TAPIOCA. Starch is often combined with poisonous substances; and many anxious mothers will be surprised to hear that the mild, bland, demulcent tapioca, is obtained from the root of the jatropha manihot, a plant indigenous to the Brazils, Guiana, and the West India Islands, which is one of the most active poisons known, causing death in a few minutes after it has been swal lowed. The roots of this plant, which contain a great quantity of sap, are peeled and subjected to pressure in bags made of rushes. The juice thus forced out is so deadly a poison, that it is employed by the Indians as a poison for their arrows. On being allowed to stand, however, it soon deposits a white starch, which, when properly washed, is quite innocent. This starch is then dried in smoke, and afterwards passed through a sieve; and is the substance from which tapioca and the cassava bread of the Indians is prepared. The discovery of the process for separating this powder from the jatropha manihot has been of the greatest importance to the human race, since it enables us to obtain a most valuable article of food from a plant that is of a highly poisonous nature, but which contains an enormous quantity of nutritious matter; for it is asserted that one acre of manihot will afford nourishment for more persons than six acres of wheat. MODERN EPICUREAN EXPLOITS. Europeans may justly lay claim to the merit of having been most instrumental in conveying the different animals and vegetables most useful as articles of diet from one country to another. From Europe and Asia they have carried our common ruminants, and fowls, corn, sugar, rice, tamarinds, tea, coffee, some spices, oranges, and many other vegetables, to America and Australasia. They have brought back from America in return, the turkey, maize, potatoes, manihot, the pine-apple, &c., and transported them to different regions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, where the climate and soil are fitted for their existence and growth. They have thus conferred a great benefit on the human race in general; for the more completely this interchange is carried out, the more will the means for nourishing the body be multiplied, which is the best way to improve its condition. EFFECTS OF CULTURE. Ofied with advantage by suppressing the growth of one part, which causes increased development of other parts. MOFFAT'S MSSIONARY LABORS AND THIS, in its leading feature, the personal record of its author, is a very remarkable book, and one which is better calculated to show the utility of missions to Africa than any work that has appeared for many years back. It is the narrative of a man who has been for twenty-three years a faithful and diligent laborer among the heathen, as the agent, in South Africa, of the London Missionary Society,―of a man of quick intelligence, and remarkable sagacity, and one who appears to have been in every way singularly well adapted to the difficult situation into which Providence has thrown him From youth to middle age he has spent his life in privations, vicissitudes, and dangers, of which stay-at-home people can hardly form an idea; and which few men possess the courage, fortitude, and physical hardihood to encounter, and much less to persevere under. The missionary to barbarous or half-civilized countries is the true hero of modern times. He is the successor of the hardy and enterprising navigator and discoverer of the middle ages; though he follows in their track for much nobler purposes, and in the strength of a purer spirit. But, independently altogether of his sacred vocation, we have seldom read any narrative which more powerfully stirs the sympathies than this of Moffat; or which interests the reader more deeply, in the perils, conflicts, and personal adventures of the actor, and in the display of those varied intellectual and physical qualities and resources which, in the face of what seemed insurmountable obstacles, has enabled him to work what The almond, with its tough coriaceous husk, looks like miracles, among the barbarous has been changed by long culture into the peach, tribes for whose improvement he has laborwith its beautiful, soft, and delicious pulp; the ed with untiring courage; often cast down, acrid sloe, into the luscious plum; and the harsh, but never despairing. He and his coadjubitter crab, into the golden pippin. Attention to tors may now be hailed as the civilizers of nutrition has produced quite as marked changes the barbarous tribes of South Africa, whom in the pear, cherry, and other fruit-trees; many of which have not only been altered in their they have conquered and civilized by Chrisqualities and appearance, but even in their habits. tianizing. But these-civilization and ChrisCelery, so agreeable to most palates, is a modi- tianity-are phrases which ought to be fication of the apium graveolens, the taste of synonymous. which is so acrid and bitter that it cannot be From the published Reports of the Miseaten. Our cauliflowers and cabbages, which sionary Society, and the African Narratives weigh many pounds, are largely-developed cole- of the Rev. John Campbell, late of Kingsworts, that grow wild on the sea-shore, and do not weigh more than half an ounce each. The land, some of our readers must probably rose has been produced by