slavery in Agoona, is very small; not above one person in forty, or perhaps in fifty, can be considered as a slave. The power of the master over the slave is absolute, and extends not only to the exaction of whatever labour the slave is capable of performing, but to life itself. The slave is liable to be seized and sold for the debts of his master, or for the payment of any forfeiture to which the sentence of the law may have subjected him. In respect, however, to the common field labour which they have to perform, there is practically no difference between the slave and the freeman. Their hours of working are the same, and those not strictly regulated; the forenoon only being usually allotted to labour. Nor are the slaves ever driven, or other wise compelled to work: what they do, they do with willingness. There is still some slave-trade carried on by the Dutch, and lately also by the Danes, who continue to reside on the coast. The chief carriers of slaves from the Gold Coast, are the Portuguese. Their great market, however, is on the leeward, or what it called the Slave Coast. Two vessels from Cuba carried off cargoes of slaves from the Gold Coast, in October last. The continuance of the slave-trade, though on a reduced scale, by other nations, has greatly impeded the beneficial effects which might have been expected to follow from its abolition by Great Britain; for though the export of slaves from the coast be comparatively trifling, yet it serves to keep alive there many of the mal-practices, which would otherwise have ceased. What is wanted, therefore, to give this measure its full effect, is an universal abolition of the trade. Even as things are, the natives have become more diligent in seeking for gold, and in procuring other articles wanted by Europeans; and, generally speaking, more industrious; but still, the partial existence of the slave-trade, is a great bar to industrious exertion. It is also true that accusations and condemnations for crimes (as witchcraft, &c.), and predatory wars, have been less frequent than they used to be. Kidnapping, or panyaring, as it is called on the Gold Coast, is not much diminished. Personal security, however, is, on the whole, increased; and this has manifested it of by increased industry. From these partial improvements, may be inferred the unspeakable and innumerable benefits which must accrue to Africa, from a total abolition of the traffic in slaves. The foregoing observations embrace but a small portion of what is called the Gold Coast; and although there is throughout the whole much similarity of soil and climate, yet in other respects there are material differences. The Anta country, for instance, which lies between the rivers Ancobra and Succondee, is a rich woody country, well watered, and well planted. The timber here is fit for every purpose. It abounds in gold, and other metals, in a greater degree than the neighbouring states. The cultivation of the soil is more attended to than in many parts of the coast; and it has many very convenient creeks and harbours. The river Ancobra separates this state from the kingdom of Apollonia. Here the country is still better watered by lakes and rivers: it is more flat, and better adapted for the growth of rice, sugar. cane, and all those articles which require a moist soil. The great disadvantage under which Apollonia labours, is, that the surf along its coast is so violent, that it is impossible to land without danger. The form of its government is despotic; a circumstance which certainly prevents many of those irregularities and abuses, which prevail in other districts. As we recede from the sea, however, and advance into the interior, the state of things appears to be much more fa vourable than it can be said to be on any part of the coast. We witness a life of more industry and more happiness; and a great improvement, not only in these important respects, but in soil, climate, and other natural advantages. In short, the capabilities of Africa can be appreciated but in a very inadequate degree, if we confine our observations to the sea-coast, and do not proceed inland. The difference, indeed, is visible even a few miles from the shore; but it is still greater the farther we advance into the country. There is no valuable article of tropical culture, which might not be raised in this country in great abundance; while its population stands in need of our manufactures, and is accustomed to their use. And when it is considered what the hand of industry' has done in the West Indies, in the pestilential swamps of Guiana, for instance, what may not fairly be expected from the 1810.] On Projects respecting Silk-worms, and Wine and Honey. 221 the rich hills and extensive plains of this country, blessed as it is with a luxuriant soil, and a comparatively healthy climate? IT For the Monthly Magazine. SILK WORMS-WINE-HONEY. T must necessarily happen, in the vast revolving series of the affairs of a nation, that failures in every concern must be forgotten, together with even their records; and that thence the desire of this or that improvement should periodically burst forth, stimulating the enterprising to new attempts. My recollection, which now extends to nearly half a century, has furnished me with a variety of instances of this nature; and with many, particularly in the medical department, in which old pretended in fallible remedies have been re-produced as new discoveries, in order to the honours of a second, third, or fourth, repetition of failure. Amongst a thousand other projects of late years, that of grow ing silk in England has been eminently pushed forward. It was in course out of memory, and, until lately, out of the common road of reading, that, in or about the year 1721, the silk mania became epidemic in this