quisitive dame." The place was situated about half-way between those two towns. Impatient at this mode of reply-" I'll thank you, madam," I repeated, "to acquaint me with the price demanded for this little place?""Pray what may you be?" rejoined she, as if fully determined not to satisfy my enquiry till I had gratified her curiosity. I was not less resolute than herself, and turned my back in disgust.' p. 87.

The manners and customs are incomparably the worst in the most southern states; and the author is ingenuous enough to ascribe it to the total estrangement from all knowledge, and inattention to all institutions of religion. At Edenton, one of the principal towns of North Carolina, the only place of worship is now reduced to a shelter for cattle and hogs from the heat of the sun. A horrid kind of amusement is acknowledged by the American writers to prevail in these states: it is called gouging.

Passing, in company with other travellers, through the state of Georgia, our attention was arrested by a gouging-match. We found the combatants, as Morse describes, fast clenched by the hair, and their thumbs endeavouring to force a passage into each other's eyes; while several of the bystanders were betting upon the first eye to be turned out of its socket. For some time the combatants avoided the thumb stroke with dexterity. At length they fell to the ground, and in an instant the uppermost sprung up with his antagonist's eye in his hand!!! The savage crowd applauded, while, sick with horror, we gallopped away from the infernal scene. The name of the sufferer was John Butler, a Carolinian, who, it seems, had been dared to the combat by a Georgian; and the first eye was for the honor of the state to which they respectively belonged.

• The eye is not the only feature which suffers on these occasions. Like dogs and bears, they use their teeth * and feet, with the most savage ferocity, upon each other.

A brute, in human form, named John Stanley, of Bertie county, North Carolina, sharpens his teeth with a file, and boasts of his dependence upon them in fight. This monster will also exult in relating the account of the noses and ears he has bitten off, and the cheeks he has torn.

• A man of the name of Thomas Penrise, then living in Edenton, in the same State, attempting at cards to cheat some half-drunken sailors, was detected. A scuffle ensued; Penrise knocked out the candle, then gouged out three eyes, bit off an ear, tore a few cheeks, and made good his retreat.

Near the same place, a schoolmaster, named Jarvis Lucas, was beset by three men, one Horton, his son, and son-in-law. These ruffians beat the unfortunate man till his life was despaired of, having bitten, gouged, and kicked him unmercifully. On the trial of an indictment for this outrageous assault, a Carolina court of justice amerced them in a small fine only.' pp. 301,

303.

*During the author's residence in North Carolina, Mr. Standen, the post-master, and a merchant of Edenton, had a part of his cheek bitten off in an affray with O'Mally, a tavern-keeper in that town.

With what contempt we may justly regard a government, that does not instantly put an end to such a practice by main force. It does not surprise us to find, after these statements, that duels are exceedingly frequent.

Another abomination of these southern states is the number, treatment, and continual importation of slaves. Mr. Janson, with deserved scorn, contrasts this practical enormity, with that bombast about freedom, which shame has not disabled the organs of the people of even these states to utter. He had an extensive view of the miserable condition of the slaves, and he describes with the energy of indignant but not extravagant feeling. His descriptions are much of the same colour with those which have so often represented to us the general oppression, and occasional excesses of barbarity, exercised on the same race in the West Indies; and on the persevering example of England, as exhibited in those islands, may doubtless be charged, in no small degree, the prevalence of the same execrable system in the American states. We could make large and most impressive extracts; but we exult that, as to England, the time is at last arrived, when it is no longer necessary to renew these odious representations in order to excite the nation to press the abolition of the traffic, which is the foundation of the evil, and we are confident they will never be necessary in order to preclude repentance of that decision, when it shall have been fully carried into effect. As to the United States, the cause must be left to providence and its avenging plagues.-But we are aware the federal government passed an act some years since, that the slave trade should cease in the year 1808, and we will endeavour to hope, notwithstanding what we can recollect to have been done in England, that this decree of long protracted justice may not prove nugatory when the term shall be completed.

As a very welcome relief and contrast to these views of the American civilization, we wish we had room for Mr. J.'s account of the general character and administration of the criminal laws, and his statements respecting the prisons, which seem well contrived for schools of industry and reformation.

Respectable efforts are making in Philadelphia in favour of science and literature; but we fear a long train of years must pass away, before these will become popular attainments over the wide extent of the States.

The information relative to religion, is nearly confined to an account of the essential fanaticism of the childish followers of one Ann Leese, and the occasional and circumstantial fanaticism of several wiser and better denominations. We are well aware that extravagances have been committed by the Methodists, and other classes of Christians; but we can easily perceive that

Mr. J. never thought it worth his while to inquire into the doctrines of any of them, as maintained by the more rational part of the respective societies, or to distinguish the transient or local excesses of these societies, from their more permanent character. He probably apprehended no danger of mistake in admitting the wildest aspect, which ignorance and weakness would give to a mode of religious profession, as its true and only character; and felt himself fortunate in the opportunity of being witty by means of the term "elect." Religion itself, in the abstract, is not very familiar we fear to our author's thoughts, nor were we apprised of his feeling any interest about the subject, till we found the rejection of Christianity alledged among the sins of Thomas Paine, in a needless, virulent, and low invective, which occupies an entire chapter towards the end of the volume. We must not however refuse the due applause to some of his observations on ecclesiastical concerns. There is a happy boldness of opinion, in his approbation of a bishop for raising money to build a church, by means of a lottery set on foot for the purpose. But by telling this in England, we will hope he cannot mean any malicious insinuation, that if here episcopalian churches, and all their appointments, were to cease to be raised and maintained by the absolute power of the state, the cordial attachment and voluntary liberality of the people, would ever abandon them to the necessity of supporting themselves by such ingenious expedients.

