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gulph by an expert climber, and fastened firmly into iron rings mortised into the rock on either side. Between

these ropes a number of boards, about a foot in breadth, are laid in succession, supported at intervals by cross cords, and thus the pathway is formed, which, though broad enough to bear a man's foot with tolerable convenience, does by no means hide from view the pointed rocks and raging sea beneath, which, in this situation, exhibit the fatal effects of a fall in very strong colouring; while the swingings and undulations of the bridge itself, and of the hand-rope, which no degree of tension can prevent in so great a length, suggest no very comfortable feelings to persons of weak nerves. Upon the whole, it is a beautiful bridge in the scenery of a landscape, but a frightful one in real life.

Description Hamilton.

BENMORE, or FAIRHEAD.

The eastern side of Ballycastle Bay terminates in the bold promontory of Fairhead, at the distance of eight miles eastward of the promontory of Bengore already mentioned. The promontory of Fairhead raises its lofty summit more than 400 feet above the sea. It presents to view a vast compact mas of rude columnar stones, the forms of which are extremely gross, many of them being near 150 feet in length, and in the texture so coarse as to resemble black schorle stone, rather than the close fine grain of the Giants Causeway basaltes. At the base of these gigantic columns lies a wild waste of natural ruins of an enormous size, which, in the course of successive ages have been tumbled down from their foundation by storms, or some powerful and more mighty operations of nature. These massive bodies have sometimes withstood the shock of their fall, and often lie in groups and clumps of pillars, resembling many of the varieties of artificial ruins, and forming a very novel and striking landscape.

A savage wildness characterizes this great promontory, at the foot of which the ocean rages with uncommon fury. Scarce a single mark of vegetation has yet crept over the hard rock to diver sify its colouring, but one uniform greyness clothes the scene all around. Upon the whole, it makes a fine contrast with the beautiful capes of Bengore, where the varied brown shades of the pillars,

enlivened by the red and green tints of ochre and grass, casts a degree of life and cheerfulness over the different objects.

Or Torr's bleak rocks Titanian limbs o'erspread,

Or cloudy Benmore lifts his giant head,
Or where Kenban his chalky brow uprears.

Torr is a sharp promontory, about five miles from Cushendun, on the shores of Cushleak. The ruins of Dunavarre, an old fort, said to be a work of the giants, may be seen near the point of the promontory, and at some distance above it, Sleacht na Barragh, their grave. West of Torr is Kenban, i. e. the white or fair head, improperly transferred to Benmore is a picturesque rock of limestone topped with the ruins of a castle, about two miles westward of Ballycastle.

West of Torr stands the bold and majestic promontory of Benmore, commouly but improperly known by the name of Fairhead, the Robogdium of Ptolemy. Hamilton justly describes it, as characterized by a wild and savage sublimity. None of the numerous precipices on the coast, indeed, can vie with it in elevation, extent, and grandeur. It is composed of a range of enormous basaltic pillars, according to a measurement made in the summer of 1810, by Professor Playfair, 283 feet high, and resting on a base which makes the whole altitude 631 feet. One of the columns is a quadrangular figure, prismatic, measuring 33 feet by 36 on the sides, and about 200 feet perpendicular.

Compared to this what is Pompey's Pillar, or the celebrated column which stod before the temple of Venus Genetrix, at Rome, or the pedestal of Peter the Great's statute at Petersburgh. The precipice towering majestic over an awful waste of broken columns, presents to the spectator the most stupendous colonnade ever erected by nate, and in comparison of which, the proudest monuments of human architecture are but the efforts of pigmy imbecility to the omnipotence of God. He who does not feel impressions of the sublime on Benmore, must be incapable of feeling them in any situation.

The enormous pillars of this promontory are separable into smaller columns, the line of whose contact is very percep tible in some of the fallen joints.

The grey man's path is a fissure in

the face of the precipice, by which a path winds down to the shore. A huge pillar has fallen across the top of the fissure, but it is immoveably fixed, and may be passed under without any apprehension. Drummond.

Hamilton observes, that though he has described the basalt pillars of those two magnificent promontories, Beninore and Fairhead, yet there are many other similar arrangements through this country, which, though less worthy of observation as great objects, yet become extremely interesting when one wishes to search minutely into the natural causes which might have produced these extraordinary pillars.

