tal round three sides of the fire in which the crucibles were placed. Of the latter, indeed, there is no indication in these subjects, unless it be in a preceding woodcut [403, fig. c.,]; but their use is readily suggested, and some which have been found in Egypt are preserved in the museum of Berlin. They are nearly five inches in diameter at the mouth, and about the same in depth, and present the ordinary form and appearance of those used at the present day.

"At Beni Hassan, the process of washing the ore, smelting or fusing the metal, with the help of the blow-pipe, and fashioning it for ornamental purposes, weighing it, and taking an account of the quantity so made up, and other occupations of the goldsmith, are represented, but, as might be supposed, these subjects merely suffice, as they were intended, to give a general indication of the goldsmith's trade, without attempting to describe the means employed.

"From the mentiont) of ear-rings, and bracelets, and jewels of silver and gold, in the days of Abraham, it is evident that in Asia as well as in Egypt, the art of metallurgy was known at a very remote period, and workmen of the same countries are noticed by Homer‡) as excelling in the manufacture of arms, rich vases, and other objects inlaid or ornamented with metals. His account of the shield of Achilles proves the art of working the various substances of which it was made-copper, tin, gold, and silver-to have been understood at that time, and the skill required to represent the infinity of subject he mentions, was such as no ordinary artisan could possess.

"The ornaments of gold found in Egypt consist of rings, bracelets, armlets, necklaces, ear-ring, and numerous trinkets belonging to the toilet, many of which are of the time of Osirtasen I. and Thotomes III., about 3930. and 3290 years ago. Gold and silver vases, statues, and other objects of gold and silver, of silver inlaid with gold, and of bronze inlaid with the precious metals, were also common at the same time; and besides those manufactured in the country from the produce of their own mines, the Egygtians exacted an annual tribute from the conquered provinces of Asia and Africa, in gold and silver, and in vases made of those materials.

"There was great elegance in the form of many of the oldest Egyptian vases, expecially of those of gold and silver. Much taste was also displayed in other objects as well as in the devices which ornamented them, among which may be mentioned the golden basket in the tomb of Remeses III.

"The gold mines of Egygt or of Ethiopia, though mentioned by Agatharchides and later writers, and worked even by the Arab Caliphs, long remained unknown, and their position has only been ascertained a few years since by M. Linaut and Mr. Bonomi. They lie in the Bisharee desert-the land of Bigah (or of the "Bugaitae" mentioned in the inscription of Axum) about seventeen or eighteen days journey to the southeastward from Deraw, which is situated on the Nile, a little above Kom Ombo, the ancient Ombos.

"Those two travellers met with some Cufic funeral inscriptons there, which from their dates show that the mines were worked in the years

+ Gen. xxiv. 47,

53.

Hom. Iliad. XXII. 74. A silver cup, the work of the Sidonians, Od. IM, 816, &c. Iliad. 11. 872; vI. 236; XVII. 474.

339 A. H., (951, A. D.), and 378 A. H. (989, A. D.); the former being in the fifth year of the Caliph Mostukfee Billah, a short time before the arrival of the Fatemites in Egypt, the latter in the fourteenth of El Azeez, the second of the Fatemite dynasty.

"They continued to be worked till a much later period, and were afterwards adandoned, the value of the gold barely covering the expenses; nor did Mohammed Ali, who sent to examine them, and obtain specimens of the ore, find it worth while to reopen them.

The matrix is quartz and so diligent a search did the Egyptians establish, throughout the whole of the deserts east of the Nile, for this precious metal, that I never remember to have seen a vein of quartz in any of the primitive ranges there, which had not been carefully examined by their miners; certain portions having been invariably picked out from the fissures in which it lay, and broken into small fragments. The same was done in later times by the Romans; and evidences of their searching for gold in quartz veins are even found in some parts of Britain.

"The gold mines are said by Aboolfeda to be situated at El Allaga (or Ollagee) but Eshuranib (or Eshuanib), the principal place, is about three days' journey beyond Wadee Allaga according to Mr. Bonomi, to whom I am indebted for the following account of the mines. The direction of the excavations depends on that of the strata in which the ore is found; and the position of the various shafts differs accordingly. As to the manner of extracting the metal, some notion may be given by a description of the ruins at Eshuranib, the largest station, where sufficient remains to explain the process they adopted. The principal excavation, according to M. Linaut's measurement, is about 180 feet deep, it is a narrow oblique chasm, reaching a considerable way down the rock. In the valley near the most accessible part of the excavation are several huts, built of the unhewn fragments of the surrounding hills, their walls not more than breast high, perhaps the houses of the excavators or the guardians of the mine; and separated from them by the ravine or course of the torrent a group of houses, about three hundred in number, laid out very regularly in straight lines. In those nearest the mines lived the workmen who were employed to break the quartz into small fragments, the size of a bean, from whose hands the pounded stone passed to the persons who ground it in handmills, similar to those now used for corn in the valley of the Nile made of a granitic stone; one of which is to be found in almost every house at these mines, either entire or broken.

"The quartz thus reduced to powder was washed on inclined tables, furnished with two cisterns, all built of fragment of stone collected there; and near these inclined planes are generally found little white mounds, the residue of the operation. Besides the numerous remains of houses in this station, are two large buildings, with towers at the angles, built of the hard blackish granitic, yet luminous rock, that prevails in the district. The valley has many trees, and in a high part of the torrent bed is a sort of island, or isolated bank, on which we found many tombstones, some written in the ancient Cufic character, very similar to those at A'Sonan.'

