〃 BY JOHN CENTLIVRES CHASE, ESQ., EDITED BY MR. JOSEPH S. CHRISTOPHERS. "For thus saith the Lord, who created the heavens, God himself who formed the INTRODUCTION. A FRIEND of the humble compiler of the following pages, also a South African settler, whose affairs called him to England some months ago, thus addressed him: “You will doubtless remember in the course of your reading, to have met with the singular account of a Religious Mission, dispatched from Denmark, some century and a half ago, to Spitzbergen, upon which the ice, after accumulated seasons of severity, at last closed, and shut out all communication between the settlers and their native land; but whether they perished or established themselves nobody knew; and only until of late it seems did any one recollect that such an adventure was ever made, or suggest that it would be worth while to enquire into their fate! Now my dear fellow, our Albany settlement of 1820, seems to be in something like a similar predicament. It is true no ice-fields have closed around you, but what is just as bad, there is a chilly indifference about your existence, and nobody knows and nobody cares, whether you sunk into the ocean on your passage, died of some fever, yellow, blue or black, or were carbonaded by the savages on your putting foot to shore. If you have any interest in the country, shew that you still are in existence, and explain what you have been doing during the last twenty or more years,—I know it has been for good." To such a call it was impossible not to respond, and to that demand the reader owes the following pages. The ignorance of the English public, as to the advantages of |