the protector of the true believers. This shows what right the John Company had to purchase the Island of Musha, at the entrance of Gobat Embada, from the "Duodez" Sultan Mohammet of Tudjurra. Tudjurra is the seaport of Ancobar, the capitol of Shoa,* or Bar Eefat in Arabic, and Zeyla the seaport of Hurrur, distant only a five day's journey by uninterrupted traveling. Berbera is the finest harbor on the whole coast; it has no permanent buildings, and has the double quality of a fair and a free port. The fair lasts from September to March; foreign traders are obliged to purchase the protection of some Somalee tribe or other, as there is no acknowledged chieftain or governor of the fair. The three-quarters of the trade of Hurrur are absorbed by this channel, notwithstanding_Berbera being a fifteen day's journey distant from the said place. Dogankal, between Zeyla and Bullahaar is the nearest point on the seacoast, and only three day's journey from Hurrur, but unfortunately its harbor is closed up by a sand bar. Even if the Joob (Juba?) were not supposed to offer a safe channel during "three months in the year, I don't see how this river could interfere with the Somalee caravan trade, as it goes no farther than Hurrur.

Gondar, the residence of the Neguz, (a kind of roi Francaise of old France,) is the most northern and the largest town of Abyssinia; it was, a hundred years ago, the capitol of the then United Empire, but is now only the capitol of the province of Amhara, under the leadership of Ras (chieftain) Aly. So is Adowa, which the author makes the capitol of Northern Abyssinia, but the capitol of Tigreh, its nearest seaport is Amphilah; but no other communication is tolerated by the Egyptian governor than by way of Massawah, a seven day's caravan journey from Adowa. Ras Oubee is the chieftain of Tigreh, Ras Sahlo Sehlassee of Shoa; those with Ras Aly are the most powerful chieftains of Abyssinia, and in constant fear and jealousy, one against the other.

No European power has agents in Abyssinia, if the "peres Sazaristes vulgo Jesuites in Adowa are not mistaken as such; but in Massawah, both the English and French keep Consular agents, not so much to the benefit of traders, as to watch each others intrigues, to which the expulsion of Mr. Gobat, a Protestant Missionary, with half a dozen more of his fellow laborers, and the failure of Capt. now Major Harris, the celebrated African Nimrod's expedition to Shoa, must be attributed. Abyssinia is to the French a play game, like Otaheity and Owyhee of late-nothing else. The French never had any trade with Abyssinia, nor with the Red Sea either, with the exception of an attempt made, ten years ago, by the bark "Ancobar," fitted out in Havre, under the direction of some St. Simoniens, who had gone astray, a fine summerday, to Abyssinia. Those gentlemen loaded the vessel with all sorts of French fineries, and among others, with suspenders, because the Abyssinians wear small clothes; with kid gloves, because the Abyssinian ladies showed so much fancy for white skin; with pomatum, to put tallow out of fashion; snuff-tobacco to be chewed, (as our fair sex sometimes do in the south.) This is all literally true and no joke; that the attempt utterly failed need scarcely to be told, nor that it

The author believes Shoa to be the name of a town.

never has been tried again. Coffee is called in Arabic "boond," and in Galla "boona." There is a tradition in Yemen, that Scander (Alexander) the Great, on his return from India, opened Bab el Mandel (gate of tears) with his sword. There he was welcomed by the Neguz of Abyssinia (Habesh) and his court. Scander, seeing the Abyssinians afflicted with corpulency and yellow countenances, made to them a present of the ghat-shrub, from "Bar el Sinn," (China,) as an antidote; and the Neguz, in exchange of politeness, presented him with the coffee tree, which Scander at once planted in the Arabian soil. The leaves of the ghat-shrub smell faintly like tea, and look also, pretty much like tea leaves; the Arabians of the Yemen are in the habit of chewing those leaves, as the Americans chew tobacco. Both the coffee and the ghat grow wild in the Galla country, but not in Arabia. M. Rocher, a French traveler in Shoa, pretended to have discovered the tea plant there; very probably it is the ghat-shrub. Seventy years before Mohammet, Southern Arábia was conquered by the Christian Abyssinians. The worshippers of the fire and the Jews, not content with the Christian sway, united, and called Aly, the sonin-law and generalisimo of Mohammet, to their assistance, and so attained the expulsion of the Christians, Probably during this period, coffee and ghat were transplanted into Southern Arabia.

