RUDE HABITATIONS OF ANCIENT BRITONS.

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a single inscription has ever been discovered in any one of these British villages, that can throw any positive light on the era in which they flourished or were deserted for a less exposed climate."

"The site of these villages (two, on Knook Down) is decidedly marked by great cavities and irregularities of the ground, and by a black soil. When the moles were more abundant, numerous coins were constantly thrown up by them, as well as fragments of pottery of different species. On digging in these excavations we find the coarse British pottery, and almost every species of what has been called Roman pottery, but which I conceive to have been manufactured by the Britons from Roman models; also fibula, and rings of brass worn as armilla or bracelets, flatheaded iron nails, hinges of doors, locks, and keys, and a variety of Roman coins, of which the small brass of the Lower Empire are the most numerous."

STONEHENGE.

An ample share of attention is given to that grand but enigmatical phenomenon, Stonehenge. Sir Richard states fairly and fully the various theories, if they may be so denominated, and the monkish legends, respecting the origin and design of this mysterious structure. And it is really curious to see with what confidence, and, in some instances, with what palpable deficiency of even the attainable information, ingenious or learned men have been capable of pronouncing on the subject. The plan which Sir Richard judges to be the most accurate, was published by Dr. Smith, in 1771, in a work in which Stonehenge is maintained to have "been erected by the Druids for observing the motions of the heavenly bodies." This plan differs but slightly from that of Dr. Stukeley, for whose discriminating judgment, and industry in research, our author testifies the greatest possible respect, considering his work as far more valuable than all others on the subject.

It should seem that Stukeley was the first detector of a circumstance which alone was sufficient to put several of the theories to flight, namely, that in the barrows in the vicinity there are chippings of stone of identical qualities with the stones of the structure (of one of which qualities there are no stones found elsewhere in Wiltshire), and therefore clearly showing whence they came. Such chippings repeatedly

occurred in our author's excavations in the neighbourhood. This proof of the priority, in time, of the structure to the tumuli, combined with the proofs supplied by the primitive characteristics of the interments, that the tumuli are more ancient than the Roman period, makes an instant end of no small share of vain speculation, and at one sweep clears the view all the way up to the British period; but then it closes in utter and final darkness.

Our author is extremely cautious of speculating on the design of this mysterious monument. He does not even, with any confidence, associate its origin and uses with Druidism, though he sometimes employs the denomination of Temple. Some of the acutest of our recent investigators of Celtic and Druidical history have shown, that even if Druidism was ever established in the part of Britain where Stonehenge remains, there is no evidence that the horrid solemnities of that superstition were perpetrated in structures of stone. Dark groves are uniformly represented as its temples; and it is justly remarked that the locality and vicinity of Stonehenge, afford no traces or traditions of having ever been overshadowed with the gloom of deep forests of oak. After all the learning, enthusiasm, ingenuity, and confident opinion, of which this colossal circle, this "Chorea Gigantum " has been the subject, and after the important and interesting process also of excavations in the surrounding tumuli, we must submit to acknowledge, that though this grand array of rocks must have constituted an object and a place of the highest imaginable importance to the Britons, we have absolutely no means of deciding what it was that was done in its adytum or precincts; no means of knowing whether the scene now so solitary and silent, but once probably animated at some seasons with a vast assemblage of wild and inspirited countenances, was the grand court of barbarian judicature, or was the central imperial seat of a gloomy superstition, or drew the multitudes to the solemnities of both these national concerns.

Our author thinks-and we agree with him-that the two circles of smaller uprights are a later addition, foreign to the primary plan; they spoil its noble simplicity, and they are of a quite different kind of stone. The matter of taste is made extremely clear in an engraved view which is given

of the structure as it probably looked when complete in its grand exterior circle, and its exterior oval of still more majestic trilithons.

TIMBUCTOO.*

ALL the inquisitive imaginations in Europe were longing, and till lately almost despairing, to have the prospect opened across the vast African deserts as far as Timbuctoo. Conjecture, speculation, legends, had accumulated through centuries, concerning that city and its precincts, and the formidable intervening tracts. While such are the fancies and wishes of a curious and restless ignorance, and while possibilities are weighing, and enterprises planning, there is thrown on the African coast a common sailor, who can neither write nor read, who had never heard the name of Timbuctoo, and who is nearly stripped of his clothes by barbarians as soon as he comes to land. This man, thus unfurnished with any one terrestrial thing for the purposes of enterprise and geographical discovery but the limbs and organs of which his person is composed, accomplishes what no man of the Christian name ever before accomplished, however commissioned or provided-however ardent or brave. He traverses the hideous region very far towards its centre; resides a number of months, sometimes in royal society, at Timbuctoo; has the intimate inspection of Mahometan and Pagan manners and character; and after several years spent at various positions in the fiery desert, comes as a ragged beggar into London, and by the merest chance falls into the company of some of the most learned, philosophic, and powerful persons of that metropolis, to whom he describes what no other individual in the civilized world could have described, authoritatively compelling at length their reluctant belief that the far-famed

