On the return of the mission, by the northern feet of the Atlas mountains, Mr. Washington took the opportunity of ascending a part of this range, by following the course of a mountain torrent. The following extract will be read with interest, and at the same time with a regret that this intelligent traveller had not the opportunity of making more extensive researches in this celebrated chain of mountains.

At daylight, struck our tents, and set forward by a sharp ascent; a brawling torrent in the valley below us; its banks well wooded with olive, carooba, walnut, acacia, cedar-the finest timber we had yet seen in the country, though not very large-and profusion of oleanders, stunted palins and rose-trees; cheered and enlivened on our march by the shouts of the Shellüh huntsmen, re-echoed from rock to rock, in their endeavours to rouse the game; each turn of the road disclosing fresh beauties in the valley, and a more boundless view of the plain and city of Marocco, its various mosques glittering in the morning sun; basis of road, limestone; soil, stiff clay, stony; boulders of limestone, sandstone, agate, flint, porphyry, gneiss, greenstone, and cornelian; on the brow of the hill a range of limestone, fissures vertical, resembling a pile of gigantic tombstones, artificially placed; passed several villages, perched in the most romantic situations, and inhabited by the free Shelluhs, the aborigines of these mountains.

After about three hours' ascent, the paths becoming narrow and intricate, we dismounted, left our Moorish escort, and put ourselves under the guidance of the Shellüh mountaineers-our only directions, pointing to the snowy peaks above our heads; still ascending through a forest of carooba, olive, cedar, walnut, &c., overrun by wild vines, and the hop-plant in great luxuriance; the scenery now becoming truly romantic; abrupt, sterile, sandstone mountains rising on each side of us; the valley, not a quarter of a mile broad, through which rushed a brawling torrent five hundred feet below us, with the mountain path at times on the very brink of the precipice, while, before us, the snowy peaks appeared to recede as we climbed.

At noon, halted on the summit of a conical schistose hill, much decomposed at surface; strata, east and west; dip, 30° north-east, for a meridional observation, which gave our latitude 31° 25' N.-the first ever perhaps taken in the Atlas. Our barometers here showed four thousand six hundred feet above the sea.

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'While making our observations we were surrounded by the native Shellühs, who gazed with astonishment at our persons-our dress, ticularly the gilt buttons; they silently looked at the compass, the spy-glass, the barometer, as things far beyond their comprehension; but when the quicksilver was poured out for an artificial horizon, they burst out into an exclamation of mingled astonishment and admiration, but no incivility, no rudeness: the contrast between the apathy of the Moors, and the intelligence and curiosity of these primitive mountaineers, is striking; they have an air of freedom about them unknown in the plains; well-formed athletic men, not tall, not marked features,

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and light complexions. Goitre is unknown among them; their language unintelligible to our interpreter, nor, generally speaking, did they understand Arabic. We conversed through the medium of the scheik of the Jews residing in this valley, and obtained correctly some hundred words of their language; they dwell in cottages, built of rough stones and mud, with slightly sloping slate roofs; their chief occupation is hunting, mix very little with the Arabs and Moors of the plain; wherever their valley afforded a spot of ground it was enclosed and cultivated; to us they were hospitable and generous. In each village are many Jewish families, who had fled hither to avoid the degradation and taxation to which they are liable in the cities; this valley contains ten villages, between four and five thousand inhabitants, one-fourth of which are Jews. Saltpetre is found here, and good gunpowder made. Copper-mines are said to have been worked at the upper end of the valley. How little is known of the central recesses of the Atlas! Doubtless these valleys are all inhabited by a race of men probably as unmixed as any existing, of whom nothing is known, hardly even a few words of their language! Here is a field for an inquiring mind.

