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fuller discussion of the subject, with special reference to the guilt of such practices as a breach of the Moral Law.

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To the Editor of the Christian Observer. THERE are no parts of Scripture which more require illustration to a Northern reader, than those in which allusion is made, and that often incidentally and almost imperceptibly, to the habits and climate of Oriental nations. Our commercial and military intercourse throughout the world, with the many modern publications in the line of voyages, travels, and biblical criticism and illustration, have however rendered foreign manners more familiar to us than they were to most of our forefathers; and almost every new publication of any value from the pen of Oriental tourists, is adding new accessions to our riches in this interesting department of sacred literature. The following extract from the recent travels of Signor Belzoni, in Egypt, appears to me to deserve insertion in your pages, as affording an interesting illustration of those numerous passages in Scripture which speak of the miseries of a thirsty and parched land, and the perils of a tropical desert. Let the reader, as he peruses the passage, imagine to himself the children of Israel in their perilous journey from Egypt to Canaan, and he will obtain a lively idea of that "land of deserts and of pits, of drought and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt," which Jehovah chose as the scene of their trial, "to prove them, and to know what was in their heart, whether they would serve him or no ;" where he displayed his providential care and guidance in all their necessities, and through which he conducted them at length to the promised inheritance; apt emblem of the present world, and of the perils which

beset the Christian pilgrim in his journey to the heavenly Canaan ! E. W.

"It is difficult to form a correct idea of a desert, without having been in one: it is an endless plain of sand and stones, sometimes intermixed with mountains of all sizes and heights, without roads or shelter, without any sort of produce for food. The few scattered trees and shrubs of thorns, that only appear when the rainy season leaves some moisture, barely serve to feed wild animals, and a few birds. Every thing is left to nature; the wandering inhabitants do not care to cultivate even these few plants, and when there is no more of them in one place, they go to another. When these trees become old and lose their vegetation, the sun which constantly beams upon them, burns and reduces them to ashes. I have seen many of them entirely burnt. The other smaller plants have no sooner risen out of the earth than they are dried up, and all take the colour of straw, with the exception of the plant harack: this falls off before it is dry.

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Generally speaking, in a desert, there are few springs of water, some of them at the distance of four, six, and eight days' journey from one another, and not all of sweet water: on the contrary, it is generally salt or bitter; so that, if the thirsty traveller drinks of it, it increases his thirst, and he suffers more than before. But, when the calamity happens that the next well, which is so anxiously sought for, is found dry, the misery of such a situation cannot be well described. The camels, which afford the only means of escape, are so thirsty, that they cannot proceed to another well: and, if the travellers kill them, to extract the little liquid which remains in their stomachs, they themselves cannot advance any farther. The situation must be dreadful, and admits of no resource. Many perish, vic

tims of the most horrible_thirst. It is then that the value of a cup of water is really felt. He that has a zenzabia of it is the richest of all. In such a case there is no distinction. If the master has none, the servant will not give it to him; for very few are the instances, where a man will voluntarily lose his life to save that of another, particularly in a caravan in the desert, where people are strangers to each other. What a situation for a man, though a rich one, perhaps the owner of all the caravan! He is dying for a cup of water-no one gives it to him: he offers all he possesses-no one hears him; they are all dying -though by walking a few hours farther they might be saved. If the camels are lying down, and cannot be made to rise-no one has strength to walk: only he that has a glass of that precious liquor lives to walk a mile farther, and perhaps dies too. If the voyages on seas are dangerous, so are those in the deserts. At sea, the provisions very often fail; in the desert, it is worse: at sea, storms are met with; in the desert, there cannot be a greater storm than to find a dry well;-at sea, one meets with pirates-we escape-we surrenderwe die; in the desert, they rob the traveller of all his property and water they let him live perhaps, but what a life! to die the most barbarous and agonising death. In short, to be thirsty in a desert, without water, exposed to the burning sun without shelter, and NO HOPES of finding either, is the most ter

rible situation that a man can be placed in, and one of the greatest sufferings that a human being can sustain: the eyes grow inflamed; the tongue and lips swell; a hollow sound is heard in the ears, which brings on deafness, and the brains appear to grow thick and inflamed: all these feelings arise from the want of a little water. In the midst of all this misery, the deceitful morasses appear before the traveller at no great distance, something like a lake or river of clear fresh water. If perchance a traveller is not undeceived, he hastens his pace to reach it sooner: the more he advances towards it, the more it goes from him, till at last it vanishes entirely, and the deluded passenger often asks, where is the water he saw at no great distance? He can scarcely believe that he was so deceived: he protests that he saw the waves running before the wind, and the reflection of the high rocks in the water.

