medans, and, according to Mollien the French traveller's report, they are animated by a strong zeal for proselytism. They are the missionaries of Islam among the Pagan negro tribes. Where they have conquered, they have forced the adoption of the Koran by the sword; and whilst pursuing quietly their pastoral occupation, they become schoolmasters (maalims), and thus propagate the doctrines and precepts of Islam. Whereever the Foulah has wandered, the Pagan idolatry of the negro has been overthrown; the barbarous Fetish and greegree have been abandoned; anthropophagy and cannibalism have been suppressed. . . . Thus the Foulahs are now exercising a powerful influence upon the moral and social condition of Central Africa. I do not doubt that they are destined to be the great instrument in the future civilisation of Africa, and the consequent suppression of the external Atlantic slave trade. . . . They will, probably, erect one vast empire in the Soudan, and the influence which that power may exert in the great question of African civilisation, gives to them no ordinary importance." If this opinion be true, what might not be the result if the Foulahs, at present barbarians and Mohammedans, themselves were overpowered by the higher and purer ideas which have raised Europe to its present supremacy over the earth? Meanwhile, it is consoling to think that, even in Central Africa, the human race has been moving onward.

NORTHERN AFRICA AND THE GREAT DESERT.

Respecting that vast section of the African continent which extends from the Mediterranean to Nigritia, it appears that we are only beginning to obtain a correct description. Various officers of the French army at present engaged in the arduous enterprise of establishing the colony of Algeria, have occupied themselves in collecting information regarding the numerous tribes overspreading Northern Africa; and it would seem, from their accounts, that the ideas we have been accustomed to entertain concerning these regions are far from correct.

According to these recent accounts, Northern Africa, between the Mediterranean and Nigritia, consists of two portions-the Tell, or that strip of land varying from 50 to 120 miles in breadth, which lies along the sea; and the Sahara, or, as it has commonly been called, the Great Desert. The following remarks respecting the Tell are from the work of Mr Hodgson previously quoted :"On the Mediterranean coast of Africa, there are in progress at this moment great political and commercial revolutions. There exists in that region a sanguinary and unceasing conflict of Christianity with Mohammedanism, of civilisation with semibarbarism. France, having conquered the extensive territory of Algeria, is now pushing forward her victorious legions into the more important and more populous empire of Morocco. The result of a conflict between undisciplined hordes and the science

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of European warfare cannot be doubtful. But there are elements in this contest which perhaps have not been well understood. It is not with the Arab population of those countries with which France has chiefly to contend. That, indeed, is the more intellectual but smaller portion of the people of Algeria and Morocco. The more ferocious and larger portion of that population consists of the aboriginal Berbers, the ancient Numidians, and Mauretanians. The Romans termed this race genus insuperabile bellounconquerable in war.’ It remains to be determined if they have lost that proud appellation."

"To form a correct conception of the Sahara," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review (No. 169), condensing the information contained in some of the recent French publications on the subject, 60 our readers must dismiss from their minds all the loose and fantastic conceptions which have been attached, from time immemorial, to the interior of Northern Africa. Instead of a torrid region, where boundless steppes of burning sand are abandoned to the roving horsemen of the Desert, and to beasts of prey, and where the last vestiges of Moorish civilisation expire long before the traveller arrives at Negroland and the savage communities of the interior, the Sahara is now ascertained to consist of a vast archipelago of oases; each of them peopled by a tribe of the Moorish race or its offsets, more civilised, and more capable of receiving the lessons of civilisation, than the houseless Arabs of the Tell [the mountainous tract lying between the Great Desert and the sea]; cultivating the date-tree with application and ingenuity, inhabiting walled towns, living under a regular government, for the most part of a popular origin; carrying to some perfection certain branches of native manufactures, and keeping up an extensive system of commercial intercourse with the northern and central parts of the African continent, and from Mogador to Mecca, by the enterprise and activity of their caravans. Each of the oases of the Sahara, which are divided from one another by sandy tracts, bearing shrubs and plants fit only for the nourishment of cattle, presents an animated group of towns and villages. Every village is encircled by a profusion of fruitbearing trees. The palm is the monarch of their orchards, as much by the grace of its form, as by the value of its productions; and the pomegranate, the fig-tree, and the apricot cluster around its lofty stem. The lions and other beasts of prey with which poetry has peopled the African wilds are to be met with only in the mountains of the Tell, never in the plains of the Sahara. The robber tribes of the Tuaricks frequent the southern frontier of the Sahara, and the last tracts of habitable land which intervene between these oases and the real Desert; but in the Sahara itself, communications, carried on after the fashion of the country, are regular and secure. War is, indeed, of frequent occurrence between the neighbouring tribes, either for the possession of disputed territories, or the revenge of supposed injuries; but all

that is yet known of these singular communities shows them to be living in a completely constituted state of society, eminently adapted to the peculiar part of the globe which they inhabit, governed by the strong traditions of a primitive people, and fulfilling, with energy and intelligence, the strange vocation of their life."