cultivation from the have some previous knowledge of the common wild-brier. Many plants may be modi-thor of this work. At a very early 6 was sent out to Africa by the London So- | has become that of his affections; the wilciety. The principal scene of his mission- derness, now no longer a wilderness, his beary labors has been among the Bechuanas; loved home. We presume that Mr. Moffat and his head-quarters is now the flourishing is now far on his way to the shores of AfKuruman Station, which he was mainly in- rica. strumental in planting. But his has been a In an old note-book of John Campbell's, wandering life, and one wholly spent among there appears this notice of Mr. Moffat, 66 savage tribes and roving barbarians;" which we cite in the first place :-"His edunor does John Campbell, over-rate Mof- cation does not qualify him to preach at Cape fat's extraordinary powers and achieve- Town; but I believe him to be a first-rate ments when he says, "To master the lan- missionary to the heathen. He is also acguage he wandered the deserts with the sav- quainted with agriculture, carpentery work, age tribes, sharing their perils and priva- the sextant, map-making," &c. &c. A know. tions. He outdid Paul in accommodating ledge of medicine and surgery appear to himself to all men, in order to save some. have been among Mr. Moffat's useful acPaul never became a savage in lot, to save quirements; and with his own hands he savages. Many might indeed thus stoop to printed the Gospels, which he had translatconquer, but few could retain both their ed into the language of the country, as well piety and philosophy in such society!" as school-books, hymn-books, and other On Campbell's second journey to Africa, useful tracts. To own the truth, we are Mr. Moffat was his companion from Cape not certain that Campbell was able to appreTown into the interior. Though much younger in years, and perhaps inferior to Campbell in some secondary attainments, we should infer that Moffat is a man of loftier intellect, and one who possesses, in a far higher degree, those qualities which enable the missionary to acquire and retain influence over a barbarous people. His personal courage alone, and skill in the chase and in many useful arts, must have given him an immense advantage with the Afri cans. In the course of his long sojourn among the Bechuanas and Namaquas, and the neighboring tribes, Mr. Moffat has made several journeys to Cape Town on private business, or for objects connected with his missionary labors. On one of these journeys he was married to a young lady to whom he appears to have been engaged before he left England, and who has been his faithful companion in the desert. In the wilds of Africa he has had a large family, and experienced a full share of domestic affliction and calamity, though his wife must have been not only a very great addition to his happiness, but to his usefulness as a laborer among the heathen. The year before last, Mr. Moffat, for the first time since his departure, visited England, to give an account of his extraordinary labors, and more extraordinary ultimate success. This, we understand, he has frequently done orally, but better by the publication of the interesting work before us, which he has bequeathed as a legacy to the multitudes of friends of all classes who have shown him kindness, before he shall finally return to the far-distant scene of his labors, his conflicts, and his triumphs. The country of his adoption ciate the full merits of this breaker-up of the fallow-ground, in a field to which he was himself but a transient though a most useful visitor. As to Moffat not being qualified to preach at Cape Town, if such be the fact, the fault must rest with the audience, and not with the Preacher;-the actor in, and the author of, the remarkable narrative before us. Preaching and we wish this was as generally understood among the clergy as it is among the laity-admits of much greater variety than is usually imagined, and of a far wider range of topics. If a man who has spent an active life, replete with wild adventure and daring enterprise, among the barbarous hordes of Africa, propagating the Gospel by exhibiting its fruits in his lessons and in his life, be not an adept in the conventionalities and usages of monotonous sermonizing, as they are practised among us and transmitted from generation to generation almost unchanged-if he may not be what is called a "good preacher," he is something of a far higher character, which not one "good preacher" in a thousand is fitted to become. A feeling of undue humility has led Mr. Moffat to make superfluous apologies for the imperfections of his style, and for his inability to enter upon philosophical disquisition and analysis. He has done much better; he has supplied philosophers, and all orders of men, with copious materials, and much novel matter for reflection; and the actor in the wild scenes he describes, the witness of the strange facts he relates, could not fail of apt expressions to convey his own vivid feelings and recollections of the events he had witnessed; could not, in short, fail to be imaginative and eloquent in the best sense. Moffat is so in an eminent degree. He is a native of Scotland, which says something for the early nurture of the higher