We are amused with several singular adventures, and especially, in an extreme degree, by a long and fierce nocturnal bat tle between an unarmed rustic and a bear, in a place named Dismal Swamp, in Virginia, in which battle the bear was vanquished and slain. The weight of the man was 191, that of the bear 305, pounds.

We are sorry to find Mr. J. deeming it worth his while to repeat the fable, as at present it appears to us, and apparently to him also, about the man that wandered in company with a small band of savages, up the Missouri, till they found a nation of Welch Indians, of whom it is pretended he gave a long account to a Mr. Childs, who gave it to a Mr. Toulmin, who has published it as a probable story. It was very needless to repeat it in England, after Mr. Janson and all of us know that Capt. Lewis's party advanced near the head of the Missouri, and that Mr. Mackenzie traversed the region of its sources, and never saw or heard the slightest trace or tradition of such a people, though they conversed with natives who were accustomed to rove hundreds of leagues over the vast wilderness.

The last subject we have to notice, is what relates to the prospects of settlement for strangers from Europe. This the

author professes to have in view as one of the chief objects of his book. And he appears to exult in having made out a strong case against emigration. But we are as sorry as he is pleased. For one of the great desiderata for those of the inhabitants of Europe, who cannot force themselves to become enamoured of eternal wars and increasing taxes, after doing their very utmost to convert their own unfashionable and perverse feelings, and who look forward with an almost hopeless anxiety to the establishment or rather ruin of their families, is some distant peaceful land, where the resources of nature are not scrambled for by an overgrown population, nor wasted by the corruption and extravagance of governments. Were there such a country, we should detest the officiousness of any man who should labour to excite the government of an old over populous state to prevent emigration to it. From the facts illustrated by Mr. Malthus, it appears very desirable that there could be some grand outlet, other than a field of battle, for a part of the population of a crowded country, unless it were possible the government of such a country should acquire the wisdom to open to the last acre, all its own resources of cultivation.

As to the clandestine emigration, under circumstances of the most revolting inconvenience, of numbers of the Irish peasantry, to which fact this author wishes to call the attention of the state, we think it proves one thing at least, that they are beyond all endurance wretched where they are; for we know it is a general law of human nature to desert with reluctance the na. tive soil. Let Mr. Janson, and any other writer, do all that correct representations of the circumstances of a distant country will do, to confirm this natural partiality; but they would deserve the severest reprobation of every philanthropist, if they should endeavour, from the mere bigotry of patriotism, - to raise the arm of power to intercept miserable beings in their escape to a place, where they may yet make one more trial, whether the possession of life is to be considered as a blessing or a

curse.

We hope America may yet become a happy asylum for Europeans, when a much greater extent of the western country shall be cleared, and the climate improved by the cultivation, when good and direct roads shall have given a facility of reaching the interior of the Continent from the Atlantic coast, when there shall be a regular system for disposing of its produce to the greatest advantage, and when the population shall be numerous enough to create some of the conveniences and refinements of society, without being so numerous as to raise extremely high the price of land. For the present, America is a most excellent place for mechanics and bardy rural labourers, excepting what is to be apprehended from an unfriendly cli

mate, and from destructive diseases, which are indefinitely aggravated by the gross mode of living, and the frightful consumption of raw spirits. But the persons who wish to establish themselves by the purchase of lands, will feel great hesitation after reading the statements of Mr. Janson, respecting the expense of supporting a family while a most tedious journey is made into the back settlements, merely, in the first place, to determine where to settle, the toil of clearing the land, the exorbitant price of labour, and the difficulty of finding a market for the produce, when it shall exceed the wants of the family. As to purchasing land, without personal inspection, of the commissioners appointed for selling it, in London, or any of the cities of the United States, we are confident no man will do it after reading some parts of this book, which describe the nefarious deceptions practised by those agents. We hold it our duty to present an extract relative to these subjects, and with this we conclude our review.

• To enumerate the different frauds, and to lay open the arts practised upon deluded Englishmen by these gangs of coalesced adventurers, would alone exceed the limits of these sheets. To such a pitch of bare-faced deceit did they arrive, that the American government was at length obliged to be its own land agent, and to open offices for retailing land to English settlers. To the disgraceful and villainous deeds of land-speculators, Dr. Priestley, and indeed most of the recent English settlers, could bear testimony. False titles, forged grants, fictitious patents, and deeds of bargain and sale of land in the clouds were daily imposed upon the unwary. Sometimes, indeed, the conspirators would discover a tract, which was under some indispensable necessity of being sold, of which they would make a bona fide purchase, and under this cloak have they conveyed it, again and again, perhaps a dozen times. In other instances, the land granted was described to begin at a sycamore tree on such a point; from thence running in a parallel line till it struck a mulberry tree; from thence running due south till intersected by an oak. In short, the described portion comprised the most valuable timber, and rich, clear land, and all for one dollar per acre. In these cases the purchaser would often find his land, and the remains of the trees described; but alas! instead of rich meads, fertile plains, valuable forests, and meandering rivers, he found a barren desart, not producing a single shrub. The trees had been planted for deception only, and the navigable rivers had found another course. Colonel Michael Payne, of North Carolina, marshal of the state, informed me that he was obliged to attend a sale of land in the interior part of the state, which had been levied upon under an execution issuing out of the Federal Court, and that upon his journey over one of the most barren and rocky countries he had ever travelled, he observed a party of men planting trees. So strange an employment in so dreary a spot induced the colonel to enquire of the laborers what benefit they expected to derive from their labor. He also observed two or three carts, loaded with young trees, and a man at a little distance, surveying the ground, who said, in answer to the colonel's questions, that the land was advertised for sale in London at half a guinea per VOL. III.

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