But to proceed: for two more hours continued ascending; ground covered with scanty herbage and stunted cedar; reached the limit of snow, and continued some distance above, till finding the thawing snow giving way under our feet, and our guides declaring they would no longer accompany us, we reluctantly halted and gazed on the highest peaks, still far beyond our reach, the space between us and them one mass of untrodden snow. Our barometer here showed an elevation of six thousand four hundred feet. The mountain on which we stood was of hard red sandstone, strata running in an east and west direction, dip 10° south; we had thus only passed limestone, micaceous schist, and sandstone, only transition and secondary rocks; no traces of the primitive, except a boulder of granite or rather of gneiss in the valley below, and veins of foliated quartz in the schistose hills; besides, the tendency of the formation is to table-land, ridges, and rounded summits, not to sharp or Alpine peaks; neither did we on our route through the country see any trace of volcanic agency, nor is there anything in the outline of Atlas indicating the former existence of a crater.'-p. 148-150.

We find that our limits will not permit us to notice Captain King's communication on the geography of Tierra del Fuego, and the Strait of Magelhaens, nor the Notes respecting the Isthmus of Panama,' by Mr. Lloyd, who, having served for some time on General Bolivar's personal staff, received from him a special commission to survey that isthmus, with the view of ascertaining the most eligible line of communication across it, whether by road or canal. The Spaniards have frequently caused surveys to be made, but none of them have held out much encouragement to set on foot a laborious and expensive undertak

ing of this kind, nor do we think the result of Mr. Lloyd's levelling affords any hope of success for this project, which, if feasible, at an enormous expense, would probably not answer the end proposed.

The last paper we can afford to notice, is on a subject which has attracted more attention than any geographical problem that remained to be solved in our times, excepting, perhaps, the discovery of a north-west passage. The long sought for termination of that river which has been so long and so improperly called the Niger, has now been discovered, and by a very humble but intelligent individual, who, without having any theory to support, or prepossession to gratify, set about the task in a straightforward manner, and accomplished, not without difficulty and danger, an undertaking in which all former travellers had failed.

Richard Lander, who had accompanied the late Captain Clapperton as his domestic on his second journey to Soccatoo, and who conducted himself so well on the death of his master, in bringing home his journals, besides a great deal of additional information of his own, volunteered his services to follow up their former discoveries, and to trace the river to its termination, wherever it might be. His instructions were to take the same route as Clapperton did, till a convenient spot might be reached, from whence he should find the means of embarking on this river; then to commit himself to the stream, and descend with it whithersoever it might convey him—whether to the sea or to the lake Tsad, the only two probable, we might say possible, reservoirs of the waters of this great river. Richard Lander, accompanied by his brother John, landed at Badagry on the 31st of March, 1830, and, on the 15th of November following, they were launched into the Atlantic through the channel of the Nun, a branch that discharges a small portion of the waters of the Quorra into the Bight of Benin.

The paper which is here published consists only of a few Extracts from the Journal of an Expedition, undertaken by order of His Majesty's Government, to determine the Course and Termination of the Niger, more properly named Quorra, from Yaoori to the Sea, by Richard and John Lander,' communicated by Lieutenant Becher of the Royal Navy. This, of course, is the title of the book about to be published by Mr. Murray, for which it appears he has given the travellers the liberal sum of one thousand guineas, and which, with equal liberality, we see announced to be published in the Family Library,' a work that, from the smallness of the price, makes the valuable information its volumes generally contain accessible to all. The present paper consists of a few extracts, merely to explain the route and the mode in which the accompanying map was constructed by Lieu tenant Becher.

The

The travellers, in the first instance, proceeded, with some slight deviations from the former track, as far as Boossà, which, it appears, does not stand on an island, as Clapperton supposed, but on the main land on the right bank of the river. Clapperton's mistake was a very natural one; the small river Menai flows into the Quorra, just below Boossà, and it being necessary to cross this in order to arrive at that town from the southward, Clapperton supposed the Menai to be an arm of the great river. Lander

says:

This morning I visited the far-famed Niger or Quorra, which flows at the foot of the city, about a mile from our residence; and I was greatly surprised at its reduced breadth. Black rugged rocks rose abruptly from the centre of the stream, and its surface was agitated by whirlpools. At this place, in its widest part, (the end of the dry season,) it was not more than a stone's throw across. The rock on which I sat overlooks the spot where Mr. Park and his associates met their unhappy fate.'-pp. 180, 181.

