melodrama of the Brentford tailor rendered of which Humboldt has given many details, into Spanish, the whole concluding with a The vegetable cow is by no means confined dance on the tight rope. On a subsequent to this neighborhood; the milk is brought inevening we visited the opera, which was held to the market in the English colony of Demaat the regular theatre, by no means a despi- rara, in sufficient quantities by the Buck Incable building. Macintoshes, lined with plaid | dians who descend the Essequibo and Dematurned inside out, and thrown gracefully over rara rivers, to prove its existence in abunthe shoulders of several of the performers, fixed dance in the forests of British Guyana; in the scene of action in representation at our en- Caraccas the milk is never used except in trance to Scotland. The opera was "Lucia the immediate spot where the tree grows. di Lammermuir;" the audience was numer- We found much difficulty in procuring informaous, and seemed highly gratified, but the tion to guide us in our search, but at length performance not such as to invite a second ascertained that the nearest spot where the visit. tree was known to flourish was at the Hacienda of Santa Cruz, about five or six hours' The Venezuelans, immediately upon the establishment of the republic, turned their at-ride from caracas. A lady to whom that tention towards public education, which under and the neighboring properties belonged, the Spanish rule, in spite of a university at having kindly offered us the services of a Caraccas and a college at Merida, was ever Peon for a guide, we started early one morndiscouraged, the suppressed convents and ing, in company with an Englishman, whose their revenues having, as has been before ob- acquaintance we had made in Caraccas. served, been devoted to this purpose. There Our road lay over a rough mountain, covered are now, besides a second university at Merida, with more fantastically-shaped varieties of a college in every large town, a military cactus, cereus, agave, and aloe, than we had academy, and numerous primary schools. ever seen collected together before; the rich There are also in Caraccas private colleges flowers of the latter, upon their tall larch-like and well-regulated schools for both sexes; and stems, and the candelabra boughs of some of the Government are now establishing paro- the former, mingled with piles of uncouth chial schools throughout the whole extent of lichen-grown rock, gave a peculiarly grotesque their territory, as they have already formed in aspect to the scenery. Descending into a long about one-third. The proportion of those edu-winding valley, our wild guide, mounted upon cated in the latter to the whole population, not reckoning the Indians, was one to a hundred and fourteen in 1840. a raw-boned jackass, now led us along the bed of a rivulet, by which it was traversed, now by a path cut through the forest, till after surmounting several ridges in succession, we at length reached a mountain side, richly clad up to its summit with forest, and looking down into a valley filled with haciendas of coffee; another hill was beyond, and over this a fine There are several printing establishments in Caraccas, whence, besides newspapers, issue numerous translations from English and French authors; the latter, judging from the numbers, being the favorites, especially the novelists of the modern school. The proceed-view of the sea presented itself. ings of the chambers, with ample statistics of commerce, population, expenditure, revenue, and produce, are published yearly, under the authority of Government;* the amount of exports and imports, and of revenue, extracted from these Blue Books for the year ending July, 1841, will serve to give an idea of the existing state of the republic as to wealth, the population being about a million. The farm of Fundacion, to which we were first led, we found much farther than we had expected, and as we had an engagement to dinner in Caraccas for the same evening, we had but little time to lose; we therefore hurried over a breakfast there, and remounted. The road being steep, and our pace brisk, our Caraccas friend, accustomed to a sedentary life, soon knocked up, and returned to the farm. In the neighborhood of Caraccas, within Santa Cruz we found situated in a delightful reach of an afternoon's ride, are several villa-valley; we were soon furnished with guides ges, surrounded by cultivated grounds, and extremely beautiful, especially along the foot of the Silla, All the fruits, vegetables, and flowers of Europe, can be made to flourish upon these elevated plains among the sugar canes and bananas of the tropics, and perhaps only require the hand of a skilful gardener to make them equal in flavor to those of cooler climes. We had much curiosity to see the palo di vacca, or cow-tree (Golactodendron), * Financial year from 1840 to 1841-Revenue, 5,363,040 pesos, of 3s. 4d.; exports, 6,159,835; imports, 7,399,923. In the year 1829 to 1830 the evports and imports were 5,587,104, and the in crease has been gradual. by the major domo or superintendent; but the distance of the farm to the first tree was still not trifling. After riding about a mile or two, the road became too steep for either horses or mules; we dismounted. The path was now the edge of a water-course, which, cut out of the rock, or built up at intervals of masonry, carried the waters of one of the lesser valleys in a winding course, down to irrigate the hacienda