all created; that a deep sleep fell upon him; that he was touched by the Great Spirit, and found, when he awoke, a wife by his side. The world becoming desperately wicked, was drowned by a flood, only one man being saved in a canoe, from which he sent out a rat, to discover if the waters had subsided, and it returned with a head of Indian corn. Such is the strange manner in which the Mosaic account of the Creation has been mutilated and mixed up with absurdities, and thus handed down as a tradition among these people!

In proceeding up the Essequibo our travellers found a curious custom to prevail among the Indians who navigated the canoes, Whenever they came to a place which the Indians had not visited before, they had tobaccojuice squeezed or squirted into their eyes, to avert the Evil Spirit! This was done on the occasion of arriving at a remarkable pile of large granite boulders, near the banks of the river. The boulders rise perpendicularly to the height of about a hundred feet, and appear to enclose a large cavity, partly covered by a square mass of granite.

Among the numerous trees and plants found in this neighbourhood, is that which produces the gum elastic; the wood of which has much the appearance of the sycamore. The gum is contained in the bark; and when the latter is cut through, the gum oozes out very freely: it is quite white, and looks as rich as cream. It hardens almost immediately on issuing from the tree; so that it is very easy to collect a ball, by forming the juice into a globular shape as fast as it comes out. It turns nearly black on being exposed to the air, and becomes real Indian rubber without any farther preparation.

Waterton speaks in enthusiastic terms of the scenery on the banks of the Essequibo. At one spot is a savannah at the edge of a forest, which he thought excelled in beauty any park in England. It consists of about two thousand acres of grass, with here and there a clump of trees, and a few bushes and single trees, scattered up and down by the hand of nature. The ground is diversified with moderate undulations; and near the middle is an eminence, gradually rising from every side, and occupied by Indian huts:

This beautiful park of nature, (says he,) is quite sur rounded by lofty hills, all arrayed in superbest garb of trees; some in the form of pyramids, others like sugar-loaves, towering one above the other, some rounded off and others as though they had lost their apex. Here, too, hills rise up in spiral summits, and the wooded line of communication betwixt them sinks so gradually that it forms a crescent; and there the ridges of others resemble the waves of an agitated sea. Beyond these appear others, and others past them; and others still farther on, till they can scarcely be distinguished from the clouds.

Amid scenes such as these, diversified with rapids, falls, shoals, and small islands, the traveller up the Essequibo finds himself; seeing no relics or traces of the "white man," but meeting here and there with small parties of the natives. At one part of his voyage Mr. Schomburghk met two canoes full of natives going to trade at the Demerara river. Their canoes were loaded with hammocks, large balls of spun cotton, bows, tobacco leaves, parrots, macaws, and other articles for barter. The chief, as a distinguishing mark, wore a crown of macaw feathers; and trafficked with the travellers, exchanging some of his commodities for scissors and

knives.

When we arrive at a distance of about two hundred and forty miles from the mouth of the river, we meet with the river Rupunoony, which empties itself into the Essequibo. Up this river Mr. Schomburghk proceeded, and met with many picturesque groups of natives. At one spot, in a fine savannah, he saw a dome-shaped hut, and two smaller open ones, which were prepared for a piwarry feast among the natives. The men all came forward, and greeted him by waving the hand. He then looked in at one of the open huts, where he saw women and children occupied in baking fresh cassava

bread. At his appearance, children, dogs, fowls, parrots, all set up a cry of affright; so he left them and went to inspect the dome-shaped hut. It consisted of palm leaves plaited neatly together, with a plastered entrance. The interior resembled a cupola or dome, supported by three beans and several oblique posts. Around it the hammocks were slung, and the different implements of the kitchen and chase ranged against the walls. The middle was occupied by a wooden trough, carved and painted in the Indian fashion, and filled with piwarry, of which it contained as much as sixty gallons. The guests assembled for the feast had slung their hammocks partly in the circular hut, partly in one of the open huts, while others stood outside, each party being attended by a person highly painted and ornamented for the occasion, to bring them the intoxicating liquor when wanted. On a signal given by the host, or one of the guests, the calabash was filled and handed to the person who desired it: it was then given to his next neighbour, and so on till emptied; after which it was filled again, and the same round occurred. This was continued until the trough was emptied, after which a new supply was made, and the men continued drinking until they became,-first highly elated and boastful, and then torpid and sleepy.

Mr. Schomburghk, after speaking favourably of the behaviour of the Indians towards their children, says,

They show much more attention to their wives than I should have expected from what I had read. I allude to the Caribbees, where the women appear to be considered more as companions than slaves. They certainly must work hard; the men clear the ground, and the women have to cultivate it, and to bring in the crop; but they are by no means the low slaves and drudges which they have been represented. There is one great failing which unfortunately appears to prevail among all the tribes-neglect of old per sons, and the sick: they are stowed away in a small corner of the house, neglected, and left to themselves; and where weakness keeps them to their hammocks, perhaps often without the necessaries of life.

