in Switzerland; and I have heard their teachers, who found them less manageable than English or Swiss boys, maintain that they must all of them have some dash of wild Indian blood in their veins. Englishmen, on the other hand, sometimes attribute the same character to republican institutions; but in fact they are spoilt long before they are old enough to know that they are not born under an absolute monarchy. The folowing passages indicate the emigration that is taking place from old states to new-though Alabama is young enough. Part of the "moving" may be attributed to the American restlessness; but there are evidently real economical reasons at the bottom, some of which might be pondered over with advantage by contributors to State loans. another eyed my short-sight glass, suspended by a riband round my neck, with much curiosity. Some of them asked me to read for them the name inscribed on the stern of a steamer, so far off that I doubted whether a good telescope would have enabled me to do more than discern the exact place where the name was written. Others, abruptly seizing the glass without leave or apology, brought their heads into close contact with mine, and, looking through it, exclaimed, in a disappointed and half reproachful tone, that they could see nothing. Meanwhile, the wives and daughters of passengers of the same class were sitting idle in the ladies' cabin, occasionally taking my wife's embroidery out of her hand. without asking leave, and examining it with many comments; usually, however, in a complimentary strain. To one who is studying the geology of the valley of the Mississippi, the society of such companions may be endurable for a few weeks. ought to recollect that they form the great majority The movers, who were going to Texas, had of those who support these noble steamers, without come down 200 miles from the upper country of which such researches could not be pursued except | Alabama, and were waiting for some others of their by an indefinite sacrifice of time. But we some- kindred who were to follow with their heavy times doubted how far an English party travelling wagons. One of these families is carrying away no for mere amusement would enjoy themselves. If they venture on the experiment, they had better not take with them an English maid-servant unless they are prepared for her being transformed into an equal. It would be safer to engage some one of that too numerous class commonly called "humble companions," who might occasionally enter into society with them. Ladies who can dispense with such assistance will find the maids in the inns, whether white or colored, most attentive. * He When my wife first entered the ladies' cabin, she found every one of the numerous rocking-chairs filled with a mother suckling an infant. As none of them had nurses or servants, all their other children were at large, and might have been a great resource to passengers suffering from ennui had they been under tolerable control; as it was, they were so riotous and undisciplined as to be the torment of all who approached them. "How fortunate you are," said one of the mothers to my wife," to be without children; they are so ungovernable, and if you switch them, they sulk or go into hysterics." The threat of "I'll switch you" is forever vociferated in an angry tone, but never carried into execution. One genteel and pleasing young lady sat down by my wife, and began conversation by saying, "You hate children, don't you?" intimating that such were her own feelings. A medical man, in large practice in one of the southern states, told us he often lost young patients in fevers, and other cases where excitement of the nerves was dangerous, by the habitual inability of the parents to exert the least command over their children. We saw an instance, where a young girl, in considerable danger, threw the medicine into the physician's face, and heaped most abusive epithets upon him. The director of the state penitentiary in Georgia told me that he had been at some pains to trace out the history of the most desperate characters under his charge, and found that they had been invariably spoilt children; and he added, if young Americans were not called upon to act for themselves at so early an age, and undergo the rubs and discipline of the world, they would be more vicious and immoral than the people of any other nation. Yet there is no country where children ought to be so great a blessing, or where they can be so easily provided for. Many young Americans have been sent to school 66 less than forty negroes; and the cheerfulness with which these slaves are going they know not where with their owners, notwithstanding their usual dislike to quit the place they have been brought up in, shows a strong bond of union between the master and his people." In the last fifteen months. 1,300 whites, and twice that number of slaves, have quitted Alabama for Texas and Arkansas; and they tell me that Monroe county has lost 1,500 inhabitants. "Much capital," said one of my informants, "is leaving this state; and no wonder ; for if we remain here, we are reduced to the alternative of high taxes to pay the interest of money so improvidently borrowed from England, or to suffer the disgrace of repudiation, which would be doubly shameful, because the money was received in hard cash, and lent out, often rashly, by the state, to farmers for agricultural improvements. Besides," he added, "all the expenses of government were in reality defrayed during several years by borrowed money, and the burden of the debt thrown on posterity. The facility with which your English capitalists, in 1821. lent their cash to a state from which the Indians were not yet expelled, without reflecting on the migratory nature of the white population, is astonishing! The planters who got grants of your money, and spent it, have nearly all of them moved off and settled