below, along the face of an abrupt cliff, whose fissures were filled with forest trees. After scrambling for above half a mile along the water-course, our guide pointed to the palo di vacca in midst of a hanging wood, whose lofty summits shut out the sun. The stem was about two and a half feet er. in thickness, and shot up from seventy to a The city lay below us, and the numerous hundred feet into the air, where its foliage villages of the plain, with their verdant valmingled with that of its neighbors, from leys, were scattered around till lost among the which it was scarcely distinguishable at that distant succession of those mountains which height. We had chosen an unfavorable time we had already traversed in our journey from for our visit to the vegetable cow: it was the the Llanos. On the summit of the hill the dry season, and the moon was on the wane. forest is extremely rich in every variety of The power of the moon upon the flow of the tropical foliage, and the wild strawberry is juices in the vegetation of the tropics, is well here gathered in profusion at the foot of the known-our cow was accordingly a bad various palms. Surmounting the ridge, the milker; nevertheless, upon slashing the bark ocean appeared at intervals through the rollwith a cutlass, out came the cream so as to be ing mists with which the base of the mountain easily taken up with a spoon; with the excep- was wreathed, and below us were the coffeetion of a slight clamminess, the cream was plantations of the hacienda, which seemed sushighly palatable, and said to be much used by pended over the sea, midway down the mounthe laborers of the farms during the season tain sides. A path, very difficult of access, when the juices are abundant, when it is col- and impracticable without guides, leads from lected in bottles. The tree was said to be com- this ridge to the neighboring summits of the mon in the forests around, and a grove of them Silla. Descending the mountain in company was pointed out to us at the hacienda of Co- with the proprietor of the farm, who had accitoura, about half an hour further off, where the dentally overtaken us, being himself mounted tree was to be seen in every stage of exis- on a mule, we gladly accepted his invitation tence. Time, however, pressed; the guides to breakfast. We found here strawberries in made us many promises that they would bring abundance, and numerous English vegetables, in a bundle of young trees for us the next and the garden filled with roses, pinks, carnamorning, to transfer to the gardens of the West tions, and lilies. The sun had set before we India islands; however, the promises were for- reached our hotel, where a large party were gotten, and the good Island of Tobago must assembled, according to custom, playing bilstill continue to put up with the milk of the liards, drinking coffee, and discussing politics. goat and the animal cow. We returned to We were listening to a variety of yarns, spun the Farm of Fundacion by a short cut, where by an old English Venezuelan officer, upon we found our friend, still unwilling to move; the eternal subject of the war of independence, in fact, he anticipated the pace at which we interspersed with republican declamation, should return, and wisely waited for the cool when a buzz outside of the hotel drew every of the evening. The grass was certainly not one to the balconies of the windows. It was permitted to grow under our horses' heels; the first appearance of the comet, whose brilhowever, the animals not being knocked up liant tail, dashing across a third of the heabefore our arrival at the hotel, we were en- vens, had startled Caraccas, ever since the abled to keep our engagement with the British day of her destruction in 1812 painfully sus Consul. ceptible of alarm at any unusual natural pheIt was the time of the Carnival. We had nomena, from its customary repose. The anticipated a great deal of amusement in the commotion, commencing in terror, continued idea that in so Catholic a city the festival in admiration through half the night. It was would be kept with extraordinary vivacity. a beautiful sight, and the pure atmosphere of We were disappointed. The only observance Caraccas, on that night unmingled with a sinconsisted in a barbarous license exerted in the gle cloud, gave a silvery splendor to the specoutskirts of the city, of deluging the passen-tacle. The alarm of the inhabitants was the gers with water from syringes and garden more natural, as the tidings of the earthquake forcing-pumps, and occasionally powdering at Guadaloupe and Antigua had but a short the victims with flour while dripping from the first assault. These outrages were checked | by the police in the better parts of the city, but respectable people were still cautious of appearing in the streets at the hour of dusk. The population of the British island of Trinidad have a far more civilized mode of observing their carnival; it is their season of masuerading, gayety, and gallantry. period before reached them. This catastrophe had occurred since we left the islands, and, as usual, the reports were so exaggerated by distance that we were uncertain whether the island that we had come from was yet above water. Report affirmed, after enumerating the fates of several other islands, that a brig, in sailing by, had seen a column of smoke and ashes hovering above the spot where Tobago once was. To see the farm of Galipan, upon the opposite side of the range of the Silla, upon another