as the lamb is dropt, it is immediately sewn up in a sort of coarse linen shirt, to keep up a constant and gentle pressure on the fine wool. Warm water is then poured over it every day, to make it soft and sleek, and to lay the fleece in ringlets. The bandage is gradually let out as the lamb grows. The most useful information is the description of the method of preparing Morocco leather at Karasubazar, where there is an old and famous manufactory. They begin the process by cleaning the skins in the following manner. After having steeped some raw hides in cold water for twenty-four hours, to free them from blood and other impurities, the fleshy parts are scraped off with proper instruments. They are next macerated for ten days in cold limewater, to loosen the hair, which is likewise scraped off as clean as possible. For fifteen days they lie in clean cold water, and then are worked under foot in a succession of clean waters; the last being impregnated with dog's dung, to loosen the hair still more; when they receive a second scraping, and are drained of their humidity, which finishes the cleaning process. "They now proceed to what they call feeding the skins, by steeping them four days in a cold infusion of wheat bran; then in a decoction of honey and water, twentyeight pounds to five pails, cooled down to the temperature of new milk; out of which they are put under pressure into a vessel with holes at the bottom to let the liquor escape. They are, lastly, steeped four days in a light solution of salt and water, one pound to five pails: this finishes the preparation; and the leather is now ready to receive the dye. "A strong decoction of artemisa annua, or southernwood, in the proportion of four pounds to ten pails of water, seems to be the basis of all the different colours that they give to the morocco in the Taurida, Astracan, and the other cities formerly belonging to the Tartar empire, where the secret has remained till now. When a red colour is intended, a pound of cochineal in powder is gradually stirred. into ten pails of the fine yellow decoction of artemisa, and boiled upon it for half an hour, with five or six drachms, of alum, and poured on the leather in a proper vessel. They are next worked under feet in an infusion of oak leaves in warm water, till they become supple and soft; when they are finally rinsed in cold water, then rubbed over with olive oil, and callendered with wooden rollers; which finishes the manufacture. "The yellow morocco is dyed with the decoction of artemisia alone; only stronger, twenty pounds of it to fifteen pails, being, the proportion when used without other admixture; but two pounds of alum in fine powder, is gradually added, by half a table. spoonful at a time; and with this each skin is twice stained before the last operations of oiling and callendering. "It is, however, necessary to remark, that there is a little difference in the preparation of the skins for receiving the pure yellow dye described above; as neither honey nor salt are used; but, instead of them, the hides are steeped for two days in an infusion of oak leaves (immediately after being taken out of the infusion of bran, wherein they must have lain four days), and then worked under feet for a few hours of two days; next rinsed in cold water, and placed one above. another on poles, to drain off the water, and make them ready for staining. "This is all the certain information that I have been able to obtain on this curious subject; for I can by no means depend on the vague reports that I have heard, relative to the colouring matter added for staining the green and blue kinds of morocco; so that I prefer leaving you in the same uncertainty, to giving as facts what I cannot myself depend upon." Dr. Guthrie has added a supplement, and an appendix, which fill a fourth part of the volume, both upon Bosphoric antiquities and history. We wish he had given all his erudition in this form, instead of interpolating his wife's letters; but then Mrs. Guthrie's part would have been reduced to the length of a preface -a little French anti-room to the Doctor's huge lumbered library. ART. XI. Travels through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire, in the Years 1793 and 1794. Translated from the German of P. S. PALLAS, vol. 1, 4to. pages 575. 