parts of that extensive tract than in others. They would not appear, however, to be very numerous anywhere; and though a considerable portion of the Kuchar is subject to the Ghoorkalis, the Nepaulians procure the Kustoora principally from the vicinity of Neyat, Dhy

boon, and one or two other places. This animal is most usually caught by means of a snare, made of a particular kind of mountain bamboo, of which it is reported that the whole species is occasionally blasted at once, not a single tree remaining that does not rapidly decay. The blight, however, never happening till the annual seed has fallen into the ground, the plant is abundantly renewed in due course of production. Very little pure musk is to be obtained at Khatmandu; and there is still less exported from Nepaul. Indeed, I have been assured that even the musk contained in the nâfeh, or bag, still attached to the body of the animal, is not always found unadulterated, and that its purity can only be relied on when the Kustoora is received directly as a present from some person on whose lands it has recently been caught."

Having read this description of the small animal which supplies the precious perfume in niggard quantities, we hunted further, but in vain, for some mention of the musk-elephant, of which we had never before heard. We thought how delighted would be Mr Atkinson of Bond Street, and Mr Smyth, of the Civet Cat, and other proprietors of similar sweet-scented establishments, at this sudden and enormous augmentation of their resources, for which they were doubtless indebted to the zoological zeal of the young Cingalese jurist. Presently, however, on examination of the context, our fragrant illusions were dispelled. We had already been puzzled, whilst reading Captain Egerton, by that officer's repeated mention of " rogue elephant" and it now struck us that the naval commander's "rogue," and Mr Oliphant's "musk," were intended to designate the state of sexual madness in which an elephant is said to be must. We cannot sufficiently laud the playful and exquisite delicacy of the sea-captain, at the same time that we admonish the proctor to rub up his Oordoo, and to correct, in any future edition of his book, the not unfrequent errors he has committed when writing names of places and

VOL. LXXII.—NO. CCCCXLI.

a

employing native terms. At page 81, for instance, when describing the great square in Khatmandu, he tells us that it" is well paved, and contains the Chinese pagoda, composed entirely of wood, from which it is said the town

derives its name." We should have expected him to know that Khatmandu, or Kathipore, means "the town of wood," (the original material of its construction,) with the name of which the temple has neither more nor less to do than any other wooden edifice in the place. We are rather curious to know where Mr Oliphant picked up the remarkable piece of information with which, a few lines further on, he presents his readers :—

"In Nepaul it is a rule that the death of one great animal should be immediately followed by that of another; and when a Rajah dies, a rhinoceros is forthwith killed to keep him company."

Surely some waggish Oriental has been amusing himself at the expense of the smooth-faced Feringee.

Any reference to blunders naturally reminds us of Captain Smith, whom we left some pages back, clipping paragraphs from Kirkpatrick, and sticking them into his own dapper duodecimos. After a while he lays aside Kirkpatrick, turns to the Nepaul Blue Book, and from it concocts a sort of history of the Nepaulese war. This fills about two hundred pages, and gets him well on into his second volume. "Nepaul, since the war," is dismissed in sixteen scanty pages. Brief as these are, they abound in mistakes. Khatmandu is printed Estnordoo; Mr Brian Hodgson is Mr W. Hodgson; the ex-king of Nepaul is stated to be dead, which must be very recently, for only a few months ago he was all alive. perhaps the Captain has been consulting a somnambulist. With his opportunities, as political assistant in Nepaul for five years, how easy ought it to have been for Captain Smith to have produced a really good and useful book, which should have worthily succeeded Kirkpatrick and Hamilton. We hope some day to witness the appearance of such a work. Nepaul and Khatmandu are far-off places and outlandish names, known until lately but to

G

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tions of Europe; and, as if in anticipation of some still greater crisis yet to come, Australia, groaning under a plethora of new-found wealth, starving Croesus-like in the midst of her gold, cries aloud to Europe for men to till her fields, to tend her flocks, or to satiate their restless energies by the exploration of her fifteen hundred miles of auriferous mountains. That her call is already being answered, any one may see at a glance. What city of our own country but is now sending forth her hundreds, what town her tens, what village or hamlet of the land but has some family or individual bound for the land of promise? And, what is worthy of notice, the emigration-fever-like all fevers when they become epidemic-has now mounted from the lower classes to the higher; and the same relief seems about to be afforded to our world of clerks, and milliners, and better artisans, as has already relieved the pressure, and kept up the wages, of our suffering peasantry.

