daily-increasing value in relation to the commercial and maritime interests of nations, the enterprises of missionaries, the study of comparative philology, and many other objects of practical utility. Our voyagers and travellers, and those of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, the United States of America, and other countries, are continually bringing us in curious information about the globe and its highest occupant-Man: but this knowledge requires to be systematized; how many lights must be brought to one focus and rendered visible to all the civilized nations, whether of the Old World or of the New! The publications now issuing from the presses of London, Paris, and New York, will tend to this consummation; and from many of them the traveller, now starting on his career, may learn what researches to pursue or follow out, what inquiries to make, and what comparisons to institute between different races, or different branches of the same race, as modified by difference of climate and other influences; and from some of these works he may take a profitable lesson as to the arrangement of his matter, and the unadorned precision and simplicity of style best adapted to such writing, where facts and not rhetoric are wanted. Many circumstances concur to render the present time propitious to ethnological science. The artificial barriers which so long divided nations, and kept them from a knowledge of each other, are everywhere seen falling before the advance of commerce and its attendant civilization. There is not a sea, strait, or bay into which our ships do not penetrate; every corner of the world is told that it must not expect to be allowed to segregate itself from the rest of mankind. China may almost be said to be thrown open, and even Japan is no longer the sealed book that it was. New and extensive, regions are thus opened to the enterprise of the traveller; and even in better-known but imperfectly-described countries the successful results of recent scientific explorations show how much yet remains to be learned and to be done. No two clever, qualified men will travel, the one after the other, over the same regions, without making (each of them) an addition to our ethnological stock of knowledge. The mystery that still envelops the history and origin of the diversified American races of man; the phenomena connected therewith; the diversity of languages; the remains of ancient art and traces of ancient civilization among the aborigines of Peru, Mexico, and Central America; the earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and their founders; the spontaneous growth of arts, sciences, and mythology among the different American peoples -these are among the leading topics to be taken up and dealt with by the American Ethnological Society; and there are few individuals in the western country who may not, by bestowing a little time and attention, obtain interesting materials for their elucidation. This society, however, does not strictly confine itself to American subjects. They have already treated, in a general way, of the Phallic Worship in the Old World; of the progress of ethnology in Europe; of some Phoenician ruins on Mount Lebanon ; of the languages of Northern Africa; of the Foolah nation, &c. We have before us three volumes of their 'Transactions,' the first published in 1848, and the last in 1853; and from these we propose to make some gleanings for the benefit of our readers, few of whom are likely ever to see the thick New York volumes. The matter is much more moral, wholesome, and in every way better than that contained in the American works of fiction with which certain of our publishers are stocking our cheap bookshops and inundating our railway-stations, merely because (as the international law at present stands) they have nothing to pay for copyright to the American author, and can pirate and reprint any American book, just as the American publishers have long been accustomed to deal with our books, to the great detriment of many a popular and deserving English writer. There are exceptions, but, generally speaking, these purloined, transatlantic productions, which glare at us, from every corner, in their glossy, shining covers of blue, pea-green, scarlet, or yellow, ought to be put in an Index Expurgatorium, as things offensive to good taste, and subversive of all taste to the young, as rhapsodical extravagances that go to confound and to corrupt the language of Chaucer and Spenser, Bacon and Jeremy Taylor, Shakspeare and Milton. There are none of the vices of language or style in the volumes hitherto put forth by the American Ethnological Society. Some of the papers in the 'Transactions,' by Mr. A. Gallatin, Dr. Hawkes, Mr. W. B. Hodgson, Mr. T. Dwight, junior, and others, appear to us to be models of good, straightforward, unaffected writing. For the present we can do no more than extract a wild Indian legend, from a letter to the society, by the Rev. C. C. Copeland. We would observe, that the wonder as to what becomes of the setting sun, and how it is that the glorious orb which sets in the west should rise next morning in the east, is common to all barbarous people, who know nothing of the rotundity or the rotatory VOL. II. 2 H motion of the earth. It is strongest where such people dwell in inland countries, among mountains far in the interior of a continent, where all that the poor people know is that the sun drops behind one ridge and rises from behind another. We have ourselves heard the astonishment expressed by Turkish peasants, not very far in the interior of Asia Minor, who had never seen the sea, or travelled to any distance from the valley in which they were born. Once an English traveller, coming from the west, arrived, between night and morning, at one of these Turkish villages, and complained of the inconvenience and danger of travelling in the dark. "How?" said a Turk, "had you not light? you were coming from the west did you not meet the sun? When he leaves us he always goes in that direction!" A CHOCTAW LEGEND. "I send you here with a tradition in regard to the setting of the sun. The native expression for the setting of the sun, Hoshi vt okatula,' signifies that 'The sun falls in the water.' The tradition is as follows:"Many, many generations ago, when the Choctaws were assembled on a great national occasion, the inquiry arose as to what became of the sun when it disappeared at the close of the day. None of their great men, chiefs, prophets, or doctors, could give any satisfactory answer to the inquiry. The next question was, Whether it was not possible to ascertain, to a good degree of certainty, in regard