The planters of Sana carry their coffee in the husks to the markets of the Yemen, where the coffee-berry is separated from it by handmills formed of two small sand-stones. The greedy Arab is not likely to throw away any thing he paid for, and so he drinks the insipid infusion of the coffee husks (Arab kishr) which no body else has taken a fancy to yet, in any other part of the world. The Arabians grind on stones, or pound their coffee for want of iron mills, just as they wear sandals for want of skill to make shoes; but not with an idea of preserving, by these methods, the flavor of the coffee, which is quite erroneous.

The business time at the fair of Berbera lasts but five months; the beginning and the leaving it takes very near a month. The arrival of loaded camels during this time, may be set down at forty or forty-five thousand heads. As the Somalee camels are but of inferior kind, five camel loads must be here counted to a ton. The assortment of goods imported at the fair, from the inland, is about as follows:

25 per cent. in coffee (sent cleaned from the husks to the Berbera market); 35 per cent. in gums and resins; 40 per cent. in butter, sheep-tail fat, tallow, hides, ivory, and sundry articles.

The statement about the annual export of coffee from Berbera being 15,000 tons! is apparently a misprint in the pamphlet laying before me, and in Lieut. Wellstedt's travels, where it seems to be copied from, and is intended to be, probably, but 1,500 tons-a sum corresponding near enough to the above cyphers. The garrison and workpeople at the fortification of Aden, nearly ten thousand men, depend chiefly on Berbera and the Somalee country for their supply of sheep, goats, and horned cattle. Berbera, notwithstanding its daily intercouse with Aden, continues to be also a slave market.

I do not know what advantage for American trade, might arise from an Ambassade to a fanatic Wachabee chieftain, like Sheriff Hussein, of Aboo-Arrish, the present ruler of the Yemen, or to petty tyrants

like Sahlo-Sehlassee, Ras Oubee and Ras Aly, or to lawless and disunited savages like the Somalees. There is only one way to make such people subservient to our wishes-by following the steps of the John Company, the Handels-Mads happy, and the different fur-trade companies on our continent-which is to establish fortified comptoirs and factories, to draw as much as possible the commerce out of the reach of mischief, to procure shelters for vessels and traders, under cover of which, cargoes of goods might be collected or distributed with all leisure and security in the surrounding countries. Such points are at present, Aden, Singapore and Hongkong-such were, two hundred years ago, Bombay, Madras, Batavia, and numbers of forts in the then far west, grown up now to wealthy and populous cities. Such a point also might become the Island of Socotra, at the entrance of the Arabian Gulf, to the commerce of the United States; first to concentrate and protect the existing trade with Mocha, Muscate and Zanzuibar, then to extend it from the mouths of the Tudar, all over the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, and from Cape Guardafui (Ras Jar d'Afoon) to Zanzuibar and the adjacent islands, and finally, to provide Egypt directly with the spices, and drugs, and minerals of the east, in concurrence with Marseilles, which in a great measure monopolizes this trade in the Mediterranean, in the place of Alexandria of yore. This old channel will be re-opened ere long by some foreign power or other, as the Egyptians of our days have neither the intellect nor the spirit. of enterprise to do it by themselves.

The sea around Socotra abounds with whales and fishes of all kinds. The soil is most part fertile; vegetables, dates, bananas and melons are plentiful. The aloe of the Island is celebrated, and the mountains contain, also, many kind of resins and gums, among them the Myrrha -a dragon-blood tree.

The English speak now ill of its climate and anchorage, but for Aden it would be English now, in spite of its defects.

Would such a place, like the Island of Socotra, on the high road from Europe to India, not be worth the inspection of some idle man of war, or the expenses of an Ambassador; and would it not be of more value to our country than the famous Dead Sea expedition ?

HADJEE ABGAT EL GASSIHR.

MEMPHIS, March 30, 1850.

T. BUTLER KING'S REPORT ON THE GOLD MINES OF CALIFORNIA.

THE newspapers have, within the last few days, laid before the public the Report of the Hon. T. Butler King, on California. This Report has been looked for with great anxiety for sometime. Many grave and important questions, to the whole Union, are connected

with this country. Many rumors have got into circulation in relation to this gentleman's political movements, whilst there; and not a little interest has been felt to see or learn something of the pseudothyrial authority under which he is supposed to have acted; but that which caused this Report to be looked for with the greatest popular interest and anxiety, was the revelations it was expected to make in relation to the extent and value of the gold mines. It is a paper of so much importance, that we could have wished it to have reached us in the official garb of a public document; but under the existing arrangements of public printing at Washington, if we wait for that before we pay our respects to it, many of the most important questions it discusses may have been settled, and whatever we may have to say might become stale, if not unprofitable. We shall, therefore, assume that the Report, as published by the papers, is correct; as ample time, since its appearance in this form, has passed to allow the gentleman to whom it is attributed, to correct it, if erroneous in any of its parts, or disclaim it, if not his own. In doing so, however, we are left in uncertainty upon two preliminary points that would be interesting to know, though not, perhaps, essential; that is, the person to whom the Report is made, and the nature of the instructions under which he acted. These, we presume, will be satisfactorily explained, when the documents are officially published.