beyond the Mississippi. "First, our legislature negotiates a loan; then borrows to pay the interest of it; then discovers, after some years, that five out of the sixteen millions lent to us have evaporated. Our democrats then stigmatize those who vote for direct taxes to redeem their pledges, as the high taxation men.' Possibly the capital and interest may eventually be made good, but there is some risk at least of a suspension of payment. At this moment the state is selling land forfeited by those to whom portions of borrowed money were lent on mortgage; but the value of property thus forced into the market is greatly depreciated.” Although, since my departure in 1846, Alabama has not repudiated, I was struck with the warning here conveyed against lending money to a new and half-formed community, where everything is fluctuating and on the move a state from which the Indians are only just retreating, and where few whites ever continue to reside three years in one place-where thousands are going with their negroes to Louisiana, Texas, or Arkansas-where even the county court-houses and state capitol are on the move-the court-houses of Clark county, for example, just shifted from Clarkesville to Macon, and the seat of legislature about to be transferred from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery. On board were many "movers" going to Texas with their slaves. One of them confessed to me that he had been eaten out of Alabama by his negroes. He had no idea where he was going; but, after settling his family at Houston, he said he should look out for a square league of good land to be had cheap. Another passenger had, a few weeks before, returned from Texas, much disappointed, and was holding forth in disparagement of the country for its want of wood and water, declaring that none could thrive there unless they came from the prairies of Illinois, and were inured to such privations. Cotton," he said, "could only be raised on a few narrow strips of alluvial land near the rivers; and, as these were not navigable by steamers, the crop when raised could not be carried to a market." He also comforted the mover with the assurance "that there were swarms of buffalo-flies to torment his horses, and sand-flies to sting him and his family." To this the undismayed emigrant replied, "that when he first set tled in Alabama, before the long grass and canes had been eaten down by his cattle, the insect pests were as great as they could be in Texas." He was, I found, one of those resolute pioneers of the wilderness, who, after building a log-house, clearing the forest, and improving some hundred acres of wild ground by years of labor, sells the farm and migrates again to another part of the uncleared for est; repeating this operation three or four times in the course of his life, and, though constantly growing richer, never disposed to take his ease. In pursuing this singular vocation, they who go southwards from Virginia to North and South Carolina, and thence to Georgia and Alabama, follow, as if by instinct, the corresponding zones of country. The inhabitants of the red soil of the granitic region keep to their oak and hiccory, the "crackers" of the tertiary pine-barrens to their light wood, and they of the newest geological formations in the seaislands to their fish and oysters. On reaching Texas, they are all of them at fault; which will surprise no geologist who has read Ferdinand Roemer's account of the form which the cretaceous strata assume in that country, consisting of a hard, compact, silicious limestone, which defies the decomposing action of the atmosphere, and forms table-lands of bare rock, so entirely unlike the marls, clays, and sands of the same age in Alabama. On going down from the cabin to the lower deck, I found a slave dealer with sixteen negroes to sell, most of them Virginians. I heard him decline an offer of 500 dollars for one of them, a price which he said he could have got for the man before he left his own state. We could easily extend these extracts by pictures of society from the northern, middle and southern states; for the book abounds in social sketches, and anecdotes and incidents illustrative of society in all its various classes. Our further extracts will exhibit the author as a painter of nature. This picture of the singular effects of cold on vegetation is from the White Mountains in New Hampshire. When we had passed through this lowest belt of wood the clouds cleared away, so that, on looking back to the westward, we had a fine view of the mountains of Vermont and the Camel's Hump, and were the more struck with the magnificent extent of the prospect as it had not opened upon us gradually during our ascent. We then began to enter the second region, or zone of evergreens, consisting of the black spruce and the Pinus balsamea, which were at first mixed with other forest-trees, all dwarfed in height, till at length, after we had ascended a few hundred feet, these two kinds of firs monopolized the entire ground. They are extremely dense, rising to about the height of a man's head; having evidently been prevented by the cold winds from continuing their upward growth beyond the level at which they are protected by the snow. All their vigor seems to have been exerted in throwing out numerous strong horizontal or pendant branches, each tree covering a considerable area, and being closely interwoven with others, so that they surround the mountain with a formidable hedge about a quarter of a mile broad. The innumerable dead boughs, which, after growing for a time, during a series of milder seasons, to a greater height, have then been killed by the keen blast, present a singular appearance. They are forked and leafless, and look like the antlers of an enormous herd of deer or elk. This thicket opposed a serious obstacle to those who first ascended the mountain thirty years ago. Dr. Francis