lation of 4615, not more than 1000 could read. Still this state of things was an improvement upon what had prevailed at the date of the previous census-that of 1821; and happily the progress made since the census of 1831 has been corresponding, although, from the nature of the country, and the barrier offered to the dissemination of knowledge by the Gaelic language, much remains yet unaccomplished, and even unattempted. It is an affecting peculiarity," says Mr Anderson, "that the order of nature is to a great extent reversed in our mountain glens; the adult being very frequently almost wholly dependent upon the young for access to Scriptural knowledge. Several Highland parishes are so extensive as from forty to sixty miles in extreme length, and twenty to thirty in extreme breadth, and many are not much smaller. It is thus out of the power of a great part of the population to attend the public services of the church, while the mountainous character of the country increases the difficulties of intercourse. The capacity of reading is thus of the more vital consequence, and schools in remote districts are signal blessings, the teacher in numerous instances becoming a sort of pastor or missionary to the inhabitants."

In addition to these observations, it must be stated, to the credit of the church of Scotland, that it has long laboured earnestly and successfully in spreading religious knowledge among the Highlanders by the usual means of clerical superintendence. It is a rule in the Scottish church to appoint and settle no clergyman in a Highland parish who cannot speak and preach in Gaelic. The usual practice is to preach in English one part of every Sunday, and in Gaelic the other. As all the religious bodies which have seceded from the church follow the same rule, it cannot be brought against the Scotch that they have neglected making a due provision for religious instruction in the Highlands and Islands.

While all reasonable diligence has been employed to effect these beneficial ends, it is gratifying to know that matters connected with the ancient manners of this interesting portion of the United Kingdom have not been forgotten. Although clanship has been broken up, Highlanders, wherever they are scattered, retain a species of reverence for those whom they consider their chiefs, as well as for the set of the tartan to which their respective clans were wont to adhere. Thus, every true Highlander or his descendant, in London, Edinburgh, or at the furthest corner of the earth, can tell who is his chief, what is the appearance of his tartan, or what is the nature of the cognisance which he should wear in his bonnet. In order to keep alive a knowledge and feelings of this not unamiable kind, the Caledonian Society of London patronise and support a festival which takes place at Edinburgh every third year. On this occasion prizes are distributed to the best players on the bagpipe, the best performers of Highland reels

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and other dances, also to those who are the best or most correctly dressed in the ancient Highland costume. Bagpipers connected with the families of Breadalbane, Argyle, Sutherland, and others, usually attend; and the exhibition has certainly a marked effect in preserving the old Highland music and feelings. In different parts of the Highlands also, gatherings take place annually, under local patronage, for similar purposes, including the perpetuating of ancient out-door sports.

All these festive meetings take place in summer or autumn, when the Highlands are visited by hosts of tourists and sportsmen from the south. Every year, as the beauty of the picturesque scenery of the Highlands becomes better known, the number of visitors increases, and an excursion to no part of the world is productive of more pleasing emotions. The lakes and mountains of Stirling and Dumbartonshires; the rugged grandeur of Argyleshire; the picturesque beauty of the western coast and islands, more particularly of Staffa, of which we present a sketch beneath; the mountain passes and glens of Perthshire; the stupendous masses of Aberdeen and Inverness-shires—are all something new and striking to those who are accustomed to the tame though beautiful scenery of England.

AFRICAN DISCOVERY.

HE vast continent of Africa, measuring 5000 miles in length, and about 4700 in its greatest breadth, and the of which is calculated at 12,000,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the entire land area of the globe, has presented greater obstacles to human enterprise than any other equal portion of the earth's surface. The peculiar physical condition of Africa has operated as one cause of her isolation from the rest of the world. The other portions of our earth situated under the tropics consist generally either of sea, or of narrow peninsular tracts of land, and clusters of islands blown upon by the sea-breeze. Africa, on the other hand, presents scarcely one gulf or sea-break in its vast outline. A consequence of this compact geographical shape of a continent, the greater part of which is within the torrid zone, is its subjection, throughout its entire extent, to the unmitigated influence of the sun's heat. All that is noxious in climate we are accustomed to associate with Africa. Here stretching out into a boundless desert, where for days the traveller toils amid burning sands under a stifling sky-there covered with dense and swampy jungle, breathing out pestilence, and teeming with all repulsive forms of animal life, the African continent seems to defy the encroachments of European civilisation. And although, probably, our ideas of these African horrors will. be modified by more accurate knowledge, enough seems ascertained to prove that the laying open of interior Africa to the general flood of human influences will be among the last achievements of the exploring spirit of our race.

