bought by Kordofan traders, and transported to Obeydh in Kordofan, whence they are sent to Shendy. Here they are purchased either by the Souakin or Egyptian traders, who transport them either to Egypt or to Arabia. In Egypt, they frequently change hands several times before they are finally disposed of. Entire lots of slaves are sold at Esne and Siout, in upper Egypt, to wholesale dealers, who dispose of them in retail at Cairo. Young slaves, of four or five years old, are frequently exposed in the market, sometimes with, and at other times without their parents; and the traders so far shew humanity, that they seldom sell the parent and the child separately. When such a transaction takes place, the trader incurs universal reproach for his cruelty. The treatment of the slaves, by the traders who purchase them, is rather kind than otherwise. They are seldom Hogged, are well fed, are not over-worked, and are spoken to in a kind manner, being taught to call their master " Abouy," my father. This results not, however, from humanity, but from policy, the traders apprehending that the slave, in the event of being ill-treated, would abscond; and being aware that any attempt to confine him would injure his health; for the newly imported slaves delight in the open air, and reluctantly enter houses, which they consider as prisons. When they are once in the desert, where the traders know that they have no means of escape, they frequently give vent to their savage tempers, in the treatment of their slaves, though they are always well fed. Slaves, after they are settled in families in the east, are treated much like children of the family, and always better than the free servants. Both in Arabia and Egypt, the law gives one great privilege to the slave, namely, that if he is discontented with his master, and decided not to remain with him, he can insist on being exposed to sale in the public slave-market. Slave boys are allowed entire freedom in the yard of the house where they are kept; but grown up males are kept in close confinement, and often chained. On the journey they are tied to a long pole, one end of which is fastened to the camel's saddle, and the other, which is forked, is passed on each side of the slave's neck, and tied behind with a strong cord. The slave-traders pretend that they respect the chastity of the handsomest female slaves; but according to Burckhardt this is false, the place where the caravan encamps being a scene of indiscriminate licentiousness.

Slaves are occasionally mutilated for exportation, at Borgho, to the west of Darfour. But the chief place where this is practised, is at a village near Siout, in upper Egypt. The unhappy beings chosen for the purpose, are between eight and

twelve years of age; and their value is, in this inhuman manner, raised from 300 to 1000 piastres-a profit so enormous, as to stifle, it would appear, every sentiment of mercy within the breast of the slave-trader. The operation, strange as it may seem, seldom proves fatal; the deaths being rarely more than two in a hundred.

Mr. Burckhardt left Shendy on the 17th May, with the caravan for Souakin, where he arrived on the 26th June. His details of the journey are, as usual, amusing and curious; but our account of this interesting work has already extended to so great a length, that we must compress what we have now to add, within a very short compass. He passed through the fertile district of Taka, celebrated for its herds of cattle, and for its grain. The cattle would be even more numerous were it not for the wild beasts which haunt the forests, and destroy great numbers of them. There are lions, which, the natives say, sometimes reach the size of a cow, and tigers, or, as Burckhardt supposes, panthers. These wild animals were frequently heard growling round the encampment of the caravan during the night. At all the villages through which they passed, the appearance of a white man excited, more especially among the females, one universal shriek of surprise and horror. The whiteness of the skin is considered by the negroes as the effect of disease, and a sign of weakness, and it is always viewed with disgust. On the market-days at Shendy, Burckhardt mentions that he frequently terrified the people, by turning short upon them, when the general exclamation was, "God preserve us from the devil.”

"One day, after bargaining for some onions with a country girl in the market at Shendy, she told me, that if I would take off my turban and shew her my head, she would give me five more onions; I insisted upon having eight, which she gave me; when I removed my turban, she started back at the sight of my white closely-shaven crown, and when I jocularly asked her whether she should like to have a husband with such a head; she expressed the greatest surprise and disgust, and swore that she would rather live with the ugliest Darfour slave."

With the Souakin caravan there were about 20 pilgrims, travelling towards Mecca. Many of these came from the most remote parts of the interior, and travel generally as beggars, being quite destitute. The two principal routes for the pilgrims, after they arrive on the Nile, is either along the course of the river to Egypt, or along the tracks of the Mogren and Atbara, to Taka, and thence to Souakin on the Red Sea. Those who come from Kordofan, go to Sennaar, and from thence, through Abyssinia,

to Masuah, likewise on the Red Sea. The manners of the people of Souakin, like those of all the nations of Africa, are, according to Burckhardt, more or less tainted with ill faith, avarice, drunkenness, and debauchery. The town is governed by an Aga, a Turkish officer, whose tyranny would have proved fatal to Burckhardt, had he not been luckily protected by the firman which he received from the Pasha of Egypt.

At Souakin Burckhardt embarked in company with a crowd of Mahometan pilgrims for Djidda, and the account of this voyage terminates the present publication. The journal of his travels in Arabia, and of his pilgrimage to Mecca, is reserved for a subsequent work, which, judging from the interest and the merits of what is now published, the public will expect with no small degree of impatience. Mr. Burckhardt is an enterprising and judicious traveller, whose details never fail to amuse, because they always tend to illustrate some important point in the character and manners of the people among whom he is travelling. They bear the stamp of an active mind, curious to inquire and eager to communicate, and he never bespeaks the attention of his readers, unless for information both satisfactory and import

ant.

