Sinar, the Hedjaz and Soudan: Wanderings around the birth-place of the Prophet and across the Ethiopian Desert, from Sawakin to Chartum. By James Hamilton, author of "Wanderings in South Africa. London: Bentley. Charleston: Russell & Jones. 1857.

It is a comfortable thing to travel-by proxy; to sit in one's arm chair, before a comfortable fire, or in a pleasant shade, as the case may be, and traverse the world's wonders with no fear of suffering from polar snows or tropic suns, or the probable lack of something to wear, or, still worse, of something to eat; with some other to swallow train oil and whale blubber among the Greenland icebergs, or melted butter, of a castor oil flavour, with the good people of Soudan; with another's carcase to be pounded to soreness on the backs of camels, or stuffed to bursting by Arab etiquette in the Hedjaz; with a representative to be fleeced by rapacious Sheiks and contractors for dromedary staging, or to tumble off their humps to the danger of limbs or life, to engage in tiger shooting or bagging lions, like Cummins or his French compatriot, with the Atlantic between us and them, to scramble up mountains or fall down precipices, or to be frozen up for years in seas of ice, with no sun or stars for months to look at, and with the comfortable assurance that our bones may be mumbled by white bears-or excite the sympathetic commiseration of subsequent voyagers-all this is pleasant enough. We cannot be too grateful to such gentlemen as Mr. Hamilton for acting in this representative capacity, and introducing us to so many strange things for our amusement or information. It adds to the enjoyment in all these cases that we get to regard the proxy who is doing our traveling for us as a friend or companion. We acquire in him a pleasant acquaintance, who gives us no trouble or annoyance by his most wayward humours. We bear his worst caprices with perfect equanimity. Indeed, it may be said that they add to our enjoyment. If we share, in some measure, his difficulties, dangers and privations, we have nevertheless the

agreeable consciousness of encountering the one and bearing the other with unshaken resolution and fortitude. At the same time we enjoy all that he enjoys with at least equal zest and with less wearisomeness of mind and body. Fancy surpasses fact. His descriptions are suggestive and our imagination clothes his scenes with brighter colours than their own, and overlooks all their deficiencies and defects. It is this power which gives mysterious properties to the moving columns of sand whirling over the desert, and converts them into gins or monsters in chase of each other, and we exercise its strength more freely because more securely, than the traveling proxy who is in danger of being suffocated by the phenomenon that arouses its exercise.

Among these proxies traveling for the benefit of home keeping wits, there are not many more pleasant than Mr. Hamilton. He is very much of a John Bull, it is true, with an unshaken conviction of the surpassing excellence of his own country, from which he has run away, and a supercilious contempt for all the countries for which he has exchanged his own for a season; with a horror of domestic slavery worthy of Clarkson, while he admits that the slave is unhappy when released from his bondage; and with a firm belief that nothing is needed for the regeneration of all nations, but the active interference of England in their usages and laws, altering and improving according to her model of civilization and happiness.

Mr. Hamilton, spending his time listlessly, as he says, in Cairo, gazing at passing travelers and amused with the variegated population of the city, was induced by a friend on his way to India, to accompany him a part of the way. They rode to Suez by the route where a railroad is preparing to be. From Suez they sailed in a boat of the country. The skipper was no classical scholar, but his rule, nevertheless, was festina lentemake haste slowly. It is the maxim of his tribe and people, and very odious to travelers who have nothing to do. They visited Sinai, and Mr. Hamilton describes effectively the desolate region of dark, rugged, granite mountains, on

which Moses received the law for his stiff-necked followers. The traveler seems to think the craving of the Israelites for the pleasant fields, to say nothing of the flesh-pots of Egypt, not an unnatural feeling contrasted as these were with the desert of black and stoney desolation, to which they had migrated. He describes the gusts of wind rushing down the ravines of the mountain as bringing intense cold, and with it showers of triangular stones worse than the most furious hail storms, making a sad exchange for the pleasant breezes, and green pastures and genial atmosphere of the land of Goshen. The travelers were entertained in the Convent, and the worthy fathers exhibited as keen an appreciation of the value of a consideration, as a broker in Wall street dealing in suspended bank pa

per.

The traveler's next port of arrival was Jeddah, on the coast of the Hedjaz. It is a place of increasing importance, and a population drawn from all the nations of the world. Among them were large numbers of pilgrims to the shrine of the Prophet, from the Moslems of India. From this point they paid a visit to the Sherif of Arabia, descended from the family of the Prophet, and a holy man in the eyes of all Arabs. He is described as an intelligent and accomplished gentleman, and entertained his guests sumptuously. His residence is not far from Mecca, in a country of green valleys or wadys, with palms, apricots and other fruits, producing wheat and abounding in flocks and herds. In going there, the travelers passed Mecca on the left, and on their return again passed it on the same side by a different road, thus making the circuit of the holy Caaba at a distance, however, sufficiently great to satisfy the most rigid worshipper of the Prophet.

