to the larva and nymphæ of the tipule of the gnats, which may be considered as real aquatic animals? Some small rivers, whose water is either deep blue, or yellowish brown; the Toparo, the Mataveni, and the Zama, are exceptions to the general rule of the absence of mosquitos from the dark waters. These three rivers swarm with them, and the Indians themselves called our attention to the problematical causes of the phenomenon. In descending the Rio Negro we breathed freely at Maroa, at Davipe, and at San Carlos, villages situated on the frontiers of Brazil. But this relief was short, our sufferings recommenced in entering the Cassiquiaire. At Esmeralda, at the eastern extremity of the high Orinoco, where the terra cognita of the Spaniards ends, the clouds of mosquitos are scarcely less dense than at the great cataracts. At Mondava we found an old missionary, who said to us with a sad air, that "he had passed his twenty years of mosquitos in America." He would have us look at his legs, that we might one day be able to tell "por Allà (beyond the sea) what the poor monks suffer, in the forests of the Cassiquiaire." As every sting leaves a little blackish brown spot, his legs were speckled to such a degree that it was hardly possible to recognise any white skin, through the spots of coagulated blood. If the insects of the genus Simulium abound in the Cassiquiaire, which has white waters, the Culex or the Zancudos, on the other hand, are proportionably rare. You scarce meet any of them, while in the rivers with black waters, in the Atabapo and Rio Negro, there are generally zancudos and no mosquitos. It has been already observed that in the little revolutions, which agitate from time to time the order of the observance of St Francis, when the father guardian wishes to inflict a punishment on a lay brother, he sends him to Esmeralda: a banishment, as the monks say, "where one is condemned to the mosquitos." Such is the geographical distribution of the venomous insects. What seemed very remarkable to us, but is confirmed by all the missionaries is, that the different species do not associate, and that at different hours of the day one is stung by different species. Every time that the scene changes, and according to the familiar phrase of the missionaries, other insects "mount guard," you have a few moments, sometimes a quarter of an hour, of rest. From half past six in the morning till five in the afternoon, the air is filled with mosquitos, who are not as is stated by some travellers* of the form of our gnats, (culex pipiens) but of that of a small fly. These are the simulia of the family of Nemocères in the system of M. Latreille. Their sting is painful like that of the conops calcitrans. It leaves a little reddish brown spot, formed of blood extravasated and coagulated, where the * Kalm, Reise in Nord America, ii. 268.

trunk has pierced the skin. An hour before sunsetting the mosquitos are succeeded by a species of little gnats, called temperanos, because they also appear at sunrise. They remain scarcely an hour and a half. They vanish between six and seven in the evening, or, in the missionary phrase, after the angelus (evening prayer.) After a few minutes of rest, you begin to be stung by the zancudo, another species of culex, with very long legs. The zancudo, whose trunk contains a piercing sucker, causes the keenest pain and swellings which last several weeks. Its noise is like that of the gnats of Europe, but stronger and more prolonged.

I have been informed that from time to time these insects migrate, like the apes (singes Alouattes) that live in a gregareous manner. Species, whose sting has never before been felt, appear at certain places in the commencement of the rainy season. We were told on the Rio de la Magdelena, that at Simitì no other culex was formerly known than the jejen. The nights were tranquil in that quarter, for the jejen is not a nocturnal insect. Since the year 1801, the great blue winged gnat (culex cyanopterus) has appeared in such abundance that the poor inhabitants of Simiti know not how to procure a comfortable night's sleep. In the swampy canals of the isle of Barû, near Carthagena, there is a little white fly called cafafi. It is scarcely visible to the naked eye, and causes highly painful swellings. It is necessary to wet the cotton mosquito nets, that the cafafi may not penetrate between the threads. This insect, happily rare, ascends in the month of January, by the canal or dike of Mahates, to Morales.'

After several other facts and observations, M. de Humboldt closes his chapter with these remarks:

'I have thus collected, at the close of this chapter, all that we have observed in the course of our travels, with respect to phenomena singularly neglected by naturalists hitherto, although they exercise a great influence on the wellbeing of the inhabitants, the salubrity of the climate, and the establishment of new colonies along the rivers of equinoctial America. I should not have allowed myself to treat the subject, with a detail which might seem trifling, if it did not connect itself with more extensive physiological views. As our imagination is not powerfully arrested but by that, which is physically grand, it belongs to the philosophy of nature, to study what is small. We have seen that winged insects, concealing in their trunks a liquor, which irritates the skin, render vast regions almost uninhabitable. Other insects equally small, the termites, create important obstacles to civilization, in many warm and temperate portions of the equinoctial zone.