Our last excursion in the neighborhood of occasion, afforded us an agreeable excursion Caraccas was through a highly-cultivated valfrom Caraccas. We started early one morn-ley, where we put up at a hacienda where ing on foot, upon the erroneous supposition that the mountain was inaccessible for mules; the ascent was difficult, but the prospect from the different stages of the ascent extremely beautiful, in spite of the dryness of the weath there were some mills lately established for shelling coffee for the English market. The process, they say, spoils the berry's flavor, though it improves its appearance, and procures for it a readier sale. The Venezuelan planters in general cultivate their estates with public, and of the motives which actuated the a rigid attention to economy; having little British troops on that day to combat with so or no capital wherewithal to work their farms, much obstinacy, bore upon it the rude imthey are obliged to borrow from the money-press of truth. The British troops had been lenders at an exorbitant interest, that no-harassed by the warfare of the Llanos, tothing but this economy, which their naturally tally at variance with their habits, and longfrugal habits render comparatively easy, could ed for repose. On the eve of the battle they enable them to pay. The proprietors also saw plainly that if it was not won, there would reside on their farms, or are at least their be before them another years campaigning, own managers, in which they have the ad-up to their waists in water; and this they vantage over their more extravagant neigh-resolved to prevent if they could. The Venebors of the British West Indies. Amid the zuelan regiments were broken and routed at thick cultivation in the district around these the commencement of the fray, "but the valmills, we found a very beautiful village crown-orous strangers," as the historian observes, ing the summit of a group of hills. Here all deployed and formed line under a horrithe male inhabitants were eagerly employed ble fire, with a serenity that did not seem in cock-fighting. It was Sunday, and some to belong to rational creatures." The officers of our party remained so late watching the were all killed or wounded, and the battalfestivities of the peasantry, that it was dark ion reduced by more than half; but in the before we assembled at the hacienda for din-meantime the broken Venezuelans had ralner, and late ere we broke up; a young lied behind the foreign battalion, and returnetourdi of our party having contrived to be-ed to its support. The result was a comcome extremely festive during the evening, plete victory, from which only one battalion retarded our homeward progress. The roads of the Spaniards escaped. The congress were frightfully steep even in the broad day- were lavish of their praises and honors to light, the distance considerable, and the drunk- the army and its chiefs. It was decreed en subject refractory. However, the light that divers attic columns should be raised to of the stars and of the comet assisting, he the latter; but the funds of the republic bewas found and picked up whenever he fell ing low, their names, instead of this, were from his horse, and finally brought into Car- in the meantime inscribed legibly upon various town-pumps, where they may yet be seen, attesting the exalted sense which a highspirited people entertain of the heroism of the departed brave. The Britannic legion having received the distinction of being named the Legion of Corobobo, after the field of battle, was, however, disappointed in its hopes of obtaining rest. It was marched about till so few remained that the republic, disembarrassed of such numerous claims, could af ford to fulfil its magnanimous promises of pensions to the survivors. accas. There are comparatively few English among the artisans or merchants of Caraccas; and, of all those who flocked over at one time, to fight in the service of the young republic, under the title of Patriots, but a small number survives. Nevertheless some few British officers are still in the service of Venezuela. Among those who have earned for their names a certain notoriety, are the Cacique of Poyais, M'Gregor, now stricken in years, but formerly a distinguished leader in the war of independence; and General Devereux, now blind, whose levies of patriots distinguished themselves by mutinying, because the pillage of the rich cities which their recruiting serjeants had promised them was withheld upon their arrival upon the coast, and who had previously much perplexed the authorities by claiming arrears of pay, when, as the historian of the war innocently observes, they had never any money for their own troops. The cular pulmonary consumption, phthisis tubercuunmanageable foreigners were at length em-losa. The seat of the ulceration having been asbarked and sent off to Jamaica, to be dis- certained by means of the stethoscope, the matposed of by the Governor, with the excep- ter is discharged outwardly by an incision being tion of some officers and volunteers who re-made in the cavity of the breast, penetrating the mained in the service of the republic. lungs. The cure is finally effected by medicine NOVEL TREATMENT FOR THE GURE OF CON SUMPTION.