39 coloured Plates and Vignettes, and 3 Maps. THE great name of professor Pallas, and the splendid appearance of this volume, which is full of prints, had prepared us to expect much interesting information, from an account of countries so little known, by a man of such ac, knowledged learning. His former tra vels have not been rendered into our language. The present work, he says, may tend to supply deficiencies in the former. The translator has, therefore, judiciously inwoven such passages from the former publication as are necessary to complete the information in this. 4 From Petersburg the author travelled to Tzaritzin, on the Volga. Every where on the road he observes and regrets the waste of timber. The number of distilleries is a more serious and alarming evil; in the government of Pensa, which contains about 650,000 inhabitants, about ten million gallons of spirits are annually distilled. The forests in some parts of the journey presented a very singular appearance. Severe hoar frosts had commenced in these regions before Christmas, and were followed by snow, mixed with rain or sleet, so that even the smallest branches of the trees were covered with ice an inch thick; by this all the flexible birch-trees had been bent to the ground in semicircles. Their tops and branches were thus buried under the continual snow, which lay upwards of a yard deep, and kept the trees in that recumbent state. The inflexible full grown birch and oaks trees had been partly split, and partly broken, by the weight of the congelations on their tops, while their collateral branches were also bent to the ground. The thaw, which began here towards the latter end of February, and the rays of the sun, had indeed melted the icy incrustations on the upper part of the trees, but it still remained undissolved on the branches which were fixed in the snow. The cylinders of ice on one side, all appeared melted into a solid mass, but on the lower part they were crystallised, some according to the usual configuration of frozen water, in hexagonal and partly in rhomboidal figures, while others consisted only of hexagonal sections. These bodies were, like the well-known hollow cubes of salt, apparently formed of icicles of a pyramidal figure when inverted, broad on the surface, and narrow towards the inner part, where they were fixed in the ice." A favourable account is given of the German colonists. “These colonists have, during the last twenty years, considerably encreased both in population and opulence, and are now al most completely naturalized, or renovated; as the old settlers, who were in general rather moral characters, are dead, and succeeded by a better and more vigorous progeny. The Dumber of colonists who settled on the banks of the Volga, originally amounted to 29,000 persons; 2000 of these gradually emigrated to difierent parts of the empire; about 400 were carried into captivity by the Kirghiskozaks, during the troubles of 1779, nevertheless the present population of the German colonies on the Volga amounts to 33,000 persons of They appear to be perfectly contented and happy, and to have no other wish than to be governed by magistrates acquainted with the German language, as many both sexes. of the colonists are unable to speak the Russian. Nor would it have been an easy matter to choose a better and more comfortable situation for such a colony in the Russian empire; not only with respect to fertility, but also for a healthy and temperate climate. The winter is regular and moderate, with deep falls of snow; the weather of spring and autumn is generally wholesome, and the summer is delightful. The various degrees of heat and cold here do not exceed twentyseven degrees above and below the freezing point, and even these do not occur to such extent every year." Professor Pallas is of opinion with Tournefort, that the Kumanian, Kalmuk, and Yaikian deserts, were formerly overflown, and that the Caspian and Black Seas were united. He founds his opinion upon the shells scattered through these deserts, resembling those of the Caspian, and not to be found in the ri vers; the uniformity of the soil, and the quantity of marine salt which it contains. When he arrived at Tzaritzin, the frost had not yet broken, though it was the latter end of March, for the winter lingered unusually long. The birds of passage, who as usual had arrived in February, had disappeared. The thaw came on in April; the ice on the river split; the snow torrents ran from the mountains into the Volga; the birds of passage returned; the tulip and the mountain-saffron sprouted out, and the first chaffer and citillus, or mountainmouse, awoke from their brumal slumber. This town contains many wealthy merchants, who trade with.the Kalmuks. The lower classes maintain themselves cucumbers, sugar, and water melons; by rearing cattle, by the cultivation of by the fisheries, and by the trade of carriers. The town itself was strong enough to repel Pugatshef in his eruel career in 1774. The country seems to have rccovered the devastation committed dur ing that calamitous insurrection. Otrada white mustard is cultivated on a large scale; it produces sixty-fold crops; and the oil and flour of mustard exceed the value of wheat in a similar proportion. A Moravian.colony is settled at Sarepta. Their late marriages, the Professor says, impede population. haps count Zinzendorff legislated for a Percolder climate. They carry on many manufactories; among others those of velveret and calico, which are made in great perfection, but cannot be sold as At low as those imported from Manchester. The sisters are said to embroider with uncommon