to the matter? Whether by travelling in the direction of the point where the sun disappeared, one could not find the place of its rest? And then, who would voluntarily undertake the task of discovering what became of the sun? "After a long consultation in regard to the matter, a young man, in all the freshness and vigour of early manhood, volunteered for the task. He would leave his people, his friends, and his country, all that the Indian counts dear, and devote his life to the task, that he might gratify his people. Accordingly, he bade them all farewell, charging them to remember him daily, and talk of him and his undertaking to their children, so that he should be always had in remembrance by the tribe. And assuring them that he would one day return to gratify them in regard to the object of their desires, he departed. "His people remembered him, and talked of him and the object of his journey, and the day of his return. The old men died; the young men became old, and many of them passed away to the grave. Still the young man came not. The people had looked for him, the prophets had spoken of his coming, but he came not. Years rolled away, and even generations passed, but no tidings from the young man who had gone to find what became of the sun, till finally his name and the object of his journey were quite forgotten. "The nation were again assembled. The old men, the young men, the women and children were there. They were suddenly checked in their mirth and rejoicing by the appearance of an old man—a very, very old man. His form was bent, his hair white, his eye dim, and he leaned upon a staff. The people rose up in reverence for the old man. He inquired if the young man who went to find the resting-place of the sun was forgotten? The old men remembered the story told them by their fathers. "Then,' said he, 'behold the man of whom ye have heard. I am he. Long, long years are gone. I left my friends, my people, and my country. I travelled on, on, and on, till I came to a great water, and standing there, on the shore, I saw the sun disappear. I have now returned to you to tell you of my success, and to be buried in the land of my fathers. The sun, when it disappears, falls into the water. In the morning it must rise out of it. My mission is ended, my work is done, all, all farewell.' And the old man lay down and died. "Such is the tradition, and, whether true or false, the expressions for the rising and the setting of the sun, in use among the Choctaws at this day, are in accordance with it: Hoshi vt okatula-hoshi, the sun; oka, water; itula, to fall: The sun falls in the water."* [To be continued.] A VISIT TO SARK: BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY AND PRESENT STATE WHEN I learned lessons in geography, very long ago, the Channel Islands Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark-were only known to many English people as they were then made known to me, that is, as "islands lying in the British Channel, between England and France." Now, however, these islands form an easy, and very frequent excursion trip for our Londoners: the two first at least do so, but Sark is still out of the beaten track of the water highway, and as yet few excursionists have thought of descending upon it on a ticket of leave from our South Western Railway Company. It is such a curious little isle, and such a charming one, that I venture on its description, although I own I am disappointed in finding it a much more civilized one than I had expected. But if an excuse for trying to amuse others with an account of my visit here be necessary, I can only say that I do so in the hope of amusing myself, for having slipped down the wet rocks in its remarkable caves, called Les Boutiques, or the Shops, and thus dislocated a foot, I am obliged, in the absence of society, books, work, or any other source of what the French call distraction, to take up the pen as a refuge against ennui. * Transactions of the American Ethnological Society,' vol. iii. part 1. You approach Sark from Guernsey, distant five miles, in a small cutter, which cutter being dependent on wind and tide, and having a dangerous coast to make, is sometimes less than two, and sometimes more than ten hours on its voyage; and is, in its outgoings and comings-in, notwithstanding that these take place daily, the great source of interest and excitement to the world of Sark, being its only mode of communication with that of Guernsey, and carrying back and forward the natives of that island, who cross the five miles of water that lie between to try the effect of change of air on this, during the summer and autumn seasons; while, to what are called "foreigners," like myself for example, the evening arrivals of the said cutter are the cause of even more anxious commotion, from the fact that there is neither post, post-boy, post-office, nor even receiving-house for stray letters on the island of Sark. So that strangers' letters have the chance of making a tour of the isle, or lying at the captain's house, or of being deposited by some quick-witted sailor after the fashion of one now remaining here. This letter was addressed to a Miss Rily, which name was a foreign one to the crew of the Sark cutter, but the name of my landlord, who acts sometimes as pilot, is William Messurier, and he goes by that of Billy; the crew of the cutter, therefore, not knowing Miss Rily, supposed the name must mean Mrs. Billy, and actually brought the letter here, and popped it into my good landlady's hands, saying they could make nothing else of it; and here it still lies, appealing in vain to the said Miss Rily. Having a more unintelligible name by far, I am obliged to lie in wait for the captain and his crew; and after sitting on the roadside till nearly ten o'clock one night, I made the old man very angry by forcing him into a cottage and searching the great basket on his back for my own share of the epistles that, with other stores, were to be found therein. I am told that once, in this portion of the British kingdom, there was a depository for letters at a little shop; but the good woman who kept the shop was so laughed at for the novelty of "setting up a post-office," that she had to give it up. I dare say, however, that our next visitors to Sark will find such a "foreign invention" flourishing there. A steamer, too, may possibly be running here; and then adieu to the present privacy, peace, and simplicity of this little out-of-the-world isle. But this is a digression into which the famous cutter has led us. Sark, as viewed from the sea, appears only a mass of rocksgigantic, perpendicular, and inaccessible rocks, which on a near |