The mountain of Dunmull, lying between Coleraine and the river Bush, abounds in this species of stone, particularly at the craigs of Islamore, where two different ranges of columns may be discovered, and at most of the quarries which have occasionally been opened round the mountain. They may be seen also at Dunluce Hill, near the Castle of Dunluce; in the bed of the river Bush, near the Bridge of Bush MiNs; on the summit of the mountain of Croaghmore; in many parts of the high land over Ballintoy; in the island of Kaghery; and in various other places, through an extent of coast about 15 miles in length, and two in breadth.*

Six or seven miles off the north coast of Antrim, nearly opposite to Carricka-Rede and Fairhead, the places we have been just describing, lies the

ISLAND OF RAGHERY, OR RATHLIN,

Thus described by Hamilton. Rag hery Island lies six or seven miles off the northern coast of Antrim, opposite to Ballycastle Bay. Stands between this and the Scottish coast. Though the island be not very remote, yet its situation, so much exposed to the northern ocean, and the turbulence of its irregular tides, have thrown such difficulties in the way of landsmen, that few have

Beyond this tract, which abounds in perfect pillars, an attentive observer will be able to trace the same species of fossils, in very distant parts of the country, as far as the northern shore of Lough Neah, and the mountains of the county of Derry; in many places of which, imperfect columnar forms may be observed; so that the great

cause which generated this species of stone, has been exerted through a space of more than 40 miles in length, and 20 in breadth, that is, through above 800 square miles.

visited it but from necessity; and some curious arrangements of the columnar basaltes, with which it abounds, have never been noticed except by its inhabitants.

The chalky cliffs of Raghery, crowned by a venerable covering of brown rock, form a very beautiful and picturesque appearance, as one is sailing towards them; and if the turbulence of the sea do not restrain the eyes and fancy from expatiating around, such a striking similitude appears between this and the opposite coast, as readily suggests an idea, that the island might once have formed a part of the adjacent country, from whence it has been disunited by some violent shock of nature.

Raghery is near five miles in length, and about three quarters of a mile in breadth; towards the middle it is bent ju an angle, opposite to Ballycastle, and forms a tolerable bay, affording good anchorage in deep water, with a stiff clay bottom; but a westerly wind raises such a heavy swell all along this coast, that few vessels can ride out a gale from that quarter.

Raghery contains about 1100 inhabitants. The cultivated land is kindly enough, and produces excellent barley. In a plentiful year 6007. worth of this grain has been exported from it. The craggy pasture fattens a small, but delicious breed of sheep. Even its inhospitable rocks supply to the hand of industry a rich source of wealth, in the sea-weed it affords for the manufacture of kelp, which under an indulgent landlord, often goes to pay the whole rent of the island. The horses as well as sheep are small in kind, but extremely serviceable, and sure-footed beyond conception.

The inhabitants are a simple, laborious, and honest race of people, and island, which may very much surprise a possess a degree of affection for their stranger. In coversation they always talk of Ireland as a foreign country, and really have scarce any intercourse with it, except in the way of their little trade. A common and heavy curse among them is," May Ireland be your

hinder end "

From this amor patriæ arises their great population, notwithstanding the perils that attend their turbulent coast, as they never entertain a thought of trying to better their fortune by settling in any of the neighbouring towns of Antrim.

Small as this spot is, one can nevertheless distinguish two different characters among its inhabitants. The Kenramer, or wester end, is craggy and mountainous, the land in the vallies rich and well cultivated, but the coast destitute of harbours. A single native is here known to fix his rope to a stake driven into the summit of a precipice, and from thence alone, unassisted, to swing down the face of a rock in quest of the nests of sea-fowl.

From hence activity, bodily strength, and self-dependance are eminent among the Kenramer-men. Want of intercourse with strangers has preserved many peculiarities, and their native Irish continues to be the universal language.

The Ushot-end, on the contrary, is barren in its soil, but more open and well supplied with little harbours; hence its inhabitants are become fishermen, are accustomed to make short voyages to barter. Intercourse with strangers has rubbed off many of their peculiari ties, and the English language is well understood and spoken.

This distinction, I fear, my seem foolishly speculative, considering the diminutive object of it; and yet, I assure you, it is a matter of fact; and the inhabitants themselves are so well aware of this, that in perilous situations, different offices and stations are appointed unto each, according as he is an Ushot or a Kenramer-man.

Raghery has formerly been, as it were, a stepping-stone between the Irish and Scottish coasts, which the natives of each country alternately used in their various expeditions, and for which they frequently fought.

In my return from Raghery I spent a few days at Ballycastle, a town pretty considerable in this part of the world, which has been almost the entire creation of one man, a Mr. Boyd, who died some years ago.

The eastern side of Ballycastle bay terminates in the bold promontory of Fairhead. Between this and the town lie the collieries, in an abrupt bank that overhangs the sea. Ships, however, cannot derive much advantage from this circumstance, as the unsheltered situation of the place, and the prevailing westerly winds, make a delay on the, coast extremely dangerous, and renders it difficut to embark the coals.

(To be continucl.)

