The Press. — London, England, 1853-07-09 00:00:00

JULY 9, 1853. Mr. Balton sailed for the Cape in 1850, in tending to make Algoa Bay his point of depar ture, and thence to strike northward for Lake 'Ngami through the Boer country. The dis turbed state of the colony induced him to alter his plans, and, after some months of un certainty, he selected Witlfisch Bay, on the Atlantic coast (hit. •:3 deg.. long. 14 (leg. 30 sees.), as affording the must convenient access to the interior. Nothing, according to our author, can be more desolate than the whole line of seaboard between the Orange River and the Portuguese territory to the north. Desti tute of vegetation, of water, and almost of inhabitants, it interposes an insuperable bar rier to commerce with the interior. But the natives inland have no reason to complain ; for this desert., which the missionary has pene trated, repels the slave-trader. Wallis& Bay has been reached overland from Cape Town, but. it is a journey of fora• months, and dangerous. The missionaries receive supplies and letters by a vessel chartered for the pur pose, which touches once in two years. No other ships call there. Fresh water can only be had at a single spot near the coast, and that more often brackish than sweet. The mis sionary station of Scheppinattsdorf, one day's journey distant, is not much better off. 'I he coast is peopled by a scattered Hottentot tribe, over wheat missionaries exercise some influence, and who live in perpetual feud with the negro Damaras of the interior. From this pleasant locality Mr. Galton pro ceeded to Otjimbingue and Barmen. distant some two hundred miles from the sea, the latter of which posts became the centre or pivot of his more distant expeditions. lie made his way (February to June, 1851) to it spot called by him Ondonga, beyond the I sth parallel of latitude, anti five hundred miles from Barmen by the track which he followed ; was there brought to a standstill, partly by the refusal of the waiver( to let him pass. partly by the exhausted state of his cattle ; returned unwillingly to the southward : again set. off in a due-easterly direction across the plains, and reached the Hottentot station of Tounobis, ,'►t► miles south-west of the 'Ngami Lake ; once more retraced his steps to the coast. and re-embarked, in January, 1552, from Waltisch Bay. after fourteen months of wan dering in the least-known tracts of the globe. His apologies for penetrating no blether, though quite superfluous, are worth the eon sideration of stay-at-home critics : A question is commonly put to explorers, " Why could you not go further when you had already succeeded in going so far ?" and the answer to tins is, that several in dependent circumstances concur us ntopping a man after he has been travelling for a certain time and distance. lie ,anal refit, tier his cattle become worn out ; his articles of ewhange, which are his money, expended ; and, indeed, the medium of currency among the people he at last nitrites being unknown to him has of course been unpro vided for. His clothes, necessaries, tummies, all be c onw exleinsted, and the capital out of which he has to support himself fast disappears. On the other hand, infinite diffi culty is timid in acquiring the confidence of a strange nation ; a new language has to be learnt ; native servants refuse, and are unfitted, to accompany their master in emmtries strange and probably hostile to them, and whom months of joint labours had educated into a kind of sym pathy with his cause ; and so, when an explorer intends to cross the frontier of a neighbouring tribe, be finds that all his old travelling arrangements are more or less broken up, and that the further progress (tithe expedition will require nearly as many preparations and as much delay as if it were then about quitting the burdens of rivilisation. hut his energies are reduced, and his means lweinne blade iinate to the task, mid therefore no ahrmative is left him but to return while it is still possible for him to do so. The days are gone by when single adven turers, by land or sea, could hope to discover terra incognita, or lay open the interior of a continent. The outlines of the world's map are complete, and nothing is le ft except to fill them in. Only three fields of discovery on a large scale remain—Central Africa, Central Australia, and the Steppes of Tartary. Of all these our knowledge is imperfect ; but, com pared with what it was 24 years ago, the pro gress made seems more than satisfactory ; and it appears likely that by the commencement Of the twentieth century the explorer's occupa tion will be ;one. The practical results of Mr. Galton's wan derings are twofold. He has ascertained the existence