"We had been there more than a moon, when it came to my turn to go in. I found almost the whole of the ground inside of the walls was covered with huts made of stones piled up without clay, and some reeds, laid across the tops, covered over with the large leaves of the date or palm tree, or of another tree, which looks very much like a date tree, and bears a fruit as large as my head, which has a white juice in it sweeter than milk; the inside is hard, and very good to eat. The trees that bear this big fruit grow in abundance in this country, and their fruit is very plenty. Their huts have narrow passages between them. The king or chief is called Oleeboo, which means, in the negro talk, good sultan: he is a very tall, and quite a young man; his house is very large, square, and high, made of stone, and the chinks filled up with something white like lime, but not so hard: they would not let me go into his house, and told me he had one hundred and fifty wives, or more, and ten thousand slaves: he dresses in a white shirt, that looks like the one worn by Mr. Willshire, and long trowsers, made like them you have on, and coloured like an orange.' Those I then had on, were common wide sailor trowsers. He has over his shirt a caftan or robe, with sleeves to it, made of red cloth, tied about with a girdle that goes from his breast to his hips, made of silk handkerchiefs of all colours, and has slips of fine coloured silk tied round his arms and legs: his hair is also tied in small bunches, and he wears on his head a very high hat, made of canes, coloured very handsomely, and adorned with fine feathers: he has sandals on his feet, bound up with gold chains, and a great gold chain over his shoulder, with a bunch of ornaments made of bright stones and shells, that dazzle the eyes, hanging on his breast, and wears a large dagger by his side, in a gold case. He rides on the back of a huge beast, called Ilfement, three times as thick as my great camel, and a great deal higher, with a very long nose and great teeth, and almost as black as the negroes: he is so strong, that he can kill an hundred men in a minute, when he is mad. This is the animal that the teeth grow in, which we bring from Tombuctoo to Widnoon, which you call elephants' teeth, and this was the only one of the animals I ever saw; but they told me these creatures were very plenty down the river from Wassanah.' This answers to the description of, and no doubt is, the elephant.

The king of Wassanah has a guard of two hundred negroes on foot, one hundred of them armed with muskets, fifty with long spears, and fifty with great bows and arrows, with long knives by their sides: they always attend him when he goes out on his beast. He has also a very large army: they fight with guns, spears, and bows and arrows. The city has twice as many inhabitants in it as Tombuctoo, and we saw a great many towns near it on the other side of the river, as well as several small settlements on the same side below. The king nor the people do not pray like the Moslemins, but they jump about, fall down, tear

their faces as if they were mad, when any of their friends die, and every time they see the new moon, they make a great feast, and dance all night to music made by singing and beating on skins tied across a hollow stick, and shaking little stones in a bag or shell; but they do not read nor write, and are heathens. Though the free people in this place do not steal, and are very hospitable, yet I hope the time is near when the faithful, and they that fear God and his prophet, will turn them to the true belief, or drive them away from this goodly land.

The principal inhabitants of Wassanah are dressed in shirts of white or blue cloth, with short trowsers, and some with a long robe over the whole, tied about with a girdle of different colours: the free females are generally very fat, and dress in blue or white coverings tied about their waists with girdles of all colours: they wear a great many ornaments of gold, and beads, and shells, hanging to their ears and noses, necks, arms, ankles, and all over their hair; but the poorer sort are only covered about their loins by a cloth which grows on the tree that bears the big fruit I have told you about before.' This fruit, I imagine, must be the cocoa-nut, and I have often in the West Indies, and elsewhere, observed the outer bark of this singular palm-tree: it is woven by nature like cloth, each thread being placed exactly over and under the others. It appears like regular wove coarse bagging, and is quite strong: it loosens and drops from the trunk of the tree of its own accord, as the tree increases in size and age. I had long before considered that this most singular bark must have suggested to man the first idea of cloth, and taught him how to spin, and place the threads so as to form it of other materials that have since been used for that purpose, and this first hint from nature has been improved into our present methods of spinning and weaving.