Mr. Hamilton appears to entertain a favourable opinion of the Arab law-giver in the main. He not only thinks him entitled to the praise of great ability, but to the commendation of a reformer of the pagan creeds and practices of his countrymen. He was not, in his opinion, a mere vulgar imposter, like Joe Smith or Brigham Young, deceiving for his personal advantage only, but was a believer in his own mission. He was neither avaricious nor rapacious, and his worldly goods, at his death, were almost nothing.

From Jeddah, Mr. Hamilton sailed to Sarawak, on the African side of the Red Sea, in stormy weather, with no little discomfort from dirt and vermin, the accompaniment of all Arab ships. The journey across the country from Sarawak to Chartum, was accomplished,

after much delay, by a circuitous route, on dromedary back, with unruly and sulky conductors, through a region sometimes desert, sometimes exceedingly fertile, abounding in flocks and herds of cattle and camels, from whose simple shepherds the weary and hungry travelers were able to obtain ready supplies of milk, rich and foaming, though in somewhat unsightly and unclean vessels, always without money, "for the love of God." Mr. Hamilton thinks the country one of great capabilities, agricultural and commercial. But the people are oppressed by the Egyptian Pasha, who makes all improvement impossible. If this despotic power, however, is hateful and injurious to the people of Soudan, it is a talisman of safety to the traveler. The process by which it acts is as simple as it is efficacious. If a traveler is plundered or otherwise illtreated, a certain number of purses is levied by the troops of the Pasha on the whole district. Every one is thus constituted a guardian of the passing European, ready to defend and help him. Under this safeguard, Mr. Hamilton passed unmolested, even by wild beasts, though sometimes a little frightened by them, from the Red Sea to the city of Chartum, at the confluence of the Blue and the White Nile.

Chartum is a place of recent growth. It is increasing in importance and population, though the climate is detestable, something like that of the engine room of a steamboat, when the steam is abroad and the outside atmosphere somewhere about ninety. It is the entrepot of Egyp tian commerce with the South. Here Mr. Hamilton saw much jollification, dancing girls of various kinds, great hospitality, and some hard drinking. The drink, however, is all taken as medicine, the climate being very sickly and the virulent nature of its diseases rendering homœopathic doses utterly absurd. Two or three bottles of wine, therefore, together with sundries of porter, brandy and other matters, are taken daily as alteratives or preventives. Notwithstanding this, life is short at Chartum, which is a strong evidence of the sickness of the place.

Mr. Hamilton thinks that there is good reason to believe in the speedy solution of the great geographical problem that has perplexed the world for so many thousand years, and that the secretive temper of the Nile will be at last overcome. We hope so, and that Mr. Hamilton may be there to see, to travel for us, and tell us all about it. In the meantime we thank him for the pleasant moments he has already imparted, and hope that his shadow may never grow less.

The Shadow Worshipper and other Poems. By Frank Lee Benedict. J. S. Redfield. 1857.

This volume is introduced with a preface by Mrs. Anne S. Stephens, recently one of the editors of Peterson's Philadelphia Magazine, in the course of which we are informed that the author of "The Shadow Worshipper" is "but just of legal age, that his literary studies have been the promptings of his own mind, carried on in the early part in secresy, and unaided at any time either by literary friendships or example." Much of this the reader would, we think, have discovered for himself, since anything more crude, undigested and inartistic than the contents of Mr. Benedict's book, it is difficult to conceive of. In parts we discover signs of cleverness, but when we revert to the poetry which has been published by others "just of legal age," by Shelley, Keats, Byron and Kirk White, we cannot help looking upon "The Shadow Worshipper," and the other poems which compose the volume before us, as productions which should have remained in the writer's portfolio, or at any rate, been produced only in a modest and private way at the special request of personal friends.

The Hasheesh Eater, being Passages in the Life of a Pythagorean. Harper & Brothers, New York.