INTERIOR OF AFRICA, OBSERVATIONS on ABSTRACTS from the TRAVELS of ALI BET and ROBERT ADAMS, in the JOURNAL of SCIENCE and the ARTS, Vol. I. No. 2, Page 264, edi ed at the ROYAL INSTITUTION of GREAT BRITAIN.

To the Editor of the European Magazine.

SIR,

N the discussion on Aly Bey's Tra

the Arts above-mentioned, are the following words.*

66

Aly Bey has added, in a separate chapter all the information he received respecting a Mediterranean Sea, from a merchant of Morocco, of the name of Sidi Matte Buhlal, who had resided many years at Tombuctoo, and in other countries of Sudan or Nigritia; the most material of which was, that Tombut is a large town, very trading, and inhabited by Moors and Negroes, and was at the same distance from the Nile Abid (or Nile of the Negroes, or Niger) as Fez is from Wed-Sebu, that is to say, about three hundred English miles."

As this passage is quoted from Ali Bey by the first literary society of Great Britain, and is therefore calculated to create a doubt of the accuracy of what I have said, respecting the distance of the Nilo El Abeede, from Timbuctoo, in the enlarged editions of my account of Marocco, &c. page 297, I consider it a duty which I owe to my country and to myself, not to let this sentence pass through the press, without submitting to the public, through the same medium of intelligence, my observations on the subject.

Sidi Matte Buhlal is a native of Fas; the name, according to the Arabic orthography, is Sidi El Matie Bû Hellel; this gentleman is one out of twenty authorities from whom I derived the information recorded in my account of Marocco, and respecting Timbuctoo, and the interior of Africa. His whole family, which is respectable and numerous, are among the first Timbuctoo merchants, that have their establishments at Fas. I should, however, add, that among the many authorities from whom I derived my information, relative to Timbuctoo, there were two Mus selmen in particular, merchants of respectability and intelligence, who came from Timbuctoo to Santa Cruz, soon

* Page 270.

after I opened that port to Dutch commerce, in the capacity of agent of Holland, by order of the Emperor of Marocco, Muley Yezzid, brother and predecessor of the present Emperor, Soliman: these two gentlemen had resided at Timbuctoo, and in other parts of Soudan, 15 years, trading during the whole of that period, with Parbeyta, on the coast of the Red Sea, with Jinnie, Houssa, Wangara, Cashna, and other countries of the interior, from whom, and from others equally intelligent and credible, I procured my information respecting the Mediterranean Sea in the interior of Africa, called the Sea of Soudan, situated 15 days journey east of Timbuctoo. These two Musselmen merchants had amassed considerable fortunes at Timbuctoo, and were on their journey to Fas, their native place; but in consequence of a civil war raging at that time throughout West Barbary (particularly in the province of Haha, through which it was indispensable that they should pass, in their way to Fas), they sojourned with me two months, after which they departed for Fas, with a caravan. These intelligent Moors gave me much information respecting Timbuctoo, and the interior countries, where they had resided; they sold me many articles of Soudanic manufacture, among which were three pieces of fine cotton cloth, manufactured at Timbuctoo, and some ornaments of pure gold in or-molu, of exquisite workmanship, of the manufacture of Jinnie. One of these pieces of Timbuctoo manufacture, of cotton interwoven with silk, of a square blue and white pattern, dyed with Indigo of Timbuctoo, I had the honour to present to the British Museum, in April, 1796, where it is now deposited.*

I have been led into this digression, from certain insinuations that have been insidiously propagated, reflecting on the accuracy of my statements, respecting the interior of Africa, and, I mustadd, that I always have felt, and still feel confident, that in proportion as we shall become more acquainted with the

This piece of cloth, about two yards wide and five long, I had the honour of offering to Sir Joseph Banks, who declined receiving it, but at the same time suggested that it was an article deserving public notice, and would be considered an acceptable present by the British Museum.

+ See my Letter to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, March, 1817, page 125.

interior of this unexplored continent, my account will be so much the more authentic. My confidence in this opinion, (however dogmatical it may ap pear) is founded on the original and intelligent sources of my information, on a long residence and general acquaintance with all the principal inhabitants of West Barbary, whose connections lay in Soudan, and at Timbuctoo, in a competent knowledge and practical ac quaintance with the languages of North Africa, and a consequent ability to discriminate the accuracy of the sources of my intelligence.

This being premised, I now proceed to offer to the public my animadver sions on the above quotation from the Journal of Science and the Arts.

I have actually crossed the Wad Sebu, or the River Sebu, alluded to in the above quotation, which passes through the Breber, Kabyl of Zimure Shelleh ; I have crossed the same river several times at the city of Mequinez, and also at Meheduma, where it enters the Allantic Ocean in lat. N. 34. 15. and from this experimental knowledge of the course of that river, I can affirm with confidence, that it is not inaccurately laid down in my map of West Barbary, facing page 1, of my account of Marocco, &c. and that it is not 300* English miles from Fas, but only six English miles from that city. I can also assert, from incontestible testimony, that Tom but, or Timbuctoo, is not 300 miles from the Nile El Abude, but only about 12 English miles from that stream, the latter bing south of the town.

