6

On the evening of the eighth day, a Moor came into the enclosure, and brought them a letter. 'I felt,' says Riley, as if my heart was forcing its way up into my throat, and it entirely obstructed my breath-I broke it open; but my emotions were such, that it was impossible for me to read its contents, and I handed it to Mr. Savage; for my frame trembled to such a degree, that I could not stand, and I sunk to the earth.' The letter was from 'William Willshire, the English consul;' it told them that he had agreed to the demands of Sidi Hamet, whom he kept as an hostage for their safe appearance; that the bearer, Rais BelCossim, would conduct them to Mogadore. This Bel-Cossim was the very man who purchased Adams at Wed-noon. He also sent them various kinds of provisions, cloaks, and shoes. Thus accoutred and fortified, they set out under their new conductor, with another person who had joined them, of the name of Scheik Ali, an Arab of a tribe near the north border of the Great Desert, one of whose daughters Sidi Hamet had married. They passed a ruined city, before the breached walls of which was still standing a sort of battering ram. It had been sacked, and the ground was strewed with human bones, bleached in the sun. They also passed several small sanctuaries surmounted with domes, and a tolerably well cultivated country abounding with cattle.

On the 30th October they crossed the wod-Sehlem or river Sehlem, and the town Sehlemah. On their arrival at a walled city called Stuka, which might contain about five thousand souls, Scheik Ali procured from the chief, Muley Ibrahim, an order for their detention, under pretence that they were the slaves of Sidi Hamet his son-in-law, who was indebted to him in a large sum of money; and it was not before the 4th November that they were able to procure their release. AtSanta Cruz, as usual, they were pelted with stones by the rabble, and saluted with every abusive epithet that could be thought of. This was not the worst; for here again Scheik Ali persuaded the governor to seize the slaves of Sidi Hamet for a supposed debt, which he was only prevented from doing by the unceasing activity of the Rais Bel-Cossim, who detected what was passing, and got them out of the town at an early hour in the morning: after a fatiguing and perilous journey they came in sight of Mogadore, where English colours were floating in the harbour, and the American flag in the city. At this blessed and transporting sight,' exclaims Riley, the little blood remaining in my veins, gushed through my glowing heart with wild impetuosity, and seemed to pour a flood of new life through every part of my exhausted frame.' They were presently met by Mr. Willshire, whose kind reception and commiseration for their sufferings does honour to human nature. He took each man by the hand, wel

comed them to life and liberty, while tears trickled down his manly cheeks, and the sudden rush of all the generous and sympathetic feelings of his heart nearly choked his utterance. Mr. Riley describes the meeting as so affecting, that Rais Bel-Cossim wept and hid himself behind a wall, that none might witness so degrading and womanish a weakness in a Moor.

Mr. Willshire conducted them to his house, had them all cleansed, clothed, and fed, and spared no pains nor expense in procuring every comfort, and in administering with his own hands, night and day, such refreshment as their late severe sufferings and debility required. A fact is mentioned which describes better than a whole volume could do the miserable condition to which these unfortunate men were reduced. 'At the instance of Mr. Willshire,' Riley says, I was weighed, and fell short of ninety pounds, though my usual weight, for the last ten years, had been over two hundred and forty pounds: the weight of my companions was less than I dare to mention, for I apprehend it would not be believed, that the bodies of men, retaining the vital spark, should not weigh forty pounds!

The miserable condition to which those unfortunate beings, who fall into the hands of the inhuman Arabs, are reduced, calls to our recollection the observation made by Mr. Dupuis, in a note on Adams's statement of the brutal treatment which he had experi enced at Wed-noon; that the general effect on the minds of Christian captives was most deplorable; that on their first arrival at Mogadore, they appeared lost to reason and feeling, and all their faculties sunk in a species of stupor-indifferent to every thing around them-abject, servile and brutified.'-Riley thus describes his own situation.