Boot, among others, whose description of his ascent in 1816, given to me in London several years before, made me resolve one day to visit the scene, was compelled, with his companion, Dr. Bigelow, to climb over the tops and walk on the branches of these trees, until they came to the bald region. A traveller now passes so rapidly through the open pathway cut through this belt of firs, that he is in danger, while admiring the distant view, of overlooking its peculiarities. The trees become gradually lower and lower as you ascend, till at length they trail along the ground only two or three inches high; and I actually observed, at the upper margin of this zone, that the spruce was topped in its average height by the common reindeer moss.' The Mississippi has often been described. but never so completely; for it has never, perhaps, been visited by one who possesses the same combination of scientific knowledge and descriptive power as Sir Charles Lyell. From the description being mixed up with the personal narrative, the reader does not indeed get the whole features placed so distinctly or impressively before him as he might do by what the Germans call a monograph, or the French a study of the river; but the features are all there-the wonders of the delta's formation, which has originated in successive deposits through thousands of centuries; the drier swamps growing forests that were submerged by earthquakes, to be again covered by deposits, and the stumps of the submerged forests remaining fresh though buried to this day: the various courses which at different epochs the mighty flood has taken to reach the ocean, as shown by its ancient channels, now forming swamps and lagoons of various depths in various stages of filling up, sometimes isolated unless in times of flood, some times communicating with the main stream and collision with a huge steamer-it is strange to rewith each other in a remarkable way. At Vidalia we were joined by Mr. Forshey, the engineer; who went with us to Lake Concordia, a fine example of an old bend of the Mississippi, recently detached and converted into a crescentshaped lake, surrounded by wood. It is a fine sheet of water, fifteen miles long if measured by a curved line drawn through the middle. The old levee, or embankment, is still seen; but it is no longer necessary to keep it in repair, for a few years ago the channel, which once connected this bend with the main river, was silted up. Opposite Natchez the depth of the Mississippi varies from 100 feet to 150 feet; but Lake Concordia has nowhere a greater depth than 40 feet. There are thirteen similar lakes between the mouth of the Arkansas and Baton Rouge, all near the Mississippi, and produced by cutoffs; and so numerous are the channels which communicate from one to the other, that a canoe may pass during the flood season from Lake Concordia and reach the Gulf of Mexico, without once entering the Mississippi. flect, that at length, when their owners have caught sight of the towers of New Orleans in the distance, they should be hurried into a wilderness and perish there. I was shown the entrance of what is called the Carthage crevasse, formed in May, 1840, and open for eight weeks, during which time it attained a breadth of eighty feet. Its waters were discharged into Lake Ponchartrain, when nothing was visible between that great lagoon and the Mississippi but the tops of tall cypress trees growing in the morass, and a long, narrow, black stripe of earth, being the top of the levee, which marked the course of the river. There are still further wonders, more like Prospero's island than matter of fact, in " quaking prairies" with cattle around you and sea-fish below you, and floating islands that shrink under men's weight. After I had examined the bluff below Port Hudson, I went down the river in my boat to Fontania, a few miles to the south, to pay a visit to Mr. The enormous depth of the river just noted Falkner, a proprietor to whom Dr. Carpenter had is another of its wonders. The great Father given me a letter of introduction. He received me carries down his waters by deepening his chan- with great politeness, and at my request accomnel, not by extending his surface. "The great panied me at once to see a crescent-shaped sheet river does not run," says Sir Charles Lyell, of water on his estate, called Lake Solitude, evi"as might be inferred from the description of dently an ancient bed of the Mississippi now deserted. It is one of the few examples of old channels which some of the old geographers, on the top of a ridge occur to the east of the great river, the general tenin a level plain, but in a valley from one hundred dency of which is always to move from west to east. to two hundred and fifty feet deep," which he Of this eastward movement, there is a striking monhimself has scooped out. In answer to the ques-ument on the other side of the Mississippi immetion that might be raised, why, when the river has sometimes burst its banks and flowed into a lake, it does not take the nearest point to the ocean, Sir Charles replies-" It is probable that the Mississippi flows to the nearest point of the Gulf (of Mexico) where there is a sufficient depth or capacity in the bed of the sea to receive its vast burden of water and mud; and, if it went to Lake Pontchartrain, it would have to excavate a new valley many times deeper than the bottom of that lagoon." Unluckily, as we know from the last American arrivals, the body of water above the delta, confined by a sea-wall or "levee," is sufficiently deep to submerge the country, which it often does partially. Pointing to an old levee with a higher embankment newly made behind it, the captain told me that a breach had been made there in 1844, through which the Mississippi burst, inundating the low cultivated lands between the highest part of the bank and the swamp. In this manner, thousands of