"Mr. Bonomi's account agrees very well with those given by Agatharchides and Diodorus, who both mention the great labour of extract

ing the gold, and separating it from the pounded stone by frequent washings; a process apparently represented in the tombs of the early time of the Osirtasens; and the descriptions of the old "Diggins" have acquired additional interest from those of the modern days.

But in Australia and California they are carried on under more auspicious circumstances than those of old, where the workers in the mines were principally captives taken in war, and men condemned to hard labor for crimes, or in consequence of offences against the government. They were bound in fetters, and obliged to work night and day; every chance of escape being carefully obviated by the watchfullness of the guards, who in order that persuasion might not be used to induce them to relax in their duty, or feelings of compassion be excited for the sufferings of their fellow-countrymen, were foreign soldiers, ignorant of the Egyptian language.

"Such was the system in the time of Diodorus; but it is uncertain whether it was introduced under the Ptolemies, or had already existed under the later Pharaohs. "The soil," says the historian, "naturally black, is traversed with veins of marble of excessive whiteness, surpassing in brilliancy the most shining substances, out of which the overseers cause the gold to be dug, by the labor of a vast multitude of people; for the kings of Egypt condemn to the mines. notorious criminals, prisoners of war, persons convicted by false accusations, or the victims of resentment. And not only the individuals themselves, but sometimes even their whole families, are doomed to this labor, with the view of punishing the guilty, and profiting

their toil."

ARTICLE IV.

(From a forth-coming work by H E. GARLAND on slavery.)

England and the Slave Trade.

Not only mankind, says a profound thinker, but all that mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy act, thy word, into, the ever-living, everworking universe; it is a seedgrain that cannot die unnoticed, today, it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove (perhaps also as a hemlock forrest) after a thousand years. Seven hundred and eighty-eight years ago, the act done was the landing of William of Normandy on the shores of England with sixty thousand fighting men under his command-the result was the battle of Hastings-the death of Harold and the conquest of England. These sixty thousand men with their wives and children stalked into the houses of the defenceless Saxons and turned them out and took

possession of their estates. The Norman built castles, wore coats of mail, bore arms, rode on horse-back, and formed a compact order from the prince to the retainer completely organized for defence-while the Saxons, driven from their mansions, stripped of their arms, and dwelling in exposed huts, were compelled to till for others the land they had once called their own-or were reduced to starvation, or driven to the green forests to find a scanty subsistence on hunting and robbing. The Norman was the master, the Saxon was the slave-a constant apprehension of revolt and revenge filled the mind of the one-while a spirit of hatred and a thirst for retaliation animated the bosom of the other. But society cannot exist on fear. The elements however discordant must be made to harmonize or it will fall to pieces. Out of this relation of master and slave grew that of Baron and Serf-then that of Landlord and Servant-and finally merry England in which all traces of two distinct and hostile people were lost in the common appellation of Englishmen ; even their hostile speech were blended into one glorious English tongue with its Bible, Prayer Book, its Shakespeare and its Milton-with its rich stores of generous and fruitful ideas and principles of human liberty.

Two hundred years ago and for a century afterwards, the continuous act done was the importation of negro slaves into the North American colonies by authority of the British government. On this subject let the Historian speak.

The English continental colonies (says Bancroft vol. 3d, chap. 24.) were always opposed to the African slave trade. Maryland, Virginia, and even Carolina alarmed at the excessive production and consequent low price of their staples, at the heavy debts incurred by the purchase of slaves on credit, and at the dangerous increase of the colored population-each showed an anxious preference for the introduction of white men, and laws, designed to restrict the importation of slaves, are scattered copiously along the records of colonial legislation. The first continental congress which took to itself legislative powers, gave a legal expression of the well formed opinion of the country by resolving that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen united colonies.

Before America legislated for herself, the interdict of the slave trade was impossible, England was inexorable in maintaining the system, which gained new and stronger supporters by its excess.

We shall not err very much if for the century previous to the

prohibition of the slave trade by the American congress in 1776, we assume the number imported by the English, into the Spanish, French and English West Indies as well as the English continental colonies to have heen collectively nearly three millions, to which are to be added more than a quarter of a million purchased in Africa and thrown into the Atlantic on the passage.

The gross returns to English merchants, for the whole traffic in that number of slaves, may have been not far from four hundred millions of dollars. Yet as at least one-half of the negroes exported from Africa to America were carried on English ships, it should be observed, that this estimate is by far the lowest ever made by any inquirer into these statistics.

In an age when the interests of trade guided legislation, this branch of commerce possessed paramount attraction. Not a statesman exposed its enormities. The public opinion of the age was obedient to materialism. Protestantism itself had, in the

political point of view been the triumph of materialism over the spiritual authority of the church. The same influence exhibited itself in philosophy and letters. Philosophy had gone back to the days of its infancy, founded itself on the doctrines of Aristotle and furnished to the African no protection against oppression. The interpretation of English common law was equally regardless of human freedom. The colonial slave who sailed to the metropolis, found no benefit from touching the soil of England, but returned a slave.

The influence of the manufacturers was still worse. They clamoured for the protection of a trade which opened to them an African market. The party of the slave trade dictated laws to England. A resolve of the Commons in the days of William and Mary proposed to lay open the trade in negroes "for the better supply of the plantations ;" and the statute book of England soon declared the opinion of its king and its parliament, that "the trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the kingdom and the colonies.' In 1708 a committee of the house of Commons report that "the slave trade is important and ought to be free;" in 1711 a committee once more report that "the plantations ought to be supplied with negroes at reasonable rates," and recommend an increase of the trade. In June 1712, Queen Ann, in her speech to parliament, boasts of her success in securing to Englishmén a new market for slaves in Spanish America. In 1729,