side, when another of the same sort ran out among us. We could not fire at it, for fear of hurting each other, and just then we thought we saw something like the head of an old one rise above the water. We thought it better to leave the coast clear to them, and made the best of our way home. We found afterwards that what we had seen were iguanos, a large species of lizard, and very good eating, the flesh very much resembling that of a chicken. On another occasion I had gone out alone, and when at some distance from the village, was very much startled by a most frightful howling and grunting. Supposing that I had got near a drove of wild pigs, I thought the best thing I could do was to get away from them. This noise I discovered afterwards proceeded from the red apes. One day in the wood I had observed some pieces of rotten branches and fruit fall very near me two or three times, and on looking up I saw the apes, who had been pelting them at me. So soon as they saw I had observed them, they set off helter skelter, and set up such a dismal grunting and howling as I never heard; the noise they make more resembles that made by a drove of pigs, when some one disturbs them as they lie huddled together, and they all join in chorus of complaint at having their slumbers broken, than anything I know.

:

In our excursions into the woods, we became acquainted with what the plague of mosquitoes really is. What we had seen of them before, was scarcely a foretaste of their powers of annoying and giving pain. If we stopped for one minute, we were absolutely covered with them; every bush seemed to be an ambush for them and while recharging one's gun, every vulnerable part, the face, hands, ancles, &c. were pierced by a hundred stings. In vain we attempted to drive them off with our handkerchiefs; they seemed to return in greater numbers, and with more venom every time. Our only safety, and that only partial, was in motion. Finding that smoking kept them pretty well off our faces at least, we were obliged to adopt that habit in our own defence. Speaking of smoking, we were all very much surprised at a cus-.

tom among the women of the place, who smoked with the lighted end of the cigar in the mouth. One is at a loss to imagine why they do so; but it is a fact; and then they attempt to talk with it so. They cannot of course use the tongue very freely, for fear of burning it; but they make a horrid attempt at articulation; and their jabbering and chattering is only equalled by the flocks of parroquets which keep the woods in an uproar from sunrise to sunset.

Although every thing about us was new, and strange, and full of interest; yet nothing we met with appeared more curious than the habits of the large red ant, whose paths are met with everywhere. The first time I saw them, they were crossing the road, and I could not conceive what the green line drawn across the sand could be. On coming close to it, I perceived that it was formed by the ants; and what made it appear green was the leaves they were carrying home to their nest. Their path was about nine inches wide, and worn quite bare and smooth. Every inch of this path was covered with ants-some carrying a piece of leaf towards home, others hurrying back for more, after having deposited a load in the nest. It appears that there is one particular shrub that they take the leaves of, and a party is employed to break them off, another to cut them to the proper size, and then the great body to convey them to the nest or ant hill. Some people are of opinion that they carry the leaves in order to screen themselves from the birds: but this I think an erroneous idea. If such were the case, they would all carry a screen. But it is not so; and those laden with the leaf are always seen going in the same direction, while the others without it are constantly seen coming in the opposite one. Indeed the circumstance of their carrying the leaf makes them more easily seen as I observed above, it was the moving line of green which first attracted my attention, and the vision of birds is generally too acute to be deceived by so clumsy a screen. have followed these paths for hundreds of yards, and always found them crowded through the whole length. In fact, what astonished me most was the regularity of their proceedings. There were no parts of their path

I

crowded and others unoccupied, but all covered just close enough to allow room to work. Some of them appear to burrow in the sand, making excavations, which prove dangerous to passengers, when they happen to be made under a road, which is often the case. Others raise conical shaped hills of three or four feet in height, the outside of which is formed of some kind of paste which is impervious to water. There is another species which fasten their nest to the branch of a tree,* generally a horizontal one, which it hangs down from as large as a bus-skep.

In the house next to our domicile, a fine little girl took ill and died, and we had an opportunity of witnessing a wake and funeral. The body was laid out on a kind of couch, and dressed in all its best clothes; a bright yellow satin frock, silk stockings, and red satin shoes. Its head was decked out with flowers, one of which was fixed in the mouth. Six large wax tapers were placed round the body, and a few of the relations joined in lamentations for the loss, and praises of the deceased.