This book, which we understand to be the production of a young man of twenty-one, is a curious and interesting publication. Although in general style and conception, bearing the unmistakable marks of having been suggested by the famous "Confessions" of De Quincey, yet it is a harsh criticism which would consign this revelation of Hasheesh deliriums to the rank of a mere imitation. A mere imitation the work is not. There are evidences in it of an individuality of thought which indicates very considerable subtlety and force of endowment. Moreover, the experiences recorded, appear-notwithstanding some extravagance of expression-to be truthfully told. The author keeps, or contrives effectually to make his reader believe, that he keeps good faith with the public. In a word, we look upon the book as genuine, and in all important points worthy of credence. Under this conviction, we have followed the Hasheesh Eater, step by step, through the multiform labyrinths of a journey which leads far beyond the beaten ways of our "dim diurnal sphere." The interest of the work is chiefly psychological. It discourses of the myste

ries of the spirit, and even professes to furnish certain novel phenomena, which may throw some light upon the occult and difficult investigations of the most engrossing of human sciences. The effect of Hasheesh differs in many important particulars from the effect of any other drug with which we are acquainted. It is a stimulus of wonderful potency, acting so profoundly upon the brain and intellectual functions, as to produce results the most startling and peculiar. But what, the reader asks, is Hasheesh, and how does it work? Let us begin at the beginning. The hemp plant flourishes with equal vigour, both in Northern and Southern latitudes. But in the torrid zone it secretes a glutinous substance, which gives to it a somewhat distinctive character, and on this account Botanists have called it the Cannabis Indica, (or Indian hemp,) in contradistinction to the Cannabis Sativa, which, growing free of fibre, becomes in virtue of this quality the great resource for mats and cordage. The gluten which adheres to the Cannabis Indica is Hasheesh. It is a favorite stimulant among all Eastern nations, being employed sometimes "in the state in which it exudes from the mature stalk, as a crude resin, and at others after having been manufactured into a conserve with clarified butter, honey and spices."

Our Hasheesh Eater, who is, or was until recently, a student of medicine, experimented, he says, upon every drug which came in his way, with a self-devoted heroism, or a hardy folly-as the reader may choose to view it-which is rather unusual, we suppose, among the disciples of the healing art. He exhausted the whole Materia Medica, from salts and rhubarb to the elixir of opium. Nor was he behindhand in testing the more dangerous æsthetics. "With the chloroform bottle beneath my nose, I have," he says, "set myself careering upon the wings of a thrilling and accelerating life, until I had just enough power remaining to restore the liquid to the place upon the shelf, and sink back to the enjoyment of the delicious apathy which lasted through the few succeeding moments. Now, ether was substituted for chloroform, and the difference of their phenomena noted, &c." "When," he goes on to observe, "the circuit of all the accessible tests was completed, I ceased experimenting, and sat down like a pharmaceutical Alexander, with no more drug-worlds to conquer." But from this condition of complacent knowledge and supremacy, the writer was destined to be aroused.

One morning while lounging in an apothecary's store, the proprietor-his friend-notified him of the arrival of a

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fresh assortment of drugs. Glancing carelessly over them, he encountered the label "Cannabis Indica." With his usual hardihood, he took down the bottle, removed the cork, and was about to swallow a small portion of an "olive brown extract with "an aromatic smell," when the doctor informed him that the stuff was poison! This intelligence dampened his ardour for the moment, but he spent the remainder of the morning in consulting the Dispensatory," the result of which was, that waiting until he was alone, he made up a pile of the "extract sufficient to balance the ten grain weight of the sanctorial scales, and this, on the authority of Pereira, &c., he swallowed without a tremor." But not the "shadow of a phenomenon" followed the dose. Gradually, however, he added to the size and strength of his pills, until, one evening half an hour after tea, he partook of a bolus of thirty grains. Doubting the success of this experiment -all the former ones having proved abortive the Hasheesh Eater went to pass the evening at the house of a friend. From this point the author shall tell his own story:

"In music and conversation the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared. I was provoked to think that this trial was as fruitless as its prede

cessors.

Ha! what means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some unimagined vital force, shoots without warning through my entire frame, leaping to my fingers' ends, piercing my brain, startling me till I almost spring from my chair.

I could not doubt it. I was in the power of the hasheesh influence. My first emotion was one of uncontrollable terror-a sense of getting something which I had not bargained for. That moment I would have given all I had or hoped to have to be as I was three hours before.

No pain any where-not a twinge in any fibre-yet a cloud of unutterable strangeness was settling upon me, and wrapping me impenetrably in from all that was natural or familiar. Endeared faces, well known to me of old, surrounded me, yet they were not with me in my loneliness. I had entered upon a tremendous life which they could not share. If the disembodied ever return to hover over the hearth-stone which once had a seat for them, they look upon their friends as I then looked upon mine. A nearness of place, with an infinite distance of state, a connection which had no possible sympathies for the wants of

that hour of revelation, an isolation none the less perfect for seeming companionship. Still I spoke; a question was put to me, and I answered it; I even laughed at a bon mot. Yet it was not my voice which spoke. For a while I knew nothing that was going on externally, and then the remembrance of the last remark which had been made returned slowly and indistinctly, as some trait of a dream will return after many days, puzzling us to say where we have been conscious of it before.