Notwithstanding the difficulties which lie in the way, Africa

has at all times been an object of curiosity and interest to the inhabitants of the civilised parts of the earth; and scientific zeal, the desire of extending traffic, and even the mere thirst for adventure, have prompted many expeditions for the purpose of exploring its coasts and making discoveries in its interior. The ancients appear to have acquired much knowledge of Africa, which was afterwards lost, and had to be re-acquired by the moderns for themselves. The African coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were not only familiar to the ancient geographers, but were inhabited by populations which performed a conspicuous part in the general affairs of the world, and ranked high in the scale of civilisation-the Egyptians, Carthaginians, &c. Nor, if we may believe the evidence which exists in favour of the accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by ancient navigators, were the other coasts of the continent—those, namely, which are washed by the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean-unvisited by northern ships. Regarding the interior of Africa, too, the knowledge possessed by the ancients, although very meagre in itself, was nearly as definite as that possessed by their modern descendants, until within a comparatively recent period. As far as the northern borders of the Great Desert, their own personal observation might be said to extend; and respecting the wandering tribes of black and savage people living farther to the south, they had received many vague notices. The Nile being one of the best-known rivers of the ancient world, its origin and course were matters of great interest, and the African geography of the ancients, in general, may be said to consist of speculations respecting this extraordinary river. The first mention made of the other great African river, the Niger, is by Ptolemy, who lived seventy years after Christ. Ptolemy believed that this river discharged itself ultimately into the Nile; others, however, did not admit this conclusion, and acknowledged that the real course of the Niger was a mystery.

Such are some of the more prominent points in the ancient geography of Africa. How wild and inaccurate must have been the notions entertained respecting the shape and total extent of the African continent, may be judged from the fact, that one geographer describes it as an irregular figure of four sides, the south side running nearly parallel to the equator, but considerably to the north of it! Others, again, held forth the fearful picture of Central Africa as a vast burning plain, in which no green thing grew, and into which no living being could penetrate; and this hypothesis of an uninhabitable torrid zone became at length the generally received one.

The invasion of Africa by the Arab races in the seventh century wrought a great change in the condition of the northern half of the continent. Founding powerful states along the Mediterranean coasts, these enterprising Mohammedans, or Moors, as they were called, were able, by means of the camel, to effect

a passage across the Desert which had baffled the ancients, and to hold intercourse with the negroes who lived on its southern border along the banks of the Niger and the shores of Lake Tchad. In some of these negro states the Arabs obtained a preponderance, and with others they carried on an influential and lucrative commerce. The consequence was a mixture of Moorish and negro blood among the inhabitants of the countries of Central Africa bordering on the Great Desert, as well as a general diffusion of certain scraps of the Mohammedan religion among the negro tribes. Hence it is that, in the innermost recesses of interior Africa at the present day, we find the negroes partly professing Paganism, partly Mohammedanism, but all practising ceremonies and superstitions in which we observe the Pagan spirit with a slight Mohammedan tincture.

It was not till the fifteenth century that the career of modern European discovery in Africa commenced. The Portuguese, leading the van of the nations of Europe in that great movement of maritime enterprise which constitutes so signal an epoch in the history of modern society, selected the western coast of Africa as the most promising track along which to prosecute discovery; their intercourse with the Moors having made them aware that gold and other precious commodities were to be procured in that direction. In the year 1433, Cape Bojador was passed by a navigator called Gilianez; and others succeeding him, passed Cape Blanco, and, exploring the entire coast of the Desert, reached at length the fertile shores of Gambia and Guinea. The sudden bending inwards of the coast line at the Gulf of Guinea gave a new direction and a new impulse to the activity of the Portuguese. Having no definite ideas of the breadth of the African continent, they imagined that, by continuing their course eastward along the Gulf, they would arrive at the renowned country of the great Prester John, a fabulous personage, who was believed to reign with golden sway over an immense and rich territory, situated no one could tell exactly where, but which some contended could be no other than Abyssinia. The Portuguese, while prosecuting their discoveries along the African coast, did not neglect means for establishing a commercial intercourse with those parts of the coast which they had already explored. Settlements or factories for the convenience of the trade in gold, ivory, gum, different kinds of timber, and eventually also in slaves, were founded at various points of the coast between Cape Verd and Biafra. Various missionary settlements were likewise founded for the dissemination of the Roman Catholic faith among the

natives.

The chimera of Prester John was succeeded by the more rational hope of effecting a passage to India by the way of Southern Africa. This great feat, accordingly, was at length achieved by Vasco de Gama, who, in 1497, four years after the