In the evening the priest came, attended by the sexton, some musicians, and three or four little boys who carried censers with incense, the holy water, &c. The body was then laid in an open coffin and set on a kind of frame, having four feet, and two poles to carry it by, like a sedan chair. Wax torches were given to all those who were to attend the funeral; and after some prayers were said, the coffin was carried out, and the procession followed two deep, and all uncovered. The sexton chaunted the service for the dead, accompanied by the music of a fiddle, a flute, and clarionet. At about twenty yards from the house, the coffin was set down; the priest re

peated a pater noster, took a silver instrument (which very much resembled a child's rattle on a large scale,) that was immersed in the holy water, and sprinkled the coffin cross fashion. The round nob of the instrument being perforated with holes, both charged itself when dipped into the water, and served as a rose to scatter it when swung in the way I have mentioned. The censers in which the incense was carried, were now waived back and forward, until the current of air created by this means, made it burn more quickly, and the coffin was enveloped in a cloud of perfumed smoke. This ceremony was repeated every twenty or thirty yards. I was told afterwards that the more frequent, or rather the greater the number of parados or stops, the shorter time the soul would remain in purgatory, at least the funeral would be considered mas luxoso, more grand and, of course, more profitable to the priest, who gets a certain sum for each parado. The child was daughter to a person who might be called an hidalgo of the place; and the same number of parados that would have served every body's children would not do for his. So we had more praying and music in the church, where the body was interred. We then returned to the house, where there was chocolate, sweetmeats, and cigars for such as chose to partake of them.

One evening, about seven o'clock, we heard a great bustle down towards the river side, and presently a crowd of people came into the square, dragging a young alligator after them. It was about six feet long, and had been killed in a house near the river, where it had entered in search of fowl, it was supposed, as many had been carried off from near the same place within a short time. The house where it was

killed was built close to the water's edge, having a door towards the river, and another opening to the street. Two women were sitting at the street door, when they observed the creature enter the opposite one They gave the alarm immediately, and the alligator having got into the house, its retreat was cut off by some boatmen who came to the womens' assistance, and it was dragged off in triumph to the square. Although it was almost beaten to a jelly, it still attempted to lash with its tail and to bite. Their tenacity of life is very great. This was the first alligator I had seen; and when I was told that it had not attained a half of its full size, I could easily credit the stories I heard of their carrying off pigs, calves, children, and even horses.

Although the bats were not so numerous here as in Carthagena, they were much larger, and in the evenings were very disagreeable, as they came flapping their great leather wings close past one's head, and leaving a most unpleasant smell behind them. Besides their repugnant appearance, they are

to be guarded against at night, or (being of the vampire species) they will wound and suck the blood of any one they can get at. Their favourite point of attack is the top of the great toe, where they make a small hole, as if of a pointed instrument, or of a nail, and from this they manage to extract a great quantity of blood. I have known the boatmen of the river, when lying exposed on the banks, to awake so enfeebled from loss of blood, as to be unable to stand. This, one would suppose, could not be effected by one bat, nor without awaking the person bitten. On such occasions it has been observed that round where the person was lying there were quantities of clotted blood, and it is conjectured that as soon as the bat had filled itself, it had disgorged the blood and returned to suck again repeatedly. How it is that the person who is attacked by them does not feel them at the time, is not easily accounted for, but such is the case. In the villages along the Magdalena I have seen bats measuring eighteen inches from the point of one wing to the point of the other.

sprung.

ADVENA.

There are but two modes of forming a due estimate of the literary attainments and character of any ancient people, who, at a remote period of time, had been subjected to the ravages of war or the degradation of conquest. The first is a candid examination of such of their most celebrated writings as have survived the ruin of their affairs, and been transmitted to the present age. The second is an appeal to the testimony of such foreign authors as have either directly discussed, or incidentally glanced at the subject, and given favourable or unfavourable evidence respecting their literary character. In some instances it is wholly impossible to make use of the former criterion, because it has sometimes happened that conquerors, actuated by a spirit of hatred, jealousy, and revenge, have sought to obliterate every trace of the ancient glory of those nations who had, with manly but unsuccessful fortitude, resisted their ambitious projects. Thus few, if any genuine remnants of the literature of the Carthaginians have escaped the barbarous scrutiny of their Roman conquerors; and the history and character of that most interesting nation have chiefly descended to us through the polluted medium of their most determined and inveterate enemies. In Ireland, also, an unrelenting warfare was waged against the literature of the country by the Ostmen, Livonians, and other barbarous tribes of Pagans, who, though they did not absolutely conquer this entire kingdom, yet invaded and wasted it in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The first host of these savages made their appearance in the year 795, at the isle of Rachlin, in the county of Antrim, and devastated a consider able part of Ulster. About the year 815 another swarm of them destroyed the Abbey of Bangor, and the literary works which it contained. Armagh and its college, or academy-then the most celebrated one of the kind in Ireland-experienced the same fate.

