• I here beg leave to observe, that the reader who wishes to form a just estimate of the merits and faults of Mr. Bruce should carefully compare the information given in the late appendices with the original publication, and, after perusing both with attention, he will find that I have selected only a small portion of the contradictions subsisting between them; as I have been anxious to enter only so far into the question as might tend to justify the observations I felt myself compelled to make respecting this traveller; for, had I altogether evaded the question, I might, with some justice, have been supposed to have compromised my own opinions from dread of his numerous advocates, or from a culpable desire of sheltering myself under his acquired reputation. I am perfectly aware how much Mr. Bruce has accomplished; and no man can more truly admire his courage, his perseverance, his sagacity, or his genius, than myself; and I confess that, from the pleasure I still take in reading his book, I shall never cease to regret that any weakness of character or unfortunate vanity should have induced him, in a single instance, to have swerved from the plain and manly path of sincerity and truth which lay before him: since the ground which he occupied was far too elevated for him to stand in need of any such unworthy and adventitious aid.' P. 343.

In several other places he bears testimony in strong terms to the general truth of Bruce's picture of the country and its population. At some moments, what our Author beheld, so vividly recalled his predecessor's exhibitions that it was nearly equal, for obtaining a strong and true impression of the scene, whether he looked on the reality or on the reflected images in the mirror of the description. If that powerful describer could have abstained from some extravagances and exaggerations,-if the crowded diversity of actual adventures could have convinced him there was really no room for the introduction, as matter of fact, of several fictitious ones,-if he could have thought it better, freely to suffer some other individuals to enjoy an inferior share of the credit of an achievement, of which he has, after all, been unsuccessful in his earnest endeavour to monopolize the honour, than to mis-state facts, falsify dates, and even attempt to pervert geography,-and if these convictions of defective integrity, in some particulars, had not inevitably thrown a certain dubiousness over the specific detail, at least of every part of bis work where any thing extraordinary is exhibited; he might indeed have been regarded as the prince of travellers. How much he misjudged the age that was then coming on, if he really fancied that his enterprise was to be nearly the last of the kind, that no Englishman would ever dare be found on any part of his track, and that therefore his negligent or deliberate deviations from truth could be for ever beyond the reach of inquisition. If the rapid multiplication of books of travels be, in some respects, an evil, it gives us at least the advantage of a powerful check on the romance-making propensities of the amusing vagrants; apd

what has befallen Bruce will very strongly tend to admonish them, that there is hardly any part of the earth which the most daring of them can explore, that can secure them an impunity in bringing us a deceptive account of what they shall have seen there, and have done there.

The only place to warrant such an experiment would be a country going to be for ever closed up (as in the case of a great portion of the coast of Greenland) by an indissoluble assemblage of ice, or a district in some of those regions where it should not be at all improbable that the very year after the traveller's visit, the towns, the people, and the very face of the country, may be destroyed by an earthquake.

In our cursory survey of the present work, it may come in our way almost inevitably to otice, in a slight and passing manner, an instance or two of Bruce's temerity and miscalculation, in making statements and assertions which must have been hazarded in the presumption, that he was an exclusively favoured mortal with regard to attempts on the interior of Africa, and that the fountains of the Nile had hardly been more effectually guarded against vulgar approach before his time, than the very country itself was destined to be subsequently. He was not even considerate enough to advert to a danger that menaced his reputation from a quarter from which it might be deeply injured without the intervention of any rival of his adventures. He could little have anticipated that his own manuscript papers were to furnish, through the highly laudable honesty of his friends, in a new edition of his own work, the proofs of a variety of inaccuracies and contradictions, and, we fear, some intentionally false statements.

Nevertheless, he stands as yet above all danger of rivalry in practical achievement in that part of the world. He went where no other of his countrymen has penetrated since, or is likely to penetrate for an indefinite time to come; and the brilliant enterprise was accomplished by his own single energy, aided by none of that influence which now accompanies, in so many regions of the east, a man belonging to a nation known to have acquired the ascendency at sea, and the dominion of a considerable portion of Asia. His fame admits no other individual for a moment in heirship or competition but Mr. Salt; and he, with all the influence and the facilities that accompanied him, has not been able to approach that central region of Abyssinia which Bruce created himself the means of invading, and traversing with protracted and privileged and intimate inspection.

Having read with much interest Mr. Salt's former journal of travels in Abyssinia, forming a part of Lord Valentia's splendid work, we heard, with great pleasure, of his being appointed by our government to make a more formal attempt on that coun

try, in a mission which, with overtures for opening a commercial intercourse as its most palpable object, would necessarily, in such hands, include whatever could be accomplished in the way of general inquiry, vigilant and accurate inspection, and graphical representation. We ventured to hope that at his return we should be enabled to travel once more in imagination to Gondar, for the first time with a guide on whom we could in all respects implicitly rely. It was, therefore, with a strong feeling of disappointment that we learned at length that he had, with still more mortifying disappointment to himself, found insuperable obstacles to his design of penetrating into the interior province of Amhara; that he had not, indeed, been able to approach very materially nearer to Gondar than Antálo, the capital of the grand eastern province denominated Tigré, the same town which formed the limit to his former advance into the country-only he was permitted in this latter visit to make a pleasant and a very observant excursion eastward to the river Tacazze, and the foot of some of the mountains of Samen, the grand appearance of which mountains was worth a longer journey, even had there been nothing interesting in its several stages.