faculties of his mind; and his residence in the wilderness has wonderfully preserved the originality and raciness of his mental constitution. An able man he must have been under all circumstances; but had he lived at home, aiming to become such a preacher as, for a season, is pretty sure to captivate a town or civilized audience, he would probably have been tamed down into respectable mediocrity. He was accepted by the Directors of the Society, and set apart for his work at the same time with the lamented Williams, the "Martyr of Erromanga." His career has been more arduous, his conflict more protracted; and when the nature of his position is closely examined, his final success appears to us more remarkable. He has eminently been a breaker-up of the fallowground; one who bears the burden in the heat of the day. His volume must, we imagine, engage the attention of many who are not particularly interested in missionary enterprise, from the curious and novel as pects in which it presents a portion of the great human family, and from its copious additions to natural history. Intelligent travellers, passing through these tribes, describe superficially their condition and manners; but men like Moffat, who have spent a lifetime among them, studied and used their language, and adopted their usages so far as this was advisable, becoming, as it were, children of their family, are able to do much more. The missionaries, if tolerably enlightened men, are certainly much better qualified to tell us of the people among whom they labor, than any other description of travellers. actor in the scenes he describes, and the principal hero of his own tale, is interesting, though it falls below the personal narrative, both from the tamer nature of the events, and the greater animation of the author, when he comes to be the actor, instead of the chronicler, of those daring and perilous adventures. From the Hottentots the missions were gradually extended to the Bushmen, the Namaquas, Corannas, Griquas, and Bechuanas; the native converts becoming efficient instruments in spreading religious knowledge among their savage and nomade neighbors. In 1806, the Orange River was first crossed by the missionaries, and the mission of Namaqua-land established, under very disastrous circumstances, by the brothers Albrechts. A fierce, predatory chief, named Africaner, a name which afterwards became familiar and dear to the friends of African Missions, was at that time the scourge and terror of the country, but particularly of the Dutch settlers on the frontier of the colony. The history of this noble African is not a little romantic. The first missionaries were ready to despond, and to abandon the enterprise under the many and grievous discour agements; and, among other reasons, from their proximity to this noted freebooter and cattle-stealer. One day this dreaded personage appeared at the station, and thus addressed them: "As you are sent by the English, I welcome you to the country; for though I hate the Dutch, my former oppressors, I love the English; for I have always heard that they are the friends of the black man." poor Jager, the eldest son of the old man, from his shrewdness and prowess, obtained the reins of the government of his tribe at an early age. He and his father once roamed on their native hills and dales, within 100 miles of Cape Town; pastured Mr. Moffat's volume opens with a gener- their own flocks, killed their own game, drank of al view of the condition of the tribes of their own streams, and mingled the music of Southern Africa; and a retrospective his- their heathen songs with the winds which burst over the Witsemberg and Winterhoek mountory of missions to that division of the tains, once the strongholds of his clan. As the great continent. He begins with Schmidt, Dutch settlers increased, and found it necessary who was sent forth by the Moravians to the to make room for themselves, by adopting as Hottentots upwards of a century since. their own the lands which lay beyond them, the The fascinating history of Schmidt's suc- Hottentots, the aborigines, perfectly incapable cessful labors has long been familiar to the of maintaining their ground against these forworld. They were suspended by the jeal-eign intruders, were compelled to give place by removing to a distance, or yielding themselves ousy of the Dutch East India Company; but in passive obedience to the farmers. From time fifty years afterwards, when Missionaries to time he found himself and his people becomwere sgain sent out, the good fruits of ing more remote from the land of their fore Schmidt's labors were still visible, and his fathers, till he became united and subject to a memory paved the way for the favorable re-farmer named P. Here he and his diminception of Vanderkemp and others. The retrospect of the various South-African Missions, from their commencement until the period when Mr. Moffat became himself an | ished clan lived for a number of years. In Africaner, P found a faithful, and an intrepid shepherd; while his valor in defending and increasing the herds and flocks of his master, enhanced his value, at the same time it rapidly ma tured the latent principle which afterwards re- until Berend also was subdued by the power coiled on that devoted family, and carried