In short, the Normans and Danes, as they were generally called, not only tyrannized most inhumanly over the people, but sought to annihilate every vestige of their literature, so far as their power extended. Many manuscripts, however, escaped their savage rage, and were either preserved in the libraries of private individuals, or in such monasteries as, through various causes, the Danes had been unable to destroy. It happened, however, unfortunately, that after the invasion of this country by the English, the natives were accustomed to deposit their provisions in those edifices and in churches, as places of refuge and of security. The Britons paid little respect to those sanctuaries, but pillaged them when in want of either food or raiment. Hence both churches and abbeys became the theatres of sanguinary warfare, and numbers of them were ruined by the contending parties. Giraldus Cambrensis informs us, that in pillaging or removing the provisions stored in churches, &c. the English acted under the authority of VIVIAN,the Pope's legate. At last the Irish themselves, in order to cut off the sources of supply thus opened to their enemies, set fire to those religious buildings with their own hands, and a new and boundless havoc was committed amongst their literary manuscripts. Annal. Anon. citante Leland, Vol. I. p. 123.

Still, however, some remained in the hands of individuals. Of these, part have been lost, part still are to be found in Ireland, and part, it is said, were deposited in France by James II. and some of his followers. Carthage perished wholly as a nation, and with her perished, it is to be feared, all the original records of her literary fame. But Ireland, though harassed and conquered, had still a kind of distinct existence, a shadowy semblance of her ancient glory, which yet remains, and

"Stat magni nominis Umbra.” Archbishop Peter Lombard, a very

learned prelate and antiquary, who lived in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and of James I. states (Analecta, p. 562, 3-4) that many volumes of Irish manuscripts were deposited in the Royal Copenhagen Library, and that the king of Denmark had applied to Queen Elizabeth to procure him some able linguist and antiquary to translate them. Donatus O'Daly, a man perfectly qualified to execute the task, was willing to undertake it, but was prohibited by the court. Lombard also asserts that several Irish manuscripts of importance were consigned to oblivion in the tower of London. He complains, too, most bitterly, that the English governors of Ireland had laboured incessantly to remove from this kingdom every monument of antiquity which it was in their power to convey to Great Britain. O'Reilly, the Irish lexicographer, is in possession of several very valuable Irish manuscripts; and states that there yet exist, in different libraries of this kingdom, authentic copies of great antiquity, treating on history, law, topography, poetry, music, astronomy, and medicine; the most common are those on history and medicine. Respecting these he has published a quarto volume, giving a brief abstract account of some of them, in chronological order.

We shall now proceed to demonstrate, from the testimony of foreign authors, that the Irish literati, during a great part of what is called the dark or the middle ages, were remarkable for their sanctity and learning. And first, as to the testimony of our nearest neighbours, the inhabitants of Great Britain.

Gildas, the most ancient British historian extant, was first an alumnus, and then the chief master of the famous academy founded at Armagh, by his preceptor St. Patrick. He died about the year 512. After his decease, no historian of any moment appeared in England, till the days of the venerable BEDE, who speaks in the most honorable terms of the liberality and learning of the Irish. He, indeed, distinctly informs us that numbers of the Anglo Saxon youth flocked from Britain to Ireland, to be instructed in religion and letters, and were supplied with lodgings and even with books, gratis. Bede lived in part of the seventh and

of the eighth centuries, and was a man whose evidence is never called in question, except when, like his contemporary authors, he intersperses tales of miracles (which no doubt he believed to be true) in his biographical works. (Bede, Hist. Ecc. Brit. lib. 3 cap. 27.) Again he tells us that many of the English nobles withdrew to Ireland, to cultivate letters or lead a life of greater purity. The same Bede affirms that when Bishop Aidan was sent to convert the Northumbrians, he preached in the Irish language, and King Oswin, who was acquainted with that tongue, acted as his interpreter. Hist. Ecc. Brit. lib. 2. cap. 3. In like manner, when Colman, the Irish divine, deputed from the Isle of Hi or Iona, and his companions, addressed the Anglo Saxons, Ceadda was appointed their interpreter. Ibid. lib. 3. cap. 23.

Alcuin, who also lived in the eighth century, in his life of St. Willibrord, Archbishop of Utretcht, bears similar testimony to the liberality and learning of the Irish. Willibrord was edu cated at Armagh, and his biographer, who was a man of eminent talents, has, in becoming terms, eulogized the preceptors under whom that prelate had studied twelve years. Nennius, the next British historian of any note, also corroborates the evidence of his predecessors, and English and British writers of a later date, such as Camden, Spenser, Hanmer, Llhuid, Roland, and many others, might be referred to, if it were necessary to accumulate evidence on this subject.

It is a curious fact, that in some of our ancient academical towns the former names of whole districts of streets were derived from their being the residence of the Anglo Saxon students. Thus, from a very remote period of time, one division of the city of Armagh was called Trian Sassanach-the Saxon division or district; and the road leading from it, Bohar-na-trian Sassanach—the road of the Saxon district or division, and this road led directly to the college or academy. Triad Tham. p. 300. It is yet called English-street. Amongst the Anglo-Saxons and others of high rank, educated in Ireland, we find the name of ALFRED, King of Northum berland, as is expressly vouched by Bede himself, lib. 3. c.7-27, et sequent; and of Aigilbert, first Bishop of the