Still, though all his readers will very sensibly share his own. disappointment, and though they are to be informed, besides, that he failed in the specific object of his mission, they will all testify that he has given us a very pleasing book. It contains information of considerable value, supplies a great deal of entertainment, and will contribute to reduce to a less extravagant and a more defined shape in our minds, the somewhat wild and dubious images introduced into them without a possibility of ex-. pulsion by his romancing predecessor. It presents, also, a number of characteristic objects and scenes directly to the eye by means of our Author's sketches, and may, perhaps, for we would not utterly despair of this, tend to excite in this country a degree of benevolence which may ultimately operate to assist an unhappy people, placed in circumstances in which very small services might prove of incalculable benefit To this last point Mr. Salt, with a very laudable zeal in behalf of a country, in which he has experienced so much kindness and seen so much infecility, adverts strongly both at the beginning and at the end of his book. His dedication to a personage to whom, previously to reading it, we exceedingly wondered what he could say, concludes thus.

Should this volume succeed in attracting your notice to the present forlorn and distracted state of byssinia, so far as to induce your R. H. to promote the welfare of that country, by the introduction of useful arts, together with a judicious advancement of the true tenets of the Christian Religion among its inhabitants, I shall feel that my

exertions in this cause have not been in vain; and, in the meanwhile as the best reward of my labours, shall continue to look forward to the consolatory hope of witnessing the beneficial changes which the bounty and wisdom of your R. H. may effect in the condition of that remote country.'

And at the termination of his narrative he cannot part with his readers without suggesting the subject once more.

I shall here take my leave of the reader with an anxious hope that I may, in this instance, meet with the same liberal indulgence which has hitherto attended my efforts in the cause of Abyssinia; and, referring once again to that country, shail conclude with the words of the learned and disinterested Ludolf, "Excitet D. O. M. Principum "nostrorum animos, ut per vetusta huic Christianæ nationi opem "ferant, Christianismo in tam remotis mundi partibus proferendo uti "lem sibique omni ævo gloriosam futuram.""

The practice so common among our writers of peregrinations of expending a great length of composition and time on the introductory portions of their enterprises, is, in general, to be condemned; but the readers of Mr. Salt's book will, perhaps, think that no part of it is more gratifying to curiosity than the extended portion which relates the course of events from the Cape of Good Hope to the entrance into the Red Sea Besides that very great pains were taken to correct and complete the hydrography of a coast with which navigators are not very familiar, and which, at several points, our Author and his party approached with all the uncertainty and precaution of an experiment. It was under this uncertainty that they approached the Bay of Sofala. It had been left to them to give name to a point which they found jutting out against them near its entrance. They very properly called it Elephant Point, for, he

says,

In every part of the thicket the footsteps of numerous elephants might be seen, and we could plainly trace the recent ravages of these animals among the trees, many of which lay torn up by the roots, stripped of their bark, and their branches and leaves rudely twisted off, and trampled in the mire. At some little distance round the point we discovered an old deserted shed, the remains of a fire, and Some reninants of roasted fish and cashew nuts left by the natives. Several trees near this spot had been burnt to the ground, and a kind of artificial entrenchment seemed to have been made for the purpose, no doubt, of keeping away elephants and other wild beasts during the night.'

An unavailing search was made in the bay for any thing like a town, and an unsuccessful attempt to obtain some communication with a company of the natives who were seen landing from several canoes, and who made on the beach a fierce and wild display of hostility and defiance, with which Mr. S. confesses he

was rather pleased than otherwise, as indicating their competence to defend themselves against the attacks of slave-dealers, with whom,' says he,' they have had but too much intercourse, and for whom, there is every reason to think, we were mistaken.' He adds,

From the little we saw of these people, I should suppose them, from their stature, colour, habits and language, to be nearly allied to the Kaffers, a large party of whom I had seen a short time before at the Cape, and I consider both as perfectly distinct from either that of the Hottentot, or of the negro.'

He points out the danger to navigation in this bay, from the numerous shoals of a large, and, probably, varying and increasing sand-bank, which has been thrown up by the violence of the 'south-west winds, which generally prevail, blowing in direct opposition to the currents of many rapid rivers which here flow ' into the sea.' 'No ship should venture into less than twelve fathoms, in which depth she may traverse the bank in perfect safety.' About this bank they met with many whales.

'At times we had twenty or thirty in sight; some of them passing close by the vessel, others darting away, making a snorting noise, and throwing up the water like a fountain. At different times they seemed to be pursuing each other, wildly rolling and tumbling about, occasionally rising erect out of the water, shining like bright pillars of silver, then falling on their backs and flapping their enormous fins violently on the surface, with a noise somewhat resembling the report of a cannon.'

In approaching Mosambique they saw several water-spouts, which did not come near enough to cause much alarm. One of them continued steadily in the same position long enough for Mr. S. to make a sketch, from which he has given a very beautiful and striking engraving.

At Mosambique they were received with the most gratifying politeness by Don Antonio Manoel de Mello Castro e Mendoça, who had assumed the government only twelve days before their arrival. They were most handsomely treated, during their stay, with hospitalities and amusements, and were freely allowed to see every thing in the settlement, excepting the ladies, of whose secluded condition, with respect to strangers, our Author complains. He had much communication with the governor relative to the interior of the continent, its native tribes, and the possibility of its being safely explored by travellers. The Englishmen felt a peculiar interest in this last question, on account of Mr. Cowan's adventurous expedition of discovery from the Cape, in a direction which had raised some expectation of his crossing the whole interior of the continent to the Mosambique side. The Governor, who had been informed of this enterprise,