the Polar seas in their skin boats in quest of their game. Their features, manners, and customs evince that they are of American origin, and our traveler was of opinion that the northern races of American Indians are descended from them.

The principal object Cochrane had in view in attending the fair was to make an arrangement with these people to allow him to accompany them through their country, for the purpose of crossing Behring's Straits to the American continent; but this plan failing through the exorbitant demand of the savages, he determined to take the direct route to Okotsk, distant, in a southerly direction, on the Pacific, nearly two thousand miles, with the intention of reaching America in a vessel from that point.

Winter was raging in all its severity when our traveler left Nishney Kolymsk for Okotsk. His way was over a large tract of desolate country nearly two thousand miles across. Our limits do not permit us to detail the difficulties and perils of the undertaking, which far exceeded anything of the kind within his experience; but which, after seventy-five days of indescribable toil, were successfully conquered. His route lay along broad, rapid, dangerous, and almost impassable rivers, over lofty, ice-clad mountains, large, overflowed marshes, through dense, decayed forests, and half-frozen lakes. He suffered greatly from cold, rain, hunger, and fatigue, was forty-five nights exposed to the snow, and often without fire with the thermometer 25° and 30° below zero. At one time he was for five days without food; was frequently lost and bewildered in the snow mountains; for a space of one thousand miles he did not see a single human habitation, and for nearly half that distance not a solitary individual.

On his arrival at Okotsk, he was received with much kindness by Captain Ushinsky, the chief officer of the place. That gentleman was much surprised at his haggard and miserable appearance. Cochrane finding no vessels in the port bound to the American continent, and no probability of there being any during the year, was constrained to abandon the grand object of his enterprise and the chief fruits of all his toils. He, however, crossed over to the peninsula of Kamtschatka. There he remained eleven months, and there all his "airy phantoms, bold desires, and his eccentric turn" were "dissipated by one woman." In short, in this extreme corner of the world, our bold traveler, who had conquered so many difficulties, was conquered in turn he fell captive to the charms of one of the softer sex, a native of Kamtschatka, and was bound in indissoluble bonds.

The peninsula of Kamtschatka is of an oval shape; through it runs, from north to south, a magnificent chain of mountains, from which issue numerous rivers, crowded with fish of an excellent flavor. Ship timber abounds, and grass of a most nutritious quality. The climate is too cold for potatoes, cabbages, or peas, but turnips and radishes thrive amazingly. The principal riches are furs from the animals of the chase, of which there is a prodigious number; next to these may be considered the dogs. These faithful and useful creatures are employed to transport the fish, supply the house with water, the cattle with hay-in fine, to do all the work that horses perform in temperate climates. Surprising quantities of geese, ducks, swans, snipes, and wild

cocks abound, and as a whole, few people have more of the necessaries of life than the Kamtschatkes.

The natives are hospitable, truth-loving, honest, and amiable; they are established in villages, built in the old Russian style, which are clean and comfortable. During the summer or fishing season, they leave their winter residences for the balagans, or places which they use for drying their fish. Thus the summer is employed in preparing food against the winter, while the latter is taken up in the chase. The whole population amounts to about four thousand, of which one-quarter only are Russians. The introduction of ardent spirits and of Russian convicts have both been productive of much misery to the natives.

When our traveler left Kamtschatka he was accompanied by his wife. His return route to St. Petersburg was by easy stages, and without marked incidents. He had been absent a little over three years.

If this hurried sketch of his travels in Siberia has been devoid of the interest anticipated, it can be in a measure explained by our traveler's own words: "Siberia," says he, "is, in fact, one immense wilderness, whose inhabitants are so scattered, that five or six hundred miles are often passed by the traveler without seeing an individual, much less any cultivation, or any works of man at all worthy of description. The manners, dress, and customs of the inhabitants are the same. The severity of the climate is, in most cases, co-equal, and in general productive of the same results, and there is, as a whole, so little of interest in Siberia to be seen, that it is hardly possible to form an interesting narrative upon it."

ADVENTURES AND DISCOVERIES

OF

MUNGO PARK AND OTHERS IN AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

PECULIAR Condition of Africa-Knowledge of the Ancients respecting this Continent-Invasion by the Arabs-Discoveries of the Portuguese-Western Africa-Southern AfricaEastern Africa-Central Africa-Ledyard. the American Traveler-Mungo Park's First Journey-He undertakes to explore Africa-Departure-Ill Treatment at Bondou and Joag--Kooniakary--Captivity among the Moors-Escape-The Niger-Sego-Sansanding -Silla-Obliged to Return-Various Misfortunes-Distressed State-Finds Relief at Kamalia-Arrival in England.

THE vast continent of Africa, comprising nearly one fourth of the entire land area of the globe, has presented greater obstacles to human enterprise than any other equal portion of the earth's surface. The peculiar physical condition of Africa has operated as one cause of her isolation from the rest of the world. The other portions of our earth, situated under the tropics, consist, generally, either of sea, or of narrow peninsular tracts of land, and clusters of islands, blown upon by the sea-breeze. Africa, on the other hand, presents scarcely one gulf or sea-break in its vast outline.

