animal life, are the principal features in the religious practice of both, and the most devout in all the prescribed observances are the members of the Brahminical caste. To this system of religion, which has existed in India from time immemorial, and is probably coeval with the system of castes, there once existed a rival in another system named Buddhism, which was founded, as is commonly believed, some centuries before Christ by a Hindoo prince and sage named Gautama. As originally propounded, Buddhism is supposed to have been a purer and more reasonable form of faith than Brahminism, recognising more clearly the spiritual and moral aims of religion; but, having been expelled from Hindostan during the early centuries of our era, after having undergone severe persecution from the Brahmins - at whose power it struck, by proscribing the system of castes-it sought refuge in the eastern peninsula, Ceylon, Thibet, China, and Japan, where it has been modified and corrupted into various forms. In Cases VI and VII, shelf 1, there are various figures of Buddha or Gautama, as he is worshipped in Birmah. Deducting the images of the various divinities contained in the cases devoted to India, and which differ from the similar figures in the Chinese cases only in being less neatly carved, and of more grotesque form, there remains but a scanty collection of other articles. The most interesting are some specimens of arms from the north-western districts (Cases VIII-IX, shelf 3); an elaborately-carved guitar; a set of native playing cards of a round shape; and some ancient copperplates, containing grants of land engraven in native characters (Cases VI-VII, shelf 3). The Hindoos are believed to be the inventors of the game of chess. 'In the mechanic arts,' says Bishop Heber, 'they are not inferior to the general run of European nations. Where they fall short of us (which is chiefly in agricultural instruments and the mechanics of common life), they are not, so far as I have understood of Italy and the south of France, surpassed in any great degree by the people of those countries.'*

Birmese Buddha.

Of a kind totally different from the articles from China and India are those in the cases (X-XIII) devoted to the great conti

For an instructive account of the Hindoos, see Hindoos,' in Library of Entertaining Knowledge.

nent of Africa. Here, with the exception of a few articles, such as the quadrants in Case X, shelf 1, brought from those parts of northern Africa into which the Arabs have penetrated, there is nothing to betoken high culture or civilisation. Nor, on the other hand, are there images of deities to indicate, by their number as compared with the other objects, the existence in the country from which they come of any elaborate and established system of worship. We are here introduced, in short, to that great negro" or Ethiopian race which overspreads the African continent, divided, it is true, into tribes and nations of various degrees of culture, but nowhere advanced beyond that primitive stage of existence which is indicated by the prevalence of fetish-worship, and the absence of any literature. The great proportion of the articles are from the western coast of Africa (Sierra-Leone, Ashantee, &c.), and from those portions of the interior which have been visited during the exploring expeditions up the Niger. As usual, instruments of war-which are much alike in all savage countries -swords, bows, arrows, quivers, spears, form part of the collection. But the eye is pleased to see these weapons decidedly outnumbered by objects of a different kind, clearly betokening that among these native African tribes there is a spirit of industrial activity from which we may augur hopefully of their future. The cases present many interesting specimens of negro manufacture. From Ashantee, for example, side by side with so ugly an article as a royal warhorn made of a human jaw and an elephant's tusk (Cases X-XI, shelf 2), are bowls of earthenware of various shapes, two native musical instruments, and specimens of dressed leather; while in shelf 3 is a collection of wooden boxes, and calabashes carved with considerable skill.

But it is in the department of weaving and cloth-making that the African cases make the best show. Here (Cases X-XI, shelf 2) we have a shuttle and reel of cotton thread, spindles, patterns of cloth of different patterns, both cotton and silk, plain and dyed with indigo, all from Ashantee; and again (Cases XII, XIII, shelves 1 and 2), 'various specimens of cloth, mostly of native fabric,' from the banks of the Niger; one a piece of cloth 16 feet long by 74 feet wide, decorated with borders and various stellated patterns produced by discharging the deep colour of the indigo, woven in stripes three inches wide; another similar, but of check pattern;' together with spindles, shuttles, hanks of thread white and blue, specimens of raw native silk both in the cocoon state, and dyed yellow, green, and crimson, all from

Calabashes.

the interior; while over Case XIII is a specimen of a native loom used for the manufacture of narrow cloth. This display of thread and cloth in all its shapes, and in that variety of gaudy colours of which the negroes are so fond, has a pleasant effect, suggesting as it does the docility and cheerful industry of these tribes; and, on the whole, the African cases are on this account better worth looking at than either the Chinese or the Indian, from which similar specimens of Chinese and Indian weaving are necessarily omitted. There is much truth in the observation, that in the negro character there is by nature a greater tendency to those mild virtues, that patient and affectionate spirit, which Christianity recommends, than is visible among Europeans; and when, in connection with this, we consider the industrious disposition of the negroes, and the absence among them of any dominant form of superstition, we cannot doubt that, as the friends of their race fondly hope, some peculiar career subserving the general progress of the world yet awaits them.*

African Loom.