Perhaps I was acting strangely. Suddenly a pair of busy hands, which had been running neck and neck all the evening with a nimble little crochetneedle over a race-ground of pink and blue silk, stopped at their goal, and their owner looked at me steadfastly. Ah! I was found out-I had betrayed myself. In terror I waited, expecting every instant to hear the word "hasheesh." No, the lady only asked me some question connected with the previous conversation. As mechanically as an automaton I began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke, and in another world. I sat and listened; still the voice kept speaking. Now for the first time I experienced the vast change which hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the reply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held me when I heard it begun.

And now, with time, space expanded also. At my friend's house one particular arm-chair was always reserved for me. I was sitting in it at a distance of hardly three feet from the centre-table around which the members of the family were grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side. We were in a vast hall, of which my friends and I occupied extremities. The ceiling and the walls ran upward with a gliding motion, as if vivified by a sudden force of resistless growth.

This calmer being suffered with the other by sympathy, but did not lose its self-possession. Presently it warned me that I must go home, lest the growing effect of the hasheesh should incite me to some act which might frighten my friends. I acknowledged the force of this remark very much, as if it had been made by another person, and rose to take my leave. I advanced toward the centre-table. With every step its distance increased. I nerved myself as for a long pedestrian journey. Still the lights, the faces, the furniture receded. At last, almost unconsciously, I reached them. It would be tedious to attempt to convey the idea of the time which my leave-taking consumed, and the attempt, at least with all minds that have not passed through the same experience, would be as impossible as tedious. At last I was in the street.

Beyond me the view stretched endlessly away. It was an unconverging vista, whose nearest lamps seemed separated from me by leagues. I was doomed to pass through a merciless stretch of space. A soul just disenthralled, setting out for his flight beyond the farthest visible star, could not be more overwhelmed with his newly-acquired conception of the sublimity of distance, than I was at that moment. Solemnly I began my infinite journey.

Before long I walked in entire unconsciousness of all around me. I dwelt in a marvelous inner world. I existed by turns in different places and various states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle. Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in the spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of music and perfume. My soul changed to a vegetable essence, thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy. The palace of Al Haroun could not have bought me back to humanity.

vein I could trace the circulation of the blood along each inch of its progress. I knew when every valve opened and when it shut; every sense was preternaturally awakened; the room was full of a great glory. The beating of my heart was so clearly audible that I wondered to find it unnoticed by those who were sitting by my side. Lo, now, that heart became a great fountain, whose jet played upward with loud vibrations, and, striking upon the roof of my skull as on a gigantic dome, fell back with a splash and echo into its reservoir. Faster and faster came the pulsations, until at last I heard them no more, and the stream became one continuously pouring flood, whose roar resounded through all my frame. I gave myself up for lost, since judgment, which still sat unimpaired above my perverted senses, argued that congestion must take place in a few moments, and close the drama with my death. But my clutch would not yet relax from hope. The thought struck me, Might not this rapidity of circulation be, after all, imaginary. I determined to find out.

Going to my own room, I took out my watch, and placed my hand upon my heart. The very effort which I made to ascertain the reality, gradually brought perception back to its natural state. In the intensity of my observations, I began to perceive that the circulation was not as rapid as I had thought. From a pulseless flow it gradually came to be apprehended as a hurrying succession of intense throbs, then less swift and less intense, till finally, on comparing it with the second-hand, I found that about 90 a minute was its average rapidity. Greatly comforted, I desisted from the experiment."

The other experiences of the Hasheesh Eater all bear a generic resemblance to this. They differ, of course, very materially in details, and towards the close of the rash experiment, they assume a sombre and terrific character, but still the general features and phenomena are the same. Sometimes the dreamer fancied himself imprisoned "by a weird enchanter in the Domdaniel caves under the roots of the ocean;" sometimes he looked upon Eternity, and in the "sublime revelation of the soul's own time, and her capacity for an infinite life, he stood trembling with awe," then he "writhed in Etna, and burned unquenchably in Gehenna," and again horror and pain giving place to the grotesque, "the walls bristled with hippogripps, toucans and maccataws, swung and nodded from their palm perches, whilst Centaurs and Lapithae clashed in ferocious conflict."

It is in details like these that the au