"they would not see them embrue their hands in the blood of their fathers, husbands, and brothers; and, if they made the assault, it must be over their prostrate bodies."

Considering these natives of Africa are classed by a large proportion of the civilized world as savages, ranking but little above the brute creation in intellect, feelings, and understanding, that for ages they have been ordained not only to hew wood and draw water, but toil as beasts of the field, that they were legally kidnapped, dragged from their countries, their homes, their hearths, and their families. to minister to the luxuries, pamper the appetite, accumulate by their blood, tears, and sweat of their bodies, fortunes for cruel, heartless, and oppressive taskmasters, not always to be used in an honourable and generous expenditure for the benefit of others, or even for that of the individuals themselves, but too often squandered in rioting, dissipation, gambling, and wantonness, the conduct and devotion of the Foulah women might prove a salutary lesson to many enlightened people. But let it not be imagined I am levelling a canting, twaddling tirade against our West India planters, or flinging one more stone at a party already unjustly abused. How many millions of these poor Africans have been drawn into slavery in North America, South America, the West Indies, and other portions of the world, where they have been handed down from one generation to another as hereditary bondsmen.

Now commences a deep game, worthy of English electioneering in olden times. Omar distributed presents of slaves, horses, cattle, sheep, rice, country cloths, blue baft, fine muslin, double-barrelled fowlingpieces, procured from the French colony at Balkeel, among his chiefs and the members of the Grand Council, and the Engillah, or hereditary House of Commons; but, not contented with all this, he kept open house for the two days preceding the election, and feasted every one who chose to partake of his profuse and prodigal hospitality. At last Sunday came, the day appointed to settle the question. The Grand Council and Engillah met, and the reigning monarch is so powerless as to be obliged to remain a passive spectator, while a portion of his subjects proceed to discuss and decide whether he is to hold the reins of government any longer, or another take his seat. One-third of the assembly only declared for Omar; but many of the Imaun's chiefs left the palaver-house without voting; thus virtually abandoning his cause, compromising between their consciences and their interests, and affording ample proofs of the efficiency of Omar's presents, and the sound policy of his feasting. Five chiefs of the Sooryah family, and two of Omar's uncles, disgusted with the venality of the chiefs, proved honourable exceptions to this dastardly proceeding, and protested loudly, before the whole assembly, against the iniquitous and barefaced trick, declaring their determination to oppose Omar, even if bloodshed followed; and thus by the silence of the majority the election (rather an anomaly, considering he was King already,) was gained. The following day they accompanied the deposed Imaun, Alimamee Boccaree, from Teembo to Darah.

To European ideas it sounds singular for a King to submit quietly to be removed from his throne, to be stripped of the ensigns of royalty by the voices of his nobility, and to retire into private life; but in Foulah this is no novelty, nor does it excite either astonishment or commisera

tion. The fallen Monarch consoles himself with the prospect of resuming his power at no distant day, and playing a similar game to the one lately so successfully acted against himself. The fact is, the Imauns of Foulah are completely in the hands of their chiefs and headmen, who invariably keep one of the royal family in reserve, as a check upon the reigning Monarch; so that should he attempt to render himself independent of them, or assume the prerogative of power; should he assert his free agency, or presume to fancy himself every inch a King, the turbulent nobles at once start a candidate for the throne, plunge the country into civil war, and sell the crown to the highest bidder. At present there are four aspirants in abeyance for the Imaunship of Foulah, all of whom are led to hope and suppose they will reach the slippery pre-eminence at some future day.

This position of the ruler of Foulah reminds one strongly of the turbulent ages in England and Scotland, when the bold Barons of these countries dictated to their respective Sovereigns the line of government they must pursue; and who, jealous of the least infringement upon their usurped authority and fancied rights, were in reality the tyrants of their Monarchs. Beautiful, ill-fated, and unhappy Mary, of melancholy memory, dispossessed of her crown, and immured in prison, by her rebellious subjects, illustrates Foulah royalty, presenting a memorable and sad example of how unstable is the tenure of a crown to the Sovereign when once innovations take place, when the many seek to govern the few, and intriguing agitating demagogues excite the rabble to refuse obedience to their lawful rulers; for, whether among civilized or uncivilized nations, in Europe or in Africa, be the bone of contention what it may, the gist of the matter is the pecuniary advantage,-the political aggrandisement of these would-be magnates of the realm,—and for these reasons constant revolutions have lacerated, and will constantly harass, the wide-spreading and fertile kingdom of Foulah. On the deposing of an Imaun the governments of provinces and large towns become vacant; and, as they are invariably given to the highest bidder and heaviest briber, the chiefs composing the Grand Council, and the Engillajah, or hereditary representatives of the inferior chiefs, reap a rich harvest, and replenish their exhausted finances. To them, therefore, a revolution is a matter of speculation, delight, and profit; and hence they are willing to foment civil war and excite popular disturbances.