devas- of the Gospel of Peace. Probably both the tation to whatever quarter he directed his steps. chiefs about the same time began to perHad P― treated his subjects with common ceive the unprofitable nature of their sanhumanity, not to say with gratitude, he might have died honorably, and prevented the catas-guinary quarrels. Of Nicholas Berend, a trophe which befell the family, and the train of brother of the chief, and one of his best caprobbery, crime, and bloodshed, which quickly tains, it is told that he was afterward atfollowed that melancholy event. tached to different missions as a native We omit the tragedy, in which the far-teacher. He was, says Moffat, mer, by treachery, provoked his fate. When the horrible outrage was completed, A very superior man both in appearance and intellect. I have frequently travelled with him, and many a dreary mile have we walked over Africaner, with as little loss of time as possi- the wilderness together. Having an excellent ble, rallied the remnant of his tribe, and, with memory, and good deseriptive powers, he has what they could take with them, directed their often beguiled the dreariness of the road, by recourse to the Orange River, and were soon be-hearsing deeds of valor in days of heathenism, yond the reach of pursuers, who, in a thinly-in which this struggle with Africaner bore a proscattered population, required time to collect.minent part, and on which he could not reflect He fixed his abode on the banks of the Orange without a sigh of sorrow. River; and afterwards, a chief ceding to him Nicholas finished his Christian course under the his dominion in Great Namaqua-land, it hence-pastoral care of the Rev. T. L. Hodgson, Wesforth became his by right, as well as by con leyan missionary at Boochuap. His end was quest. peace. The subsequent wild adventures of this Among the earlier exploits of Africaner bold and generous outlaw, carry the imagi- was sacking the Namaqua mission-station, nation back to the days of Johnny Arm- probably for the sake of plunder, but avowstrong and Robin Hood, or of the "landless" edly because some of his property had been Macgregor; but his end was of a very dif- unjustly seized by a settler. A conciliatory ferent character. The man who lived in letter, which John Campbell, when travelling continual strife with all around him, whose through Namaqua-land, in deadly terror of hand was against every man; whose busi- Africaner, addressed to the formidable freeness was rapine, and whose passion re- booter, is said to have produced a powerful venge; whose name was a terror not only effect upon his naturally intelligent and eleto the colonists on the north, but to the na-vated mind. Two of his brothers were contive tribes of the south; "whose name car-verted by the preaching of the missionary ried dismay into the solitary places," be- Ebner, and were baptized shortly before Mr. came an eminent instance of the power of Moffat, in 1817, left Cape Town for Africathe principles of the Gospel over a mind ner's village in the wilderness. He sayswhich, however fierce and untaught, had never been treacherous nor ungenerous. Mr. Moffat relates, that after this great change had taken place It was evident to me, as I approached the boundaries of the colony, that the farmers, who, of course, had not one good word to say of Africaner, were skeptical to the last degree about his reported conversion, and most unceremoniously predicted As I was standing with a Namaqua chief, my destruction. One said he would set me up looking at Africaner, in a supplicating attitude, for a mark for his boys to shoot at: and anentreating parties ripe for a battle, to live at other, that he would strip off my skin, and make a peace with each other: "Look," said the wondrum of it to dance to another most consoling dering chief, pointing to Africaner, "there is the prediction was, that he would make a drinking cup man, once the lion, at whose roar even the inha-of my skull. I believe they were serious, and es bitants of distant hamlets fled from their homes! Yes, and I" (patting his chest with his hand) "have, for fear of his approach, fled with my people, our wives and our babes, to the mountain glen, or to the wilderness, and spent nights among beasts of prey, rather than gaze on the eyes of this lion, or hear his roar." Another native chief, with whom Africaner was at deadly feud, was named Berend. Several of their bloody conflicts and cattle forays are described, in which great skill as well as prowess were displayed upon both sides. Theirs were generally drawn battles, and they continued to harass and to breathe hatred and defiance to each other, pecially a kind motherly lady, who, wiping the tear from her eye, bade me farewell, saying, "Had you been an old man, it would have been nothing, for you would soon have died, whether or no; but you are young, and going to become a prey to that monster." But we shall see more of this remarkable person. The privations and dangers of the journey to Africaner's village might have interest in the narrative of an ordinary traveller; but Moffat's subsequent adventures far eclipse these early trials of his faith and patience, his manliness and hardihood. His reception by the tamed Wolf, and scourge of the desert, is interesting. Africaner had