We pass next to the great continent of North America (Cases XIV-XXX). 'The Indians of North America,' says Mr Catlin, are copper-coloured, with long black hair, black eyes, tall, straight, and elastic forms, are less than 2,000,000 in number, were originally the undisputed owners of the soil, and got their title to their lands from the Great Spirit who created them on it; were once 16,000,000 in number, and sent that number of daily prayers to the Almighty for his protection. Their country was entered by white men but a few hundred years since; and 30,000,000 of these are now scuffling for the goods and luxuries of life over the bones and ashes of 14,000,000 of red men, 6,000,000 of whom have fallen victims to the small-pox, and the remainder to the sword, the bayonet, and whisky. Of the 2,000,000 remaining alive at this time, 1,400,000 are already the miserable living victims and dupes of white man's cupidity-degraded, discouraged, and lost in the bewildering maze that is produced by the use of whisky and its concomitant vices; and the remaining number are yet unaroused and unenticed from their wild haunts or their primitive abodes, by the dread or love of white man and his allurements.'

*See Murray's Africa, Park's Travels, &c. for detailed accounts of negro manners and customs.

The 16,000,000 of human beings mentioned in this paragraph as the original possessors of North America when it was discovered by the whites, were spread very thinly over its vast extent. Only in the southern portion of the continent, where it narrows towards South America, was the population at all dense. Here, by the operation of causes which it is impossible for us to trace, there had sprung up a native civilisation of no mean order-that of the Aztecs or Mexicans. Founded, according to native traditions, about the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era, the Mexican kingdom had gradually enlarged itself; the Indian races in its vicinity consolidated round it as a centre; and at the time (1518) when the Spaniards landed in North America, they found the whole breadth of continent between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific dotted with towns and villages, and inhabited by an associated people stationary on the soil, and possessing many of the arts and habits of civilised life. To the north of this comparatively civilised country, however—that is, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic regions—the continent was overspread by the American Indians proper, who for the most part led a nomadic life, wandering in tribes from place to place, each tribe within certain defined limits, and living on the produce of the chase. Of these tribes the easternmost, inhabiting the territories which now constitute the United States and Canada, were extirpated to make way for the whites; and now the only remains of the aborigines of America, besides the Esquimaux in the north, are a few tribes which, under the names of Crows, Sioux, Blackfeet, Ojibbeways, Choctaws, Cherokees, &c. are able still to maintain themselves to the west of the lands colonised by white men. The tribes nearest the frontier of the United States are a mongrel race, degraded by their contact with the whites; and it is only the remote tribes in the neighbourhood of the Rocky Mountains that retain unchanged their primitive Indian habits, and illustrate, in their present state, the condition of America while it was still wholly under the dominion of red men.

The curiosities in the cases under notice may be divided into three classes: first, those which illustrate the manners and customs of the present Esquimaux, or remote northern tribes; secondly, those which illustrate the manners and customs of the present North American Indians, properly so called-that is, of the surviving native tribes west of the countries hitherto colonised by Europeans; and lastly, those which, under the more distinctive name of Mexican antiquities, illustrate the manners and customs of the extinct Aztecs, or Mexicans, and help us to conceive the nature of that singular civilisation which was spontaneously springing up in North America, and which might

have overrun the whole continent had it not been prematurely cut short by European colonisation. Of articles from the extreme northern regions of America there are a great variety (Cases XIVXXI); articles of dress made of skin; harpoons, spears, darts, and other instruments made of, bone; fishing-lines, hooks; jackets made of the intestines of the whale; models of canoes, &c. all indicating the hardy life, half fisher, half huntsman, of those inhabitants of the snowy coasts of America.

The articles illustrative of the life of the North American Indians proper are fewer in number (Case XXII). Many of the articles, however, brought from the regions of the Esquimaux are in use farther south-as, for instance, the snow-shoes (Cases XVIII, XIX, shelf 3), those large, kite-shaped frames and netting on which the native Indians skim so lightly over the deep snows, in which, without their assistance, they would sink; and the skin-dresses which everywhere mark the huntsman mode of life. The art of dressing skins,' says Mr Catlin, 'belongs to the Indians in all countries; and the Crow Indians near the Rocky Mountains surpass the civilised world in the beauty of their skindressing.' The North American Indians display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of many other articles. Their tomahawks and scalping-knives, according to the statement of Mr Catlin, are universally of European make, even the remotest tribes being supplied with these instruments of death by traders from the west; but they themselves make their ordinary weapons, such as stone knives, hatchets, arrows, &c.; they likewise manufacture boxes of wood, and vessels of earthenware; and some tribes make beautiful ornaments of the quills of the porcupine (see Case XXII, shelf 3). Among the most interesting articles in this case are specimens of the calumets or pipes of peace, and the wampumbelts, with the uses of which all readers of Cooper's novels must be familiar. Of the Indian pipes (of which the calumet is but the most distinguished variety, smoked on solemn occasions, as when a treaty is made between the chiefs of

hostile tribes), the bowl, says Mr Catlin, is always made of one particular kind of stone, of a cherry-red colour, brought from a quarry on the frontiers

Snow-shoe.

Calumet, or Pipe of Peace.

of the Wisconsin territory, regarding which the Indians have many superstitious notions, believing that it consists of the flesh

C