The system throughout Foulah is so venal and rotten that the Governors blush not at receiving bribes openly; and, as all minor cases are decided by them without appeal, they are enabled to reimburse themselves for their first outlay in securing their governmentships. By being open to corruption thus the chiefs of Teembo, the Engillajah, the governors of provinces and towns, are the sole gainers, and the sufferers their rivals for the robes of office, who nearly beggar themselves to compass the coveted position. Then come the inferior chiefs, who must bribe largely to get justice; and, finally, the bulk of the people, deemed, as is the case in all Mahometan countries, the legitimate prey for the higher powers, whose withers may be easily, and never too severely, wrung.

The kingdom of Foulah is divided into nine provincial and forty-two municipal governments, all of which changed masters the last revolution, except Kengampell and Dundaiah. Both of these have been held U. S. MAG., No. 199, JUNE, 1845.

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possession of by their present respective rulers for upwards of forty years, who, maintaining their posts, have only been confirmed in succession by the various Imauns called to the throne, no rivals daring to offer themselves as candidates for either of these provinces, as death, by poison or the dagger, would follow within a month of their elevation.

One consequence follows from these repeated contests for power, and from this gross system of corruption: the disappointed competitors pass over to the party of the ex-Imaun; and as there are invariably three or four candidates for each government, the successful Imaun loses many adherents; so that, should his life be prolonged, there is a tolerable certainty of his being disturbed in, if not ousted from, his throne, as soon as his treasury is exhausted, or, to use the expressive term of the Foulahs, "the hand of the reigning Monarch becomes dry."

The ill-fated Niger Expedition, fraught with such melancholy disappointments, and terminating with such disastrous consequences, has alarmed the natives of Central Africa, and led them to suppose their country would be invaded by the English, and the people be released `from the barbarous thraldom they are now subject to. The beys, chiefs, and head-men imagine if an European was once allowed to penetrate to the Niger, the ruin of Foulah, Bambarra, and other kingdoms, would be sealed, as no white man has as yet been permitted to traverse this portion of the land; according to an ancient prophecy, well known and generally circulated through Central Africa, that "should ships once sail up the Niger, all the nations of Central Africa would be broken, and Foulah demolished."

The principles which govern all Africans, enlightened and barbarous, are selfish aggrandisement, unlimited command over their inferiors, unblushing venality, and a determined and unconquerable aversion to the admission of the European into their nations. The chiefs are crafty and insatiable monopolists of the trade, wealth, and power in their several kingdoms. To preserve all these they unceasingly struggle towards one end, and lend all their faculties to one purpose. No exertion is deemed too great, no falsehood too palpable, no crime too sanguinary, to retain them in their own position. Hence they fear free trade and honesty; protection of property and confidence would attend on their footsteps; that the darkness of barbarism and slavery would be dispelled from the minds of the people, who at present are but the live goods and chattels of their kings and chiefs, to be bought and sold as suits their interest or caprice; their liberties, their miserable properties, are held at the beck and call, and on sufferance, of beys and sovereigns, who, influenced by imaginary insult, a thirst to increase their territories, or instigated by revenge, summon, by the beat of the drum, every disposable man, to make war, and furnish slaves to the Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian dealers. None dare disobey or resist this mandate; none presume to question the reasons for invading the neighbouring kingdom of a peaceful chief; the King and council palaver will it, Bishmilla, the people, must obey. Hence it is that the voices and interests of the influential men and rulers throughout Africa, from north to south, from east to west, are hostile to European enterprise. Hence it is we have penetrated so little beyond the routes of our oldest travellers, and the interior of Central Western Africa is still wrapped in obscurity,

and clothed with terrors and dangers,—a sealed volume to us. The boldest spirits, the most vigorous constitutions, the best-organized and judicious measures, have been frustrated, have sunk under the inroads of the climate, by the hostility of the natives. Expeditions conducted on the most liberal scale, and under the most favourable auspices, aided by wealth, experience, and talent, and protected by powerful governments, and the humble and unpretending pilgrim, with scrip and staff, have both alike failed. The natural and local obstacles which oppose the white man's travelling in Africa are numerous and baffling. A fatal and deadly climate, the secret or avowed hostilities of the natives, the total want of all conveyance, the impassableness of the roads, or, more correctly speaking, the tracks; the avariciousness, duplicity, and gross superstition of the chiefs, their exorbitant demands and unremitting extortion, their jealousy of each other, their supposition that the white man's means are inexhaustible, and their resolve to be master of his funds, and their total want of confidence in the assertions of any one, and, therefore, unqualified disbelief in the veracity of the Europeans' reasons that a wish to gain knowledge, to improve science, and benefit the natives themselves, are the only inducements for leaving their own distant land, to encounter the acknowledged perils of disease, pestilence, and famine, to endure scorching suns, to traverse dreary inhospitable deserts, to penetrate forests and jungles terrific to the very natives from their wild and savage inhabitants, and to follow the path from which so many of their countrymen have never retraced their footsteps.