A consequence of this compact geographical shape of a conti

nent, the greater part of which is within the torrid zone, is its subjection, throughout its entire extent, to the unmitigated influence of the sun's heat. All that is noxious in climate, we are accustomed to associate with Africa. Here stretching out into a boundless desert, where for days the traveler toils amid burning sands under a stifling sky; there covered with a dense and swampy jungle, breathing out pestilence, and teeming with all repulsive forms of animal life, the African continent seems to defy the encroachments

of European civilization. And although, probably, our ideas of these African horrors will be modified by more accurate knowledge, enough seems ascertained to prove that the laying open of interior Africa to the general flood of human influences, will be among the last achievements of the exploring spirit of our race.

Notwithstanding the difficulties which lie in the way, Africa has at all times been an object of curiosity and interest to the inhabitants of the civilized parts of the earth; and scientific zeal, the desire of extending traffic, and even the mere thirst for adventure, have prompted many expeditions for the purpose of exploring its coasts, and making discoveries in its interior. The ancients appear to have acquired much knowledge of Africa, which was afterward lost, and had to be re-acquired by the moderns for themselves. The African coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were not only familiar to the ancient geographers, but were inhabited by populations which performed a conspicuous part in the general affairs of the world, and ranked high in the scale of civilization-the Egyptians, Carthaginians, etc. Nor, if we may believe the evidence which exists in favor of the accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by ancient navigators, were the other coasts of the continentthose, namely, which are washed by the Atlantic and the Indian Oceanunvisited by northern ships. Regarding the interior of Africa, too, the knowledge possessed by the ancients, although very meager in itself, was nearly as definite as that possessed by their modern descendants, until within a comparatively recent period. As far as the northern borders of the Great Desert, their own personal observation might be said to extend, and respecting the wandering tribes of black and savage people living farther to the south, they had received many vague notices. The Nile being one of the best-known rivers of the ancient world, its origin and course were matters of great interest, and the African geography of the ancients, in general, may be said to consist of speculations respecting this extraordinary river. The first mention made of the other great African river, the Niger, is by Ptolemy, who lived seventy years after Christ. Ptolemy believed that this river discharged itself ultimately into the Nile; others, however, did not admit this conclusion, and acknowledged that the real course of the Niger was a mystery.

Such are some of the most prominent points in the ancient geography of Africa. How wild and inaccurate must have been the notions entertained respecting the shape and total extent of the African continent, may be judged from the fact, that one geographer describes it as an irregular figure of four sides, the south side running nearly parallel to the equator, but considerably to the north of it! Others, again, held forth the fearful picture of Central Africa as a vast burning plain, in which no green thing grew, and into which no living being could penetrate; and this hypothesis of an uninhabitable torrid zone became at length the generally received one.

The invasion of Africa by the Arab races in the seventh century, wrought a great change in the condition of the northern half of the continent. Founding powerful states along the Mediterranean coasts, these enterprising Mahommedans, or Moors, as they were called, were able, by means of the camel, to effect a passage across the Desert, which had baffled the ancients, and to

hold intercourse with the negroes who lived on its southern border along the banks of the Niger and the shores of Lake Tchad. In some of these negro states the Arabs obtained a preponderance, and with others they carried on an influential and lucrative commerce. The consequence was a mixture of Moorish and negro blood among the inhabitants of the countries of Central Africa bordering on the Great Desert, as well as a general diffusion of certain scraps of the Mahommedan religion among the negro tribes. Hence it is that, in the innermost recesses of interior Africa at the present day, we find the negroes partly professing Paganism, partly Mahommedanism, but all practicing ceremonies and superstitions in which we observe the Pagan spirit with a slight Mahommedan tincture.

It was not till the fifteenth century that the career of modern European discovery in Africa commenced. The Portuguese, leading the van of the nations of Europe in that great movement of maritime enterprise which constitutes so signal an epoch in the history of modern society, selected the western coast of Africa as the most promising tract along which to prosecute discovery; their intercourse with the Moors having made them aware that gold and other precious commodities were to be procured in that direction. In the year 1433 Cape Bojador was passed by a navigator called Gilianez; and others succeeding him, passed Cape Blanco, and, exploring the entire coast of the Desert, reached at length the fertile shores of Gambra and Guinea. The sudden bending inward of the coast-line at the Gulf of Guinea, gave a new direction and a new impulse to the activity of the Portuguese. Having no definite ideas of the breadth of the African continent, they imagined that, by continuing their course eastward along the Gulf, they would arrive at the renowned country of the great Prester John, a fabulous personage, who was believed to reign with golden sway over an immense and rich territory, situated no one could tell exactly where, but which some contended could be no other than Abyssinia. The Portuguese, while prosecuting their discoveries along the African coast, did not neglect means for establishing a commercial intercourse with those parts of the coast which they had already explored. Settlements or factories for the convenience of the trade in gold, ivory, gum, different kinds of timber, and eventually, also in slaves, were founded at various points of the coast between Cape Verde and Biafra. Various missionary settlements were likewise founded for the dissemination of the Roman Catholic faith among the natives.

The chimera of Prester John was succeeded by the more rational hope of effecting a passage to India by way of Southern Africa. This great feat, accordingly, was at length achieved by Vasco de Gama, who, in 1497, four years after the discovery of America by Columbus, persisted in his course to the south so far as to double the Cape of Good Hope, and point the way northward into the Indian Ocean. By his voyages, and those of his successors, the eastern coast of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope through the Mozambique channel to the Red Sea, was soon defined as accurately as the western coast had been by the voyages of his predecessors; and thus the entire outline and shape of the African continent were at length made known. This great service to science and to the human race, was rendered, it ought