benefit of it, by acting with a barbarity which no ordinary improvements in depravity could rival. But the Frenchmen could not endure to be surpassed even in impolitic wickedness. The Natchez, a considerable tribe of Indians, had received favourably the French adventurers; had supplied them with provisions; assisted them in their tillage, and in building their houses; had saved them from famine and death; continued to possess the strongest disposition to oblige; and would still have been eminently useful to them if they had not been treated with indignity and injustice by the commandant of a French fort. They began to take, as might be expected, a severe revenge, but were induced to stop short of its complete execution; and a treaty of peace restored confidence, apparently, on both sides, and really on the side of the Natchez. But the civilized party, the christians, were meditating a plan of extermination. A very strong military body concealed its movements so well as to be enabled to fall suddenly on the habitations of the Indians, of whom a large proportion perished in a slaughter prolonged through several days, and not terminated till the surrender, at the requisition of the French, of the head of a peculiarly obnoxious chief. The remainder of the nation, still considerable, continued to be treated with the most galling injustice, and about six years afterwards were suddenly ordered to clear away their huts from the site of their ancient residence, in order to make way for the establishing of a French settlement, and to seek some other dwelling place. Stimulated to madness by this outrage, but refraining from premature violence, they devised a plan, which, at the appointed time, they accomplished in the sudden destruction of a great number of the French, and the ravage and demolition of the most promising and advancing settlements in the colony. This execution was revenged by measures which compelled the Indians to retire precipitately into a distant part of the wilderness. Thither, however, they were followed by a force which attacked them in such a locality that their most desperate efforts could not avert their fate. A few escaped and incorporated themselves with other tribes; while the remainder of those that survived the carnage were taken, enslaved, and at last transported to St. Domingo. "Thus the Natchez, once so useful to the French, and whose villages contained above twelve hundred souls on the first arrival of those strangers among them, became almost extinct."

The author bestows ample praises on the Natchez, as a comparatively "polished and civilized" tribe. "They had an established religion among them, in many particulars rational and consistent, as likewise regular orders of priesthood. They had a temple to the great spirit, in which they preserved the eternal fire" and the major has common places to extenuate the malignity, or at least the guilt, of the worship that now and then (for

wards, ceded it, for a pecuniary consideration, to the final possessions of the American states. The long series of jealous, evasive, and offensive measures of the Spanish authorities, and of the remonstrant, impatient, and sometimes almost violent, movements of the American population, on the west of the Alleghany mountains, are related in detail; but are of no great interest further than as leading to the magnificent view of the acquisition, at a stroke, and beyond the possibility of any further question or competition, of the vast central region of the continent, by a people occupying so large a portion of it before, and destined to extend their ever growing multitudes in no very long time into the actual possession of perhaps four fifths of its habitable space. There is no other section of our race that would not be elated, perhaps almost as much as those ostentatiously self-asserting republicans, at being able to draw, in lines of fact and prediction, half such a map of their allotted quantum of earth, and confound their imagination in the immensity of such lakes, such rivers, such forests, and such plains.

This historical portion of the work is followed by a short chapter on the Floridas, "the proximity of which to the United States, and our claim to no inconsiderable portion of them," says our author, drily, render some account of them of the greatest importance at this time. Our best use of the chapter will be to extract its most remarkable paragraph.

"One remarkable fact relative to the population of the Floridas must not escape notice. While these were in the possession of the English, a plan was concerted to entice a colony of Greeks into the country. Sir William Duncan and Doctor Turnbull were at the bottom of this transaction. The country was represented to the Greeks in the most favourable light: they were promised fertile fields and lands in abundance, and also transportation and subsistence. Hence fifteen hundred souls were deluded from the islands in Greece and Italy, and landed in East Florida. They were planted at a place called New Smyrna, situated about seventy miles, to the southward of St. Augustine. Put what was their surprise when, instead of cultivated fields, they were ushered into a desolate wilderness, without the means of support! What mortified them still more was, that some of them were tantalized with the use of rented lands for ten years, at the expiration of which they reverted again to their original proprietors, when the poor settlers were once more reduced to poverty and misery. Some of them indeed could not obtain land on any terms. Hence they were obliged to labour for the planters in the character of slaves, and to experience hunger and nakedness. Overseers were placed over them, and whenever the usual task was not completed, they were goaded with the lash. Families were not allowed to live separate from each other; but a number of them were crowded together in one mass, and condemned to promiscuous repose. The poor wretches were not even allowed to

procure fish for themselves, although the sea at their feet was full of tem. People were forbidden to furnish them with victuals; severe ishments were decreed against those who gave and those who received the charitable boon. At length, in 1769, seized with despair, nd sensible of no other alternative than escape or death, they rose on ir cruel tyrants, and made themselves masters of some small vessels. But their designs were frustrated by the prompt exertions of the miliry; and this revolt closed with the death of five of the unhappy ringhders. This transaction is so contrary to the reputed humanity of de English nation, that it requires some credulity to believe the solema port of a British officer, who was an eyewitness to what we have related." P. 121.

From the author's omission to state any such thing, and also from the quality of the case, we conclude that no investigation and punishment were thought of for the seducers and the tyrants in this piece of complicated villany. We wish he had given some formation relative to the present state of the remainder and descendants of these most injured emigrants.