It is difficult to comprehend, and almost impossible to describe, the frivolous pretences which the Africans resort to to check our penetrating to the interior. An able and anxious missionary, ambitious to circulate the Gospel, made his way to Darrah, intending to proceed to Sego, the capital of Bambara, and thence, if practicable, to far-famed Timboctoo. Seasoned by long residence on the western coast, thoroughly acquainted with the natives of various tribes, from daily intercourse with them at Freetown, and understanding not only Arabic but many of the African languages, supported by the Governor and Council, and bearing credentials to the Imaun and head-men, he reached only one hundred and seventy miles. There he remained for eighteen months in the vain expectation of being allowed to pursue his route, receiving the strongest assurance of assistance and countenance from the powers in authority; but which proved eventually to be but hollow promises, and that hidden means were resorted to to delay, if not put an end to, his journey. Days and weeks were frittered away. Now it was stated that the road was unsafe from marauding parties, then the weather was unfavourable for the white man's travelling, or an assumed carefulness of his life, lest he might fall into the hands of the next nation, who were Pagans, and, at last, he must wait a month to kiss a newly-elected Imaun's hand. Humble, patient, and persevering, the missionary still dwelt at Darrah, hoping at last to conquer by his determination all difficulties. With no one of his colour or country but his little son, among a bigoted and besotted race of Mahometans, he boldly exercised his calling, and assembled around him a small congregation of his own immediate followers. The rainy season came, and with it the usual attendants of sickness and fever. The missionary took it. Hope deferred made the heart sick. The remembrance of his wife and family

at Freetown, from whom he had been separated some months, anxiously looking for and entreating his return, whose only prop and support he was in a cold and selfish world, and his little son, his companion in peril and danger, to be left at the mercy of strangers, of established and accredited slave-dealers, of enlightened and well-read Mollahs, who would glory in making him a proselyte to their religion, were one and all too much for an impaired and shattered constitution to undergo,— and the last adventurous traveller who attempted to penetrate Central Africa, lies buried at Darrah. The Foulah chiefs behaved with kindness to him in his last moments, and suffered his remains to be buried according to the rites of his religion. His orphan son has since been. brought to Sierra Leone; but to a solitary hearth; for his mother, wearied with anxiety, and tortured by suspense for her husband's fate, pined away, and died a few days before the account was received in Freetown of his decease.

Although the Africans may disagree in politics, religion, interests, or habits, they all seem unanimous on one subject,-a deep-rooted aversion to the European becoming intimately acquainted with the interior of their continent, and an unqualified disbelief in the motive to instruct them in the manufactures, disseminate the truths of the Gospel, spread the blessing of peace, and, by opening a road for commerce, confer a mutual benefit. 66 Aye, aye," answered a shrewd crafty old bey to a well-known African traveller, "thankee, thankee, that is good; but, God be praised, we don't want to learn the white man's knowledge. The people, and the land, the fields, the crops, the rivers, and forests, are now all ours; and, by the Prophet's beard, you must make presents to us to be permitted to come near us: but once you get a hand within our nations, and you will take the very dust from under our feet."

(To be continued.)

REMARKS ON THE DEFENCES AND RESOURCES OF CANADA IN THE EVENT OF A WAR.

BY CLAUDIUS SHAW, ESQ., K.S.F., LATE OF THE ROYAL ARTILLERY.

Ar this time, when all eyes are turned to the other side of the Atlantic with so much anxiety, and from the very great probability there is just now of an eruption between Great Britain and the United States, a few remarks from a person who served in Canada during part of the last war, and remained several years in that country, when he visited, on duty, every military post in both provinces, and had particular opportunities of making observations, may not be unacceptable.

When the last war with the States broke out, all the disposable British troops were engaged in the Peninsula, and those under Sir George Prevost, the Governor of the Canadas, were very few indeed, and they dispersed over some thousand miles of frontier. The force consisted only of two regular regiments of the line, 41st and 49th, and some provincial and fencible corps just raised. The militia were quite unorganised, and some among them were considered a little disaffected; but this last number was small.