and most "massive" of the four continents, | South Africa, into a puny being hardly like and has been, so to speak, lost to hu- a man; but he stopped at a point as if manity; but he was always on the Nile, arrested by a divine will. There is not a the immediate road to the Mediterranean, shadow of proof that the negro described and in west and east Africa he was on by Werne differs in any way from the the sea. Africa is probably more fertile, negro of the time of Sesostris. It is not and almost certainly richer than Asia, and quite certain even that the race, when is pierced by rivers as mighty, and some started again, would, as a race, go on imof them at least as navigable. What could proving. The Haytians, who are Chrisa singularly healthy race, armed with a tians, who are free, and who are in the constitution which resists the sun, and fullest contact with great white races, are defies malaria, wish for better than to be believed to be retrograding; and only the seated on the Nile, or the Congo, or the hopeful would believe in the future of Niger, in numbers amply sufficient to ex- American slaves, if they were to be execute any needed work, from the cutting pelled, as De Tocqueville thought they of forests and the making of roads up to would ultimately be, to the islands, or, as the building of cities? How was the is infinitely more probable, should the negro more secluded than the Peruvian; war of races ever break out, to Central or why was he "shut up" worse than the America. Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook As far as we see, nothing really im himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and from proves the negro except one of two causes, the Sea of Okhotsk to the Baltic, and south- - cross-breeding, and catching hold of wards to the Nerbudda, mastered the some foreign but superior creed. The world? One Tartar family was reigning cross-breeds of the Soudan and of South at one time over China, Tartary, India, Africa seem to have some fine qualities and Russia. Why has the negro, who is matchless courage, for example brave as man may be, alone of mankind under a strict but vivifying white rule never emerged from his jungles, and sub-might, we fancy, be brought in a century dued neighboring races? Why has he or two up to the Asiatic level. They pronever invented a creed of the slightest spiritual or moral merit, never, in fact, risen above fetishism? Above all, why has he remained in Africa for three thousand years at least, without forming empires or building stone cities, or employing a common medium of intercommunication? Mr. Blyden says he has formed cities full of busy life and commerce; but have they ever been better than encampments, and why have they not lasted? We who write certainly do not believe in the incurable incapacity of the race, for we know of Bishop Crowther and Mr. Blyden, and have talked with negroes apparently as thoughtful and as well instructed as any Europeans; but we confess that the history of the race remains to us an insoluble puzzle, except upon the theory that there are breeds of mankind in whom that strangest of all phenomena, the arrestment of development, occurs at a very early stage. The negro went by himself far beyond the Australian savage. He learned the uses of fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all appearance he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the Arab, to advance a step. He did not die, like the Australian. He did not sink, like one or two varieties of the Red Indian, and of the aborigines of duce generals, at all events, and chiefs with some tincture of statesmanship, and have poetry and a folk-lore of their own. Those negroes, again, who have embraced Islam do show a certain manliness, a capacity for aggregation, and a tendency, at all events, to form kingdoms, and organize armies, and obey laws, which are the first steps towards a higher civilization. It is not a high civilization, for when all is said, a Mohammedan negro is not an ideal of humanity towards which Europeans can look with any feeling of enthu siasm; but still, it is higher, far higher, than the condition of the African pagan. The negro who embraces Christianity, again, while he remains in contact with the white man distinctly advances. Uncle Tom is an abnormal specimen, it may be, and we are not inclined to place the moral condition of the negroes of the Southern States very high; but still, they have displayed a perfectly wonderful ab sence of vindictiveness towards the former slave-owners, obey the ordinary laws with fair regularity, and keep themselves above starvation by the labor of their own hands. The best of them, moreover, rise far beyond this point, the South containing both doctors and lawyers who, by the admission of the whites, are thoroughly competent men; and it may be said of the whole body that, though not equal to any Euro 59 pean community of the same extent, they | Navigation;" which art, Kelly says in are far superior to any four millions of his preface, "is allowed by all, and well pagan negroes who could be selected in known by those of the noble tribe of ZabAfrica. As they cannot owe this rise in ulon to be one by which islands are enthe scale to slavery, which at the best rich'd and preserv'd from invasion, the could only drill the negroes to industry, wonderful works of an omnicient Creator and at the worst must beget a permanent in the wide ocean and remote nations dedistaste for labor, the change must be lightfully beheld, etc.; while 'tis no mean owing to Christianity, plus the operation accomplishment to be capable of conductof laws based upon that faith. It follows ing a ship richly laden round the world." that the largest group of negroes under The first part of Kelly's book treats of civilized observation, the descendants, as what our master mariner quaintly calls is believed, of four widely distinguished tribes, have been raised in the scale of this essay it appears that the deep-sea "Domestic or coasting navigation." From humanity by embracing a rude form of the lead of that time was so frequently and Christian faith. therefore, as yet justified by evidence is British Channel was thoroughly known, The total conclusion, carefully employed that the bottom of the that intermarriage, especially with the from Scilly to Dunnose. Arab, improves the negro tribes, that they the inquiry are carefully recorded by gain in manliness by embracing Islam, Kelly in a table, from which we learn The results of and that they gain in the social virtues by that "twenty-five miles E. by N. of Silly embracing Christianity, the latter to a Islands, in seventy-two fathoms," the seadegree measured by the depth and earnest-bottom was then "pepper sand, black and ness of their faith. At home, when un-yellow, passing into branny sand like conquered and unconverted, they do not ground wheat." advance, and the point still doubtful is with Queen shells; white sand with ouse Then comes 66 whether, when left to themselves, they will and nits; ouse sand, not, even when converted, again recede or herring-bones, and small stones.' "followed by "branny sand, stop. The Abyssinians, who are Semites, ther up Channel, near the Lizard, the have been Christians for ages. The con- lead showed "marshy shells like oatmeal Furclusion is not very satisfactory; but it is husks;" while off the (at that time old certain that races of imperfect powers wooden) Eddistone lighthouse the bottom existe.g., the Australian aborigines and that Providence does, for unknown hakes' teeth.' resembled "the dust off a grindstone, with purposes, occasionally waste even fine minute investigation to the hasty glance What a contrast is this e.g., the Maoris, who will, to all of a modern seaman, taking flying shots appearance, die out, having fulfilled no at it with Sir William Thompson's soundfunction at all, not even that of preparing ing-tubes as he rushes up Channel at thirthe way for the ultimate occupants of teen knots! their country. races, From St. James's Gazette. EARLY ENGLISH NAVIGATORS AND THEIR NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS. For want of correct time-keepers, a ship's longitude at sea was then an unsolved problem; but Kelly describes what he calls "five of the most rational finding it" wisely, however, advising ways of to omit any of the methods of a journal, "no one to confide too much in them, or when she nears land." Among these five or other precautions, to preserve a ship ter's satellites of course come first. But of one of these he says, "This method would be accurate and useful if we could have an eclipse of the moon every night;" while of the other he remarks, that the impracticability of managing a telescope twelve feet or fourteen feet long in the tossing, rolling motion of a ship at sea surrounds it with difficulties scarce to be remedied. AN advertisement of about the year 1720 tells us that "in Broad Street, Wap-methods, eclipses of the moon and Jupiping, near Wapping-new-stairs, are taught the mathematical sciences, navigation, astronomy, dialling, gauging, gunnery, fortifycation, the use of the globes, and the projection of the sphere upon any circle, by Joshua Kelly, mariner. With whom young gentlemen and others are well boarded, and compleatly and expeditiously qualify'd (on reasonable terms) for any business relating to accompts and the mathematicks." This Joshua Kelly was the author of "The Compleat Modern Navigator's Tutor, or the Whole Art of for some form of good sea time-keeper older and simpler contrivance for measuring angles between the fixed stars or the sun and the sea horizon. It was merely a four-sided straight staff or bar of hard wood, with four cross-pieces of different lengths, which were made to slide upon it as the cross-piece does upon a shoemaker's rule. These cross-pieces were respectively called the ten, thirty, sixty, and ninety cross, and were used upon the staff according to the altitude of the sun or star at time of observation. One cross only was used upon the staff at a time; the angle measured being shown by a scale of degrees and minutes intersected by the cross-piece on that side of the staff to which it (the cross) belonged. It was with this simple but really effective instrument that Columbus, Drake, and other early navigators, took their meridian sights for fatitude, etc. A fine specimen in boxwood and ebony is still preserved in the Naval Museum, Madrid. It is probably as old as the days of Columbus, if not the actual instrument that first crossed the Atlantic in the hands of that seaman. finding the longitude by automatas or un- the little wooden midshipmen that stood erring clocks, watches, or hour-glasses;" outside the doors of London opticians. where directions are given for preparing The cross-staff or fore-staff was a still and using a "very perfect and true-running sand-glass, which may precisely run twenty-four hours without error, to be set exactly at noon on leaving the land; which upon being run out is to be turned instantly, not losing any time in the turning of it." "And so," says Kelly, “having very warily kept the said glass 'til you think good to make an observation at noon, and having in readiness an half-hour, minute, and half-minute glass, you may thereby know exactly how much the twenty-four hour glass is before or after the ship's time; the difference being your longitude east or west, according as the time by the sun is afore or after the time by the glass." Time on ship-board was then always measured by hour and half-hour glasses; and in accounts of old sea-fights such expressions as, "We engaged the enemy over three glasses before he hauled down his ensigns " often occur. Navigation by account, or dead reckoning, has changed little since then. Indeed, the introduction of chronometers and the almost perfect accuracy of observations taken with the modern sextant, etc., have almost superseded it, except in the case of small coasters. But in Kelly's