My mind, which (though my body was worn down to a skeleton) bad been hitherto strong, and supported me through all my trials, distresses, and sufferings, and enabled me to encourage and keep up the spirits of my frequently despairing fellow sufferers, could no longer sustain me: my sudden change of situation seemed to have relaxed the very springs of my soul, and all my faculties fell into the wildest confusion. The unbounded kindness, the goodness, and whole attention of Mr. Willshire, who made use of all the soothing language of which the most affectionate brother or friend is capable, tended but to ferment the tempest that was gathering in my brain. I became delirious-was bereft of my senses-and for the space of three days, knew not where I was. When my reason returned, I found I had been constantly attended by Mr. Willshire, and generally kept in my room, though he would sometimes persuade me to walk in the gallery with him, and used every means in his power to restore and compose my bewildered senses: that I had remained continually bathed in tears and shuddering at the sight of every human being, fearing I should again be carried into slavery. I had slunk into the darkest corner of my room;

but, though insensible, I seemed to know the worth of my friend and deliverer, and would agree to, and comply with, his advice and directions.' (p. 301.)

The reflections to which the horrors of his late sufferings and slavery and his providential escape from them gave rise, kept him almost constantly bathed in tears, for the greater part of a month.

When I had retired to rest and sleep had closed my eyes, my mind, still retaining the strong impression of my past sufferings, made them the subjects of my dreams. I used to rise in my sleep, and think I was driving camels up and down the sand hills near the Desert, or along the craggy steeps of Morocco; obeying my master's orders in putting on the fetters, or beckets, on the legs and knees of his camels, and in the midst of my agonizing toils and heart-sickening anxieties, while groping about my room, I would hit my head against something, which would startle and awaken me: then I would throw myself on my bed again to sleep, and dream and act over similar scenes.' (p. 310.)

The addition which Mr. Riley has afforded to our information, respecting the geography and natural history of the Great Desert of Africa, amounts to very little, and that little, not very accurate. We ought not to be surprised, as Riley observes, that one weighed down with weariness and despair, suffering under the most excruciating bodily pains and the most cruel privations, should sometimes mistake one route foranother, or have erred in the computation of distances, in travelling over a vast, smooth, and trackless desert;-but, we cannot avoid wondering that a 'seaman,' and, as his American friends call him, 'a man of intelligence,' should uniformly, throughout the whole of his book, mistake the west for east, and the south for north; or, in other words, that, in his whole journey towards Mogadore, he should carry us, in his book, towards Abyssinia. In his dates too he is equally careless, travelling the same day twice over, (p. 181) and mistaking the month, (p. 286) and travelling, and remaining still, on the same day and in the same page, (p. 182.) what is perhaps still more extraordinary, we have dates in abundance while naked and deprived of all means of keeping a journal, but not a single one from the time the travellers reach the habitations of men, where materials could so easily be had to The mistakes we allude to are enable them to register events. not owing to any lapse of his memory, which he tells us, indeed, is naturally a retentive one, but to oversights which ought to have been avoided, as they very materially affect the fidelity of the narrative, and the accuracy of his observations.

The Great Desert of Africa is a barren subject: but in a geological point of view, the extent and grandeur of its barrenness render it interesting. Riley's account of it, as far as he saw,

agrees with the description usually given, of its being an elevated plain, presenting to the eye an extended surface of uniform sterility, but broken here and there by small valleys or dells, of a few miles or a few acres, in which a little soil or sand collected and moistened with the scanty rains that fall, produces a glimpse of verdure from a few stunted plants-the only ones noticed by Riley are, a 'dwarf thorn-bush,' from two to five feet in height, with succulent leaves, strongly impregnated with salt; and 'two or three prickly plants resembling weeds,' one of which, from its fluted branches, armed with small sharp prickles all over,' and the 'nauseous white liquid' which 'bites the tongue like aquafortis,' we take to be a species of euphorbium. This is but a miserable catalogue of the vegetable kingdom; and as to animals, they saw none of any description, except the ostrich. Near the skirts of the Desert and on the sea shore about Cape Bojador, the hard, uniform, baked surface of reddish coloured clay is changed into immense heaps of loose sand, forming mountains of from one to three or four hundred feet in height, blown and whirled about by every wind.' Mr. Riley has a theory for the formation of these sand hills, but it unfortunately does not speak much in favour of his intelligence.' This sand, he says, has evidently been driven from the sea shore, and in the same degree as the ocean has retired, by means of the trade-wind blowing constantly on to the Desert through a long 'succession of ages.' Whether the sea has retired is mere matter of conjecture; but the blowing of the trade-wind is matter of fact; and, unluckily for the author's theory, during the 'succession' of those ages,' since we know any thing about it, instead of blowing on, it has invariably blown off the Desert.