The journeys of Mr. Burckhardt place in a very clear view, the difficulty of penetrating with safety into the interior of Africa. The barbarous manners and prejudices of the inhabitants oppose almost insuperable difficulties to any European traversing this Continent alone, in his own native character. Burckhardt suggests, that 100 Europeans, well armed, might make their way over the whole country in perfect security; and this is no doubt true, as fire-arms are not used, and scarcely known in the interior. Even at Shendy, on the Nile, Burckhardt's musket was an object of general terror, and some of the traders would not remain in the apartment where it was placed. But to bodies of men attempting such an enterprise, the fatality of the climate, which gradually reduces their numbers, and leaves them at length to the mercy of the inhabitants, is found a formidable obstacle. In such barbarous countries, the disguise of the Mahometan religion and manners seems, after all, the traveller's best safeguard; and it is probably to some scheme of this nature, conducted by a more fortunate, but not more enterprising adventurer, than the author of the present work, that we must trust for farther discoveries in the interior of Africa.

ART. IV. An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia; including various political Observations relating to them. By WILLIAM WILKINSON, Esq. late British Consul to the above mentioned principality. London. Longman & Co. 1820. Pp. 304. 8vo.

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WHEN the constitutional moderation, or the prospective envy of Augustus, decreed the Danube as a boundary of the Roman empire, he virtually acknowledged the independence, as he bably meant to imply the unprofitableness of a country, which was destined to give a title and an increase of glory to one of the worthiest of his successors. The inhabitants of that part of Europe which he thus left unsubdued, had by no means conducted themselves in such a manner as to merit forbearance. They more than once disturbed the repose, and offended the majesty of the emperor, when the possession of undisputed power, and the establishment of unquestioned authority throughout the wide extent of his dominions, furnished, at once, the means and a fit season for taking vengeance. Their insolence, heightened it may be by the impunity which they had experienced, and urged by the augmenting necessity for extending their predatory visitations, proved vastly more vexatious in the reign of the infamous Domitian, who had the vanity to claim the honours of a triumph over them, which neither his courage nor his prudence could have achieved. The indignant Juvenal enjoys a sneer at this event in the miscreant's history, and alludes, with sarcastic glee, to the gold medals, which a contemptible subserviency of the senate ordered to be struck in commemoration of his very problematical conquest

cum lance beata

Dacicus et scripto radiat Germanicus auro.-Sat. vi.

It was reserved for Trajan to deserve the renown, thus fraudulently anticipated, by the substantial acquisition of the province; and, by imparting to it the redeeming features of Roman civilization, to compensate for the loss of its barbarous independence. He joined it to Moesia by a stupendous bridge, the most magnificent of his works, and of which the rock-like piles are still to be seen in the Danube, when its waters are low. The boundaries of Dacia, for so was this territorial appendage denominated, were the rivers Niester, Theyss or Tibiscus, and the lower Danube, with one of the shores of the Euxine Sea, comprehending a space of about thirteen hundred miles in circumference.

The people, originally a Scythian tribe, were a warlike and a hardy race, and had generally been governed by princes who set a due value on their national freedom. Decebalus, the last of them, disdaining the bondage of a tributary and the sufferings of a captive, after having waged unsuccessful war with the masters of the world, destroyed himself that he might not fall into the hands of the victors.

Agreeably to their wonted policy, the Romans set about improving the country which their arms had subdued. For this purpose they sent colonies into it, built new cities, and constructed high roads. Marks of this judicious conduct are now to be traced, in the fragments of pavements, the corrupted names of places, and the mongrel Latin that is occasionally employed as a medium of oral communication. Dacia, like other portions of the decaying fabric, suffered grievously from the attacks of those tribes which finally rioted over the empire. Of these the Goths were early conspicucus, by the frequency and the violence of their barbarous inroads. They obtained entire ascendancy about the middle of the fourth century, when they em braced a form of the Christian religion, which thenceforward predominated among the inhabitants. To the Goths succeeded the Huns, whose dominion was overturned by the Gepida. These gave way to the Lombards, who yielded to the Avari or White-Huns, by whom the country was held till their destruction by the Franks and Bulgarians. Other transitions occurred between the seventh century and the time when the Turkish power began to be felt in this part of Europe. Between these periods, Dacia, which, under the protection and ga vernment of the Romans, existed as one province, occasionally designated by the name of its conqueror, and at other times by the epithet Vera, in order to distinguish it from Dacia Nova, a district lying to the south of the Danube, va: broken down and divided among various petty tribes, whose origin and connexions have afforded ample scope for the ingenuity and research of the antiquarians. We shall content ourselves with that subdivision of it which exists to the present day, and with the chief events in the history of those portions of it in which we are now professedly concerned.

The Roman Dacia comprehended Transylvania, a province united in modern times to the dominions of the house of Austria, and the two provinces of which our author treats. One of these, Wallachia, a name of uncertain etymology, and which is not recognized by the inhabitants, who style themselves "Rum"unn," or Romans, and their country "Tsara-Rumaneska," or Roman-land, became tributary to the Turks about the end of