valuable acres were injured. He had seen the water rush through the opening at the rate of ten miles an hour, sucking in several flat boats, and carrying them over a watery waste into a dense swamp forest. Here the voyagers might remain entangled among the trees unheard of and unheeded till they were starved, if canoes were not sent to traverse the swamps in every direction in the hope of rescuing such wanderers from destruction. When we consider how many hairbreadth escapes these flat boats have experienced-how often they have been nearly run down in the night, or even in the day, during dense fogs, and sent to the bottom by diately opposite Port Hudson, called Fausse Rivière, a sheet of water of the usual horse-shoe form. One me to visit Lake Solitude; "because," said he, of my fellow-passengers in the Rainbow had urged there is a floating island in it, well wooded, on which a friend of mine once landed from a canoe, when, to his surprise, it began to sink with his weight. In great alarm, he climbed a cypress-tree, which also began immediately to go down with him as fast as he ascended. He mounted higher and higher into its boughs, until at length it seemed to subside; and, looking round, he saw in every direction, for a distance of fifty yards, the whole wood in motion." I wished much to know what foundation there could be for so marvellous a tale. It appears that there is always a bayou or channel, connecting, during floods, each deserted bend or lake with the main river, through which large floating logs may pass. These often form rafts, and become covered with soil supporting shrubs and trees. At first such green islands are blown from one part of the lake to another, by the winds; but the deciduous cypress, if it springs up in such a soil, sends down strong roots, many feet or yards long, so as to cast anchor in the muddy bottom, rendering the island stationary. After we had sailed up the river eighty miles, I was amused by the sight of the insignificant village of Donaldsonville, the future glories of which I had heard so eloquently depicted. Its position, however, is doubtless important; for here the right bank is intersected by that arm of the Mississippi called Bayou La Fourche. This arm has much the appearance of a canal; and, by it, I am told, our steamer, although it draws no less than ten feet water, might sail into the Gulf of Mexico, or traverse a large part of that wonderful inland navigation in the delta which contributes so largely to the wealth of Louis- | population, in 1845, was 23.6 per thousand; in iana. A curious description was given me by one Algeria, the mortality of the French population, of my fellow-travellers of that same low country, exclusively of deaths by war and of invalids reespecially the region called Attakapas. It contains, turned to die at home, was 62.5 per thousand. he said, wide" quaking prairies," where cattle are pastured, and where you may fancy yourself far in- The deaths among the French in Algeria exceed land; yet, if you pierce anywhere through the turf, the births-in 1845 they were respectively 6,689 to the depth of two feet, you find sea-fish swimming and 3,018. Yet that is not because the ordinary about, which make their way in search of food under increase of the population is less in Algeria-the the superficial sward from the Gulf of Mexico marriages in that colony are 17 per thousand; in through subterranean watery channels. France, 8.15; and the births are not in a less ratio-in France 28.3, in Algeria (among the French) 36.6. Settlements at Fondouck, Toumiettes, and El-Arouch, have been abandoned from a sheer impossibility of sustaining the frightful mortality. The nett annual decrease of the resident European population is 17.2 per thousand, of the French population 25.9. From the Spectator. FRENCH COLONIZATION OF ALGERIA. France." THREE pamphlets recently put forth by M. Boudin establish some curious conclusions against the practicability of ever really settling a French power in Algeria. M. Boudin has attained his eminence as chief physician to the army of the On the subject of agriculture the results are Alps, and a leading authority in military medicine, less easily extracted from the text. Suffice it to solely by his great and striking abilities; for he say, that the alternation of a broiling sun and inhas encountered and overborne no small amount undating rains limits the period of field-work for of persecution from those whose opinions he con- Europeans to two months in the year. The inevtroverted. One instance may be cited. Some itable expenses are excessive; and the produce is years since, he was one of the managers of the insufficient to support the cultivator; who must hospital at Toulon, and after interesting experi-eke it out with imports-paid for with what? ments on the effects of arsenic, he introduced an Even Marshal Bugeaud has declared that the arsenical treatment of the marsh fever under which agriculturist" had much better stop metayer in the soldiers from Algeria suffered. The faculty at Paris made a great outcry; the minister was besieged with remonstrances; M. Boudin was stopped in his treatment, and threatened with a judicial inquiry. But he had succeeded; the government protected him; and his method was soon after professionally recognized. By favor of the promotion which ability commands in the public service of France, he has risen rapidly in his profession. His pamphlets comprise a number of statistical details to show that Algeria is unfitted by its climate for European, and especially for French residents; that they do not become inured to the climate by long residence; and that they cannot obtain from the soil an adequate subsistence. Less consciously, he also indicates some further conclusions not without interest to the English colonist. His statistics of mortality are painfully conclusive. He turns the comparison in