this country, we shall endeavour to make our readers a little better acquainted with her; but we must first remind them that she was once a bishop, a higher dignity in the church than was ever attained by any of her sex since the days of Pope Joan; and that though she swindles Delphine out of her estate with a considerable degree of address, her dexterity sometimes fails her, as in the memorable instance of the American commissioners. Madame de Staël gives the following description of this pastoral metropolitan female:

Though she is at least forty, she still appears charming even among the young and beautiful of her own sex. The paleness of her complexion, the slight relaxation of her features, indicate the languor of indisposition, and not the decay of years; the easy negligence of her dress accords with this impression. Every one concludes, that when her health is recovered, and she dresses with more care, she must be but it is always expected; and that is sufficient to make the completely beautiful: this change, however, never happens, imagination still add something more to the natural effect of her charms.'-(Vol. I., p. 21.)

Nothing can be more execrable than the manner in which this book is translated. The bookseller has employed one of our countrymen for that purpose, who appears to have been very lately caught. The contrast between the passionate exclamatious of Madame de Stael, and the barbarous vulgarities of poor Sawney, produces a mighty ludicrous effect. One of the heroes, a man of high fastidious temper, exclaims in a letter to Delphine, I cannot endure this Paris; I have met with ever so many people whom my soul ab◄ hors.' And the accomplished and enraptured Leonce terminates one of his letters thus: Adieu! adieu! my dearest Delphine. I will give you a call to-morrow We doubt if Grub street ever imported from Caledonia a more abominable translator.

We admit the character of Madame de Vernon to be drawn with considerable skill. There are occasional traits of eloquence and pathos in this novel, and very many of those observations upon manners and charac rer, which are totally out of the reach of all who have lived not long in the world, and observed it well.

The immorality of any book (in our estimation) is to be determined by the general impression it leaves on those minds, whose principles, not yet ossified, are capable of affording a less powerful defence to its influence. The most dangerous effect that any fictitious character can produce, is when two or three of its popular vices are varnished over with every thing that is captivating and gracious in the exterior, and ennobled by association with splendid virtues: this apology will be more sure of its effect, if the faults are not against nature, but against society. The aversion to murder and cruelty could not perhaps be so overcome; but a regard to the sanctity of marriage vows, to the and to numberless restrictions important to the wellsacred and sensitive delicacy of the female character, being of our species, may easily be relaxed by this subtle and voluptuous confusion of good and evil. It is in vain to say the fable evinces, in the last act, that vice is productive of misery. We may decorate a vil

1819.)

Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a Statistical Account of that Kingdom, and Geographical Notices of other Parts of the Interior of Africa. By T. Edward Bowdich, Conductor. London, Murray. 1819.

lain with graces and felicities for nine volumes, and | sure to add, that the badness of the principles is alone hang him in the last page. This is not teaching vir- corrected by the badness of the style, and that this tue, but gilding the gallows, and raising up splendid celebrated lady would have been very guilty, if she associations in favour of being hanged. In such an had not been very dull! union of the amiable and the vicious, (especially if the vices are such, to the commission of which there is no want of natural disposition,) the vice will not degrade the man, but the man will ennoble the vice. We shall MISSION TO ASHANTEE. (EDINBUrgh Review, wish to be him we admire, in spite of his vices, and, if the novel be well written, even in consequence of his vice. There exists, through the whole of this novel, a show of exquisite sensibility to the evils which individuals suffer by the inflexible rules of virtue prescribed by society, and an eager disposition to apologize for particular transgressions. Such doctrine is not con- CAPE COAST CASTLE, or Cape Corso, is a factory of fined to Madame de Stael; an Arcadian cant is gaining Africa, on the Gold Coast. The Portuguese settled fast upon Spartan gravity; and the happiness diffused, here in 1610, and built the citadel; from which, in a and the beautiful order established in society, by this few years afterwards, they were dislodged by the unbending discipline, are wholly swallowed up in com- Dutch. In 1661, it was demolished by the English passion for the unfortunate and interesting individual. under Admiral Holmes; and by the treaty of Breda, Either the exceptions or the rule must be given up: it was made over to our government. The latitude of every highwayman who thrusts his pistol into a chaise Cape Coast Castle is 5 6' north; the longitude 1° 51' window has met with unforeseen misfortunes; and west. The capital of the kingdom of Ashantee is every loose matron who flies into the arms of her Coomassie, the latitude of which is about 6° 30' 20" Greville was compelled to marry an old man whom north, and the longitude 2° 6' 30" west. The mission she detested, by an avaricious and unfeeling father. quitted Cape Coast Castle on the 22d of April, and arThe passions want not accelerating, but retarding ma-rived at Coomassie about the 16th of May-halting chinery. This fatal and foolish sophistry has power two or three days on the route, and walking the whole enough over every heart, not to need aid of fine com-distance, or carried by hammock-bearers at a footposition, and well-contrived incident-auxiliaries pace. The distance between the fort and the capital which Madame de Stael intended to bring forward in is not more than 150 miles, or about as far as from the cause, though she has fortunately not succeeded.

