From The Saturday Review. CAPTAIN BURTON'S TRAVELS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.*

urally the victim of a severe tariff. But beyond this the native tribes offered him no sort of hinderance. The traveller's only real THE interest of this record of exploration obstacle, the only feature which gives any is derived rather from the author's achieve- thing of a variety to his slow but easy progments than from his adventures. The re- ress, was the terrible fever with which the sult of Captain Burton's hardships and la- country is cursed. This incessant pest seems bors has been to discover at last the Great to have met and baffled the author and his Central Lake which for centuries has been companion at every stage of their advance. the subject of an indistinct tradition among It was not, as in other parts of Africa, congeographers, and a sort of philosopher's stone tent with ravaging the reedy valley or alluto African explorers. They have sought it vial plain-it appears to have pursued them from the north, and from the south, and or clung to them just as pitilessly on the from the west, and it has always hitherto mountains as in the hollow. Highlands or eluded their search. And yet it was not so lowlands, wet climate or dry, it seems to very hard to find. It lies due west from the have been just the same to the fever. The island of Zanzibar, about six hundred miles only difference between healthy and unhealthy from the coast, from which it is separated districts appears to be that the natives sufby one water-shed of moderate elevation. fer in the low country, but escape when they If there were any materials for commercial get out of it. The stranger is equally feverprogress in the degraded tribes that inhabit hunted in both. Almost a regular portion its shores, this discovery would be a very of Captain Burton's diary, at each halting important one. The extreme length of the station, is an account of the paroxysms of lake is not quite three hundred miles, its fever in which the particular malaria of the extreme breadth is about forty. It is there- place manifested itself. His normal condifore larger than any other inland sea in the tion for starting in the morning was a state Old World, with the exception of the Cas- of weakness so intense that he was unable to pian. But unless the lazy savages who sur- sit upon an ass. These fever fits were the round it were exterminated, and their places only serious adventure of the journey. Rassupplied by white men, the discovery is not cally porters would occasionally steal his likely, for some time, to have more than a goods or break his instruments, and extorgeographical value. tionate chiefs would sometimes exact an unconscionable tribute; but these are mishaps with which tourists in Europe are not wholly unacquainted. The only element of hard

enough for the most adventurous tastewas the pestilence in which they lived and moved, and from which there was neither respite nor escape. An extract will give the best picture of the reality of the sufferings it induced :

At first sight it seems surprising that no European should have made the journey before, so slight do the hardships by which it is beset appear. How little there is of seri-ship in the expedition-and it was abundant ous obstacle in mountain or morass appears sufficiently from Captain Burton's recommendation that a tram-road should be laid from the lake to the coast, and his assurance that there are no engineering difficulties. There was no difficulty about food; for almost all along the line of march, with insignificant exceptions, villages were to be found in which supplies of all kinds were to be had. Nor was the explorer exposed to personal danger from the jealousy or hostility of the natives. No doubt the melancholy fate of a French predecessor on the same line forced him to take an escort;

but a very

small dis

"On the 10th October, suddenly waking about dawn from a horrible dream, in which a close pack of tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harmessed with a network of iron hooks, were dragging him like the rush of a whirlwind over the ground, he found himself sitting up on the side of his bedding, forcibly clasping both sides with his hands. Half-stupefied by pain, he called play of force sufficed to secure him from all Bombay, who having formerly suffered from the attack. The privilege of being fleeced, which Kichyoma-chyoma'-the little irons'-raised accompanies the English traveller wherever his master's right arm, placed him in a sitting he sets his foot, did not desert Captain Bur-position, as lying down was impossible, and diton in Eastern Africa. The chiefs of this part of the country principally live by the black-mail, or customs, which they levy from the trading caravans; and as their system is to proportion their exactions to the traveller's supposed wealth, a white man travelling for pleasure, not for profit, was natThe Lake Regions of Central Africa. By R. F. Burton. London: Longmans, 1860.

rected him to hold the left ear behind the head, thus relieving the excruciating and torturing twinges, by lifting the lung from the liver. The next spasm was less severe, but the sufferer's mind had begun to wander, and he again clasped his sides-a proceeding with which Bombay interfered.