The first part of the Report is devoted to the consideration of the political affairs of California. As this has already attracted the attention of much abler and more competent persons in and out of Congress, we shall not touch it. The second gives us a very good coup d'œil of the climate, and agricultural capacities of the country, with perhaps some slight indication of a partiality that may have been very honestly felt by one who occupied the position of the Reporter.*

His facts no one will venture to question. The name of Thomas Butler King is a sufficient endorsement for them. But the most favorable view they give us of the agricultural capacities of California, makes it much inferior to the Mississippi valley. Indeed, he tells us, that when the population reaches 200,000, which it will this year, they will have to look to us: or, as he more largely expresses it: the Eastern States, for their bread and meat; and that the demand will increase with the population.

California has doubtless rich valleys and fertile plains, but they dwindle almost to a mere garden spot, when compared with the almost illimitable prairies and alluvial bottoms of this vast valley. The climate may be very pleasant to those who are habituated to it, or to those whose pursuits may not oblige them to be exposed to its vicisitudes; but when we read of their wet seasons, sending down torrents that submerge their principal cities; and their summer, or dry seasons, raising the thermometer to 100 or 115 degrees for months together, we feel a little doubt of its agreeableness. We con

*By the way, this is, perhaps, as appropriate a place as any other, to say that we are gratified that the person selected for this mission was not a Western man. If some of the statements which he has presented had come from one of us, they would have doubtlessly been attributed to that tendency-to ROMANCE, for which many of our Eastern friends are ever ready to give us credit, and for which they, in their prudence, always give us, at least full allowance, in making up their balance sheet.

fess that a climate of such monotonous extremes, does not appear quite so inviting, if even as healthful, as one more studious of change and fond of novelty." "The division of the year into two distinct seasons, dry and wet, impresses those who have been accustomed to the variable climate of the Atlantic States unfavorably." If this be the case with those from the Atlantic States, what effect must it have on those who have enjoyed the more agreeable climate of this valley? Mr. King further tells us that "a stranger arriving at San Francisco in summer, is annoyed by the cold winds and fogs, and pronounces the climate intolerable," which seems very probable, and a very good common-sense view of the subject. But if the stranger should have such an opinion of the climate in the summer, what would he have thought if so unfortunate as to arrive in winter? We are left to infer the answer to this, from negative testimony. Amongst the many things upon which praise is lavished in California, we hear but little said in favor of the wet season, or winter. We therefore infer that the stranger would have to be very keen sighted to see any thing agreeable in it; and if the summer should so annoy him as to make him pronounce the climate "intolerable," the winter would tax his organ of language, to suggest a word that would express his feelings.

With all Mr. King's evidently kind feeling for California, his regard for the truth does not permit him to deceive his fellow-citizens with false representations of the country. It is true that in running through the Report hastily, the impression is left, that he sustains to some extent the glowing descriptions of the climate and soil, that less competent, or perhaps less honest persons have heretofore endeavored to produce. Such descriptions or misrepesentations are as injurious to the country, as they are improper in those who make them, and it is to be regretted that the seeming character of Mr. King's Report gives them any countenance such a country needs no such statements. California, in its position and its resources, must become one of the most important States in the Union. The golden fascinations with which she is bewildering the senses of almost the entire civilized world, will draw to her population as fast as she should desire. Of these a large portion will become permanent residents from choice, and without any lingering feeling of unkindness to a country to which they had been allured by false or interested statements. The consideration of the Public Lands of California occupies a large part of Mr. King's Report. It appears that much of the territory south of thirty-nine degrees, adap'ed to cultivation, is covered by claims, derived from the Spanish or Mexican authorities. As the discovery of the mines has taken place since the country has been in the possession of the United States, and as they lie mostly out of the range of the agricultural region, it is to be presumed that they are chiefly, in what may be considered the public domain. A portion of these in the south, particularly in the alluvion of the rivers, may be covered by some of those grants. If such be the case, a conflict of right, involving one of the highest questions of State, may arise between the individual proprietors and the United States. It is to be regretted that Mr. King gives us so little information on the subject. It is one that must be met and investigated. It will require an