'The male slaves go entirely naked, but the women are allowed a piece of this cloth to cover their nakedness with: they are very numerous, and many of them kept chained: they are obliged to work the earth round about the city. The inhabitants catch a great many fish: they have boats made of great trees, cut off and hollowed out, that will hold ten, fifteen, or twenty negroes, and the brother of the king told one of my Moslemin companions who could understand him (for I could not), that he was going to set out in a few days with sixty boats, and to carry five hundred slaves down the river, first to the southward, and then to the westward, where they should come to the great water, and sell them to pale people, who came there in great boats, and brought muskets, and powder,* and tobacco, and blue cloth, and knives, &c.-he said it

* Adams tells us that, among other things, gunpowder is brought from ' a place called Bambarra, laying to the southward and westward of Tombuctoo.' It must have come by the way of Wassanah, we apprehend: and this, we take occasion to observe, is another strong confirmation of Sidi Hamet's story.

vas a great way, and would take him three moons to get there, and he should be gone twenty moons before he could get back by land, but should be very rich.' I then asked him how many boats he supposed there were in the river at Wassanah? He said, A great many, three or four hundred, I should think; but some of them are very small: we saw a great many of these people who had been down the river to see the great water, with slaves and teeth, and came back again: they said the pale people lived in great boats, and had guns as big as their bodies, that made a noise like thunder, and would kill all the people in a hundred negro boats, if they went too near them. We saw in the river and on the bank a great number of fish, with legs and large mouths, and these would run into the water in a minute, if any man went near them; but they told us they would catch children, and sometimes men, when in the boats; (these are no doubt, crocodiles or hippopotamus',) the negroes are very kind, and would always give us barley, corn, or rice, milk or meat, if we were hungry, though we could not speak a language they understood. While we stopped at Wassanah, it rained almost every day. Having traded away all the goods we carried there, Shelbar took three hundred slaves and a great many teeth, dazzling stones, and shells, and gold; with these we set off again, and went the same way back to Tombuctoo, which took us three moons, and we were gone from the time we left it, to the time we returned, eight moons.'

Soon after his arrival, the caravans of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Fez-all came in together. They remained two moons. Sidi Hamet and his brother joined them with their two camels; and all set out in an east-northerly direction for the Desert. They travelled twenty days through a country full of hills, and of streams running south and west;' stopped ten days in a beautiful valley; filled their sacks with coal; and 'mounting up to the Desert, steered away to the north.' In eighteen days they came to the watering place, called Weydlah; where there is a pond of black, saline, dead, sulphureous water,-which is 'covered over with a thick green scum' is never known to be dry, and has not yet been fathomed. The caravan stopped six days in a valley a little westward of this Dead Sea. The camels (4000 in all) were every night made to lie down in a circle, with the goods in the centre; the space betwixt them being occupied by the men, who amounted altogether to about 1500, and were well armed with double-barrelled guns and scimitars.' On the night of the sixth day they were at tacked by a large body of Arabs; who, however, after a most desperate conflict of two hours, 'hand to hand, and breast to breast,' were obliged to give up the field. Of Sidi Hamet's party 230 were killed, and about 100 wounded;-of the enemy 700 were lying on the ground, killed and wounded. Those