Respecting the following passage, in the above-quoted Journal of Science and the Arts, page 272:

"This river contains the fierce animals called Tzemsah, which devour men."

I shall only observe, that Tzemsah is the word in the African Arabic which denominates the crocodile.

Farther on in the same page, we have the words

"We must suppose that the Joliba makes at this spot a strange winding, which gives to the inhabitants of Morocco the opinion they express."

This supposed winding is actually asserted to exist, and is denominated by the Arabs + El Kose Nile, i. e. the arch

* Vide Jackson's enlarged account of Morocco, &c. page 297. + ibid p. 305.

or curve of the Nile, and is situated between the cities of Timbuctoo and Jinnie.

I should here adduce some further testimony respecting the course of the Nile El Abeede, but as the quotation from Aly Bey, in the above Journal, page 271, asserts it to be towards the east, and again, in page 272, declares it to be towards the west, such incohe rence, I presume, requires no confutation; I consider that it originates from Moorish inaccuracy.

The La Mar Zarak of Adams, if any such river exists, may be a corruption of Sagia el Humra, i. e. the Red Stream, a river in the southern confines of the Desart, nearly in the same longitude with Timbuctoo; this river the late Emperor of Marocco, Muley Yezzid, announced as the southern boundary of his dominions; but from the accounts which I have bad of it, it was not of that magnitude which Adams ascribes to the Mar Zarak, nor was it precisely in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo when I was a resident in South Barbary. Rivers, however, which pass through sandy or desert districts often change their courses in the space of 21 hours by the drifting of the moving sands impelled by the wind, instances of which I have myself witnessed.

If this river proceeded from the Desert, it might have had the name of El Bahar ahara, i. e. the River of Sahara; the word la mar is a Lingua Franca, or corrupt Spanish word, sigui. fying the sea, and might have been used to this poor sailor by a native, to make it the more intelligible to him, many Spanish words having crept into the Arabic vocabulary, and are occasionally used by those Africans who have had intercourse with Europeans.

The next passage for animadversion is as follows:

"The state in which he represented Timbuctoo, and its being the residence of a Negro Sovereign, instead of a Musselman."

The state in which he has represented Timbuctoo is, I think, extremely inaccurate, and being a slave, it is more than probable that he was placed in a * fondaque, or a caravansera, belonging to the king, which he mistook for his palace; but that his narrative should be deemed inaccurate, because he has de

* Vide Jackson's Account of Marocco, &c. page 295.

Europ. Mag. Vol. LXXII. Dec. 1817.

scribed the town of Timbuctoo to be under the sovereignty of a Negro Prince is to me incomprehensible. The various sources of information that I have investigated uniformly declare that sove reign to be a Negro, and that his name in the year 1800 was Woolo, this account it appears is confirmed by Adams, who says Woolo was King of Timbuctoo in 1810, and that he was then old and grey-headed. Some years after the above period, Riley's Narrative, epitomised in Leydeu's Discoveries and Travels in Africa, Vol. I. speaking of the King of Timbuctoo, says, "This sovereign is a very large, old, grey-headed black, called Shegar, which means suitan; this, however, I must observe, is a misinterpretation of the word shegar, which is an African Arabic word, and signifies red, or carrotty, and is a word applicable to his physiognomy, but certainly not to his rank: Abd-Shegar, a carrotty or red Negro."

If these two testimonies, since 1800, be correct (and I really see no reason to doubt them), then the anachronism, of which I am accused in the New Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica (title Africa), is misapplied.

Many of the king's civil officers, however, in 1800, were Mooselmen, but the military are altogether Negroes.

However fervent the zeal of Mohammedanism may be at Timbuctoo, it is not, I imagine, sufficient to convert the Negroes, who have not the best opinion of the Mohammedan tenets. The Negroes, however, are disposed to abjure idolatry for any other form of religion that they can be persuaded to think preferable, or that holds out a better pros pect, a convincing proof of which has been shown in the readiness of the Afri cans of Congo and Angola to renounce their idolatry for the Christian faith, and by the conversion of thousands to that faith by the indefatigable zeal of the Catholic Missionaries when the Portuguese first discovered those countries, and which, if the Sovereign of Portugal had persevered with that laudable zeal with which he began to promote the conversion of the Africans, the inhabitants of those extensive and populous countries might at this day have been altogether members of the Christian Church.

I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant, JAMES G. JACKSON. 3 U

London, Dec. 1817.

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