During the journey, the travellers occasionally crossed the savannahs, hills, and forests, to visit any remarkable spot, and on some of these occasions they had oppor tunities of seeing the mode of march known as "Indian file." The party, on one occasion, consisted of eighteen individuals; and as the path leading through the savannahs was not more than six or eight inches wide, each person had to follow closely in the footsteps of the one before him. Sometimes the path was lost, or became still narrower than that here indicated, but this was immaterial to the Indians; for their peculiar method of walking with the toes inward enables them to walk the smallest path with ease. They ridicule the European mode of walking, observing that in a wood we take up too much bush-room.

ac

The river

The exploring party ascended the Essequibo to a point where a fine cataract became visible, which, cording to the opinions of all the Indians present, had never before been visited by a white man contracted considerably at this part: the hills approached each other from both sides; and the indentations of the opposite shores were so exactly matched, that the channel appeared to have been the work of art. After paddling up the river in canoes, the cataract was seen by the travellers. Numerous conical hills of granite, about three hundred feet in height, and covered with luxuriant verdure, contract the river to a width of fifty yards, where the whole body of water dashes down a precipice of fifteen feet; then foams over a rugged bed of rocks for about twenty yards; and again precipitates itself, ten feet, to the basin below. The rich vegetation luxuriating in all the fertility of a tropical clime-the masses of granite projecting into the river, and hemming it in to its narrow limits, and the foaming waters in the background, bearing away everything opposed to their progress, combined to form a scene, more picturesque and beautiful than had been met with by the

sustained, to which the Empress Elizabeth added the additional sum of 4000 florins.

In 1766 Euler accepted the invitation of the Empress to return to Petersburg; but he experienced no small difficulty in obtaining permission from the king of Prussia to quit his territory, so much was he esteemed by that sovereign, who, although he spoke of Euler as being "only a mathematician," yet had sufficient discrimination to perceive that he added lustre to a court which aspired to science and literature. On his return to Petersburg, Euler was afflicted with a severe illness which terminated in the total loss of his sight. A cataract formed in his left eye which he had injured by too severe mental application. In this distressing situation he dictated to his servant, a tailor's apprentice and quite ignorant of mathematics, his Elements of Algebra, a work as admirable for clearness and method, as for the distressing circumstances under which it was composed. The amanuensis is said to have acquired a good knowledge of Algebra, in the course of merely taking down what Euler spoke.

The Academy of Sciences of Paris elected Euler to the honourable post of foreign member of their body, and adjudged the prize to three of his memoirs, "Concerning the Inequalities in the Motions of the Planets." The two prize questions proposed by that academy for 1770 and 1772 were designed to obtain from astronomy a more complete theory of the moon. With the assistance of his son, Euler competed for these prizes, and obtained both. In his last memoir he reserved for further consideration several inequalities of the moon's motion, which he could not determine in his first theory, on account of the laborious calculations in which his method had involved him. But, with the assistance of his son and two other gentlemen, he carefully revised his theory, constructed tables, and published the whole in 1772.

All these means of investigation, employed with such art and dexterity as could only be expected from analytical genius of the first order, were attended with the greatest success; and it is impossible to observe without admiration such immense calculations on the one hand, and on the other the ingenious methods employed by this great man to abridge them, and to facilitate their application to the real motion of the moon. But this admiration will become astonishment when we consider at what period, and in what circumstances, all this was effected. It was when he was totally blind, and, consequently, obliged to arrange all his computations by the sole powers of his memory and his genius; when he was embarrassed in his domestic circumstances by a dreadful fire, which had consumed the greater part of his substance, and forced him to quit a ruined house, every corner of which was known to him by a habit that in some measure supplied the place of sight ;-it was in these circumstances, and under these privations, that Euler composed a work, which alone is sufficient to render his name immortal. The heroic patience and tranquillity of mind which he displayed need no eulogy here: and he derived them not only from the love of science, but from the power of religion. His philosophy was too genuine and sublime to stop its analysis at mechanical causes; it led him to that divine philosophy of religion which ennobles human nature, and is alone capable of forming a habit of true magnanimity and patience under suffering".

After this great work was completed, Euler was couched by the celebrated oculist Wenzell, and restored to sight; but the delight occasioned by this successful operation did not long continue. Partly by the neglect of his medical attendants, and partly by his own impatience to exercise his re-acquired powers he again became totally blind, and the relapse was accompanied by intense pain. This misfortune, however, did not check the ardour of his genius. He had engaged to supply the academy of Petersburgh with a sufficient number of memoirs to complete its Transactions for twenty years

* Encyclopædia Britannica.

after his death, and, accordingly, with the assistance of his son and two other gentlemen, he sent to the academy seventy memoirs within the space of seven years, and left above two hundred more, which were revised and completed by the biographer of Euler, from whom we have just quoted.