"Early on the next morning, my companion, supported by Bombay and Gaetano, staggered towards the tent. Nearing the doorway, he

sent in his Goanese, to place a chair for sitting, cotton has been so completely appropriated as usual, during the toils of the day, outside. by the American merchants that the native The support of an arm being thus removed, en- name for the better kinds of cloth is Mersued a second and violent spasm of cramps and kani. To be beaten out of the field by twinges, all the muscles being painfully con- Yankee cotton goods in a market which is tracted. After resting for a few moments, he called his men to assist him into the house. nearer to England than to America is, inBut neglecting to have a chair previously placed deed, a deep disgrace to Manchester. But for him, he underwent a third fit of the same the truth is that, loudly as some classes of epileptic description, which more closely re- our manufacturers may denounce the insembled those of hydrophobia than aught I had crease of territory we have sought and acever witnessed. He was once more haunted by quired in the east, English merchants will a crowd of hideous devils, giants, and lion-headed hardly be induced to trade in uncivilized demons, who were wrenching, with superhuman countries except under the protection of force, and stripping the sinews and tendons of their own flag. Any thing that is personally his legs down to the ankles. At length, sitting, venturesome they discreetly leave to the or rather lying, upon the chair, with limbs racked with cramps, features drawn and ghastly, Americans. A remarkable proof of this disframe fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, inclination is the fact that, according to the he began to utter a barking noise, and a peculiar latest reports, no single English ship had chopping motion of the mouth and tongue, with been seen on this East African coast for lips protruding, the effect of difficulty of breath- many years. And yet it is from commerce ing,-which so altered his appearance that he almost alone that, in Captain Burton's judgwas hardly recognizable, and completed the ter- ment, any amelioration of the moral or physror of the beholders. When this, the third and ical condition of the East Africans can be the severest spasm, had passed away, he called looked for. The great curse of Africa, the for pen and paper, and fearing that increased slave trade-which nothing but legitimate weakness of mind and body might presently pre-trade can effectually root out-rages almost vent any exertion, he wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That, however, was the crisis. He was afterwards able to take the proper precautions, never moving without assistance, and always ordering a resting-place to be prepared for him. He spent a better night, with the inconvenience, however, of sitting up, pillow-propped, and some weeks elapsed before he could lie upon his sides. Presently the pains were mitigated, though they did not entirely cease; this he expressed by saying that the knives were sheathed.' Such, gentle reader, in East Africa, is the kichyoma-chyoma: either one of those eccentric after-effects of fever, which perplex the European at Zanzibar, or some mysterious manifestation of the Protean demon

Miasma."

Whatever the interest of Captain Burton's discoveries, we doubt whether, with this prospect before them, Europeans are likely to be tempted into the charming country he has laid open to their enterprise.

unchecked by English cruisers or Portuguese treaties upon this side of the continent. All the evils to soul and body of which this traffic is the dispenser it scatters lavishly over the "Land of the Moon." The peculiar institution has exhibited more than its usual efficacy in withering up family affection, remitting a whole race to debauchery for their sole enjoyment, and turning the most fruitful lands into a desert. Were he left to nature, the life of the East African would be passed in greater abundance, and therefore in greater happiness, than that of the Indian ryot. But the most fertile spots are generally the most exposed, and a thriving agricultural village is the favorite harryingground of the predatory tribes who supply the slave-dealers of the coast. The human being has come to be looked upon so completely as an article of merchandise that natPerhaps it is this malaria which explains ural ties are absolutely unknown. what is otherwise inexplicable-the fact that father will not hesitate, if he finds himself in this vast district of Eastern Africa British in difficulties, to relieve himself by selling commerce has been foiled at its own weapons. still continue, he not unfrequently completes his wife and children, and if the difficulties The currency of the country is of a very peculiar character, but one that ought to rec- the transaction by the further sale of himommend it to English merchants. The only self. In some tribes the wife's brother has circulating medium recognized consists of the curious right of selling her children into cotton cloth, glass or porcelain beads, and slavery if he thinks fit. This strange ownerbrass-wire, against which the ivory and copal | ship rests upon the conviction-the fruit, no which are the chief produce of the country doubt, of long experience that only materare exchanged. This ought to be a great nal relationships can be relied upon. opportunity for Birmingham and Manchester; and yet the beads, which are imported by the ton, have become a monopoly in the hands of the Hindoos, and the supply of

