are some for infants cut off at the moment of their birth. We saw them from ten inches to three feet four inches long, the skeletons in them being bent together. They are all ranged near each other, and are so entire, that not a rib, or a phalanx is wanting. The bones have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air and the sun; dyed red with onoto, a colouring matter extracted from the bixa orellana; or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or of the plantain tree. The Indians related to us, that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh may be consumed by degrees; some months after, it is taken out, and the flesh remaining on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guyana still observe this custom. Earthen vases half-baked are found near the mapires, or baskets. They appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of these vases, or funeral urns, are three feet high, and five feet and a half long. Their colour is greenish gray; and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye. The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles, or serpents; the edge is bordered with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques, in straight lines variously combined. Such paintings are found in every zone, among nations the most remote from each other, either with respect to the spot which they occupy on the globe, or to the degree of civilization which they have attained. The inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures still execute them on their commonest pottery; they decorate the bucklers of the Otaheiteans, the fishing implements of the Eskimoes, the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. Every where a rhythmic repetition of the same forms flatters the eye, as the cadenced repetition of sounds soothes the ear. Analogies founded on the internal nature of our feelings, on the natural dispositions of our intellect, are not calculated to throw light on the filiation and the ancient connections of nations. p. 615.

was

M. de Humboldt assigns many reasons for concluding that some of these mapires and painted vases could not be more than a century old. Several families of the Atures still existed in 1767; and our travellers saw an old parrot at Maypures, which ' not understood, because it spoke the language of those people.' They found the skulls of an European race mingled with the skeletons of the natives, and preserved with the same care.

'We withdrew (says M. de Humboldt in one of those descriptive and picturesque passages which flow with such sweetness and simplicity from his pen) in silence from the cavern of Ataruipe. It was one of those calm and serene nights, which are so common in the torrid zone. The stars shone with a mild and planetary light. Their scintillation was scarcely sensible at the horizon, which seemed illumined by the great nebula of the southern hemisphere. An innumerable multitude of insects spread a reddish light on the ground, loaded with plants, and resplendent with these living and moving fires, as if the stars of the firma

ment

The

ment had sunk down on the savannah. Ón quitting the cavern, we stopped several times to admire the beauty of this singular scene. odoriferous vanilla, and festoons of bignonia, decorated the entrance; and above, on the summit of the hill, the arrowy branches of the palmtrees waved murmuring in the air.'—p. 623.

The situation of Uruana is extremely picturesque. Granite rocks rise in the form of pillars, and rear their heads above the tops of the tallest trees of the forest. No where does the Oroonoko display a more majestic aspect; more than three miles in width, it flows without a winding like a vast canal. This mission is peopled by the Otomacs, a tribe in the rudest state of existence, and presenting, as we are told, one of the most extraordinary physiological phenomena. They eat earth; that is, they swallow every day, during several months, very considerable quantities, to appease hunger, without injuring their health.' These people are of robust constitutions; hideous in appearance, savage, vindictive, ravenous, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. Their usual food is fish, the catching of which is necessarily suspended during the inundations; it is then that they swallow such quantities of earth; and surprizing, says M. de Humboldt, as it may appear, they do not become lean during the long lent of the overflow. In their huts were found balls of this earth, (a very fine and unctuous clay of a yellowish gray colour,) often of five or six inches in diameter, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high.

We cannot follow our author through twenty pages of inquiry into the use of earths by various people, as an article of food; it is sufficient to observe that on this, as on every other question, he collects all the facts and authorities that exist on the subject, from the balls of the Otomacs, to the steinbutter of the quarrymen of Kiffhouser, who spread a very fine clay upon their bread, instead of butter, and find it singularly filling and easy of digestion.'

On the 7th June our travellers left Uruana, and in ten days reached Angostura, the capital of Guyana, having made, in seventy-five days, a voyage of 500 leagues almost wholly on great rivers, and generally stretched at full length, (not quite as much at their ease as the Athenian ambassadors to the Persian court,) in a narrow canoe, under a burning sky, and surrounded by swarms of musquitoes. Coming from an almost desert country, we were struck,' says M. de Humboldt, with the bustle of a town, which has only six thousand inhabitants. Humble dwellings appeared to us magnificent, and every person with whom we conversed, seemed to be endowed with superior intelligence.' We can readily enter into his feelings, when he saw for the first time, wheaten bread on the governor's table.'

And

And here we must take leave of the present portion of the work, the remainder of this volume (about a hundred and eighty pages) being occupied with geographical details on the delta of the Oroonoko, and on the voyages and travels which have been performed on this magnificent river and its numerous branches; and more particularly with a review of the old writers on the equinoctial regions on the New Continent, the hazardous enterprizes to discover the country of the El Dorado, or Gilded Man, (el rey o' hombre dorado,) and the numberless traditions on the subject. These, together with those of the lake Parime, or white sea, and the city of Manoa, have long been exploded by sober geographers: yet were they not without some foundation. It was natural that they, whose sole object was the search after gold, should, in their ignorance, mistake for gold all that glittered; and Raleigh, in the south, no more meant to deceive, than Frobisher (with his marcasites of gold') did in the north, when he gave a description of that gilded king (el dorado) whose chamberlains, furnished with long sarbacans, blew powdered gold every morning over his body, having first besmeared it with aromatic oils'; or when he asserted that every mountain, every stone in the forests of the Oroonoko, shines like the precious metals;' and that if it be not gold, it is the madre del oro.' It was the general ignorance of the age that made both these intrepid adventurers mistake the spangles of mica for the dust of gold.