country; and that among a great number of inferior extent, an attempt upon a considerable scale was made, to breed and feed silk-worms in the duke of Wharton's park at Chelsea, taken expressly for that purpose, and under the sanction of a patent. Whether the silk manufactories at Greenwich, established about the same time, were of the same connection, I have really forgotten, but I conjecture they were. I have also forgotten the par. ticular cause of failure in breeding the silk-worms at that period, but I have repeatedly, and at different periods of my life, experienced such failure, both in my own attempts, and those of other persons; insomuch, that I have many years since made up my mind on the real impossibility of ever growing silk to advantage in this country. Such has also been the case in various parts of France. Nevertheless, silk-worms have, during a century, and still are kept and bred for the amusement of young misses and masters, and a breeding stock may, at any season, be purchased in Coventgarden market, together with mulberry leaves, at two-pence per dozen, wherewith to feed them. The climate of this country is by no means inimical to the silk-worm, which or is most prolific here; and I have even had autumnal broods of them, froin keeping the eggs of the moth too warm. The sole bar of which I am apprised to success in breeding them, is the impossibility of obtaining mulberry leaves sufficiently early in the spring for the worms, a healthy substitute, until the foliage of the mulberry he ready. I have tried every plant within my reach, whilst waiting the tardy progress of the mulberry-tree, but could find none on which the worms would feed, excepting the lettuce; and that in. variably injured, after the first day or two, by scouring and weakening them, until finally they burst the greater part of them, with a species of hydropic rot, like that of sheep. Lettuce dried, proved too harsh for their mouths. In the mean time, their stench was insufferable; rendering the atmosphere of the chamber in which they were kept, absolutely morbific. Many of them began to spin; but from debility, their labour was imperfect, and they died with their web incomplete, producing no chrysolite, the dead worm being apparent through the web, which is otherwise impervious to the sight. Some silk indeed was, and generally will be obtained; but the quantity insufficient, and the quality weak and inferior. The most healthy worms produced the strongest and yellowest silk, following the rule of vegetable roots, in which the yellow colour is generally the harbinger of superior quality. In conclusion, we never need regret the want of silk culture in this country, not only because our lands may be much more advantageously occupied, but also because were such an undertaking desirable, colonies enow might be found in the world, with every requisite of climate and food for the purpose. Moreover, it is universally desirable in the view of necessary human commerce, that one country should depend upon another for its peculiar indigenous commodity. am yet prejudiced in one respect, and loath to depend on other countries for a supply of wine, more especially as there is good reason to conclude, that real wine was made in this country some centuries back, and that the introduction, with commerce, of superior wines, occa sioned the discontinuance of our home manufacture, and, in a considerable degree, of the vine culture. Our cydery balderdash from currants, gooseberries, and other fruits, I will not consent to honour with the name of wine; nor can I I agree I agree with a certain useful provincial communication concerning Stramonium, writer, in his recommendation of such debilitating slops, to be given to the sick poor, to whom, in their sickness, good sound beer, when foreign wine cannot be procured, will be generally more beneficial. But I yet entertain the bope of being able to make real wine, of passable quality, in this country, the chief impediment to which is the scarcity of grapes. We are the most indolent of nations at the fruit culture, and of mar vellous stupidity in our choice of fruits: of apples, for example, one half of the varieties of which grow among us, are unfit even for pigs, and ought, like our bad plays, to be damned. Honey is another staple article of periodical projection. Every seven, or half a score years, a fortune is to be made by the bee culture. A French cure, starving upon his living, but living Sumptuously upon his bees, treated his diocesan with a dinner of I know not how many courses, to the absolute alarm of the good bishop, who ever after replied to those asking preferment of him -Keep bees. Lately we have been informed, Mr. M'What-d'ye-call-him, as made so many hundred pounds weight of honey from his numerous hives, and sold it for so much money. And all this is passing well, to have a good stock of honey for home consumption, and a comfortable surplus for market, to be sold at a high price. But Latet anguis in herba: there is a sting in the tail of this. In all probability, the confined use of honey in this country would not bear any very extensive growth, and were the constant recommendations of increased culture to be generally attended to, down would go the price like a jack-weight, or like the stocks after the cheer-up of a Birming ham victory. It ought to be recollected, that honey is rather a medicinal than a dietetic article, and that it would make a most improper substitute for sugar, rendering tea still more debilitating. About twenty years since I was offered quantities of virgin honey, both in Es sex and Hampshire, at two-pence farthing per pound; the second species at seven farthings; and the squeezings, at five farthings. L. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. and as being calculated to give the public a very different impression with regard to its virtues from that which I endeavoured to convey, I feel myself in a certain degree called upon to reply to. Agricola seems to regard the smoking of stramonium as a species of ebriety, or as the use merely of one of those ordinary opiates, that people are apt to have recourse to in order to relieve a paroxysm of pain, whether it originates from a mental or a corporeal cause, by which they purchase a temporary sus pension of misery at the expense of permanent injury. Stramonium, however, used in the manner explamed in my first paper, produces effects essentially different from that of any intoxica ting drug that I am acquainted with. It acts favourably upon the feelings of the mind, only inasmuch as it alleviates the pain of the body; neither is its first and happy influence succeeded, as in the use of opiates or narcotics, by depression, lassitude, or stupor. So far from stramonium having induced that torpor or sluggishness, which the smoking of tobacco and hops occasioned in Agricola's friend, I am confident, that without the assistance of that invaluable remedy, I should not have been able to go through the exertions that my daily avocations call for, which, thank God, I am doing with an alacrity unknown to me for years past. As far as ny experience has gone, and it is of some standing, it has not lost, by its frequently repeated use, one iota of its medicinal influence; and wherever it has been had recourse to, in a proper manner, within the sphere of my personal knowledge, it has been equally successful. I am by no means disposed to detract from the value of Dr. Brees's work, by the application of which, Agricola has been able in a manner to regenerate his constitution; or, to make use of his own significant expression, "to turn the habit of his body," I should be extremely happy if such a new birth should take place in my crazy and capricious fabric. In the mean time, I am, as I think I ought to be, humbly contented with having a never-failing antidote at hand. Towards counteracting the tendency to spasmodic asthma (for destroying it where it is implanted in the habit, I consider as impossible)-I have found nothing that has, in any important degree, couduced condeced but abstinence (to which I wish I had resolution enough uniformly to adhere), together with a careful protection of the body against cold or damp, or any sudden vicissitudes of the weather. London, Sept. 8, 1810. VERAX. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. A SIK, S a reader of your useful and entertaining publication, I am induced to send you an account of a medicinal spring, which, from its obscurity, is hardly known; and from the want of that knowledge, many are deprived of the great benefits to be derived from the use of it. The spring or well, I allude to, is called Holywell, about two miles from Flookborough, a small village in the parish of Cartmei, Lancashire, near to a very ancient building, Wroryshole Tower, the rock adjoining to which the water appears to spring from the bottom of, and is sold at a very cheap rate by a person residing in a hut, who is little acquainted with the value of the qualities it possesses, to those afflicted with Scurvy or any cutaneous disease. The benefits derived by the drinking of it, to numbers in that neighbourhood, as well as in other parts of the county, induces me to make it better known, that those, unfortunately afflicted, may receive that relief so many of their fellow-sufferers have done. The accomodations at Flookborough are very good. The beauties of rural sce. nery have been so well described by tourists who have visited that part of the north, and more especially those of Winanderm (about six miles distant,) that no description of mine would be adequate; I will only claim particular attention to that beautiful edifice, Cart mel Church, formerly a priory of Austin Canons, founded in 1188, and purchased by the parishioners at the Dissolution: the choir is well worthy of notice. Ely Place, Aug. 22, 1810. O. H. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. led me to visit a second time; and the only time I did go, is so long passed, that I remember not even the subject of the lecture; this gentleman accuses me of having marred, altered, and appropriated, in a work of mine lately published, certain doctrines and discoveries which he has, for several years, been propounding to the public. I own I fed indignant at the accusation, not because I have any exclusive claim to the principles on which the work is grounded (for my grammar is avowedly a compilation,) but because Mr. T., for reasons best known to himself, would insinuate that I am walking, and only lamely walking, in his steps, and would lay claim to what, if not mine, most certainly is not his. So far an I, sir, from desiring to be seen in the rays of Mr. T.'s notoriety, that there is nothing I should more strenuously avoid. The pretensions I make are not the same, neither does it appear, from what little I have heard and seed of Mr. T., that we should choose, as teachers of delivery, to be judged by the same standard of opinion. His pupils, therefore, will never be mine; nor, I believe, will mine be his. impressed with, and willing to preserve, this distinction, it was not likely I should trespass on grounds belonging exclusively to Mra Thelwall.-I have not done so. There is not a single portion of my book which is not founded on the authority of one or other of those respectable orthoepists, Walker, Herries, Nares, Sheridan, and Rice. I am no theorist, bewildering my own and others' brains by new specu lations, but travel in a plain and beaten tract. The work itself will prove the assertion.