M. de Serbellone is received as a guest into the house of M. d'Ervins, whose wife he debauches as a recompense for his hospitality. Is it possible to be disgusted with ingratitude and injustice, when united to such an assemblage of talents and virtues as this man of paper possesses? Was there ever a more delightful, fascinating adulteress than Madame d'Ervins is intended to be? or a povero cornuto less capable of exciting compassion than her husband? The morality of all this is the old morality of Farquhar, Vanburgh, and Congreve-that every witty man may transgress the seventh commandment, which was never meant for the protection of husbands who labour under the incapacity of making repartees. In Matilda, religion is always as unamiable as dissimulation is graceful in Madame de Vernon, and imprudence generous in Delphine. This said Delphine, with her fine auburn hair, and her beautiful blue or green eyes (we forget which), cheats her cousin Matilda out of her lover, alienates the affections of her husband, and keeps a sort of assignation house for Serbellone and his chère amie, justifying herself by the most touching complaints against the rigour of the world, and using the customary phrases, union of souls, married in the eye of heaven, &c. &c. &c., and such like diction, the types of which Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, very prudently keeps ready composed, in order to facilitate the printing of the Adventures of Captain and Miss F, and other interesting stories, of which he, the said inimitable Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, well knows these sentiments must make a part. Another perilous absurdity which this useful production tends to cherish, is the common notion, that contempt of rule and order is a proof of greatness of mind. Delphine is everywhere a great spirit struggling with the shackles imposed upon her in common with the little world around her; and it is managed so that her contempt of restrictions shall always appear to flow from the extent, variety, and splendour of her talents. The vulgarity of this heroism ought in some degree to diminish its value. Mr. Colquhoun, in his Police of the Metropolis, reckons up above 40,000 heroines of this species, most of whom, we dare say, have at one time or another reasoned like the sentimental Delphine about the judgments of the world.

To conclude-Our general opinion of this book is, that it is calculated to shed a mild lustre over adultery; by gentle and convenient gradation, to destroy the modesty and the caution of women to facilitate the acquisition of easy vices, and encumber the difficulty of virtue. What a wretched qualification of this cen

Durham to Edinburgh; and yet the kingdom of Ashantee was, before the mission of Mr. Bowdich, almost as much unknown to us as if it had been situated in some other planet. The country which surrounds Cape Coast Castle belongs to the Fantees; and, about the year 1807, an Ashantee army reached the coast for the first time. They invaded Fantee again in 1311, and, for the third time, in 1816. To put a stop to the horrible cruelties committed by the stronger on the weaker nation; to secure their own safety, endangered by the Ashantees; and to enlarge our knowledge of Africa-the government of Cape Coast Castle persuaded the African committee to send a deputation to the kingdom of Ashantee; and of this embassy the publication now before us is the narrative. The embassy walked through a beautiful country, laid waste by the recent wars, and arrived in the time we have mentioned, and without meeting with any remarkable accident, at Coomassie the capital. The account of their first reception there we shall lay before our readers.