The

The literary merits of this book are very considerable. The narrative of a hardy, almost desperate, explorer is the last place in which we should have looked for the stores

of reading and of thought which are dis-joint discoveries in Blackwood of last year. played upon these pages. The work has He sneers savagely at the consul at Zanzionly one defect. The bilious fever which bar, apparently for no other reason than haunted Captain Burton during his travels some fancied unpoliteness. He has his fling clings to his pen. The book is one long at the government of Bombay and the augrumble against most inanimate and all ani- thorities of the India House. He takes a mate things. Of course, we do not venture delight in gibbeting, by name, an unfortuto fasten the charge of exaggeration upon ate English apothecary at Zanzibar, with any particular grumble; but a uniformly whose mode of treatment or activity in sendsombre tint cannot but suggest doubts as to ing up supplies to himself he was not satiswhether it is not the subjective result of a fied. And he loses no opportunity of snarlbad liver. We do not question that guards, ing at the whole race of parsons, apparently porters, chiefs, subordinates, and donkeys on no other ground than that they are parwere, all according to their several talents, sons. No doubt it is difficult for a man who as disagreeable and obstructive as they could sees every thing through spectacles of a be; though his sensitiveness to difficulties of dingy yellow to describe his experiences as this kind is strange in so veteran a wanderer. they would appear to those who have no But his quarrels extend much further than spectacles at all. But it is a pity that, this. He has a death-feud with the com- knowing his malady, he did not, before gopanion of his travels, because the latter ing to press, submit his compositions to broke some canon of explorer's etiquette, or some friend blest with biliary organs of a some alleged agreement, by publishing their more normal character.

"Criminal London," he has the happy disposition of educing good and ennobling lessons and influences from each and all.

We have two "sweet things" in poetry, in the shape of The Buggy, a poem, by C. M. Tatam (Mair and Son); and Shelley and other Poems, by J. A. Langford,-not the celebrated Joe, whose hair was cut, but the author of "The FLIRT.-No one of our English dictionaries Lamp of Life," etc. (Smith and Elder.) The first mentioned of the two consists of eight can- suggests a derivation for this word which seems to me acceptable. Johnson attempts none, merely tos, eight hundred and eighty stanzas, and two repeating the dictum of Skinner that it is vor a hundred and twenty-three pages. We observe that seduction, poaching, murder, remorse, sui- sono ficta. Richardson suggests that it may be from fleer, "to flee, avoid, or escape from;" cide, the Falls of Niagara, and marriage crop fleer, fleered, flirt; but this is unsatisfactory: at up at intervals through this length and breadth least as regards the modern acceptation of the of print. These are supposed to constitute the term, in the sense of coquetting, and its accommaterials of poetry; and; accordingly, we canpaniment of pretty speeches. The French have not deny that" The Buggy" is a poem. "Shelley and other Poems" is rather a curious mix- an idiom which expresses the same idea, and ture, the author's two chief heroes being the seems to me to be the probable origin of our own poet Shelley and the martyr Polycarp, between term. A gentleman in paying his court to a whom there would not at first sight appear to be lady is said "conter fleurelles," and of a lady very much in common. But the power of de- receiving his attention it is said, "elle aime la tecting resemblances between things apparently nification of a "little flower," explains fleurette fleurette." Bescherelle, besides its ordinary sig dissimilar is the admitted prerogative of genius. to mean, "jolie chose, que dit à une femme aimable l'homme que veu lui plaire;" and in THE new book by Mr. Ritchie, entitled About illustration of this sense he quotes Dufresnoy,London (Tinsley), fully sustains the reputation Quant un galant bien fait, de bonne mine, of the author of "The Night Side of London." Me conte fleurette, croit on It is both in matter and manner a most readable Que j'en sois chagrine!" volume. In a series of twenty chapters the Bescherelle alludes to the fact that both the more conspicuous and characteristic places and Romans and Greeks employed a similar figure persons about London are admirably sketched. of speech to express the same agreeable idea, The author indulges in all his modes. He is "rosas loqui," and "póda eipew." I cannot find observant, penetrative, didactic, satirical, and the former in any Latin writer except Erasmus : reflective. Health, cheerfulness, and hope, but in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, the "Adikoç however, are the pervading tones of this work. Aóyoç, in reply to the taunts of the Aikator, says Whether the subject be the "Newspaper Peo- ironically, "Рóda p' eipnкaç!" You flatter rie! ple," "Spiritualism," "London Gents," or-Notes and Queries.