-Ober Post Ampte Zeitung has the following:-The surgical operations of Dr. Von Herff at present attract great interest here (Darm stadt). These operations have in several in stances effected a decided cure in cases of tuber One of the few survivors of the British injected into the wound by a syringe. We have battalion that earned so valorous a reputa-hitherto refrained from making known these tion at Carabobo, we found head-waiter, or operations, as we wish to await the results; but major-domo at the Lion d'Oro. Caraccas we are now enabled to affirm with confidence that might well spare a better man; having sub. dued the soldierlike vice of inordinate drunkenness, he had become a paragon of major domos, and upheld the affairs of the Lion d' Oro with distinguished zeal. His account of the battle which decided the fate of the re- Athenæum. in several instances the operations have obtained the most complete success, and in no case have been attended by any danger to life. We hope that Dr. Von Herff, after an extended series of from them the subject of a philosophic inquiry-experiments, will make the observations deduced A NATIVE SOUTH AFRICAN TALE. Two neighboring nations of the Bechuana War ultimately produced its usual results, famine and misery, when both parties hastened to make peace, by slaughtering cattle and eating together, the Bechuana mode of ratifying a treaty. was a girl; but I will not retaliate: he is now starving. Little did he then think that we should thus meet. "9 She added, "There, take and eat: Utla 'mpona kai? rumela!" The feelings of the old man may be imagined. The circumstance made a deep impression on the Barolong nation. To this day, a Barolong may be restrained from an unkind act by the oppressed party exclaiming, "Utla mpona kai? rumela!"* PUNCH'S CHARGE TO JURIES. GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY:-You are sworn in all cases, to decide according to the evidence; at the same time, if you have any doubt, you are bound to give the prisoner the benefit of it. Suppose you have to pronounce on the guilt or innonaturally doubt whether any gentleman would cence of a gentleman accused of felony. You will commit such offences; accordingly, however strong may be the testimony against him, you will, perhaps, acquit him. The evidence of your own senses is, at least, as credible as that of the witnesses; if, therefore, your eyesight convinces you that the prisoner is a well-dressed person, you have a right to presume his respectability; and it is for you to say whether a respectable person would be likely to be guilty of the crimes imputed to him. In like manner, when you see a shabby-looking fellow in the dock, charged, for example, with sheep-stealing, the decision rests with you, first, whether or not that individual is a ragamuffin; and, secondly, how far it is probable that a man of that description would steal will always be guided by the evidence; but then, sheep. Of course, as has been before said, you whether the evidence is trustworthy or not, is a matter for your private consideration. You may Among others, the old warrior was compel- believe it if you choose, or you may disbelieve it; led to undertake a journey to the Bakueni in and whether, gentlemen of the jury, you will besearch of food. With a small bag, containing lieve it or disbelieve it, will depend on the con a little meal made from pounded locusts, in-stitution of your minds. If your minds are so tended for his sustenance on the journey, a pipe and tobacco, and a walking-stick in his hand, he took the road leading to the Bakuena; his progress was slow, his body being reduced to a mere skeleton by famine. The next season after the conclusion of peace, proved propitious to the Bakueni, and unpropitious to the Barolong. The former had an abundant crop of corn; but that of the latter was destroyed by swarms of locusts, which ravaged their gardens; and they were consequently driven to beg food from the people they once meant to destroy. constituted that you wish to find the prisoner guilty, perhaps you will believe it; if they hap pen to be so constituted that you desire to find him not guilty, why then, very likely, you will disbelieve it. You are to free your minds from all On arriving at the hamlet of the chief of passion and prejudice, if you can, and, in that the Bakueni, the old warrior entered the lap-case, your judgment will be unbiassed; but if you ing, or enclosure before the chief's house, near is not, strictly speaking, for you to consider what cannot, you will return a verdict accordingly. It the door of which sat a female covered with a will be the effect of your verdict; but if such a tiger-skin kaross, worn by no one but the mo- consideration should occur to you, and you cannot fumngari, or royal mistress; to her he ad- help attending to it, that verdict will be influenced dressed himself in the most abject terms, beg- by it to a certain extent. You are probably aware, ging her to give him, a poor dog, a little food, that when you retire, you will be locked up till for he was dying of hunger. She returned you contrive to agree. You may arrive at una his salutation by saying, "E! U tla 'mpona nimity by fair discussion, or by some of you starv kai? rumela !" The old man did not adverting out the others, or by tossing up; and your to the import of these words, being stupified by hunger. A woman servant being at the time in the act of cooking food, her mistress desired her to take some out of the pot and put it into a dish; then, throwing open her kaross and uncovering her arms, she pointed with the stumps to the old warrior, saying "Give it to that man. He does not deserve it. It was he who cut off my hands when I conclusion, by whichever of