and the relative situations of the adjoining countries not aceurately laid down. It is, however, sufficiently clear and explicit to illustrate the tour in Silesia, which perhaps was its only object. It should nevertheless be remembered, that erroneous ideas, once imbibed, are not easily corrected; and that placing the north at any other part than the top of a map, confuses for a time even an experienced geographer. We had lately occa sion to give a strong instance of this in Mr. Gell's map of the Troad.

In the whole of this tour, Mr. Adams displays considerable information, and a correct discrimination. He ridicules with success the modern ideas of virtue and simplicity in secluded peasants; and, in his devious wanderings over the Giant Mountains, points out features of a very different, and of a much less pleasing kind. In his commercial views, he displays much judgement, and indicates the only real foundation of successful commerce-punctuality and honour. In mechanical speculations, he is not always equally correct; but, in his account of the various machinery which he has occasion to notice, he pays an ample tribute to the abilities and industry of our own nation. Indeed, Americans must consider themselves as Englishmen. Gallo-mania can be but of short duration; and events that have occurred in France, and in St. Domingo, will hasten to dissipate more rapidly the delusion. As a politician, our author is rational and judicious: and his views of the scenery of the more romantic parts of the province evince his taste and feeling. Having given this general view of his work, it remains only to select a few passages. As many of the districts were new to us, they were also interesting: for this reason we may be tempted to enlarge a little beyond our common limits, as we may fairly conclude that the descriptions will be also new and interesting to many of our readers.

Mr. Adams wades through the sands of Brandenburg to Frankfort, which contains 3000 Jews, squalid and dirty beyond the powers of language to describe. He shortly notices the Frankfort fair, and sneers a little at the plan of producing sugar from beet roots. We think that we can see, in the back ground, the sugar from the maple implicated in the same sarcasm. Our traveller, on his entering Silesia from the electorate, soon discovered a striking change; since he only paid one third of the price for a good dinner, which had been before demanded for a bad one. The different state of the peasants in the electorate and Silesia is pointed out in the following anecdotes.

As happens to be just now the harvest-time, we passed many groups of reapers, a sight which would have afforded us more satisfaction had we not known that they were far from gathering the boun

ties of the season for themselves, and had they not, by frequently soliciting our charity, proved the wretchedness of their condition. We travelled through Saxony, a part of the March, and a corner of Bohemia, last year at this time, and then we also met many companie $ of reapers; we saw several last week as we came from Berlin, but we never before beheld them beg. Since we entered Silesia, yesterday and the day before, certainly more than twenty times, as we passed by troops of peasants of both sexes who were gathering the harvest, a woman from among them, and sometimes two or three, ran from the fields to our carriage with a little bunch of flowers tied up with some cars of the grain which they were gathering, and threw them into the carriage at the windows, by way of begging for a dreyer or half a groschin. The reason of this is, because the condition of the peasant in Silesia is much worse than in the Electorate. For although personal servitude exists alike in both provinces, yet the serf in the March is never compelled to labour for his lord, more days than there are. In Silesia he is often obliged to furnish ten days work in a week: judge then, after the man and his wife have both laboured five days in seven for the lord, what sort of a subsistence they can earn in the remaining two (one of which is a Sunday) for themselves.' P. 28.

Silesia was formerly a catholic province, and at this time one half of its inhabitants are catholics. Though the toleration or the scepticism of the Prussian government has introduced maxims of mutual forbearance; though the manners of the age have favoured the progress of indifference to every form of religion; yet the Lutheran and the catholic in Silesia still indulge the worst of animosities, the odium theologicum.

The brown pottery of Bunzlau, the ingenuity of Jacob and Hütig, a weaver and carpenter of this town, are not without their interest, but must not detain us. The whole indeed is untrodden ground, and offers much novelty. We fhall, however, prefer attending to the bolder and more characteristic features of nature in this peculiar country. The following is a scene in the Riesengebirge, the north-western point of the Sudetic Chain, which terminates on the south-east in the Carpathian Mountains.