J. EMERSON TENNENT.

PARKER'S SISTER.

tels to be made the subject of transfer and arrangement, without much reference to any views they might entertain upon the subject; the word "girl," in particular representing a term of bitter reproach.

THE often-iterated statement, that the child is the father to the man, I am quite disposed to accept as an axiom; I am prepared, indeed, to widen its significance, and to recognize in the proceedings of youth a Man is an interrogative, acquisitive, and microcosmic resemblance to the actions of an combative animal, or, at least, if not caring early state of society-to trace in the be- to combat himself, he likes to witness the havior of infant man a marked coincidence encounters of others. A new pupil at Dr. with the conduct of immature peoples. For Swabey's was put through a lively course of instance, in the condition of life enjoyed by examination on his admission among his felmyself and my fellow-pupils when at the low-students. How old was he? What was not undistinguished seminary of Dr. Swabey, his father? What school had he been at at Mortlake, it seems to me that a clear con- last? How much money had he? Had he nection is to be discovered with the aborigi- brought a cake with him? Did he want to nal circumstances deemed by ethical and purchase a top, marbles, a knife? Had he theoretic writers to attend the institution of any sisters? If so, their names, ages, and the first social contract; when a number of in- the color of their complexions, eyes, and dividuals, drawn into gregariousness by com- hair? And lastly, with whom would he mon wants and weaknesses, assembled on fight? Surely, all this is also savage, primian open plain, agreed on and swore obedience tive and unenlightened enough. to a code of laws, and elected from among Little Parker, a thin, small-boned, blonde them the tallest to be their dux, duke or little boy, his mother's kisses still fresh on leader-king, Könning, Kanning-"man his pink and white face-the lady herself that knows or cans." The same system of journeying back to town alone, in her fly, nomenclature did not obtain among the com- very nervous, and depressed, and desolate munity at Lexicon House-the head or chief after her first parting with her son-little being there called, I think, the cock-nor Parker, leaning against the playground wall, was his election of so imposing and ceremo- trying hard to follow maternal counsels, and nious a character, however it might have not to cry, but to be a man, and look forward been on the first founding of the office. I to jolly holidays at Christmas, not back upon know, indeed, that Blenkinsop Primus, the the domestic happiness he was severed from cock of the school during my time at Dr. for months-with one small hand in his Swabey's obtained power rather in a coup- pocket, clinking the recent deposit of silver d'etat and Cromwellian fashion, administer- there secured to him by his departure from ing a great thrashing to the former chief, the parental roof-the governor's tip of five Hobson, bully and tyrant, in a pitched bat- shillings, Aunt Jane's half-crown, stingy tle after a cricket-match on Barnes Common, Uncle Jack's miserable shilling, and a contriand assuming thenceforward the reins of bution from mamma, which will probably government. It is probable that the first figure in the housekeeping-book under some dux held his appointment in virtue of much other heading (for Parker pére had forbidden the same qualities as constituted Blenkinsop further donation, the boy having already, he Primus cock at Dr. Swabey's, and by reason, said, more than was good for him)-little very likely, of his worship's broad back, long Parker, I say, was subjected to the usual arm, and hard fist. Certainly we were interrogations, as a semicircle of pupils of banded together by common impulses, and Lexicon House approached and surrounded bound by implied and oral laws to resist at him, with much jostling and crowding, to all points the attacks of our enemy the doc- inspect the new boy. Little Parker replied tor, and frustrate his every effort to improve, blushingly, frightened perhaps in a measpunish, or govern us; and further, also, did ure: His father was a merchant. He had we carry out a likeness to the habits of un- not been to school before. There was a cake ripe nations in our incursions of a predatory in his box: anybody might eat it that liked; nature on the territories-especially the he was not hungry a bit himself. Yes, cerorchards of our neighbors, in the scarcity tainly he had a sister; her name was Di. of the precious metals, and of any consequent He didn't want to fight anybody, thank circulating medium; in our necessary resort you. Of course, all that seemed feasible was to barter rather than sale-the place of a more regular currency being supplied by toffy, marbles, apples, and similar commodities; and in our unchivalric and uncivilized views touching the female portion of the state, regarding women very much as chat

done to terrify him. He was informed that he had come to a fearful school for caning, they could tell him; they pitied him; they wouldn't stand in his shoes for something. Old Swabey on the very next morning would probably favor him with the severest licking,

by aid of a heavy birch-broom a yard long and a foot thick, that any boy had ever received in his life.

flashing sword clove his head in twain, and cut right down to his waist. His brains were scattered about right and left, and Jones fell a bleeding corpse on the floor!"

