Читать книгу: «Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 418», страница 7

After our repast we went out to see the dancing. This favourite amusement of the Africans takes place in the open air when the weather is fine; in wet weather it is held in the bentang, and when it is dark large fires are kindled to give light to the performers. They have two or three musical instruments, the chief of which is a drum. When this is beat, all the young folks become animated, and dance to the sound, clapping their hands, and performing a number of evolutions, some of which are not the most seemly. They keep up this exercise through a great part of the night; so that we left them in the midst of their sport, and retired to rest. Our preparations for sleep were soon made, by simply lying down upon the mats placed upon the hurdle. The negroes are very susceptible of cold, and complain of it when we are panting with heat; but the fire in their huts keeps up the desired temperature. They sleep very soundly, and cannot be easily aroused till after sun-rise. In the morning we made a slight repast of gruel, to which a kind of hasty-pudding with shea-butter was added for our peculiar gratification. This butter is made of the fruit of the shea-tree, which is not unlike a Spanish olive, and has a kernel from which the butter is extracted by boiling. It is in great repute, having a richer taste than the butter of milk, and keeping for a long time without salt, which is very expensive in Africa. After breakfast we took leave of our kind host and his family, and returned in the same way we came.

The foregoing description of semi-barbarous life may seem to portray it in some attractive colours, so that indolent and licentious persons might ask: Is it not preferable to our sophisticated state of society? We are not judges of other people's taste, but we can see in it nothing desirable. Its evils are numerous and very great. It is a dearth or death of the soul, and of all that which truly constitutes man an intelligent being, aiming at mental progress. Again, it is intimately connected with a state of slavery, with the degradation of females, and with polygamy—three great moral evils, the sources of endless rapine, injustice, and misery. Famine also frequently prevails, and is a dreadful scourge, even compelling mothers to sell some of their children that they may save the rest. For in such an uncertain state of society, no one cares to lay up for the future, as his hordes would only incur the greater risk of being pillaged and destroyed.

THE COMMERCIAL PORTS OF ENGLAND

A return has just been made, by order of parliament, which shews that Liverpool is now the greatest port in the British Empire in the value of its exports and the extent of its foreign commerce. Being the first port in the British Empire, it is the first port in the world. New York is the only place out of Great Britain which can at all compare with the extent of its commerce. New York is the Liverpool of America, as Liverpool is the New York of Europe. The trade of those two ports is reciprocal. The raw produce of America, shipped in New York, forms the mass of the imports of Liverpool; the manufactures of England, shipped at Liverpool, form the mass of the imports of New York. The two ports are, together, the gates or doors of entry between the Old World and the New. On examining the return just made, it appears that the value of the exports of Liverpool in the year 1850 amounted to nearly L.35,000,000 sterling (L.34,891,847), or considerably more than one-half of the total value of the exports of the three kingdoms for that year. This wonderful export-trade of Liverpool is partly the result of the great mineral riches of Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire; partly of the matchless ingenuity and untiring industry of the population of those counties; partly of a multitude of canals and railways, spreading from Liverpool to all parts of England and the richest parts of Wales; partly to Liverpool being the commercial centre of the three kingdoms; and partly to the fact that very nearly L.12,000,000 have been expended in Liverpool, and more than L.12,000,000 in the river Mersey, in converting a stormy estuary and an unsafe anchorage into the most perfect port ever formed by the skill of man. On comparing the respective amounts of the tonnage of Liverpool and London, it appears at first impossible to account for the fact that the shipping of Liverpool is rather less than that of London, while its export-trade is much more than twice as great. The explanation of this fact is, that the vessels employed in carrying the million or million and a half of tons of coal used in London, appear in the London return; while the canal and river flats, to say nothing of the railway trains, employed in carrying the million and a quarter of tons of coal used or employed in Liverpool, do not. State the case fairly, and the maritime superiority of Liverpool will be found to be as decided as is its commercial. We ought also to add, that while the Custom-house returns for 1850 give Liverpool only 3,262,253 tons of shipping, the payment of rates to the Liverpool Dock Estate in the twelve months ending June 25, 1851, gives 3,737,666 tons, or nearly 500,000 tons more. Comparing the rate of increase of the exports of Liverpool with that of other ports, it appears that Liverpool is not only the first port in the kingdom, but that it is becoming more decidedly the first every year. During the last five years the increase of the exports of Liverpool has been from 26,000,000 to nearly 35,000,000, while that of London has been from little less than 11,000,000 to rather more than 14,000,000. The exports of Hull—which is undoubtedly the third port of the kingdom—though still very large, have rather declined, having been L.10,875,870 in 1846, and not more than L.10,366,610 in 1850. The exports of Glasgow, now the fourth port of the empire, shew a fair increase, from L.3,024,343 to L.3,768,646. No other port now sends out exports of the value of L.2,000,000 a year, though Southampton comes near to L.2,000,000, and Cork passes L.1,000,000.—Liverpool Times.