'We entered Coomassie at two o'clock, passing under a fetish, or sacrifice of a dead sheep, wrapped up in red silk, and suspended between two lofty poles. Upwards of 5000 people, the greater part warriors, et us with awful bursts of martial music, discordant only in its mixture; for horns, drums, rattles, and gong-gongs, were all exerted with a zeal bordering on frenzy, to subdue us by the first impression. The smoke which encircled us from the incessant discharges of musquetry, confined our glimpses to the foreground; and we were halted whilst the captains performed their Pyrrhic dance, in the centre of a circle formed by their warriors; where a confusion of flags, English, Dutch, and Danish, were waved and flourished in all directions; the bearers springing from side to side, with charging their blunderbusses so close, that the flags now and a passion of enthusiasm only equalled by the captains, disthen were in a blaze; and emerging from the smoke with all the gesture and distortion of maniacs. Their followers kept up the firing around us in the rear. The dress of the captains was a war cap, with gilded rams' horns projecting in front, the sides extended beyond all proportion by immense plumes of eagles' feathers, and fastened under the chin with bands of cowries. Their vest was of red cloth, covered with fetishes and saphies in gold and silver; and embroidered cases of almost every colour, which flapped against their bodies as they moved, intermixed with small brass bells, the horns and tails of animals, shells and knives; long leopards' tails hung down their backs, over a small bow covered with fetishes. They wore loose cotton trowsers, with immense boots of a dull red leather, coming half way up the thigh, and fastened by small chains to their cartouch or waist belt; these were also ornamented with bells, horses' tails, strings of amulets, and innumerable shreds of leather; a small quiver of poisoned arrows hung from their right wrist, and they held a long iron chain between their teeth with a scrap of Moorish writing affixed to the end of it. A small spear was in their left hands, covered

with red cloth and silk tassels; their black countenances | cautious in their accounts; declining to speak unless heightened the effect of this attire and completed a figure they were positive-and frequently referring doubtful scarcely human. points to others whom they knew to be better acquainted with them.

sand victims; and on his own death this number | The doors were an entire piece of cotton wood, cut with great would probably be doubled. The funeral rites of a labour out of the stems or buttresses of that tree; battens great captain were repeated weekly for three months; variously cut and painted were afterwards nailed across. So and 200 persons, it is said, were slaughtered each time, that I gave but two tokoos for a slab of cotton wood, five feet disproportionate was the price of labour to that of provision, or 2400 hundred in all. The author gives an account by three. The locks they use are from Houssa, and are quite of the manner of these abominations, in one instance original: one will be sent to the British Museum. Where they of which he was an unwilling spectator. On the fune- raised a first floor, the under room was divided into two by an ral of the mother of Quatchie Quofie, which was by no intersecting wall, to support the rafters for the upper room, means a great one,which were generally covered with a frame-work thickly plastered over with red ochre. I saw but one attempt at flooring with plank; it was cotton wood shaped entirely with an adze, and looked like a ship's deck. The windows were open woodwork, carved in fanciful figures and intricate patterns, and painted red; the frames were frequently cased in gold, about as thick as cartridge paper. What surprised me most, and is not the least of the many circumstances deciding their great superiority over the generality of negroes, was the discovery that every house had its cloaca, besides the common ones for the lower orders without the town.'-(pp. 305, 306.)

'A dash of sheep and rum was exchanged between the king and Quatchie Quofie, and the drums announced the sacrifice of the victims. All the chiefs first visited them in turn; I was not near enough to distinguish wherefore. The executioners wrangled and struggled for the office; and the indifference with which the first poor creature looked on, in the torture he was from the knife passed through his cheeks, was remarkable. The nearest executioner snatched the sword from the others, the right hand of the victim was then lopped off, he was thrown down, and his head was sawed rather than cut off: it was cruelly prolonged, I will not say wilfully. Twelve The rubbish and offal of each house are burnt every more were dragged forward, but we forced our way through morning at the back of the street; and they are as the crowd, and retired to our quarters. Other sacrifices, prin- nice in their dwellings as in their persons. The Ashcipally female, were made in the bush where the body was bu-antee loom is precisely on the same principles as the ried. It is usual to "wet the grave" with the blood of a free- English; the fineness, variety, brilliancy, and size of man of respectability. All the retainers of the family being their cloths are astonishing. They paint white present, and the heads of all the victims deposited in the bot- cloths, not inelegantly, as fast as an European can tom of the grave, several are unsuspectingly called on in a hurry to assist in placing the coffin or basket; and just as it write. They excel in pottery, and are good goldrests on the head or skulls, a slave from behind stuns one of smiths. Their weights are very neat brass casts of these freemen by a violent blow, followed by a deep gash in almost every animal, fruit, and vegetable, known in the back part of the neck, and he is rolled in on the top of the the country. The king's scales, blow-pan, boxes, body, and the grave instantly filled up.'-(pp. 287, 288.) weights, and pipe-tongs were neatly made of the purest gold. They work finely in iron, tan leather, and are excellent carpenters.

About a hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved, are generally sacrificed, in different quarters of the town, at this custom (that is, at the feast for the new year). Several slaves were also sacrificed at Bantama, over the large brass pan, their blood mingling with the various vegetable and animal matter within (fresh and putrefied), to complete the charm, and produce invincible fetish. All the chiefs kill several slaves, that their blood may flow into the hole from whence the new yam is taken. Those who cannot afford to kill slaves, take the head of one already sacrificed, and place it on the hole.'-(p.