If we consider the great extent to which Euler carried his researches in mathematics and astronomy, we shall be surprised to find that he was also skilled in the sciences of medicine, botany, and chemistry; that he was moreover a good classical scholar, and had read with attention and taste not only the principal Latin authors, but had made himself familiar with the civil and literary history of all ages and all nations. We learn also that intellectual foreigners, who had previously become ac quainted with his mathematical and physical researches and discoveries, were astonished on visiting him to find that he also possessed an extensive acquaintance with the most interesting branches of literature. This wonderful memory doubtless made the acquisition of every kind of knowledge easy to him: as an example of the powers of his memory it is stated that he could repeat the Eneid of Virgil without hesitation from the beginning to the end, and even name the first and last line of every page of the edition which he used.

In September, 1783, he made some calculations on the motions of balloons, then newly invented. On the 7th day of that month he dined with Lexell and conversed on the subject of the newly discovered planet Herschell, and while his grandchild was at tea, he began to play with it, when he was struck with apoplexy, and died without pain.

Condorcet has left an eloquent and just summary of the character of Euler, which is thus quoted in the article before referred to:

Euler was one of those men whose genius was equally capable of the greatest efforts, and of the most continued labour; who multiplied his productions beyond what might have been expected from human strength, and who, notwith standing, was original in each; whose head was always occupied, and whose mind was always calm. The nature of his pursuits, by withdrawing him from the world, preserved that simplicity of manners for which he was originally indebted to his character and his education; and he employed

none of those means to which men of real merit have sometimes recourse, in order to enhance the importance of their discoveries. It is true that fecundity such as his renders unnecessary all the little calculations of self-love; but still great lucidity of mind, and uprightness of character, are necessary to trace, as he has done, the history of his thoughts, even when his investigations have proved fruitless, or the results disappointed the expectations which he had formed. Euler's constitution was uncommonly vigorous; his health was good; and the evening of his long life was serene, being sweetened by the fame which follows genius the public esteem and respect which are never withheld from exemplary virtue, and several domestic comforts, which he was capable of feeling, and therefore deserved to enjoy.

THIRD ROUTE.

BY WAY OF LAHORE, CAUBUL, BALKH, BOKHARA, TOORKMANIA, KHORASAN, AND PERSIA, TO THE BLACK SEA. WE now invite the reader to accompany us in our third verland journey from India, during which we propose to raverse some of the countries of Central Asia, situated etween Hindostan and the Caspian Sea. Our fellow travelers will be principally Sir Alexander Burnes, Mr. Elphintone, and Colonel Conolly.

If we examine a map of Asia we find that the river ndus forms a general boundary between Hindostan and the ountries westward of it. Beginning from the south, where hat river discharges itself into the Indian Ocean, we find that oth sides of the river are in the dominions of Sinde, which 3 bounded on the east by Rajpootana, or the country of he Rajpoots, and on the west by Beloochistan. But when ve ascend higher up the river we find that it forms a geneal boundary between the Punjaub,-recently under the ule of Runjeet Singh,-and Caubul or Afghanistan.

Now, every British officer who crosses the Indus in his vay overland to England, must pass through territories not belonging to the British crown before he reaches the Indus. n discussing the political relations of Asia it would undoubtily appear advantageous to England, if the banks of the ndus were in her possession; but this is a matter with which we have nothing here to do, and shall therefore nerely state the fact. After crossing the Indus, some travellers proceed directly through Caubul and Khorasan, to he Caspian Sea; but we shall find more objects of interest VOL. XVIII.

by taking a more northerly route through the north-east from whence we shall proceed by Mushed and Astrabad, to part of Caubul, and thence through Balkh to Bokhara; the Caspian.

On leaving Delhi, the former capital of Hindostan, but now under British dominion, our route takes us north-west towards the river Sutledje, the eastern boundary of the Punjaub. This name, "Punjaub," is singularly expressive of the nature of the country to which it is applied. It means, in Oriental language, "five rivers," and designates a triangular district watered by five rivers, which ultimately combine and form the Indus. Alexander the Great traversed this country in his career of conquest, and his historians speak of it in these terms:-"The greater part of this country is level and champaign, which is occasioned chiefly, as some suppose, by the rivers washing down quantities or mud during their overflowings, insomuch that many countries have borrowed their very names from the rivers which pass through them." This country is inhabited chiefly by Seiks or Singhs, the descendants of a sect of priests established in the fifteenth century. These Seiks were energetic men; and Mr. Forster, writing in 1783, said: "Should any future cause call forth the combined efforts of the Seiks, to maintain the existence of empire and religion, we may see some ambitious chief, led on by his genius and success, absorbing the power of his associates, display from the ruins of their commonwealth the standard of monarchy." This sagacious remark has been amply justified in the subsequent career of Runjeet Singh, who was born about the time that Forster made this prediction. The powerful kingdom or

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