these processes arrived at, will be more or less in accordance with your oaths. Your verdict may be right; it is to be hoped it will: it may be wrong; it is to be hoped it will not. At all events, gentlemen of the jury, you will come to some conclusion or other, unless coming to any-Charivari. it should so happen that you separate without Graham's Town Journal. THE LIBERATION WAR IN GERMANY. From the Foreign Quarterly Review (October). Was ich erlebte: aus der Erinnerung nie- all the formal machinery of nilitary circumstance, is never lost sight of. I have, accordingly, determined to relate my experience of German history, which my own narrow sphere, simply as I experienced it, with every personal feeling and relation as it arose within me or stood before me; and this method of treatment is likely to be satisfactory even to the already well-instructed reader, just in proportion to the disrepect shown to every thing merely personal by the modern historians. I the high merits of those who have treated these matters systematically; but the simple narration of a man of letters, who took part in the struggle, when already advanced in life, will not be without an interest of its own." HENRY STEFFENS, by birth a Norwegian, now a professor in Berlin, is well known to the literary and scientific world as a na-have no inclination, of course, to detract from tural philosopher and a novel writer of no vulgar mark. In the present volumes he has given us personal memoirs of his share of the great European movement made by the Germans against Napoleon in the years 1813 and 1814; and the value of the contributions thus made to the history of that not Coleridge only and Carlyle, among reThese remarks express a feeling to which important period, cannot, we think, be bet-cent British spokesmen, have given strong ter expressed than in the following words of utterance, but which must have been felt, the author himself. 66 more or less, by almost every person of sentiment in these times who has read or attempted to read modern history. A good battle, well described, now and then may possess a pictorial and an artistical value, even when it wants a true human interest; but a series of battles, minutely described, can have merely a scientific interest to those by whom they are minutely studied; and are to the general reader (especially where plans are not supplied,) wearisome, and, except as an external result, valueless. Most cordially, therefore, do we agree with the professor as to the value of merely personal details as a supplement to the ponder Generally speaking," says he, "there is no literary undertaking more difficult than a genuine historical account of the wars of modern times. Since the art of war has become a regular science, the narration of wars assumes a character only too like the exposition of a fixed system; and as the battles themselves, whatever motives may influence them, are at bottom combats of military principles rather than of moral agents; so the account of them is apt to reduce itself to a mere dry detail of marches and counter-marches, of advancing and retreating armies, of the quantity of ammunition taken, and the number (often not at all to be depended on) of killed, and wounded, and taken prisoners; or it takes the shape of a regular scientific exposition, which annihi-ous military and diplomatic records of lates all that is living and characteristic, and modern history; and there is no English commands a sort of general interest only when reader of Alison's ninth volume of Eusomething external and accidental interferes ropean History'-not to speak of German to modify the action of the scientific principle.who will not willingly concede to StefIn works of this kind, whatever is purely hu- fens the old man's privilege of talking copiman appears as a disturbing element, and, where it cannot be altogether omitted, is only ously about himself, when himself is merely tolerated. The individual man, just because the introducer of such names as Gneisenau, in his greatest moments he contains some- and Scharnhorst, Marshal Blücher, and the thing mysterious and unfathomable, is reject- Baron von Stein. ed as incompatible with the ordered rigor of The two volumes which contain these the system; every irregular outburst of vital patriotic reminiscences are the seventh and poetry is inadmissible. Even that which is the eighth of a series, to which our readers purely accidental, and beyond the control of have been already (No. lxi.) introduced. human measurement, and which, were it let alone, might assume a character of sublimity, When noticing the first six volumes, we is often forced to appear on the historical stage purposely eschewed all matter of a political as the result of a plan that, in fact, did not ex-nature, and confined ourselves, for the sake ist till after the victory was gained. In the of unity, to a few gleanings of literary parnarrations of Herodotus and Thucydides again ticulars, such as we thought might be inthese opposing elements interpenetrate one teresting to the student of German literaanother, and are essentially one. Men are placed before us in earnest struggle for all that makes human existence valuable, and forces the heart of man to feel strongly for man; and this living centre of interest, amid NOVEMBER, 1844. 24 ture. In the present supplementary notice we shall, for the same reason, reverse the procedure, and, excluding the literary and philosophical passages, confine ourselves to |