This day was devoted to the view of the Schneegruben, or snowpits, which are considered as among the greatest curiosities of the mountains; and, likewise, to visit the source and the fall of the Elbe. At seven in the morning we took to the cart, and after jolting over the rocks up-hill for two hours, came to the place beyond which no carriage can proceed. From the time when we left the cart we ascended, for about one hour, a steep of which you can form an idea, when I tell you that it was, throughout, about equal to the steepest part of Beacon-hill in Boston. We then came to a peasant's hut, here called a baude (pronounce it in English bouder), of which there are many upon these mountains, and of which, as they and their inhabiants have several distinguishing peculiarities, I shall say something

more in a future letter. After resting an hour, and taking some refresh-
ment at this, which is known by the name of the Silesian baude, we
recommenced our ascent, and after toiling and panting half an hour
longer, reached what is called the back of the Riesengebirge, that is,
the summit of the whole range; though single rocks and hills upon
them rise yet much higher. On this back we found a boundary-stone
between Bohemia and Silesia; for the limits between the two pro-
vinces run all along upon this summit. We had, however, another
half hour's walk, chiefly ascending, though less steep than before;
when instantly a precipice, nearly fifteen hundred feet deep, opened its
ghastly jaws before us; a sort of isthmus, or tongue of land, however,
allowed us to proceed about an hundred rods further, until we could
fix ourselves against the side of a rock, and look over into the tre-
mendous depth. We had then the precipice on both sides of us, and
it passes by the respective names of the Great and the Small Snow-
pit. They are so called, because generally the snow at the bottom
remains unmelted the whole year round; although this has not been
the case for the last two summers, and at present they contain no
snow at all. We were now elevated more than four thousand feet
above the level of the sea; beyond the jaws of the precipice, some-
what higher than ourselves, was the summit of a mountain, called the
'Great Wheel, or the Great Storm-cap. Just beneath our feet was
the dreadful precipice, at the bottom of which, lofty pines, slanting
downwards upon the still descending mountain, scarcely appeared to
our eyes of the height of a lady's needle; while beyond the foot of the
mountains, our eyes ranged to almost an immeasurable distance, over
hills and dales, corn fields and pastures, cities and villages, until they
were lost in the gray vapours that bordered the far-extended horizon.
The weather, which is here almost always cold, even when the regions
below are melting with heat, was so unusually mild, that we had no
occasion to take our cloaks, while we sat about an hour, and enjoyed
the prospects around us. At the snow-pits, as at the falls, there is
every appearance as if the immense masses of granite, of which these
mountains consist, had been split and shivered by some great natural
convulsion. The basaltic rocks, which rise in irregular pyramidical
shafts from the bottom of the pits, to the height of four or five
hundred feet, furnish materials for the controversy between the natural
philosophers, whether it is a marine or volcanic production.' P. 86.

The Elbe, as its name implies, issues from eleven springs, but its real sources are innumerable; for everywhere, on the mountains, bubbling springs arise, flowing in rippling currents cool and clear.' The Bohemians and Silesians contend for the honour of producing this famous and useful river; and, as the boundary on the summit of the mountains is not precisely defined, the contest will not be easily settled. The Elbe, however, falls on the side of Bohemia, and thence directs its course to the west, and afterwards to the north. The Oder, on the other hand, falls into Silesia, and finds a way through the sands of Brandenburg to the Baltic. We have already noticed the substance of the following paragraph.

Between two and three in the afternoon we returned to the Silesian baude, where we stopped to dine upon the provisions we had carried with us, and upon what we could get there. They could only supply us with brown bread, milk, and butter; for which, however, they made us pay the double of what the same articles would have cost us in any of the Silesian cities. I mention this because these mountaineers have been represented to us, both in conversation and by the books of the travellers hither, as the most perfect models of patriarchal virtue, happiness, and simplicity: every thing we have seen of them has tended to give us ideas of them directly the reverse of these.' P. 94.

The view from the Reisenkoppe, or the Giant's Head, is another striking feature in the picture.