every possible way, showing that French life cannot stand the struggle with the climate; but in this place a few leading facts will suffice to indicate his results. In France, the mortality in the French *Lettres sur l'Algérie (Première Lettre.) Par. M. Boudin, Médecin en Chef de l'Armée des Alpes. Lettres sur l'Algérie (Seconde Lettre.) Par M. Boudin, Médecin en Chef de l'Armée des Alpes. Etudes de Physiologie et de Pathologie Comparées de Races Humaines. Par M. Boudin, Médecin en Chef de l'Armée des Alpes. M. Boudin, however, illustrates a negative propThe decrease of osition wider than he thinks. the population has been accounted for by the large proportion of single men in the colony; but, observes M. Boudin, with a logical naïveté, marriage is not necessary to an increase of the population; and he makes good the remark by the statistics of the very case in point. We will not go beyond the strictly statistical and scientific view which M. Boudin takes; but it is to be observed, that in a colony emanating from a country where marriage is the customary social institution, the means for preserving and rearing children will to a great extent accord with the number of married couples; so that a permanent increase to the population such as that hinted by M. Boudin could in no respect be counted upon in Algeria, indeM. Vialard pendently of the morbific obstacles. mentions a case in which it cost 1,000,000 francs to settle a hundred families; an outlay exceeding anything ever attempted in our own great colonizing country. The exports of French Algeria have been-the horns of the cattle consumed by the army, and the empty bottles sent back! Such are incidents of the last great attempt which France has made in colonization. The student of that neglected art will find many examples of the causes of failure in the history of French Algeria. From the Home Journal. THE Parisian correspondent of the London Morning Post thus makes the first mention of this unexpected event: We have all been much shocked, this afternoon, by the sudden death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and her homeopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an hour and a half ago. did not know what fear was-either of persons or opinions and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained "the age of discretion," before taking any decided step, she would, probably, have been one of those guiding stars of individualism in common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable. Lady Blessington's generous estimate of what services were due in friendship—her habitual conWe doubt whether a death could have taken duct in such relations amounting to a romantic place, in private life, in Europe, that would have chivalry of devotedness-bound to her, with a made a more vivid sensation than this, or have naturalness of affection not very common in that been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a posses- class of life, those who formed the circle of her sor of more power, in its most attractive shape, intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her could hardly have been named, in life public or tact and knowledge of the world enabled her to private-for the extent of Lady Blessington's understand, with a truth that sometimes seemed friendships with distinguished men of every na- like divination, the position of a friend at the tion, quality, character, rank and creed, was with-moment-his hopes and difficulties, his wants and out a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen capabilities. She had a much larger influence —but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never than was generally supposed with persons in were neglected and never lessened in their attach-power, who were not of her known acquaintance. ment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at Many an important spring of political and social this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, churchdignitaries, poets and authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers-a galaxy of the best of their different stations and pursuits-have received with tears at the door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death. The deceased will have a biographer-no doubt an able and renowned one. Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her qualities of mind and heart, as our own memory, of the acquaintance we had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw. movement was unsuspectedly within her control. She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove difficulties in society, which she did not herself frequent, serve artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man, with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a moment. amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage, the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen (who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of friendship) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions. Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius, in the creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay in the curiously felicitous The conversation, at the table in Gore House, combination of the best qualities of the two sexes, was allowed to be the most brilliant in Europe, in her single character as it came from nature. but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead She had the cool common sense and intrepid un- in it. Her manners were such as to put every subserviency which together give a man the best one at his ease, and her absolute tact at suggessocial superiority, and she had the tact, the deli-tion and change of topics, made any one shine, cacy and the impassioned devotedness which are who had it in him, when she chose to call it essentials in the finest compounds of woman. She forth. She had the display of her guests as com |