AN UNFORTUNATE MAN

I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me. What now? Let me look about me. They have left me sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me; and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance and my cheerful spirits, and a good conscience; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my religion, and my hope of heaven, and my charity to them too. And still I sleep, and digest, and eat, and drink; I read and meditate; I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauty, and delight in all that in which God delights—that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself.—Jeremy Taylor.

SLOW BUT SURE

Some years ago a man was apprehended in Hampshire, charged with a capital offence—sheep-stealing, I believe. After being examined before a justice of the peace, he was committed to the county jail at Winchester for trial at the ensuing assizes. The evidence against the man was too strong to admit of any doubt of his guilt; he was consequently convicted, and sentence of death—rigidly enforced for this crime at the period alluded to—pronounced. Months and years passed away, but no warrant for his execution arrived. In the interval a marked improvement in the man's conduct and bearing became apparent. His natural abilities were good, his temper mild, and his general desire to please attracted the attention and engaged the confidence of the governor of the prison, who at length employed him as a domestic servant; and such was his reliance on his integrity that he even employed him in executing commissions, not only in the city, but to places at a great distance from it. After a considerable lapse of time, however, the awful instrument, which had been inadvertently concealed among other papers, was discovered, and at once forwarded to the high-sheriff, and by the proper authority to the unfortunate delinquent himself. My purpose is brief relation only; suffice it to say, the unhappy man is stated under these affecting circumstances to have suffered the last penalty of the law.—Notes and Queries.

THE SEA-KINGS OF NANTUCKET

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two-thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his—he owns it as emperors own empires, other seamen having but a right to pass through it. Merchant-ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless sea itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business; which a Noah's flood would scarcely interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves; he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows, so at nightfall the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.—Herman Melville's The Whale.

THE LINNÆA BOREALIS

'Linné selected a tiny wild-flower that he discovered, of exquisite beauty and delicious odour, to bear his name—one that refuses to exchange the silent glen and melancholy wood for the more gay parterres of horticulture.'—Rambles in Sweden and Gottland, by Sylvanus.

 
'Tis a child of the old green woodlands,
Where the song of the free wild bird,
And swaying of boughs in the summer breeze,
Are the only voices heard.
 
 
In the richest moss of the lonely dells
Are its rosy petals found,
With the clear blue skies above it spread,
And the lordly trees around.
 
 
In those still, untrodden solitudes
Its lovely days are passed;
And the sunny turf is its fragrant bier
When it gently dies at last.
 
 
But if from its own sweet dwelling-place
By a careless hand 'tis torn,
And to hot and dusty city streets
In its drooping beauty borne,
 
 
Its graceful head is with sorrow bowed,
And it quickly pines and fades;
Till the fragile bloom is for ever fled
That gladdened the forest glades.
 
 
It will not dwell 'neath a palace dome,
With rare exotic flowers,
Whose perfumed splendour gaily gleams
In radiant festal hours:
 
 
It loves not the Parian marble vase,
On the terrace fair and wide;
Or the bright and sheltered garden bowers
Smiling in gorgeous pride.
 
 
But it mourns for the far-off dingles,
For their fresh and joyous air,
For the dewy sighs and sunny beams
That lingered o'er it there.
 
 
O lonely and lovely forest-flower!
A holy lot is thine,
Amid nature's deepest solitudes,
With radiance meek to shine.
 
 
Bright blossom of the shady woods!
Live on in your cool retreat,
Unharmed by the touch of human hand,
Or the tread of careless feet;
 
 
With the rich green fern around your home,
The birds' glad song above,
And the solemn stars in the still night-time
Looking down with eyes of love!
 

LUCINDA ELLIOTT.