skill and elegance, and the garden, which they cultivate without assistance, is a pattern of industry, clean liness, and regularity. The people here brew a kind of beer from their water melons, with the addition of hops, and prepare a conserve from the same fruit, which is a good substitute for treacle. The Professor conjectures that a toler able wine might be made from melons. An army of rats (the mus decumanus) past through Sarepta a few years ago, swam over the mill-dam in open day, and pursued their journey towards Tza ritzin. From hence our author proceeded to Astrakhan. The desert produced white and yellow tulips in abundance. Ele phant bones are frequently found here. The sepulchral hillocks are numerous, and many of them have been so filled with dead bodies that their tops have sunk into the form of a bason. The lit tle village Solotnikove exhibits in its history a specimen of Russian coloniza. tion. Five hundred persons were trans planted there from the northern parts of Ustying and Vologda. The heat of the climate has destroyed three hundred; the remainder who have borne the experiment, and resisted the thaw, are in debt to the crown for the taxes of their dead relations! Of all despots, a speculating despot is the most dangerous. In all the towns and villages upon the Volga, the inhabitants make cylinders of bark, which they place on poles in the farm yards, to entice the birds to build there. The Kalmuks had been thinned by the small pox, to them as destructive as the plague. The introduction of provincial governments, and the division of lands have confined the range of this horde, who still consist of above 8000 kybitkes, or family tents. For any account of the manners of this people, the author refers to his Collections for the elucidation of the History of the Mongole Tribes. He made no stay at Astrakhan, designing to return there at the close of the summer. His summer journey furnished very little interesting matter. The journal consists almost wholly of mineralogical and botanical observations, or the topography of a country wherein every place has an unremember able name. In one leaf we come to Mankhalinskoi, or, as the Tartars call it, Kuyutkhu, Akhtoubinskoi, Solotukhino, Setterta-Modun, and Volodimerovka, the great slobode opposite Tshernoiyarsk. To this great slobode the Professor sent his baggage, while he visited Arslan-Ula, or the Lion's Mountain, so called from its resemblance on one side to a lion couchant. "The eastern declivity of this rocky dorsand-stone has probably in several places set has a very singular appearance. As the been soft, it is apparently corroded with various small globular cavities, resembling grotto work. It is obvious that this uncom mon formation of sand-stone could be produced by no other cause than the power of the dashing waves, at a time when the whole steppe formed part of the Caspian Sea; for these excavations cannot be discovered on the higher parts of the sand-bank. On the plain extending towards the saline lake, there are scattered several fragments of cliffs, which appear to have been entirely covered by water. Among these we met with globular pieces of various sizes, which, on breaking them, were partly hollow, and contained sand not unlike regular geodites. During the prevalence of easterly winds, that blow highest part of which is towards the south, with violence against this grotto work, the it appears to a person standing on its summit, as if he heard the distant murmuring of many hundred voices joined in prayer. The phenomenon was particularly striking on the day when I visited this region, during a violent storm from the north-east. The creduthe tutelary spirit of the mountain, or the lous Kalmuks are told by their priests that white old man, whom they call Tzaghan Ebughen, resides in a large cavern beneath this mountain; and that this is the chosen abode of saints, who are engaged in continual devotion and spiritual songs." A day's journey from Tzaritzin, whither he had returned, is the village of Besrodnaya Sloboda, where the empress Elizabeth has attempted to rear silk works, and establish a manufactory of silk. She invited Armenians, and other foreigners, who understood the care of the silk worm, to settle, but none accepted the invitation. She then settled about 250 straggling peasants there, under the direction of an Hungarian major, who suffered the establishment to decline. At length the great Catherine directed her attention there, appointed a director, and issued an order that the imperial college of economy should furnish him with 1300 families of voluntary peasants.' In two years these volunteers were raised; but volunteers as they 39 were, it seems they had an "invincible and rooted dislike" to the employment, because they could at all times derive greater advantage from fishing. Cogent measures were resorted to, which phrase may, perhaps, be English for the knout. This did not succeed; the peasantry even sprinkled the