!

Of the English his Quiloan majesty knew nothing but what he had derived from the French; he felt however that their triumphant flag, waving in those seas, had been the means of obstructing the traffic in slaves in the principal channel through which it flowed, and had reduced it from ten thousand, once annually exported to the French settlements in the East and West Indies, in vessels from Nantes, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, to a few hundreds, sent in Arab ships to the Persian gulph, Surat, and Guzzerat. He complained that this reduction in the number of slaves exported was not the whole extent of the evil, for that the price had fallen from thirty-two to sixteen dollars, of which the viceroy set over him' by the Imaun of Muscat took no less than eight for his share.

Here then we have a favourable opportunity of abolishing this odious traffic along an extent of sea coast equal to 400 leagues, and gradually throughout the remaining 500 leagues. The king of Quiloa expressed his anxiety to get rid of his subserviency to the Imaun of Muscat; but he dreaded his hostility unless protected by some other power; and why should England hesitate to give that protection?—she has nothing to hope or to fear from the Imaun of Muscat. The loss of revenue from this source would, we understand, be more than made up to the king by the trade in ivory, tortoise-shell, gold dust, and timber. The forests on the main produce the finest spars for masts and yards; they abound with elephants, and the rivers swarm with the hippopotamus. They have cattle and grain and other provisions in the greatest abundance, all of which would be highly acceptable in the Isle of France, since our generosity has parted with the neighbouring island on which it mainly depended for its subsistence.

One small vessel would be quite sufficient to collect these insular deputies of the Muscat Imaun and their garrisons, which do not in the whole exceed fifty men, and to transport them to their master. They might carry a message in place of tribute, that the king of Quiloa, having formed an alliance with Great Britain, had no longer any occasion for his services, and must no longer be considered as his tributary. Two sloops of war stationed on the coast would be an ample force to secure him from any resentment on the part of the Imaun.

If the Portugueze of Mosambique, thus hemmed in between an English colony on the one side and Quiloa on the other, in neither of which was any dealing in human beings permitted, did not, through shame, abandon the odious traffic, they would soon be compelled by necessity to relinquish it. To this happy issue the missionary society might greatly contribute; proceeding from Leetakoo to the northward, and from Quiloa to the southward, they would soon unite their missions through every part of the interior

behind the Portugueze settlements on the coast, and abolition must follow civilization. From the natives, we are convinced, they would have nothing to fear. Though of Moorish mixture, so much remains of the good disposition of the original inhabitants as to leave no room to apprehend any danger from that part of the character which usually attaches to the disciples of Mahomet. We find not among them any trace of that ferocious and vindictive hatred for Christians that prevails among the Moors of northern and western Africa. Indeed they appear to be without any superstition or religion but what a dread of evil spirits inspires. They are neither Amazons nor anthropophagi, nor men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,' as Lopez and the stupid Linschoten would have their readers to believe. It is no wonder that the Portugueze, in palliation of their infamous conduct, should describe those people as the worst of savages and cannibals, after blowing in pieces from the muzzles of their cannons some thousands of them because they refused to discover mines of gold and silver of which they were themselves ignorant; nor is it very surprizing, when we consider the cha-. racter of the man, that the Abbé Raynal should make use of an assertion so unfounded as 'that the eastern coast of Africa affords nothing to excite the cupidity of the trader, the curiosity of the traveller, or the humanity of the philosopher.' If the most valuable productions of nature be worthy the attention of the merchant, if the yet-to-be-discovered fountains of the Nile, the termination of the Niger, and the sources of the Zair, in a country which to every visitor from the time of the Romans to the present day has produced something new, can interest the traveller;-if to release from the bonds of slavery a race of human beings, superior in all respects to the negroes, can rouse the feelings of humanity in their favourthen most unquestionably is the eastern coast of Africa just the reverse of what the Abbé Raynal describes it to be. The untimely fate of Dr. Cowan and his party is no argument against future attempts of travellers or missionaries. In the absence of correct

information, without knowing what the temptation was on one side, or the provocation on the other, we might be led to adopt erroneous conclusions. We still believe, as we before hinted, that they fell among the borderers that separate the free native tribes from the dealers in slaves. The former would naturally conclude that the party came into their country with the view of enslaving them; the latter might suppose that a new rival was appearing in the field to supplant them in their traffic.

The eastern coast of Africa is, besides, by much the finest and most fertile region of that devoted continent. It has more resources for commerce, which require only to be brought into activity; more points accessible by shipping; and, though the climate

in the immediate vicinity of the shore may be unwholesome, as all tropical climates are where swamps and forests are left in a state of nature, yet there is but a narrow slip of these between the coast and the bold rising country sloping to the westward, in which the air of the elevated and extensive plains has been said to be so pure that the new moon is generally visible as a fine thread; that is, as a conceited writer has quaintly expressed it, on the very day on which she had kissed her bright and bountiful brother.'

The friends of the abolition of the slave trade, whose exertions in the cause of the negroes have been so laudably employed, will not, we trust, withhold their powerful aid towards loosing the bonds of an equally deserving and, in point of physical qualities, a much finer race of human beings. Were the experiment tried, we are so sanguine of success, as to venture an opinion that the hearty efforts of a Wilberforce and a Clarkson would effect more in three years, for the freedom and civilization of the natives of this coast of Africa, than they have yet been able to accomplish in thirty, for the negroes of the opposite coast.

ART. III. Hora Pelasgica. Part the First. Containing an Inquiry into the Origin and Language of the Pelasgi or ancient Inhabitants of Greece; with a Description of the Pelasgic or Eolic Digamma, as represented in the various Inscriptions in which it is still preserved; and an Attempt to determine its genuine Pelasgic pronunciation. By Herbert Marsh, D. D. F.R.S. Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge. Cambridge. 1815.