'The darkness of the night had been gradually dispersing, and the borders of the horizon at the east gradually reddening from the moment when we left the baude, so that I was apprehensive the queen of day, as Zöllner on a similar occasion calls the sun, would shew his glowing face before we should reach the summit, and to avoid this disappointment doubled the usual pace of ascent, and in another quarter of an hour stood at the door of the chapel on the top of the mountain. About ten minutes after, the great luminary rose in all his glory, from the lower cloud which bordered the horizon; for although the weather was remarkably fine for this region, the sky was not perfectly clear, and a murky vapour hung upon the atmosphere, which intercepted a part of the immense extent of territory which would otherwise have been within the compass of our vision. had heard so much of the apparent magnitude of the sun's disk when seen rising from this spot, that when I came to view it I found it less striking than I imagined; it appears about the size of a large coachwheel; but the same effect may at any time be produced by looking at it through a telescope.

•

The prospect from this spot is of course more extensive than from any other point upon these mountains; and its grandeur is augmented by the circumstance that the eye can range freely, bounded only by the horizon on every side. The spectator has but to turn on his heel, and all Silesia, all Saxony, and all Bohemia, pass in an instant before his view; it is therefore truly sublime; but as it has the defect usually attendant upon sublimity, of being indistinct, and in some sort chaotic, the lover of beautiful objects must content himself with a smaller elevation. A painter at Hirschberg, by the name of Reinhardt, who is employed by the Academy of Sciences at Berlin to paint views of the most remarkable spots in this province, observed to me, that from the highest mountains there was nothing picturesque, nothing that he could employ as a subject for any one of his paintings.-When on the Schneekoppe, I felt the force of his remark; for when the eye embraces at once such an extent of objects, it perceives only great masses; whereas, all the pleasure that painting can afford is by the accurate representation of details.

"

The proper Giant's Head is of a conical form, and the surface of the summit is not more, I think, than an hundred yards in diameter;

its perpendicular elevation is about six hundred feet, and the path by which it is ascended forms nearly a regular angle of about 45 degrees : the ascent would indeed be too steep to be practicable, but that when the chapel on the top was built, in the year 1668, a flight of stone steps was made to assist the traveller in mounting to it, of which a sufficient part remains to give no small assistance. The mountain itself appears to be a solid block of granite, upon which there is no appearance of vegetation, unless a kind of red moss, resembling rust upon iron, which grows on the loose stones that cover it on every side, may be so called: these loose stones, part of which are of granite and part of a species of white flint, are in such abundance that they wholly conceal the side of the mountain itself. On one side of the path as you approach the top, a precipice of about 1500 feet opens, by the side of which you continue to mount; it ends at the bottom in a narrow vale of perhaps a mile in extent, along the course of which are scattered a number of peasants' huts. Here too it looks as if the body of the mountain had been riven at a single stroke, and the rocks which stand on either side correspond in such a manner as to resemble the teeth of a saw. Opposite the summit, to the westward, is a mountain somewhat lower, called the Little Koppe, from the foot of which is a sloping grass-plot that goes by the name of Rübenzahl's pleasure-garden; other remarkable spots within the view are called his meadow, his pulpit, his grounds, &c.: the whole neighbourhood is full of his name.' P. 107.

We need scarcely add, that Rübenzahl is the Robin Good Fellow of the Silesian mountains. We select the following passage as of a different kind, not indeed for information, but to give the reader an idea of the low state of even the staple manufacture of Silesia, that of linens. The letter is dated from Schmiedeberg.

They' (the objects of curiosity) consist, principally, of linen manufactures, of various kinds; a business which, in proportion to the size of the place, is carried on with more activity here than at Hirschberg. The town contains, at most, five thousand inhabitants; and their exportations amount to about a million dollars annually.

One of the principal merchants of the town is a Mr. Waldkirch, who is at this time employed in erecting buildings, sufficient for bleaching from twenty to twenty-five thousand pieces of linen, yearly. For this purpose, he has one large house, in which he hangs up to dry the linen which has passed through the bleaching-tubs, instead of stretching it, as is usual elsewhere, upon a grass-plot. He gains, by this, the advantage of being able to perform the process of drying, the whole year round, and is no longer dependent upon the season and the weather. He is likewise introducing here, from Ireland, the use of oxygenated muriatic acid (I am not chemist enough to know precisely what it is), to whiten the linen the better. Here, likewife, we saw the process of dressing the linen, by passing it through a tub of starch; the object of which is, to give it stiffness, and a gloss to the eye; but which they have not been accustomed to here, and which