of a practicable communication from Lake 'Ngami to the Atlantic ; and his journey among the Ovainpos proves that the barren- THE PRESS. ness of the south-western coast does not ex tend to the interior. He has thus not only himself succeeded, but has probably opened a route by which others may follow farther. The difficulties of his journey were considera ble, the obstacles in his way being, want of water, loss of cattle by beasts of prey, the sus• picions and jealousies of native chiefs, and, above all, the impossibility of estimating dim tances beforehand from native testimony. This arose, not. so much from ignonutee, apathy. or wilful deceit on the part of the informants, as from an utter inability to compare, o r t o f or m an abstract idea. We are not aware that this distinguishing feature of barbarian organisa tion—which may also be traced in that of the more intelligent animals—has ever been more clearly brought out than by Mr. Galion. He is here speaking of the Damants:— They have no comparative in their language, no that yon cannot say to them, "which is the bogier of the two, the next stage or the last. one you must say, " th e la s t stage is little ; the next, is it grcatT"rhe reply is not, it is a " little longer," " much longer," or " levy much limger hut simply " it. is so," or "it is not so." 'l'hey Have a very poor notion of time. It' you say, " Sappose we start at sunrise, where will the sun lie when we smile they make the wildest points in the sky, though they are • 'thing of astr IN. and give names to several stars. They have no way of distinguising days, but reckon Iy the rainy season, the dry season. or the pig•tent season. When inquiries are made about how many days' journey on' a place may be, their ignoram•e of all numerteal ideas is very immiying. In !intake, whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no Illmtend greater thou three. When they wish to express four, they take to their lingers, which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding-rule is to au English schoolboy. They puzzle very much tin% beeall.e gu span' hsud relltitilli4 to grasp situ secure the lingers that are minim! ILr " units." Yet they schl los e o xen : the way in which they iliseliver the Illtis of our is, not by the of the held but by the atilSellee of a fa e c they know. • • • • (11►ee, What' I watched a I 11111111ra floundering hope lessly in a ealenlati .on 1111 4)111 Silk . of uu • , I !quail, my spaniel, equally einha►'ass e d on the other. She was overlooking half a doit • u of 111 . 1' 110 W-1141111 iiippiCS. Milk)) hail been reunnell Iwo or LlM'e t i utea rosin hen and her anxiety was excessive, its she tried In find out if they wem all present. or if any were still missing. She ;opt puzzling and is ' g her eyes over thviti bxok wards and fin-slink, but could tint %misty herself. She a•videntiv had a vague notion of tanniting, hut thl• ligiiro wax 1410 large for lisa. twain. Taking the tun as they slush, dint and Ihun , ox, the Cloiteparison rcHtrled Ito great hilikolir silk the man. One of the Damara superstit . .• makes it, difficult to bay or sell meat among them. They hold it to be in some sense common property, and every man claims his share of a slaughtered animal, under penalty of a curse if refused. Something of the same feeble* prevails, or used to prevail, among the Irish peasantry, respecting the right of casual ap plicants to the " bit and sup. " The Ovampos, to whom Mr. Gabon intro duces us, are a superior race. They are farmers and not shepherds ; live separately among their fields, a filet which indicates a peaceful state of society ; their country, a high table land, is healthy ; and the population Mr. Galion estimates at about 100 per square mile. Their boundaries, and consequently their numbers, are unknown. They have no dealings with slave traders ; and, though not lithos Fitable, rather avoid intercourse with strangers. irearms arc unknown among them ; their bows and arrows are rude ; they sleep in dimi nutive but neatly-made huts ; use copper, but have no iron. Two yearly caravans to the southward constitute their whole trade in that direction. Of Benguela, the Portuguese set tlements there, and the countries lying north ward, they either knew or would tell nothing. We are left in the dark as to their mode of government ; but Mr. Galton hears witness that they are "a kind-hearted, cheerful people.