From Boossa to Yáoori they proceeded up the river by a canoe ; it was divided into many channels by rocks, sand-banks, and low islands, covered with tall rank grass, and some of the channels were so shallow, that their canoe was constantly grounding. They were told at Yáoori, however, that above that place and below Boossa, the navigation was not interrupted by either rocks or sand-banks; and that, after the malca or wet season (setting in with fourteen days of incessant rain), canoes of all kinds pass to and fro between Yaoori, Nyffe, Boossa, and Funda.

It is immediately after the malca, also, that the river, by the depth and velocity of its current, sweeps off the rank grass which springs up annually on its borders. Every rock and every low island are then completely covered, and may be passed over in canoes without difficulty, or even apprehension of danger. Many years ago a large boat arrived at Yáoori, on a trading voyage from Timbuctoo; but when they had disposed of their merchandise, the boatmen returned to their country by land, because they asserted, that the exertion of working their vessel back so long a way against the stream was too great for them, and therefore they left it behind at Yáoori. The journey from hence to the city of Soccatoo, when no stoppage is made on the road, may easily be accomplished in five days, and this is the regular time the natives take to go there.

Yáoori is a large, flourishing kingdom. It is bounded on the east by Haussa, on the west by Borgoo, on the north by Cubbie, and on the south by the kingdom of Nouffie. The crown is hereditary; the government an absolute despotism. The last sultan was deposed by his subjects for his violent measures and general bad conduct; and the present ruler has reigned for the long period of thirty-nine years. The sultan has a strong military force, which, it is said, has successfully re

pelled

pelled the continued attacks of the ever restless Falátahs: it is now employed in a remote province in quelling an insurrection, occasioned partly by the inability of the natives to pay their accustomed tribute, and partly by the harsh measures adopted to compel them to do So. The city of Yáoori is of great extent, and very populous. It is surrounded by a high and strong wall of clay, and may be between twenty and thirty miles in circuit. It has eight large entrance gates or doors, which are well fortified after the manner of the country. The inhabitants manufacture a very coarse and inferior sort of gunpowder, which, however, is the best, and we believe the only thing of the kind made in this part of the country: they also make very neat saddles, cloth, &c. &c. They grow indigo, tobacco, onions, wheat, and other varieties of corn, and rice of a superior quality, and have horses, bullocks, sheep, and goats; but, notwithstanding their industry, and the advantages which they enjoy, they are very poorly clad, have little money, and are perpetually complaining of the badness of the times.'-pp. 181, 182.

Having passed Boossà and Nyffe or Nouffie, the river opposite Layaba became narrow and deep.

'After leaving Layaba, we ran down the stream for twelve or fourteen miles, the Quorra, during the whole distance, rolling grandly along-a noble river, neither obstructed by islands, nor deformed with rocks and stones. Its width varied from one to three miles, the country on each side very flat, and a few mean, dirty looking villages scattered on the water's edge. Just below the town of Bajiebo the river is divided by an island. At this town, which we left on the 5th of October, for the first time, we met with very large canoes having a hut in the middle, which contained merchants and their whole families. At the island of Madjie, where we were obliged to stop for canoe-men, we found trees of hungry growth and stunted shrubs, whose foliage seemed for the most part dull and withering: they shoot out of the hollows and interstices of rocks, and hang over immense precipices, whose jagged summits they partly conceal; they are only accessible to wild beasts and birds of prey. The river below Madjie takes a turn to the east by the side of another range of hills, and afterwards flows for a number of miles a little to the southward of east. On leaving the island, we journeyed very rapidly down the current for a few minutes, when, having passed another, we came suddenly in sight of an elevated rocky hill, called Mount Kesey by the natives. This small island, apparently not less than three hundred feet in height and very steep, is an object of superstitious veneration amongst the natives.'-pp. 183, 184.

At Rabba, a large, populous, and flourishing town, with a great slave-market, the river turns off to the eastward. A little below they passed the mouth of a river of considerable size, which entered the Quorra from the north-east. This was the Coodonia, which Richard Lander had crossed on his former journey

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