day, and for years afterward, the log-line, logchip, reel, and half-minute glass were a mariner's only means of knowing his longitude or distance sailed east or west. Steam and patent logs have greatly simplified calculations which in Kelly's time required numberless corrections, not only for leeway, etc., but for errors in the logline and glasses; and he tells us that "shortness of the knots in a line are on the safer side, that a ship be not ahead of her reckoning; it being better to look for land before we come at it than to be ashoar before we expect it." Besides the cross-staff, a form of quadrant called an "Almacantar staff," was used a little after sunrise or before sunset to find the sun's azimuth and the variation of the compass; while among mariners whose voyages did not extend south of the tropics an instrument called the "nocturnal " gave them the time of night by observing with it the hands of the great star-clocks Ursa Major and Minor as they turned about the pole-star. From The Spectator. editors would cast at them—is receiving NEW NAMES FOR NEW STATES. Though the old shipmen had no means THE inarticulateness which is someof finding the longitude at sea, they were times said to be the mark of Englishmen fairly provided with instruments for lati-it is not just now the reproach which tude. And our master mariner gives full directions for taking meridian altitudes a curious illustration on the Southern with a "cross staff," and the "sea-quadrant," known also as "Davis's quadrant;" it was invented by that early navigator in Elizabeth's reign. This was a much larger and more cumbersome machine than Hadley's quadrant, which superseded it a few years later; being nearly three feet in length, with two distinct arcs of differing radius upon one frame. Long after it had ceased to be used at sea, this old instrument remained in the hands of Continent. The settlers in New South Wales have suddenly woke up to the fact that the name of their colony is ill-reputed, cumbrous to use, and incapable of an adjective, and have resolved to change it. They are right, for the name is not yet consecrated by time, and all the charges they bring against it are more or less wellfounded. A savor of convictism still adheres to New South Wales, the name is absurdly long and entirely without jus tification, and the absence of an adjective diminishes the individuality of the colonists, and, consequently, the fervor of their local patriotism. A "New South Welshman "is unmanageable, and, besides, suggests a Celtic relationship which does not exist; while a "New South Welsher" would, in a land of horses and sporting men, be considered invidious and discreditable. This absence of an adjec tive presses heavily upon any people determined to be distinctive. It has destroyed the utility of "Great Britain" as a common description for this island, and has compelled the citizens of the United States to seize upon a title to which they have at best but a remote reversionary claim. They call themselves " Americans," as if they possessed both divisions of the Continent, whereas they will probably not be even "North Americans," as the Spaniards call them, for another fifty years, and may wait for universal sovereignty in the West for at least two centuries. It is true that some of the most patriotic States in the Union have names not admitting of adjectives, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine; but their citizens would be happier if they could avoid periphrasis, and describe themselves in brief as Virginians, Texans, Marylanders, and Californians do. It can only have been necessity which has compelled the people of New York, while York has no adjective, to call themselves "New Yorkers," a name the utter grotesqueness of which is only concealed by habitual usage. Let Colorado prosper ever so greatly, or even " pay the debt of the Union with its cinnabar," as Mr. Lincoln once said it would do, and still a Texan will seem to himself to stand closer to his State because he describes himself simply by her name. A good name, too, is an advantage as well as a manageable one. France is a different country from what Gallia would have been; and if we called Germany by its proper name of Deutschland, we should understand the separateness of its people far more completely than we do, and probably place them lower. We lose all sense of the unity of India because we never employ the proper adjective, Indians, to describe its people, and if we had chanced to adopt the Hindoo name for the vast peninsula, "Bharata varshya" or "Bharutsland," we should have formed a radically different a priori idea of its people and their continent. The house of Hapsburg owes half its position to the rather absurd habit of describing all its subjects as Austrians; and if there did but exist a name describing the inhabitants of that peninsula, the federation of the Balkan would be years nearer to its accomplishment. A name with bad associations in the ears of the world is a dead weight upon its people, and an island named Murderland would no more fill up than a colony named Botany Bay. 66 The people of New South Wales are, therefore, quite in the right in changing the name of their colony, and we do not believe in the least in the difficulty of effecting the transmutation. Well-known names of streets are changed every day; though we have all read Paul and Vir ginia," we have all forgotten the Isle of France; and no man now addresses a letter to Van Dieman's Land. The colonists may be sure of success for any name except the one which, in a fit of perversity, they have chosen to adopt. They appear, in fact, to have been fettered by that failure of inventive power which marks alike British builders and founders of American cities. The former, in their despair and their modesty, usually choose some muchused name, till there are, we believe, more than fifty George Streets in London alone; while the latter steal some name from a map of Europe, and plant Rome