worms with salt wa ter to destroy them. The perpetrators of this crime were punished. They next set fire to the grass, to extirpate the mulberry trees. The scheme was then abandoned. Will such potentates never learn that manufactories cannot be forced? that some degree of civilization must precede them? that he who is not workman enough to make a tenpenny nail, must not attempt to make needles? "The most certain means of introducing this source of national wealth, and of saving the empire upwards of a million of rubles, which are annually paid to the Turks, the Persians, and the Italians, for their silks, would be to establish colonies of the Asiatic nations, particularly in the peninsula of the Crimea, where the mulberry tree grows uncommonly fast, even in a dry soil, when properly watered. "On the whole, the Asiatic method is far preferable to that formerly practised on the Akhtouba, where much time and expence was wasted in feeding the silk-worms with gathered leaves, which soon decayed, and rendered the frequent shifting of their beds necessary. The Persian of Boukharia rears his mulberry trees to about six feet high, which they attain in four or five years. He then begins to lop their tops and branches, which are given to the insects, as soon as they have sufficient strength, by placing them genily on their beds. By this means the shoots remain fresh and succulent, and the worms devour them even to the woody fibres, so that no part of the nutritive foliage is wasted. As these insects are every day supplied with food, the leafless branches gradually form a kind of wicker-work, through which the impurities pass, so that the cheerful worms preserve the requisite cleanliness without trouble to the cultivator, and speedily attain a vigorous state. In this manner they are continually supplied with leaves, till they prepare to spin, when small dry brushwood is placed in all directions over the leafless branches, and on this the worms spin their silk. Two persons, an adult who lops the branches, and a child who collects them, are thus enabled quickly to procure food for a great number of silk-worms. The mulberry tree in our climate produces new shoots twice every summer: these shoots acquire in the same year the firm consistence of wood, and in the subsequent spring afford an abundant -crop of foilage. In Persia and Boukharia, where the summer is longer, and vegetation more vigorcus, the shoots may even be cut twice a-year. The tree, by this method of cutting, remains always low, and produces a trunk, as well as from its branches, every greater number of young shoots from its subsequent year. By stripping them of their leaves, however, many branches wither, and not only the buds are lost, and much foliage wasted, but the worms receive less nourishiment, as the leaves sooner decay." The traditionary account which the Kalmuks give of a ruin called Temahme Balgasum, or the camel's tower, evinces an odd idea of magnificence: they say Dshanibek-Khan kept a number of mares there, whose milk was conveyed by tubes from the tower to his residence. They have a tale of Khara-shishi, his divorced wife, (for we suppose Khan-Dehenovak to be the same name). There is a lake of sweetish water, much frequented by water fowl. By this she fixed her habitation, and ordered a large quantity of sugar to be thrown into it, to decoy aquatic birds from the country round. This made him frequently resort to the The khan was a great lover of hawking. lake, and thus she eventually effected a reconciliation. Sugar is an odd bait for a wild duck, and a wild duck is an odd bait for a husband; but this tale might form the subject of an interesting song. In August the Professor returned to Astrakhan, a semi-asiatic and important place, which, next to Moscow, ranks among the first cities of the Russian empire. The fishery here, during the fasts of the Greek church, which amount to at least one third of the year, affords the principal food to the whole European part of Russia. According to the averannually taken amounts to 1,760,405 age produce, the value of the sturgeons rubles. "It may hence be concluded, in what incalculable numbers these large fish, so rich in caviare, are continually propagated in the depths of the Caspian sea. They proceed in shoals to the mouths, and a considerable way up the current of the rivers, without the least apparent diminution of their numbers. This superabundance may be more clearly conceived from the account of eye-witnesses, respecting the fishery of Sallian, in Persia. As the Persians eat no sturgeon, the beforementioned speculators in fish have rented the fishery of that river from the khan of Derbent, SHIKH ALI, a son of FETH ÁLI KHAN, at a certain sum, which of late years has been raised to 25,000 rubles. In the season of their migration there are sometimes, in one day, 15,000 sturgeons taken with the hook, at the weirs formed across the water; nay, it is stili more remarkable, that if the fishermen