"Oh!" and there is quite a shiver of horror through the bedroom; and little Parker, pleased at this homage, pushes his light hair off his forehead, and continues his narrative.

I don't know that Parker paid much attention to the unities of time and place; I am inclined to think his narratives were somewhat of a rambling and incoherent pattern, plentifully spiced with incident and adventure. Perhaps success in romancespinning may be obtained to a great extent by such means. It is remarkable, too, that the sympathies of the public were always enlisted on the side of disorder and illegality. Parker's heroes were all opposed to

Perhaps you think little Parker rather cut out for a school-victim, the sort of subject that the sworn tormentors of Lexicon House would prefer to operate upon. But, as I have seen occasionally in a melodrama, when the hero, in mortal broad-sword combat, is beaten down and disarmed, and his antagonist on the eve of running him through or hewing him in pieces, just then, midst the cries, from an exhilarated and perspiring gallery, of "Ah! Yah! Would yer? Brayvo! Go it, Smith!" the hero aforesaid plucks a pistol from his belt, holds it to the nose of his terrified opponent, and becomes again master of the situation-the scene closing in on the group to very loud music; so our small blonde boy in the blue-jacket and bright the constituted authorities, and for sufficient buttons, however apparently down, is still not irretrievably defeated by any means. He carries very serviceable weapons in his belt. First, he is a great story-teller-something of the improvisatore's talent is possessed by little Parker. He can keep a whole bedroom full of boys spell-bound by his marvellous narrations. Boys even crowd in from other rooms to hear Parker, sitting up in his night-dress, relate one of his thrilling stories, and wonder at his strange talent in that respect. I remember little enough of the stories now, though something of the effect they created. How he did it, and whence he derived his romances, whether they were all invention, or partly drawn from memory and accidental reading, no one knew.

"Was that all out of your own head, Parker?" he was sometimes asked at the conclusion of his recital.

"Yes, Dawkins, it was," he would answer simply.

Certainly, for a small, quiet-looking, little boy, he possessed a most active, not to say violent, imagination. He was not by any means so amiable and pacific in mind as he appeared to be in body; he was prone to the morbid and the fearful-dealt largely in horrors-had a ruthless way of disposing of his dramatis persona-sprinkled about drawn swords and desperate combats, gunpowder, trap-doors, masks, stabbings, strangulations, and murders and bloodshed generally, with a free hand. His stories were accented with terror, and punctuated by crime. Sometimes his audience rose against the violent sentences awarded to his puppets.

"O Parker, what a shame! Don't let Jones be cut down like that; he's a brave fellow, he is. Let him guard off the blow just in time, and save his life."

"No, Dawkins; the story requires it. The

reasons, being burglars and highwaymen, or else smugglers and pirates. Somehow, at Lexicon House, the cause of order, and propriety, and morality seemed to be represented by Dr. Swabey-enough in itself to attach the allegiance of the students to the less worthy side of the question. At one time led away, I think, by Parker's fictions, about a dozen boys solemnly agreed together to run away from school with such means as they could collect, proceed to the nearest seaport town-a great difference of opinion existing as to which was the nearest, some being in favor of Richmond, others declaring for Lambeth-and enter as cabin-boys on board a ship just weighing anchor. They were to behave quite properly until the vessel was at sea, then mutiny, shoot the captain, compel the chief officers to walk the plank, the crew of course deciding for the mutineers; draw lots who should be commander; swear feality to the fortunate one; hoist the blood-red flag of piracy, and sweep the sea for prizes. There was a little difficulty and dilemna in respect to the flag, as to which was the regular thing, a blood-red one, or a black flag ornamented with a death's-head and cross-bones in white; but otherwise the whole scheme was fully and definitely settled. Somehow, however, it was never carried into execution.

"The deck was now slippery with gore; the carnage had lasted some hours; the air was thick with smoke; the heavens crimson from the fire of the guns; the waves rose mountains high; the winds howled and whistled like-like any thing. Yet still the fight continued. The pirate captain, covered with wounds, and bleeding from every limb, with a pistol in each hand-a doublebarrelled one, mind!-a sharp sabre between his teeth, a long dagger in his belt, and a carbine slung at his back, began to see at