* Confident that those writers only were my guides, protesting that I never entertained an idea of deriving assistance from any thing Mr. T. hath said or written, I stand astonished at the absolute effrontery of his claims. My first chapter "On Sounds," is derived from the Elements of Speech, by Mr. Herries, with such modifications as were dictated by the works of Walker and Sheridan. The second chapter "On Letters," is indebted almost wholly to the A LETTER which appeared in your Principles of English Pronunciation, Magazine of last month, lays me under the necessity of troubling you with the following in answer. Mr. Thelwall, a person of whom I know nothing dut by common report, whose works as an author I have never seen, further than to glance at his prospectus and terms; whose lecture-room my curiosity never 1 pre * I would by no means insinuate that much may no yet be done towards the tuition of whatever relates to audible lan guage; and the improvements lately made in teaching the deaf and dumb, prove that every encouragement should be given in this respect to men of science. fixed fixed to Walker's Dictionary. My third chapter "The Praxis," which forms the principal, and I believe most useful, por tion of the volume, is compiled from the last-mentioned treatise, from Nare's Elements of Orthoepy, and from Wal. ker's Rhyming Dictionary. The rules in the fourth chapter "On Accent," were formed after a perusal of Nare's and Sheridan's rules, on the same subject. The first article in the chapter" On the Pronunciation of Sentences," was suggested by my own experience, joined to a hint in Herries; and in the remaining articles, I have closely followed Mr. Walker. In regard to the sixth and last chapter, it must have been observed, that though Mr. T. "exonerates me from any suspicion of having purloined from him any part of it," yet he would make it believed that, without his help, I could not have conceived the wonderful idea of endeavouring to remove a habit of stammering, "by enforcing the necessity of an even and well-ordered movement in discourse:"-(the words which he quotes from me.) "By whom," he asks, "do I mean to insinuate that the idea in question was conceived and brought to the test of successful experiment? Was it by the author of the Practical Grammar of English Pronunciation?" I have to confess, in answer, that such an idea did certainly come into my head; but if it was a discovery, so little pride do I derive from it, that Mr. Thelwall, if he pleases, or any body else, is welcome to all the merit. That teachers do not usually direct their pupils to the rules of prosody, in order to remove a stammering delivery, is true; but the smallest reflection points out the propriety of this method, especially when these rules are brought to bear upon prose as well as verse: and it is well known, that stammerers are less likely to be influenced by their defect when they Mr Thelwall, it appears, has recourse to the principles of musical proportion for this purpose. How the strictness of musical time can be uniformly applied to speech, without destroying that unaffected delivery which is founded in nature and just taste, I own myself at a loss to conceive. For my part, though I spoke of using the hand or toe to mark the movement of discourse, (as Mr. Herries has done before me,) yet I never dreamed of making my pupil beat time with the regularity of a musician; so that joining the two discordant feet, and talking of minim, breve, and semibreve, amount to nothing bút a misrepresentation. was com feel a rhythm in a sentence, than when they feel none. My chapter "On Pro sodiacal Admeasurement," posed therefore with a view of its being applied to this purpose; and, without vaunting my experience, I leave the public to judge how far it appears likely to have the intended effect: hoping, how. ever, that those who would form an adequate idea of it, will read it throughout, and not rest any judgment upon a single illustration deprived of its own content, and adorned with Mr. Thelwall's. As to the theory advanced in it, though it is new in several respects as a system of prosody, yet the reader will find I have built on the principles of Mr. Walker. I refer, in proof, to the Elements of Elocution, under the head "Harmony of Prose;" and to the second of two methods given for marking the different forces of words in the "Rhetorical Grammar." These principles, however, are not Mr. Thelwall's principles; and, therefore, as he observes, either he or I know very little of the matter. Mr. Thelwall charges me with meanness; but now, sir, let circumstances be reviewed, and then let the public decide who most deserves this charge. I am, sir, but a young man, yet, having been long engaged in teaching, to winch I was destined from my earlier years, I conceived that, by "an attempt to combine every thing which my experience had taught me was really useful in the writings of our best orthoepists, within such a system as might render pronunciation, capable of being studied from its elementary principles, and become, as other branches of learning, an object of methodical acquirement," I should be rendering a material service to the cause of education, and doing some little credit to myself. As I have never made pretensions to the original materials, so I can claim no other merit in the volume than what may be found in the plan and method of treatment; and on these points, it is somewhat gratifying to find that even Mr. Thelwall allows, "there are parts in the compilation that are well arranged, tolerably digested, and intelligibly explained." My work being published, this gentleman, through the medium of your Magazine, would persuade the public, that popular rumour has laid it at his door, and that, in truth, he does lay claim to many of the early pages in the book, many illustrations, |