6

Leaving Mr. Riley, therefore, to the enjoyment of his theory, which he thinks so evident; and omitting his account of the Emperor of Morocco's dominions, which, though we have the testimony of Mr. Renshaw, the gentleman we have mentioned to be connected with the house of Willshire, as to its accuracy, have been often described by others, and recently noticed by ourselves, we proceed to what we consider as by far the most curious part of the book; treating on a subject which throws open a new field of speculation, by taking a new view of the long agitated question of the course of the Niger. We acquit Mr. Riley of any knowledge or participation in the theories which have been entertained on this interesting subject; he seems to triumph even in his sagacious conjectures and explanations on points which had been conjectured and explained long before his 'sufferings and captivity,'-but of which he appears to have no knowledge; his map is altogether worthless, and his course of the Niger does not agree with his relation of Sidi Hamet's travels: his countrymen, in fact, are but indifferent geographers.

Sidi Hamet, whom we have had occasion so frequently to mention, remained for a fortnight in Mr. Willshire's house; in the course of conversation, he happened to mention his having been three times at Tombuctoo, and once at another large city far to the southward of it. To a resident at Mogadore, it is no novelty to meet with Moors and Arabs who have accompanied the annual caravans into Soudan from lower Suze; Mr. Dupuis had frequent opportunities of conversing with such persons; and he has borne testimony to the general agreement of their descriptions with the account given by the unlettered seaman, Robert Adams. However, to gratify Riley's curiosity, Sidi Hamet was induced to give an account of his travels, which our author took down in writing. Mr. Riley entertains no doubt of the truth of the Arab's narrative; and says that his description of Tombuctoo agrees in substance with that given by several Moorish merchants of Fez, who came to Mr. Willshire's house to buy goods, while Sidi Hamet was there; and who said they had known him in Tombuctoo several years ago. We may add, it agrees too in substance with the description given of this celebrated city by Leo Africanus; and, in all the main points, with the more recent account of Adams. Of the simplicity of Adams's story, and of the veracity of his narrative, we have already delivered our opinion; and we are happy in having it in our power to add to this opinion, the testimony of one far more capable of appreciating the validity of the evidence than we could pretend to be-it is that of the intelligent traveller whom we mentioned in our notice of Mr. Legh's work, and who, at this moment, is probably a resident of Tombuctoo. This person had received, it appears, in the heart of Egypt,-and here we must be permitted to indulge a mingled feeling of pride and pleasure at the unbounded circulation of our labours,-that Number of our Journal in which the narrative of Adams is reviewed; and the description there given, he writes, accords exactly with all the information which he had been able to collect of that celebrated city, from the Arab traders met with in Nubia:-the only doubt, he adds, which he entertained of the fidelity of Adams's narrative, was occasioned by that part where, after leaving Tombuctoo, he says that they traversed the Desert for thirty days without water; a circumstance which the traveller above mentioned states to be physically impossible, as no camel, even those of Darfur, which are accounted the best, and able to hold out the longest without water, can proceed beyond ten or twelve days. The Nubian traveller however ob

* Leo Africanus, who, like Marco Polo, when he speaks of his own knowledge, is generally accurate, observes, that the African camel will travel fifteen days without water. Mr Riley, indeed, asserts, that a camel will go twenty days without water: but he also says, and believes, that the Arabs of the Desert very frequently attain the ageof two hundred years, which may be possible, but of which we must take leave to doubt.