he most enterprising
traveler of modern times. He appears to me to have committed two errors
in his last expedition, and I think his death is fairly attributable to
impatience to reach the mouth of the Niger. He should not have attempted
to pass from the Gambia to the Niger during the rainy season. By this,
he lost thirty-five out of forty men. He should not have tried to
_force_ a passage through the kingdom of Houssa, without making presents
to the local petty chiefs. By this, he lost his life. When will
geographers cease to talk about the mouth of the Niger? England has been
as indefatigable in solving this problem as she has been in finding out
the North West Passage, and, at present, as unsuccessful. We see no
abatement, however, in her spirit of heroic enterprise. America has sent
but one explorer to this field--Ledyard.

CHAPTER XVI.

Novel reading--Greenough's "Geology"--The cariboo--Spiteful
plunder of private property on a large scale--Marshall's
Washington--St. Clair's "Narrative of his Campaign"--Etymology of
the word _totem_--A trait of transpositive languages--Polynesian
languages--A meteoric explosion at the maximum height of the winter's
temperature--Spafford's "Gazetteer"--Holmes on the Prophecies--Foreign
politics--Mythology--Gnomes--The Odjibwa based on monosyllables--No
auxiliary verbs--Pronouns declined for tense--Esprella's
letters--Valerius--Gospel of St. Luke--Chippewayan group of
languages--Home politics--Prospect of being appointed superintendent of
the lead mines of Missouri.

1823. _Jan. 22d_. A pinching cold winter wears away slowly. The whole
village seems to me like _so_ many prescient beavers, in a vast
snow-bank, who cut away the snow and make paths, every morning, from one
lodge to another. In this reticulation of snow paths the drum is sounded
and the flag raised. Most dignified bipeds we are. Hurrah for progress,
and the extension of the Anglo-Saxon race!

I read the "Recluse," translated from D'Arlincourt's popular novel _Le
Solitaire_, and think the commendations bestowed upon it, in the
translator's preface, just in the main. It is precisely such a novel as
I should suppose would be very popular in the highest circles of France,
and consequently, owing to difference of character, would be less
relished by the same circles in England. I suspect the author to be a
great admirer of Chateaubriand's "Atala," whose death is brought to mind
by the catastrophe of Elode's. Here, ho