The chapter on the "Extent and boundaries of Louisiana," is probably as long a one as was ever written to trace the outline of a country. Their determination, however, involves a very inconrenient extent of historical inquiry, as depending, in part, on the territorial adjustments fixed in a succession of treaties and other public acts, and on the recorded facts of the actual occupation of advanced positions in right of original discovery. The general result comes out in the following form:

"If the claims of the French are sufficiently supported, Louisiana bounds thus: south on the Gulf of Mexico; west, partly on the Rio Bravo, and partly on the Mexican mountains; north and west, partly on the shining (or rocky) mountains, and partly on Canada; east on the Mississippi from its source to the thirty-first degree; thence extending east on the line of demarcation, to the Rio Perdido: thence down that river to the Gulf of Mexico. The boundaries to the north and northwest are not defined. To what point they will ultimately be stained from the source of the Mississippi, seems to admit of doubt.” As these boundaries are undefined, it will be difficult to estimate the quantity of land in Louisiana with any degree of accuracy. If, Bowever, we assume as a datum, a line drawn from the source of the Mississippi in forty-seven degrees, forty-two minutes and forty seconds, th latitude, to where the Missouri leaves the shining mountains, in arly the same latitude, we may form some reasonable conjectures on subject. From this extreme point to the mouth of the Mississippi, en straight line, is two thousand and five miles. The breadth is less tain. The Abbé Raynal calculates it at six hundred miles. But distance from St. Louis on the Mississippi to the summit of the exican mountains, has been determined by pretty accurate observato be about six hundred and fifty-two miles, and this is believed

to be near the average breadth of Louisiana. The boundaries we have described embrace one million, three hundred and seven thousand. two hundred and sixty square miles; or eight hundred, thirty-six millions, six hundred and forty-six thousand, four hundred acres!"

There is a chapter on New Orleans, and the Delta of the Mis sissippi. The city is described with that extreme minuteness of de tail which we never suspect to be out of proportion to the subject when we are exhibiting a part and a proof of a recent proud acqui sition. At the time it fell into the hands of the Americans, contained about one thousand houses, and eight thousand inhabitants, including blacks and people of colour." Almost all the old houses are of wood, of only one story high. the inhabitants have been enabled to enclose brick, coated with white or coloured mortar.

Latterly, a few o themselves in bad

The Delta is one of those remarkable results of the great opera tions of nature, on which a sensible observer will hardly ever be accused of expending too much description.

"Nothing is more certain than that it has gradually risen out of the sea, or rather that it has been formed by alluvious substances, precipitated by the waters from the upper regions. It is calculated that from 1720 to 1800, a period of 80 years, the land has advanced fifteen miles into the sea. The eastern part of New Spain along the gulf, ex hibits abundant proofs of similar advances; owing, perhaps, to the con stant accumulation of sand by the trade winds, which is driven to the shore by the perpetual motion of the waves in that direction."

The Mississippi, on approaching the sea, divides into five branches which are deep enough, except on their bars, for the largest ships. The banks of the river, to a great distance north ward, are much more elevated than the circumjacent country This is occasioned by a more copious deposition along the mar gins than at a distance from them. These are thickly covered with grass, and a vast variety of ligneous plants, which serve to filtrate the waters in their progress to the low grounds and swamps and to retain the greatest proportion of the alluvious substances.' The Mississippi is not remarkable for good fish; but this defect i compensated by a vast number of alligators. The tides have lit tle effect at New Orleans; they sometimes cause it to swell, bu never to slacken its current. It is asserted that no more than on twenty-seventh part of the Delta is susceptible of cultivation. Th country, both here near the outlet, and to a great extent on each side of the river many hundred miles upward, constitutes a work of swamps, with all the appropriate miasmata and pestilence And though there are particular parts which it might be possibl for a strong population, aided by great national resources, to rescu

from the dominion of water in its most noxious form, that dominion is founded so invincibly on the conformation of the continent, that a large portion of the southern regions of Louisiana must continue unfavourable to health and life to the end of time. There

are vast tracts which will forever preclude all human attempts at residence, by the inundation which covers them to a great depth during the season of the overflow of the Mississippi and its great tributary rivers.

The arbitrary line of division into lower and upper Louisiana is drawn about the latitude at which the Arkansas river falls into the Mississippi, between 33 and 34 north. The more distant tracts of the wide western region traversed by this river make rather a dreary appearance in description: "immense prairie, with very little else to attract attention." A traveller, however, who should survey such a wilderness for the first time, would gaze with no small interest and wonder at one of its appearances.

"Immense herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and a species of the goat, range about this open country, which produces a short grass of which they are fond; and a gentleman of veracity has asserted, that he has seen a drove of them containing at least nine thousand.”

But no one description of the face of the country can be taken as illustrative, generally, of such an immensity of earth and water; though it is doubtful whether on any of the other continents these elements appear in so few varieties of modification in so ample a space; for the deserts of Africa, and the steppes of Tartary, even if they were of equal extent with the great central wilderness of America, do not present a sameness in which a vast proportion of the active element of water is made to bear its part. Such a display, therefore, of this monotonous though immense scene, as should constitute a proportionate section of general geography,would be confined to very small space of description; though such a representation as should be satisfactory to the citizens of the United States, numbers of whom are looking towards the country with a very different kind of interest and curiosity from any that could arise from the mere taste for geographical knowledge, would require to be given in great extent and particularity. The major's survey is something between these two, approaching to a minuteness that is tedious to a European general reader, while it is hardly particular and local enough in marking the differences of the various parts of the vast territory, to satisfy the careful inquisitiveness of persons having any thought of the experiment of a removal into it. The general effect of the very multifarious account is, that Upper Louisiana is, on the whole, a tract of great value and promise; that it has a large proportion of very good VOL. III. New Series.

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