To say merely that we have been pleased with the narrative and observations which this circumnavigation (for we may so call it) of five great rivers of America, the Apure, the Oroonoko, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare, has produced, would convey but an imperfect expression of our own feelings, and of that tribute to the merits of M. de Humboldt to which he is so eminently entitled. The views he has taken of this magnificent country are so clear, detailed, and comprehensive, that the reader has perpetually before him a panorama of the surrounding objects as he travels along. The features of the route, it is true, are of the grandest and most striking description; but where the lord of the creation plays so subordinate a part as in the forests of the Equinoctial regions of the New World, it required the talent and the research of a Humboldt to give to his observations and descriptions that degree of interest which those volumes will be found to posDull and wearisome as many parts of his discussions certainly are, we toil through them with the certainty that some ingenious theory, some beautiful illustration, some curious facts will be brought to elucidate the point in question. Nothing is left undescribed by the author, nothing undefined; indeed, if he have any fault, beside that of indulging too much in scientifical and philosophical

sess.

VOL. XXV. NO. L.

Ꭰ Ꭰ

philosophical dissertations, it is that of being too minute and discursive in his physical researches. The subject, however, is important, and of increasing interest;-but we must stop; and we cannot better conclude this article, than with the author's concluding paragraph:

'I have described in this and the preceding volume the vast provinces of Venezuela and Spanish Guyana. While examining their natural limits, their climate, and their productions, I have discussed the influence produced by the configuration of the soil on agriculture, commerce, and the more or less rapid progress of society. I have successively passed over the three regions that succeed each other from north to south; from the Mediterranean of the West Indies to the forests of the Upper Oroonoko and of the Amazon. The fertile land of the shore, the centre of agricultural riches, is succeeded by the steppes, inhabited by pastoral tribes. These steppes are in their turn bordered by the region of forests, the inhabitants of which enjoy, I will not say liberty, which is always the result of civilization, but a savage independence. On the limit of these two latter zones the struggle now exists, which will decide the emancipation and future prosperity of America. The changes which are preparing cannot efface the individual character of each region; but the manners and condition of the inhabitants will assume a more uniform colour. This consideration perhaps adds an interest to a tour, made in the beginning of the 19th century. We like to see traced in the same picture the civilized nations of the shore, and the feeble remains of the natives of the Oroonoko, who know no other worship than that of the powers of nature; and who, like the Germans of Tacitus, deorum nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sold reverentiâ vident.'p. 863.

ART. IV.-Memoirs from 1754 to 1758. By James, Earl of Waldegrave, &c. London. 1821. Small 4to. pp. 176. JAMES, second Earl of Waldegrave, the author of these Memoirs, was the great grandson of James II. by Arabella Churchill, sister of the great Duke of Marlborough. His grandfather, a romancatholic, was created a baron by his royal father-in-law, followed him into exile, and died at Paris in 1689. His son, however, became a protestant in 1722, and was successively created Viscount Chewton Earl of Waldegrave, and a Knight of the Garter. His eldest son, born in 1715, was the author of these Memoirs, and succeeded to the title in 1741; and in 1743, notwithstanding his jacobite connexions, was appointed Lord of the Bedchamber by the personal favour of George II.

'Such offices were then held in high estimation; they often led to favour and greatness. It was in the spirit of those times to be more greedy of imaginary honours, than obsequious to real power. Noblemen of the first rank sought with avidity employments which their descendants regard with indifference, or reject with disdain, as badges

of

of dependence, rather than marks of distinction or importance? Introduction, p. viii.

This observation of the editor is very just; and it is not unin teresting, nor foreign from our subject, to examine what may be the cause of such a change-for we do not believe that men, high of low, are more disinterested or less ambitious now than they were a reign or two ago. We are aware that the alteration is attributed exclusively to a spirit of independence; and that a philosophical indifference to court-favour is considered as one of the results of the force of public opinion.' There is some truth in this the motives and actions of public men, and particularly of those who may be connected with the government, are liable to such misrepresentations and on the other hand-those who oppose the Court and reject its honours are so naturally the objects of popular applause, that the same vanity which formerly courted the smiles of kings now flatters a more noisy but not a more discriminating or honourable patron.

}

But there is also another circumstance which has still more tended to lower the rate of such offices as Lords of the Bedchamber -we mean the alteration in the modes of the private life of our sovereigns: -such places gave, as the editor says, in the reign of George II., access to the king's presence and opportunities of intercourse and of influence; but his late Majesty's domestic taste and habits (and probably the general influence of the age co-operating with those tastes and habits) induced him to get rid, as much as he could, of the irksome ostentation of his rank, and to live, as far as he might, as a private gentleman. One by one, the pride, pomp and circumstances of the court, (as it was understood in the times of our grandfathers,) vanished-the royal circle became matter of personal selection rather than of official designation; Lords of the Bedchamber became in fact sinecurists, and they have now no more share in the personal society of the sovereign, and little more access to his person, than any other noblemen: if, the descendants of noblemen of the first rank' now despise or reject what their ancestors sought with so much eagerness, it is not, we believe, that they are less vain, or less interested, or less ambitious, but because the places themselves, in the present state of society, can no longer contribute either to vanity, interest or ambition. If the Court of England should ever be re-established on its old principles, and if some future monarch should condemn himself to live the life of a king, and to find amongst his official servants all the pleasures of his private society, we do not doubt that we should see these now disregarded offices rise again into the same kind of request and consideration in which they were held in the time of George II. and his predecessors.

DD 2

Soon