"Almost all the Sahara tribes," says M. Carette, a French captain of engineers, who has contributed much to clear up our notions of this portion of Africa, 66 are accustomed to a system of annual peregrination, which must have existed from time immemorial, inasmuch as it is based upon the nature of the climate and the produce, and the primary wants of their existence. This general movement is commonly performed in the following manner:-During the winter and spring the tribes are collected in the waste tracts of the Sahara, which, at this season of the year, supply water and fresh vegetation, but they never remain more than three or four days on any one spot; and when the pasture is exhausted, they strike their tents, and go to establish themselves elsewhere. Towards the end of the spring they pass through the towns of the Sahara, where their merchandise is deposited. They load their camels with dates and woollen stuffs, and then turn their steps towards the north, taking with them their whole wandering city-women, dogs, herds, and tents--for it is at this season that the springs begin to dry and the plants to wither on the Sahara, at the same time that the corn is ripe in the Tell. There they arrive at the moment of the harvest, when corn is abundant and cheap, and thus they take a double advantage of the season, by abandoning the waste as it becomes arid, and seeking their fresh stock of provisions in the north, when the markets are overstocked with grain. The summer they pass in this country, in commercial activity, exchanging their dates and woollen manufactured goods for corn, raw wool, sheep, and butter; whilst their herds are allowed to browse freely upon the lands, which lie fallow after the gathering in of the harvest. The signal for the return homewards is given at the end of the summer; the camels are reloaded, the tents again struck, and the wandering city once more marches forth, as it came, in short day's journeys towards the south. The Sahara is regained about the middle of October, the period when the dates are ripe. A month is passed in gathering and storing this fruit; another is devoted to the exchange of the wheat, and barley, and raw wool for the year's dates and the woollen stuffs-the produce of the yearly labour of the women. When all this business is concluded, and the merchandise stored away, the tribes quit the towns, and lead their flocks and herds from pasture-land to pasture-land among the waste tracts of the Sahara, until the following summer calls for a renewal of the same journey, the same system of trade.

"The Sahara," continues M. Carette, "is that part of Algeria

which is most civilised and most capable of receiving civilisation. It is there that habits of precision are most generally diffused, and there that we find the greatest amount of intelligence, activity, and social disposition." The only portion of the Sahara which answers to our ideas of an uninterrupted waste of sand, seems to be the most southern belt of it, which adjoins Nigritia, and which is infested by a roving race called the Tuaricks, who conduct a commercial intercourse, especially in slaves, between the negro countries and the oases of the more northern parts of the Sahara. "These Tuaricks," says M. Carette, "pretend to be of Turkish descent, and affect to treat the Arabs with disdain. They are tall, strong, of slender make, and of fair complexion, with the exception of a few of mixed blood. They wear a headdress, one of the ends of which covers the whole face except the eyes; and almost all, whether rich or poor, have their feet bare, because, according to their own account, they never go on foot." The southern Tuaricks keep the towns of the Soudan in a constant state of blockade, hunting down the negroes in their neighbourhood, and carrying them off for sale.

CONCLUSION.

From the general survey which we have taken of Africa, and of the progress of African discovery, it appears that, while there is scarcely a point in its vast circuit where Europeans have not attempted to settle, scarcely any of the settlements have flourished. For the purposes of trade, such establishments will no doubt be maintained at a vast sacrifice of life—the consequence of the pestilential effects of the climate on European constitutions; but it is not likely that any settlements of a permanent description will be effected except at the southern and northern extremities of the continent. Cape Colony, as yet, is the most prosperous, indeed the only settlement worthy of the name in Africa: whether the French will be able to make anything of Algeria, remains yet to be seen. As for the centre of the continent, it seems quite hopeless to suppose that Europeans can ever operate there directly. The most that can be anticipated is, that they shall be able to tell upon the continent through native agents. By establishing a commerce with Central Africa, they may stimulate whatever tendencies to civilisation exist among the negroes themselves; they may create an activity through the continent resembling that caused by the slave traffic, but everyway nobler and more beneficial. Whatever seeds of improvement there are among the natives, whether negroes, Foulahs, or Arabs, may be developed by this means, and made to fructify. And in this respect, nothing could be more gratifying than to know that the opinion explained in a former part of this tract with regard to Central Africa is well-founded, and that an actual movement is in progress among the natives themselves towards a more advanced stage of humanity.

BEAUTY OF INSECTS.

OBSERVE the insect race, ordained to keep
The lazy Sabbath of a half-year's sleep.
Entombed beneath the filmy web they lie,
And wait the influence of a kinder sky.
When vernal sunbeams pierce their dark retreat,
The heaving tomb distends with vital heat;
The full-formed brood, impatient of their cell,
Start from their trance, and burst their silken shell.
Trembling awhile they stand, and scarcely dare
To launch at once upon the untried air.

At length assured, they catch the favouring gale,
And leave their sordid spoils and high in ether sail.

Lo! the bright train their radiant wings unfold, With silver fringed, and freckled o'er with gold. On the gay bosom of some fragrant flower, They, idly fluttering, live their little hour; Their life all pleasure, and their task all play, All spring their age, and sunshine all their day. Not so the child of sorrow, wretched man: His course with toil concludes, with pain began, That his high destiny he might discern, And in misfortune's school this lesson learnPleasure's the portion of the inferior kind; But glory, virtue, Heaven for man designed.