are accidentally prevented from working during a single day, the fish accumu late in such numbers at the weir, as to fill the whole channel, insomuch that those which are uppermost appear with their backs above water, in a river not less than four arshines, or twenty-eight English feet deep, and sixty fathoms wide. The Persian fishery, which has been established by the proprietors only a few years ago, and which, together with the rent, amounts to an expence of 80,000 rubles, is said to produce annually upwards of 200,000 rubles. It might be still more lucrative, if the injudicious fishermen would preserve the great number of fish, instead of throwing them into the sea as useless, after having collected their roes and air bladders." The most valuable production of the sturgeon is the isinglass, which is sold to England for our breweries, and to the southern countries to clarify their wines; not, as is said in another part of this vc lume, to give them a brilliant colour. The balance of trade from hence to Persia is against Russia. appears that Here the author was present at some religious ceremonies of the Multanes, an Indian tribe, subject to the Avgans, and whose language bears the greatest analogy to that of the gypsies. Their priest, he says, was not a regular Bramin, but a Dervise. But the word dervise is as appropriate to the Mohammedan religion as bramin is to the Hindoo, or friar to the catholic nomenclature. By the names of these idols, it their religion is a corruption of the great superstition that extends over the whole of India. In this city also he witnessed the distribution of the holy oil of the Nestorian Armenians, which is said to be prepared in forty days from flowers and plants of forty different sorts, gathered with great secresy on the mountains of Anatolia and Caucasus. It is made only in one convent, every four or five years, and is thence distributed to all the churches of the sect. Here too he learnt the history of the Persian troubles, during the last twenty years. We will not attempt to abridge pages which are crowded with khans and kuli-khans, as a more ample account of Persian history may be expected from Mr. Olivier, a far more able writer than the Russian professor. lebrated diamond, which is now set in the imperial sceptre of Russia. "Shah Nadir had in his throne two principal Indian diamonds; one of which was called the sun of the sea, and the other the moon of the mountain. At the time of his assassination, many precious ornaments belonging to the crown were pillaged, and afterwards secretly disposed of by the soldiers who shared the plunder. "Shafrass, commonly known at Astrak han by the name of Millionskik, or the Man of Millions, then resided at Bassora, with two of his brothers. One day, a chief of the Avganians applied to him, and secretly proposed to sell, for a very moderate sum, the beforementioned diamond, which probably was that called the moon of the mountain; together with a very large emerald, a ruby of à considerable size, and other precious stones of less value. Shafrass was astonished at the offer, and pretending that he had not a suffimanded time to consult with his brothers on cient sum to purchase these jewels, he dethe subject. The vender, probably from suspicious motives, did not again make his appearance. sora. "Shafrass, with the approbation of his brothers, immediately went in search of the stranger with the jewels, but he had left BaşThe Armenian, however, met him accidentally at Bagdad, and concluded the bargain by paying him 50,000 piastres for all the jewels in his possession. Shafrass and his brothers being conscious that it was necessary to observe the most profound secrecy respecting this purchase, resolved, on account of their commercial connections, to remain at Bassora. "After a lapse of twelve years, Grigori Shaf rass, with the consent of his brothers, set off with the largest of the jewels, which had till then been concealed. He directed his route through Sham and Constantinople, and afterwards by land through Hungary and Silesia, to the city of Amsterdam, where he publicly offered his jewels for sale. The English government is said to have been among the bidders. The court of Russia sent for the large diamond, with a proposal to reimburse all reasonable expenWhen the diamond arrived, the Russian mices, if the price could not be agreed upon. nister count Panin, made the following offer to Shafrass, whose negociator, M. Lasaref, was then jeweller to the court. Besides the patent of hereditary nobility, demanded by the vender, he was to receive an annual pension of 6000 rubles during life, 500,000 rubles in cash, one fifth part of which was to be payable on demand, and the remainder in the space of ten years, by regular instalments, The capricious Shafiass likewise claimed the honour of nobility for his brothers, and various other immunities or adWe will extract the history of the ce- vantages, and persisted so obstinately in his |