future looked dark and portentous in reference to the mission. This was a cheerless beginning, and worse evils were at hand. Mr. Ebner, the missionary at this station, was, from some unexplained cause, on very ill terms with Titus Africaner, and he shortly after this abandoned the station, and returned to Germany, his native land. It is not unfair to conclude that he was not well adapted to a situation so difficult, and requiring so much applied for a missionary; but as Moffat advanced, the inhabitants of another kraal intercepted and wished to detain him among them, and almost forced him to remain, until the appearance of a party of the chief's people and three of his brothers ended the contest. Moffat's reception seemed cold; and his brother missionary Ebner, who had baptized the Africaners, described the whole inhabitants as a "wicked, suspicious, and dangerous people, baptized and unbaptized." The chief was so long of making his ap-sagacity; and it appears to have been owpearance that young Moffat's heart began to fail, but at length Africaner welcomed him with frank kindness; hoped that as he was so young he would live long among them; and he immediately set the laborers, the usual drudges, the beasts of burden, the poor women, to build a hut for the missionary : ing to the presence and influence of Moffat that he at last got away unharmed. The condition of the solitary young man he left was painful in the extreme; and he had not yet made trial of himself. He tells I was left alone with a people suspicious in the extreme; jealous of their rights, which they had obtained at the point of the sword; and the best of A circle was instantly formed, and the women, whom Mr. E. described as a sharp thorn. I had evidently delighted with the job, fixed the poles, no friend and brother with whom I could particitied them down in the hemispheric form, and cov-pate in the cominunion of saints, none to whom I ered them with the mats, all ready for habitation, could look for counsel or advice. A barren and in the course of little more than half an hour.- miserable country; a small salary, about £25 per Since that time, I have seen houses built of all de-annum. No grain, and consequently no bread, scriptions, and assisted in the construction of a and no prospect of getting any, from the want of good many myself; but I confess I never witnessed water to cultivate the ground; and destitute of the such expedition. Hottentot houses, (for such they means of sending to the colony. may be called, being confined to the different Soon after my stated services commenced-which tribes of that nation,) are at best not very com- were, according to the custom of our missionaries fortable. I lived nearly six months in this native at that period, every morning and evening, and hut, which very frequently required tightening and school for three or four hours during the day-I fastening after a storm. When the sun shone, it was cheered with tokens of the Divine presence. was unbearably hot; when the rain fell, I came in The chief, who had for some time past been in a for a share of it; when the wind blew, I had fre- doubtful state, attended with such regularity, that quently to decamp to escape the dust; and in ad- I might as well doubt of morning's dawn, as of his dition to these little inconveniences, any hungry attendance on the appointed means of grace. To cur of a dog that wished a night's lodging, would reading, in which he was not very fluent, he atforce itself through the frail wall, and not unfre-tended with all the assiduity and energy of a youthquently deprive me of my anticipated meal for the coming day; and I have more than once found a serpent coiled up in a corner. . ful believer; the Testament became his constant companion, and his profiting appeared unto all. Often have I seen him under the shadow of a great But to return to my new habitation, in which, after rock, nearly the livelong day, eagerly perusing the my household matters were arranged, I began to pages of Divine inspiration; or in his hut he ruminate on the past,-the home and friends I had would sit, unconscious of the affairs of a family left, perhaps, for ever; the mighty ocean which around, or the entrance of a stranger, with his eye rolled between, the desert country through which gazing on the blessed book, and his mind wrapt I had passed, to reach one still more dreary. In up in things divine. Many were the nights he taking a review of the past, which seemed to in- sat with me, on a great stone, at the door of my crease in brightness, as I traced all the way inhabitation, conversing with me till the dawn of anwhich I had been brought, during the stillness of my first night's repose, I often involuntarily said and sung, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by thy help I'm come." The inimitable hymn from which these lines are taken, was often sung by Mr. and Mrs. Kitchingman and myself, while passing through the lonely desert. But my mind was frequently occupied with other themes. I was young, had entered into a new and responsible situation, and one surrounded with difficulties of no ordinary character. Already I began to discover some indications of an approaching storm, which might try my faith. The other day, on creation, providence, redemption, and |