- orderly and humane withal, of which the proof is, that their old and sick are carefully tended, instead of being left to die. The head-quarters of the tribe might be more easily reached from Benguela than from Waltisch Bay, and this route our author recommends to his successors. African sport is an exhausted topic ; and Mr. Galion, though he occasionally bagged rhinoceroses, lions, and giro fres, does not dwell on his exploits in this line. It is eurioue that of all the larger sort of wild beasts the lion should be the least dreaded by savages. The elephant, the rhinoceros, and the buffalo, am all more duagerous customers. fri3 Mellon* : or, Better Times to Come. Being the Contributions if many Mem touching the Pre• sent State and Prospects if Society. Edited by Viseount Ingestre. London : Parker and SOll. THE " prospeetg of society: in the picture sketched by the well-meaning authors of this and the preceding, series of essays under the Sallie title, are bounded by a narrow and low horizon. Society, in their view, comprises solely its most degraded class, or at best that class of which nothing but their youth en• conrages the hope that any of its members will rise above the level of the workhouse anti the gaol. The sketches of social condition, therefore, presented in the volume before us are necessarily imperfect and the prognostics of " better times to comer which it contains are deduced but from a single SOUIVO, and directed towards only a single end, out of the nlani told incitements to hope and effort with which modern society is so richly endowed. Written as they are with much ability and a praise worthy sincerity of purpose, almost all the papers of which the volume is composed are essentially onc•sided. There is a truncated look even in the best of them. We say thus much with no intention to dis• parage the efforts of the benevolent. contri butors to the work in our hand. In attacking the social evils of the time in their lowest and most sordid developments—in portraying di lineaments and planning the ifilleliOndion of society" which has never partaken the enlightenment. or enjoyed its due share in the inheritanee of knowledge, eomfort. a n d well being that. has fallen to the lot of the content porary generation—the writers in " Meliora" Intro undertaken a most arduous enterprise, and deserve a good report from the critic, if only for the energy with which their endea yours have been addressed to the appointed end. Glancing thr o ugh their successive papers. we find, that, under different titles, the main subject is always the same, and the suggested remedy one and indivisible. Whether Lord Carlisle reprints his " Address in aid of the Evening ('lasses for Young Men," or "S. I i .11 treats of " Immortal tfewerage." or Mr. Leigh of "Juvenile Offenders," or the noble editor himself of " Social Evils, their Causes and Cure," we find the same evil deplored, the same remedial measure preseribed, by each and all of them. For the ignorance— for the cure, education—is their common topic of remark and exhortation. HOW (tense the former, there are a multitude of striking facts set forth and variously illustrated by the several authors. How urgently wanted, and how eminently applicable, is the latter, we find enforced in many iatssages el o qu ently and earnestly written. Altogether the book presents a most forcible appeal for the estab lishment of an energetic mid comprehensive system of education. Its design and execution will often induce the reader to exclaim with Ilinuce, Video MI.: omit, yoroboque. Isthmus al Darien. Ship Canal. Second Edition. London : Effingham Wilson. Da. Cullen's book, though not very interceding, is useful as a repository of facts connected with the Darien Canal. Its chief value k deriied from the personal acquaintance of the author with his subject. To Dr. Cullen is undoubtedly due the credit of having been the first pioneer of that route, which in a few years' time will he traversed by the great Pacific and Atlantic Canal, passing as it does through a country which no whits• nom had entered since the days of the buccaneers. In some respects we think the author's generalisations from his own experience are more hasty than becomes a scientific writer. Thus, he pronounces the climate of the isthmus not un favourable to Europeans—whereas it is well known that the combination of tropical heats, alluvial soil, and constant rains, renders this coast one of the most unhealthy in the known world. Very full details are furnished respecting the projected canal, of which the total cost is estimated at twelve stillinus—a sum, we believe, larger than Chas ever been expended, in an y age of the world, on a single work—the great Ganges luu ►l, the pride and boast of Indian govern ments, requiring for its completion only one-eighth of that stun. The canal is to be without locks, and, as the ebb and How of the tide produce a constant scour, not only will vessels be assisted in their transit, but it is probablu that a mutant with:l4lu; and deep•