* The Narrative of Robert Adams, a Sailor, who was wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the year 1810; was detained three years in Slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and resided several months in the City of Timbuctoo (edited by Joseph Dupuis, British Vice-Consul at Mogadore). 4to. 1816.

Timbuctoo is an accumulation of mud-huts, the royal palace being the mud-hut-in-chief. Nor was the fact that this city is the seat of a Negro, instead of a Mahometan government, the point in which his evidence had the least force of prepossession to overcome.

ADVENTURES ON THE WESTERN COAST OF AFRICA.

Adams sailed in June, 1810, from New York, in the Charles, a merchantman, bound to Gibraltar, whence she made a voyage down the western coast of Africa, and was, in October, wrecked, in consequence of the ignorance of the captain, on a low sandy beach, at a spot named El Gazie, judged to be about the 22nd degree of north latitude, or four hundred miles north of the Senegal. All on board, about ten men, escaped to land; but it was to fall immediately into the power of forty or fifty Moors, who were fishing at the place. Without a moment's delay began a series of indignities and hardships which stimulated the captain's rage and despair to a deportment so hostile and provoking to these barbarians, that in less than ten days he became a victim to their resentment,-a fate which he made no effort, and even appeared to have no wish, to avoid. The prisoners were divided among the captors, one party of whom had for their share Adams and two others, who, just a fortnight after they had been in the state of free citizens of the only real republic (America) on earth, found themselves constituting a portion of the goods and chattels of a gang of the vilest barbarians, and obsequiously attending them in a march over burning sands, to what termination or fate they must patiently wait to see. The direction was a little to the south of eastward, and they proceeded thirty days without seeing a human being, or, which was much worse, any such thing as a spring, or pool, or puddle of water. They ended their walk for the present at the village or camp of their owners, consisting of thirty or forty tents, at a pool of water. Here they were soon joined by another of their ship's crew, and a Portuguese youth, and they were all set to tend goats and sheep; but they were soon separated, and two of them taken away by some of the Moors in a northerly direction.

Adams and the Portuguese were made to accompany their lords in an expedition to a place named Sondenny, to catch

ADVENTURES ON THE WESTERN COAST OF AFRICA. 375

negroes for slaves. Their sufferings from disappointment of finding water at the halting station in this long march, and their patience in lurking, concealed a whole week among the hills and bushes about the Negro village, lying in wait for the inhabitants, were compensated by the lucky opportunity of seizing upon a woman with a child in her arms, and two children (boys) whom they found walking in the evening near the town. They doubtless lauded the Prophet for this commencement and omen of their good fortune, and wisely determined to await the sequel. It was at hand; and may such sequel always follow such beginning :—

"During the next four or five days the party remained concealed, when one evening, as they were all lying on the ground, a large party of negroes, consisting of forty or fifty men, made their appearance, armed with daggers and bows, who surrounded and took them all prisoners, without the least resistance being attempted, and carried them into the town; tying the hands of some, and driving the whole party before them. During the night, above one hundred negroes kept watch over them. Next day they were taken before the governor, or chief person, named Mahamoud, a remarkably ugly Negro, who ordered that they should all be imprisoned. The place of confinement was a mere mud wall, about six feet high, from which they might readily have escaped, though strongly guarded, if the Moors had been enterprising; but they were a cowardly set. Here they were kept three or four days, for the purpose, as it afterwards appeared, of being sent forward to Timbuctoo, which Adams concluded to be the residence of the king of the country."

Thus our forced adventurer was fairly on the king's high road to Timbuctoo, under the perfect safeguard of a strong escort, little dreaming of the fame of this city in Europe, or of the passionate desire to obtain a sight of it, which had inflamed more enlightened spirits. A great proportion of his late captors and masters had their final earthly reckoning to pay on the road. Several of them attempted to escape :—

"In consequence, after a short consultation, fourteen were put to death, by being beheaded at a small village at which they then arrived; and as a terror to the rest, the head of one of them was hung round the neck of a camel for three days, until it became so putrid that they were obliged to remove it."

On the arrival at the city, the Europeans were immediately distinguished from the Moors, as objects at once of