There is one remarkable and significant fact connected with the recent gold-discoveries. They have all been made" in the uttermost parts of the earth," and within the bosom or on the shores of an ocean of all others the least whitened by the sails or cheered by the presence of civilised man. Although abounding with islands and archipelagos transcendent alike for beauty and productiveness-where Nature has been enriching the soil by the fall of the leaf throughout fiveand-forty centuries,-where sun and breeze, wood and water, shore and sea, present endless prizes to the enterprise of civilisation,-no maritime power, no sea-loving people, has ever arisen upon the shores of the Pacific Ocean. From the dawn of history, that longest of the earth's sea-boards has sent forth no navy to explore, and occupy, and reclaim the fertile isles and semi-continents which compose that sixth division of the globe which we now entitle Oceanica. Does it not seem as if those vast ocean-realms have been reserved by Providence until now, in order that they might become the empire of that free Anglo-Saxon race, which, cradled

in a little island of the West, has come to throw its mighty arms around the whole world?

But Providence ever attains the greatest ends by the simplest means; and the same agency of Gold which is so remarkably influencing the destinies of Europe, promises to accomplish a phenomenon, less important, it may be, but even more astounding, for the Asiatic world. The disasters resulting to China from its late war with us, the increase of taxes-the injury to commerce and employment in certain provinces of the Empire-and the general unsettling of large masses of the people, as well as the partial infusion of European ideas in the maritime districts,-have greatly broken up the apathy and stay-at-home spirit of the Celestials; and no sooner did news of the gold-discoveries reach Canton, than the mania seized upon them also; and the remarkable spectacle was witnessed of a nation which had kept itself apart from the rest of mankind since the Deluge, coming forward to compete with its fellow-races for the spoils of the earth. The Hermit Nation came forth from its cell into the world, to wonder and be wondered at-but above all, to work, and to show that there is an industry and intelligence in the population of China which some even of the European nations would do well to acquire.

"Quite a large number of the Celestials,” said a Californian journal a year ago, “have arrived among us of late, enticed hither by the golden romance which has filled the world. Scarcely a ship arrives here that does not bring an increase to this worthy integer of our population; and we hear, by China papers, and private advices from that empire, that the feeling is spreading all through the sea-board, and, as a consequence, nearly all the vessels that are up for this country are so for the prospect of passengers. A few Chinamen have returned, taking home with them some thousands of dollars in Californian gold, and have thus given an impetus to the spirit of emigration from their fatherland which is not likely to abate for some years to

Hitherto, the Chinese who left their own country generally found their way in native vessels to Borneo, Siam, and the Straits, where their situation has not always been safe or satisfactory, and their junk voyages almost invariably attended with great risk, as well from pirates of divers nations as from the common perils of of the sea. Despite these difficulties, however, for several years past a large and rapidly increasing emigration of Chinese labourers has taken place to different parts of the adjoining islands and countries, amongst others to Singapore, the emigration to which dependency of the British Crown was chiefly conducted in the following singular manner:-The owner of a native junk engages with a number of free but penniless Chinese to convey them to Singapore, upon the understanding that, on their arrival at that port, they will each engage with such residents as are in want of servants or labourers, to work for them for a certain period without other remuneration than board and lodging, the parties so engaging them paying as an equivalent the amount of their passage-money from China; the length of servitude thus freely, and on both sides cheerfully, bargained for, being dependent on the relative state of supply and demand. This mode of obtaining labour by private enterprise has proved quite successful, and has been carried on, to some extent, for many years, with the sanction of the British authorities, and to the satisfaction and profit of shipowner, employer, and employed.

The reports of those Chinamen who first returned from California to their own country, of the good reception they had met with there, and of the perfect security of the voyage when made in the ships of the Foreigners, gave an incalculable impulse to the emigration-fever of the Celestials; and they are now finding their way, in great and increasing numbers, not only to California, but to Australia, Cuba, and our West Indian colonies. To these latter, a supply of labour suited to a tropical climate is a desideratum of primary importance, if we would not see those magnificent islands irremediably relapse, as they are fast doing. ***o a state of wilderness,