AN attempt, at this period of the world, to bring to light the hitherto undiscovered origin of a people, who have long ceased to occupy a place in the map of nations, seems to be attended with little chance of success. No documents can now be produced, which have not for many ages been the common property of the learned; and it is besides, in almost every instance, a natural consequence of the progressive civilization of states, that their first beginnings soon come to be involved in obscurity. Before a people have arrived at such a pitch of importance, as renders it interesting, even to themselves, to inquire into their earliest origin, and to commit their transactions to durable records, the circumstances of their infant state have been forgotten, or are preserved only in that uncertain and distorted tradition, which becomes, like circles on the water, more variable and undefined, the farther it recedes from the The earliest historians of a state are its poets; and it is not often that the works even of these descend to posterity. Besides, the tissue of historical events forms but the woof of poetry,

center.

into which allegory and fable are so closely interwoven, that after the lapse of ages, scarcely the keenest eye can discriminate between them. From this it follows, as a natural consequence, that even the first prose writers of history will crowd their pages with a mixture of facts and fables, of recorded truths and traditional falsehoods-so that the sphere of historical certainty is necessarily circumscribed. There is a period in the annals of every state, and that at some considerable distance from its beginning, within which all is uncertain and obscure.

Non licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.

These remarks are amply justified by facts. It has been the uniform complaint of historians, from Herodotus to Robertson, that the accounts which have been preserved of the earlier ages of different people, are confused and contradictory. And when we find Thucydides acknowledging that even in his time it was impossible to do any thing more than form probable conjectures about the earlier transactions of the Grecian states; when Hecatæus, who wrote the first prose history of Greece, declares that the traditions of the Greeks were numerous and ridiculous,* how can we reasonably expect at this time to define with any degree of precision those facts which were unknown more than two thousand years ago? And if such investigations be fruitless, they are no less unprofitable for of a people who lived in tents or on trees, who were clothed in skins, and migrated from one pasture to another, what imports it us to know whether they sprung from Hellen or Pelasgus, from one barbarian or another? It may be replied, indeed, that, although such researches are at once uncertain and fruitless, they may still be not unacceptable to that principle of our nature which is ever ardent in the pursuit even of unattainable knowledge: and Dr. Marsh has succeeded in persuading himself that an inquiry into the origin and language of the Pelasgi, 'cannot fail to excite the interest of the scholar, the philosopher, and the historian.' We do not pretend to these feelings. As the Professor, however, has thought proper to bring once more into dispute a subject about which the learned have already contended for so many ages, and has resumed the field with all his forces, it shall be our humble duty to follow him, and observe with what success he makes so violent an irruption into this debatable ground. His object will be best explained in his own words.

'The Pelasgi, according to Strabo, were not only META 0vos, but τῶν περὶ τὴν ̔Ελλάδα δυναστευσάντων ΑΡΧΑΙΟΤΑΤΟΙ. Yet there is hardly an historical question which has been involved in greater perplexity; and certainly none, on which opinion has been more divided. These

* Ap. Demetr. de Eloc. § 12.

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same Pelasgi have by turns been represented in the works of modern writers, as Egyptians, Philistines, Phænicians, Bactrians, Scythians, Goths, and Celts, according as it best suited their respective systems. But although we cannot obtain the certainty of historical evidence for the origin of so ancient a people, we may obtain something more solid than mere conjecture: we may at least derive the benefit of historical induction. To give this historical induction the weight of which it is capable, we must collect all the accounts which can be obtained of the Pelasgi, from the writings of the Greeks themselves; we must arrange those accounts in such an order, as will best enable us to trace the Pelasgi upwards, as high as our data will carry us; and then consider what probable conclusion may be drawn.'

We cannot help expressing a wish in limine, that in collecting and disposing these accounts, Dr. Marsh had noticed, with due respect, the labours of preceding scholars who had cleared the way before him, and performed the most laborious part of his task. We do not perceive the least mention of Stillingfleet's learned dissertation in the 3d Book of his Origines Sacræ, ch. 4, nor of the still more accurate discussion of Larcher in his Chronologie d'Hérodote, t. vii. p. 215; an attentive consideration of which would have prevented the learned author from advancing certain positions which we do not consider tenable.

- Dr. Marsh says that it appears to be the general opinion of the Greek writers, that the Pelasgi were the first inhabitants of Peloponnesus-while some writers represent Achaia as their original country, other writers place them in the adjacent country of Arcadia.' Now in the first place, it is not the general opinion of the Greek writers that the Pelasgi were the first inhabitants of Peloponnesus. Strabo says only that they were the oldest of those who were powerful there; and in the second place, no writer ever placed them in Achaia. The words of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (or more properly Halicarnesus) to which the author alludes, are these ; πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ περὶ τὸ καλούμενον νῦν Αχαϊκὸν ̓Αργὸς ᾤκησαν, αὐτόχθονες ὄντες, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ περὶ αὐτῶν λέγουσι. He is describing Argos, as it was known in his time, τὸ ΝΥΝ καλούμενον ̓Αχαϊκὸν "Apyos, to distinguish it from other towns of the same name in different parts of Greece; and not only in his time, but in that of Homer. (Odyss. F. 251.) Argos was called 'Axaïxov, which name Strabo tells us (viii. p. 365.) was given to the whole Peloponnesus. But Dionysius means Argos in Argolis. The case, as it is represented by Greek writers, is this: Inachus was the first king of Inachia, by which name the country afterwards called Argolis, or, as Stephanus of Byzantium says, the whole Peloponnesus was called. Now the circumstance of a country taking its name from an individual, almost necessarily implies that it was occupied by him either in the way of colony or conquest; a custom of the greatest anti