"If unfortunately any one falls sick on the road, there is no alternative: he must endure the fatigue of travelling on a camel, which is troublesome even to healthy people; or he must be left behind on the sand, without any assistance, and remain so till a slow death come to relieve him. What horror! What a brutal proceeding to an unfortunate sick man! No one remains with him, not even his old and faithful servant; no one will stay and die with him: all pity his. fate, but no one will be his nion." compa

MISCELLANEOUS.

REMARKS DURING A JOURNEY
THROUGH NORTH AMERICA.

(Continued from p. 291.) WHILE visiting a friend in New York, I was informed that it was in

the adjoining room that the agents of the African Colonization Society, and their supporters, assembled for prayer the night previous to the sailing of the first expedition, of whose melancholy fate

we had just received the intelligence.

In Philadelphia, the Sunday after my arrival, I heard our excellent Liturgy for the first time on these western shores; and the impression it was calculated to make on my mind was deepened by the circumstance of its being sacrament Sunday, and by the stillness and decorum which pervaded this beautiful city, in a degree which I had never witnessed even in England. Here I was also much gratified by meeting with the aged Bishop White, one of the bishops who went over to England after the Revolution, to be consecrated, in order that episcopal authority might be transmitted to the latest generations of America, through the legitimate channel in which it had flowed since the laying on of Apostolic hands. Our excellent Granville Sharp, and his meritorious efforts in his cause, came forcibly to my recollection.

While drinking tea with a friend in Baltimore, one of the females of the family came in, who I learnt had been attending an adult school in which there were 180 Blacks. She told me there were 600 Blacks in the Sunday-schools in the city; and that they had lately formed themselves into a Bible Association, and been received into connexion with the Baltimore Bible Society. At the same place, a letter was shewn to me just received from the Black person on whom the management of the expedition of the Colonization Society devolved, on the White agents falling sacrifice to the dreadful mortality with which the settlers were visited. On a desert shore, deprived by death of the White conductors, to whom he and his companions looked for protection-depressed by the successive deaths of his Black friends, and harassed by the delays, irregularities, and suspicious conduct of the native chiefs-he writes in a strain of fortitude and piety, deserving of imitation. "But, thank God,"

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he says, though cut off from my friends, and relations, and family, and the comforts of civilized life, our people dropping off daily, myself labouring under great bodily weakness, and an important charge lying upon me, I can truly say that I rejoice that I came to Africa. O that what few days I am spared in this world, it may be to do good!" And yet this person, I was told, was once an American Slave.

At Washington, I attended Divine service in the House of Representatives; a magnificent hall in the capitol, which is always appropriated to this purpose on Sundays. The sermon was an impressive one, from the words, "The glorious Gospel of Christ;" and you will readily believe, that the promulgation of this Gospel in the capital of this vast continent, in the new chamber of its Legislature, under the fostering care of its popular Government, was well calculated to excite the most interesting reflections. The scene reminded me of the period when "they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God;" and when I recollected how long the Star had appeared in the East, before it shed its radiance on the darkness of these Western shores,—whose very existence a few centuries since was unsuspected, and which had long been abandoned to Indian superstitions, which had only just ceased to linger in the primeval forests which surrounded us, and on the banks of rivers which yet bear their Indian names, I seemed admitted to a closer view of that mysterious progression by which "the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever." This train of thought, the place, the congregation, the surrounding scene, conspired to give a peculiar inte

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rest to the verses with which the that chain of secondary causes service was concluded.

"How happy are our ears," &c. To enter fully into my feelings, you must recollect my distance from the scene where we have usually sung these words; and that when I hear of the East, I do not here think of India and China only, but include Europe and Africa, and with them dear England, in the idea which is present to my imagination. On my return to my inn, I dined in company with my friends the Indian Deputation of the Creeks and Cherokees, to whom I have already introduced you. In the afternoon, I sat in the seat next to the President's, in the Episcopal Church, where we had an excellent sequel to our morning's sermon, from the words, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"

When visiting General Washington's tomb, in his favourite retreat at Mount Vernon, on the banks of the Potowmac, my Black attendant informed me, that the domestics, about thirty I believe in number, and principally slaves,-assembled morning and evening for family worship, at which the Hon. Bushrod Washington, the present occupier of Mount Vernon, and a Judge of the Supreme Court, presides. When I was shewn into the Judge's study, Scott's Bible and Dr. Dwight's Theology were before him, as if just laid aside, and gave rise to a little conversation. In speaking of the African Colonization Society, of which he is the President, he remarked, that the most interesting light in which he regarded it, was as an instrument for the conversion of the Africans to Christianity; that he conceived this would ultimately,be accomplished by native teachers; and that the Colonization Society, by the introduction into Africa of social arrangements and religious institutions, was calculated to raise up a supply of native instructors, and thus to form an important link in

which are to establish the kingdom of the Messiah in every quarter of the globe.