They devour paper, pasteboard, and parchment with frightful rapidity. They destroy archives and libraries. Whole provinces of Spanish America do not contain a document, which has been written more than a hundred years. What development can the civilization of a people hope, where nothing unites the present to the past, where it is necessary many times to renew the deposits of human knowledge. Where the monuments of genius and reason cannot be transmitted to posterity! But in proportion as you ascend upon the table-land of the Andes, these evils disappear. Man there breathes an air more fresh and pure. Insects do not trouble the occupations of the day, nor the slumbers of the night. Documents may be collected into archives without fear of the voracity of the termes. The moustiques are no longer to be feared at a height of 200 toises. The termites, still quite frequent at 300 toises of elevation, become very rare at Mexico, at Santa Fè de Bogota, and at Quito. In these great capitals, situated on the ridge of the Cordilleras, there are already libraries and archives, which the inhabitants display an enlightened zeal in augmenting from day to day. These circumstances, which I do but indicate here, unite with others, which assure to the alpine region a moral preponderance over the lower region of the torrid zone. If we admit, in accordance with the ancient traditions preserved in both hemispheres, that at the period of the catastrophes which have preceded the renewal of our race, man has descended from the mountains to the plains, we may admit, with more assurance still, that these mountains, the cradle of so many different nations, will remain for ever, in the torrid zone, the centre of civilization. It is from their fertile and temperate table-lands, from these islets scattered in the aerial ocean, that the lights and benefits of social institutions will spread over those vast forests, which extend to the foot of the Andes, and which are inhabited, in our days, by tribes, whom the riches of nature herself have maintained in indolence.'

ART. II.-A Report to the Secretary of War of the U. S. on Indian Affairs, comprising a narrative of a Tour performed, in the Summer of 1820, under a Commission from the President of the U. S., for the purpose of ascertaining, for the use of the government, the actual State of the Indian tribes, in our Country: By Rev. Jedidiah Morse, D. D. Newhaven, 1822, 8vo.

THE subject of this work appears to be one of rapidly increasing interest, in this country. The extension of our states

and territories westward is daily giving greater political consequence to questions, relative to the condition of the yet existing nations of aboriginal inhabitants. Philologians, both abroad and at home, have of late years pursued with zeal the comparison of the native dialects of this continent. The well conducted expeditions, which our government has fitted out, and the enterprizing tours of individuals have brought to notice tribes and nations before unknown; and lastly the establishments of the various missionary societies, and the success which has attended the great efforts now making for the civilization of the Indians, have turned the eyes of a great part of the community to their condition and prospects. It was in connexion with some of these societies, that the tour of Dr Morse, of which the narrative is given in this volume, had its origin. Being in the service of the Society in Scotland, for propagating Christian knowledge, and the Northern Missionary Society of the state of New York, Dr Morse was led to make an offer of his services to the government of the United States, which was accepted. In pursuit of his object the Dr undertook a tour to Green bay, in the summer of 1820; and those who recollect--as so many among us may--the idea which prevailed, not a generation since, of the effort required for a visit to Niagara, will be struck with the improvements introduced in the means of conveyance, in this quarter. Dr Morse started from Newhaven for Green bay, on the western side of lake Michigan, May 10th, and returned to that city, Aug 30th of the same summer, not having passed more than two thirds of the time on the road. The next summer Dr Morse also made a visit to York, in upper Canada, for the sake of an interview with Sir Peregrine Maitland, the governor of that province, on the subject of his mission. The volume before us consists of a narrative of these two excursions! and a large appendix, containing documents of various kinds and various degrees of interest. As the personal observations of Dr Morse were almost wholly limited to those, which he had an opportunity of making on his hasty visit to Green bay ; the greater part of his materials rest of course on the authority of the gentlemen, who furnish them. A considerable part of these is already before the public, particularly most of the accounts of the missionary establishments among the Cherokees and Choctaws, and the accounts of the Indians in our high

latitudes, by Mr Harmon; from whose journal Dr Morse has made an extract of some length. Indeed the only exception we have to take to this volume, which we have read with great interest-and this is, perhaps, the highest compliment in our power to pay to a closely printed volume of five hundred pages-is, that more choice was not used in selecting the materials, and more care bestowed in arranging them. Had the whole been digested into one body,' according to the judicious suggestion of Mr Calhoun, and the mass of materials, contained in the appendix, been woven into one continuous discourse or treatise, of about a third of the size of the present volume, it would have been likely to enjoy an extensive circulation. As it is, the size of the work and the manner in which it is put together, will confine it principally to those, who are willing to take some pains to master the contents of a volume. We must be permitted also to object to the practice of splitting up documents into paragraphs, with running titles in italics, to tell their contents. This is proper in a scientific treatise, written in paragraphs, and it is very well in a newspaper designed for popular circulation; but certainly the present work is not intended for a class of readers, who cannot tell the subject of a document, till it has been thus dissected and labelled.

The condition of the native inhabitants of this continent, especially of those parts of it included within our own settlements or on whom the wave of population is daily encroaching, is a very interesting, a very curious, and a somewhat difficult subject. It is common to speak of them as a much oppressed and wronged race, to deplore their extinction, and to form projects for their preservation and civilization. Many questions, however, seem to be confounded together in this subject, and it will aid us materially, in coming to a right conclusion, to separate them.

Are they then a much injured and oppressed race, or rather is their gradual extinction and disappearance a great and crying injustice? No one, directly challenged on this point, perhaps, will answer in the affirmative. It seems to be agreed, on all hands, that barbarous tribes have but a partial and imperfect right in the soil; that they cannot allege a prior occupancy of the forests and plains, which they do not in any civilized sense