279.)

The Ashantees are very superior in discipline and courage to the water-side Africans: they never pursue when it is near sunset; the general is always in the rear, and the fugitives are instantly put to death. The army is prohibited, during the active part of the campaign, from all food but meal, which each man carries in a small bag by his side, and mixes in his hands with the first water he comes to; no fires are allowed, lest their position should be betrayed; they eat little select bits of the first enemy's heart whom they kill;

and all wear ornaments of his teeth and bones.

Mr. Bowdich computes the number of men capable of bearing arms to be 204,000. The disposable force is 150,000; the population a million; the number of square miles 14,000. Polygamy is tolerated to the greatest extent; the king's allowance is 3333 wives; and the full compliment is always kept up. Four of the principal streets in Coomassie are half a mile long, and from 50 to 100 yards wide. The streets were all named, and a superior captain in charge of each. The street where the mission was lodged was called Apperemsoo, or Cannon Street; another street was called Daebrim, or Great Market Street; another, Prison Street, and so on. A plan of the town is given. The Ashantees persisted in saying that the population of Coomassie was above 100,000; but this is thought, by the gentlemen of the mission, to allude rather to the population collected on great occasions, than the permanent residents, not computed by them at more than 15,000. The markets were daily; and the articles for In their buildings, a mould is made for receiving sale, beef, mutton, wild-hog, deer, monkeys' flesh, the clay, by two rows of stakes placed at a distance fowls, yams, plaintains, corn, sugar-cane, rice, pepequal to the intended thickness of the wall: the inter-pers, vegetable butter, oranges, papans, pine-apples, val is then filled with gravelly clay mixed with water, bananas, salt and dried fish, large snails smoke-dried; which, with the outward surface of the frame work, is palm wine, rum, pipes, beads, looking-glasses; sanplastered so as to exhibit the appearance of a thick dals, silk, cotton cloth, powder, small pillars, white mud wall. The captains have pillars which assist to and blue thread, and calabashes. The cattle in Ashsupport the roof, and form a proscenium, or open front. antee are as large as English cattle; their sheep are The steps and raised floors of the rooms are clay and hairy. They have no implement but the hoe; have stone, with a thick layer of red earth, washed and two crops of corn in the year; plant their yams at painted daily. Christmas, and dig them up in September. Their plantations, extensive and orderly, have the appear"While the walls are still soft, they formed moulds or frame-ance of hop gardens well fenced in, and regularly works of the patterns in delicate slips of cane, connected by planted in lines, with a broad walk around, and a hut grass. The two first slips (one end of each being inserted in at each wicker-gate, where a slave and his family rethe soft wall) projected the relief, commonly mezzo: the interstices were then filled up with the plaster, and assumed the side to protect the plantation. All the fruits mentionappearance depicted. The poles or pillars were sometimes ed as sold in the market grow in spontaneous abundencircled by twists of cane, intersecting each other, which, ance, as did the sugar-cane. The oranges were of a being filled up with thin plaster, resembled the lozenge and large size and exquisite flavour. There were no cocoa cable ornaments of the Anglo-Norman order; the quatre-foil trees. The berry which gives to acids the flavour of was very common, and by no means rude, from the symme-sweets, making limes taste like honey, is common trical bend of the cane which formed it. I saw a few pillars here. The castor-oil plant rises to a large tree. after they had been squared with the plaster), with numerous slips of cane pressed perpendicularly on to the wet surface, The cotton tree sometimes rises to the height of 150 which, being covered again with a very thin coat of plaster, closely resembled fluting. When they formed a large arch, The great obstacle to the improvement of commerce they inserted one end of a thick piece of cane in the wet clay with the Ashantee people (besides the jealousy natuof the floor or base, and, bending the other over, inserted it in ral to barbarians) is our rejection of the slave trade, the same manner; the entablature was filled up with wattle- and the continuance of that detestable traffic by the work plastered over. Arcades and piazzas were common. A white wash, very frequently renewed, was made from a clay one thousand slaves left Ashantee for two Spanish Spaniards. While the mission was in that country, in the neighbourhood. Of course the plastering is very frail, and in the relief frequently discloses the edges of the cane, schooners on the coast.-How is an African monarch giving, however, a piquant effect, auxiliary to the ornament. to be taught that he has not a right to turn human

feet.