At Charleston, in South Carolina, at the Episcopal Church, at the door of which I counted seventeen carriages, I had the gratification of seeing some slaves receive the sacrament at the same table as their masters, some of whom were of the very first rauk of Carolinian planters.

At Augusta, in Georgia, I thought with much interest on the late excellent Miss Smelt, whose Memoirs I had read in England; and although I could not find her grave in the church-yard, it was with great pleasure that I passed a solitary Sabbath in this foreign land amid the scenes where her early piety was cherished and matured.

The following Sunday, in a remoter part of Georgia, near the borders of the Indian Nation, my feelings were still more strongly excited. I attended a Negro congregation assembled in the woods, to hear a funeral sermon from one of their own number, himself a slave. It consisted of about 200 slaves, sitting on little planks under a large elm-tree; and I found I was the only White person, and the only freeman, in the assembly. The preacher first gave a sort of general address, explaining the occasion of the meeting. We then had prayer; then sung the hymn, "Why do we mourn departed friends?" and then had a sermon from the text, "The Lord is a sun and shield;" a text which the preacher assured them was somewhere in the Bible, although " he could not undertake to tell them where." It was with mingled emotions that I beheld these degraded fellow-creatures, after drawing near to the Throne of the Creator of the universe, the Mercy Seat of our common Father, disperse to their several plantations, to resume on the morrow their extorted labours, and to smart under the lash of a fellow-mortal.

Indian country, consecrated, if I may be allowed the expression, by standing on missionary ground, and by forming at once the dormitory and the sanctuary of a "man of God;" it seemed to be indeed the prophet's chamber, with "the bed and the table, and the stool and the candlestick." It contained, also, a little

Even in that land of darkness, the shores of the Gulph of Mexico, in Mobile, until lately a nest of pirates, and still without a Protestant place of worship, I found, to my surprise, "The Dairyman's Daughter," and "Little Jane," in a bookseller's shop. In the seclusion of the forests of the Mississippi, I have seen a solitary planter take down a num-book-case, with a valuable selection ber of Dr. Clarke's Bible, and in- of pious books, periodical, bioquire, with great interest, if I could graphical, and devotional; among tell him any particulars of so good which I found many an old aca man: his wife listening attentive- quaintance in this foreign land, and ly, and pronouncing an eulogium which enable Mr. Kingsbury, in his which would have made the Doctor few moments of leisure, to converse blush. with many who have long since joined the spirits of just men made perfect, or to sympathize with his fellow-labourers in Otaheite, Africa, or Hindoostan.

I have attended Divine service at the confluence of two beautiful rivers in East Tennessee, where the congregation was so numerous that we were compelled to adjourn from the meeting-house into the adjoining woods, where tables were laid under the trees for communicants, who were flocking from miles in every direction, as in Scotland, and to whom the sacred ordinance was administered by four clergymen, of serious deportment, and apparently of respectable acquirements and fervent zeal. At the foot of the Alleghany mountains, where I slept in a little log-hut, kept by a poor old woman and her only son, our hostess gladly availed herself of the accidental presence of a young minister, in his way to Brainerd, to have family prayer and reading: and, in a large popular inn in Virginia, I was asked whether I would like to retire to the private apartments of the family, who assembled morning and evening at the domestic altar.

But it was at the missionary settlements at Brainerd and Yaloo Busha, that my feelings were most strongly excited. Never shall I forget my sensations the two nights I passed in Mr. Kingsbury's little room, which was kindly and courteously assigned to me during my slay.

A log-cabin, detached from the other wooden buildings, in the middle of a boundless forest, in an

Mr. Kingsbury spent a great part of the second night in my room, inquiring, with great interest, about England, and other parts of Europe, with respect to which his intelligence had been very scanty since his seclusion among the Indians. About midnight, we became thirsty with talking so much; and Mr. Kingsbury proposed that we should walk to the spring at a little distance. The night was beautifully serene after the heavy showers of the preceding evening, and the coolness of the air, the fresh fragrance of the trees, the deep stillness of the midnight hour, and the soft light which an unclouded moon shed on the logcabins of the missionaries, contrasted with the dark shadows of the surrounding forest, impressed me with feelings which I never can forget. We looked cautiously around us, lest we should be surprised by wild beasts; and Mr. Kingsbury stopped to point out to me a plant, which, if swallowed immediately after the attack of a rattlesnake, proves an effectual antidote to the poison. He said that he never stirred from home without some of it in his waiscoat pocket: and that, in the State of Mississippi, it was commonly carried by all persons who traversed the forest. I could not

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