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who could walk---about 100---were taken as slaves; those who could not, were 'put out of pain.' Sidi Hamet and Seid were both wounded; the former with a ball in his thigh; the latter in the breast with a dagger. The caravan lost 300 camels; but found, as a remuneration, about 200 double-barrelled guns and 400 scimitars. They learned from the prisoners, that the assailants were 4000 in number, and had been three moons preparing for the enterprise. Fearing a second visitation, our caravan set out the next day; and, after a travel of twentythree days in a north-east direction ('out of the usual course') with the loss of fifty men and twenty-one slaves; they stopped and refreshed themselves eleven days at what are called the Eight Wells. They now took a north-west course; and reached Twati in ten days; during the last three of which they waded through deep sand. After resting two days, they went down north, into the country of dates; and came to Gujelah, a little strong place belonging to Tunis; where they found plenty of fruit and good water, and meat and milk.' They halted here ten days: the Tripolitan caravan went off east; and the three others travelled twelve days north-easterly; when they came to Tuggertah, close by a mountain, and near the river Tegsha, which is said to flow into the sea not far from Tunis. Tuggertah is very large; has high, thick, and tight walls; a vast number of people; a great many black slaves; and a few white ones.* After parting here with the Tunisian caravan and resting twenty five days, they started off north-westward 'through a very fine country, full of date and fig trees, and cattle, and goats, and camels, and sheep, and asses.' They reached the high mountains' in ten days; when the Algerine caravan took its leave. The remaining eighty men and two hundred camels travelled on over the great mountain' (the Atlas): and, in two moons, reached Fez, their place of destination. Sidi Hamet and his brother had started with eight richly loaded camels: they had been gone two years; and they' thanked God' for enabling them to get back with only one camel, and hardly any merchandise at all. They were poor; and had started on another voyage, when they fell in with the company who had taken Captain Riley and his crew. His sufferings had made him humane; and before he left Mr. Willshire's house, he swore by his right hand, that if God spared his life, he would bring back the remainder of the crew. God spare his life!

* On the maps there is a city of Tuggurt, placed on a river, near the south border of the Desert. The river and the name correspond with the above description; but the position is more than 10 deg. too far south.

Since the foregoing sheets were put to press, we have received from a gentleman in Georgia, an account of some geological appearances in that state and in South Carolina, which will greatly assist us in forming our opinion as to the origin of the African Zahahrah. We shall copy his own words; and our readers cannot help seeing, we think, the striking similarity between the sand hills, of which he gives a description, and the African Desert, according to the account given in Captain Riley's Narrative. The sand-hills of Carolina and Georgia

Consist, for the most part, of hills which rise abruptly from a level country, sometimes to a great height. These eminences are sometimes covered with rocks of the most curious and fanciful forms; in general they resemble very much the dross that is to be seen lying about our common blacksmith shops, except that they are much larger. Often, however, they appear to be the fragments of hollow globes, of a tolerably uniform thickness and regular construction. Some are cylinders of various dimensions, with a hole quite through them, lengthwise: while there are others in the shape of small balls, which when broken prove to be hollow, and contain fine paints of various colours, but chiefly ochre. All these exhibit the most indubitable evidences of having been, at some time or other, exposed to an intense heat. On some of these hills, as well as in places in the level country, there are rocks of an enormous size, which must, from their appearance, have once lain in the bed of some rapid current of water. Nothing else could have worn them into their present curious shape. The hills themselves consist of a hard red earth; sometimes they are quite naked, as to vegetation, and covered on the top with a beautiful fine white sand; at others they have here and there a huge pine tree, that seems as if it had been standing there since the days of Noah. Some of these hills, however, consist of alternate strata of beautifully variegated clay and sand. The clay contains not the smallest particle of sand, and the sand is as entirely free from any mixture of clay; and is, moreover, very often of different colours. This clay, in some instances, makes a very good substitute for chalk; hence these latter are generally, by the inhabitants, denominated chalk-hills. Over their top is spread a thin soil, which produces a plant called wild rosemary. They generally terminate, on all sides, in a precipice, sometimes forty feet perpendicular, the edge of which is profusely decorated with a beautiful shrub, called the calico-flower. It puts out in April, and continues in full bloom till midsummer; and during this period its profusion, its exquisite beauty, and the striking contrast which it presents with the barren, dreary, desolate wilderness that surrounds it, render these places truly enchanting. They will, I think, at some future day, furnish the curious with a rich fund of matter for speculation.