down in Minnesota, or Carthage in the interior of New Mexico. The New South Welshmen hunted and searched for an acceptable name, but found none, and at last, with the oddest mixture of powerlessness and pride, declared that they would resume their old one, and call their colony by the name of the entire continent. New South Wales should be Australia, and themselves Australians. The local Legislature has actually passed a bill to this effect, and the local premier defends the choice as a mere right of his colony, an act not of audacity, but of resumption. This pretension is simply absurd. The word was, we believe, applied to the colony when it alone was inhabited by white men; but it has now been accepted finally as the descriptive name of the continent, and its adoption for a mere section would introduce endless confusion, not only in postoffices and children's geographies, but on the exchanges of the world. An Austra lian loan is not a loan guaranteed by New South Wales. Naples might as well call itself Italy, or Greece, as the oldest civilized country in our quarter of the world, arrogate to itself the name of Europe. The colony may call itself East Australia it it likes, and would perhaps be wise in doing so, for the name, though too preten tious, is sufficiently descriptive; but if its meaning, as little as Peru, the meaning of people do not like that, they must look out which neither its aborigines nor the Spanfor some name which shall be distinguish-iards are able to explain. The most abable among the recognized names of the surd name ever invented by a mind which geographer's world. Any word not abso- in inventing it confessed its own sterility, lutely cacophonous, or befouled by evil "Newfoundland," has ceased to be ludiassociations, will do as well as any other, crous or commonplace; and England will for it is history, and not foresight, which live, though her name is, except to her makes the name of a country great. Who own children, of all names the one with knows whence Roma came, or remembers least of melody. If the colonists are that in a tongue not Roman the word utterly sterile of invention, let them leave meant strength? Or what does it matter the name to the queen, as the Canadians that America is but the feminine of the left the site of their capital, or, better odd Christian name of the obscure Flor- stiil, call a congress of Australian preentine who was not the first to discover miers to rename once for all, such colothe New World? The word Calcutta con- nies as are discontented with the titles veys its full import, though philologists imposed on them by discoverers, the have quarrelled over its meaning for a home government, or fate. They cannot hundred years; and who, as he speaks of in any event be permitted to steal from a Hindostan, ever thinks that the word, with nation already as numerous as the Ameriits suggestions of magnificence, signifies cans when they revolted, the name by etymologically nothing but Blackeyland? which it is designated throughout the England is mother of nations, though she world, and under which it will one day derives her name from a little tribe of Jut- rule an empire of islands stretching from land; and Russia may master the world, bleak Saghalien, through every variety of though her own people cannot say with tropical and semi-tropical treasure-house, certainty whence they derive their name. down to the Antarctic ice. New South If the people of New South Wales want Wales to call itself Australia! Why, to be separate, let them choose some na- then, should not Buenos Ayres rename tive word- expressing, perhaps, hot itself South America? plains as the settlers in Massachusetts did; or if they want to be recognizable before the maps of the world are altered, let them call their colony, from its capital, Sydneyland, and themselves Sydneylanders, or accept the title which, according to precedent, they ought to have adopted, THERE was a certain Bishop of SalisCooksylvania. In choosing the former, bury who was royal treasurer to our King they will only conform to the European Henry I., and who in his double capacity habit which even now names the southern of churchman and financier was greatly colonies in common parlance by their irritated at the frauds practised in the great cities only, and speaks of Melbourne manipulation of the precious metals. He when Victoria is meant. Indeed, they has the credit of the suggestion that a might, if they would, without inconven- test should be employed whereby the true ience call their colony Sydney, and their quality of wares should be gauged. That great city Jackson, for the latter, though was nearly eight hundred years ago. His forgotten in Europe, is known to all geog- test was probably the touchstone. The raphers and sailors. The very simplest word has now passed so completely into a names, such as Eastland for New South secondary use that its existence for comWales, Southland for South Australia, mercial purposes may be a surprise to Westland for West Australia, and Nor- some. Here is what an author who publand for the more tropical half of Queens-lished in 1667 a well-known book on the land, would speedily be recognized and subject says about it. In order to make become suggestive; and so, if the colo- a true touch on the touchstone, you must nists pleased, would arbitrary words, chosen solely for their sound. There is, indeed, no objection to an arbitrary name say, Auralia, or Meruna - for meaning has, in history, absolutely no importance. What descriptive word is more thoroughly definite or well understood than China, which has, for Europeans, absolutely no From St. James's Gazette. OLD SILVER. rub your gold steadily and very hard upon it, spreading the touch no broader than the thickness of a crown piece, and so continue till the place whereon you rub be like the metal itself; and when every sample has been rubbed thus in streaks on the stone, "wet all with your tongue, and it will show itself in its own counte |