and of such labour China is both willing and anxious to yield an unlimited supply. An experiment to test the practicability of importing Chinese labourers into Cuba was made about four years ago, when there were introduced into Havanna 581 Coolies from Amoy-638 having embarked there, and 57 having died on the passage and in quarantine. These labourers were distributed among various planters as apprentices, receiving four dollars each amonth. At the commencement, several of the masters were dissatisfied with them, but experience soon proved their value; and recently, a number of the most intelligent proprietors in Cuba, consulted by the local authorities, declared that they had found the Chinese in their service "laborious, robust-almost as much so as the best Africans,-more intelligent, and sufficiently docile, under good management." They moreover expressed themselves desirous that immigration should be encouraged, and ready to take a certain number into their employment; and some of them deem it quite possible to cultivate their properties with Chinese exclusively. In consequence, a contract has been made a few months ago by an English house (Syme, Muir, & Co. of Amoy) to introduce eight thousand Coolies into the island, and the entire number is by this time subscribed for

the planters engaging to pay the importers at the rate of 125 dollars a-head-the Coolies to be apprenticed for eight years, and to receive four dollars a-month each during the time of their service. We understand that there is every prospect of such emigration assuming a permanent and increasing character, and one of the best-informed of our English firms (W. P. Hammond & Co. of London) entertain "great hopes that the docility and usefulness of the free agricultural labourers of the province of Fokhien, in China, will be the means at no distant time of entirely superseding slavery in the great island of Cuba."

A desire to avail themselves of a similar arrangement has already been evinced by the planters in British Guiana, and in other of the West India colonies; and the avidity with which

the Chinese would embrace such an opportunity of honest industry, may, perhaps, be best evidenced by the following extract from the private letter, dated in March last, of a British merchant settled at Amoy :

"We have just despatched a vessel with 410 labourers for Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. They were all fine, strong, able-bodied young men, engaged for three to five years at three dollars per month, with food, &c., for men, and at two to two-and-a-half dollars per month for boys.

"The only sorrowful parties were those whom we were compelled to reject from disease or deformity. These we placed a distinguishing mark upon, but this they removed, and presented themselves for selection three or four times. We were obliged to send them from alongside in hundreds, and the last day the rush was so great we thought they would have almost taken the vessel from us. This demand for labour is a most providential thing for this province, the poverty and destitution of which is incredible."

Here, then, we have, on the one hand, a starving population of Celestials craving for employment, and, on the other, valuable estates capable of adding to the wealth of the British Empire by the production of immense quantities of sugar, cotton, coffee, &c., almost going out of cultivation, and their formerly affluent proprietors praying for the very labour which is so earnestly asking for employment; and is it possible that prejudice or a mistaken philanthropy will be allowed to step in and prevent an interchange of benefits so mutually desirable? We cannot think it. Any one who does not believe in the Voltairian doctrine that the world is ruled by Chance, must be struck with the cheering coincidence that this very period, when for the first time the final extinction of the African slave-trade seems almost within our reach, should be the season at which Providence is throwing open to the world the immense supplies of labour which for thousands of years it has been rearing secluded in a distant corner of Asia. China Proper and its dependencies contain some three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants-considerably above one-third of the whole population of the globeand could furnish, out of its mere floating population, a much larger

number of free labourers than the whole west coast of Africa could furnish of slaves. Moreover, an immense proportion of the Chinese contrive to exist only by means of the most hard and unflagging labour,-living from hand to mouth, and devouring everything, however unclean in our eyes, which can conduce to the keeping together of soul and body. A bad season, or an overflowing of their canals and rivers, reduces millions to absolute starvation, from which all the efforts of the Imperial Government are insufficient to extricate them

myriads perishing, from such causes, It is a every fourth or fifth year. work, then, of pure benevolence to both the Chinaman and the Negro, if you can at once relieve the hunger of the former and preserve the freedom of the latter,-if you can convey the one to those fields of remunerative industry which are to him a Paradise, and retain the other in his cherished deserts from which there is so little temptation to remove him.

Australia is another field to which Chinamen have begun to flock, and where their services are almost equally desirable. They have a most acute scent for anything in the shape of money, and the temptation of the auriferous Blue Mountains of Sydney was more than Chinese nature could resist. In the Australian intelligence contained in the Times of 19th March last, we read, that " many cargoes of Chinamen have been sent for, and one shipload had just arrived. They will be employed at good wages as shepherds, while thousands of honest families in England are yearning for the means of procuring the same advantage, and that, not as paupers, but with a feeling that they would faithfully make repayment." hardship to our own countrymen so correctly expressed by the Times is now greatly removed, by the steps recently taken to facilitate their passage to the sheepwalks and gold-fields of our Antarctic possessions; and no one can doubt their great superiority to the Chinese,—not, perhaps, in patient industry and thriftiness, but in most of the qualities which characterise a good subject and citizen in a free state.

The

Australia, with her unrivalled stores