well-directed labor is the source of wealth;|"merchant" who gave a pretty long lift to for with a teeming soil, and plenty of it, the Mr. Wallace on the Rio Negro, was a pleasant, Portuguese live as we have seen at Barra; friendly person, and apparently "respectable" and this is the mode of life at one of the In- after the manner of his country, though by no dian hamlets in its vicinity. means correct in his domestic relations.

So far connected with this volume, as being

manner, that they were irresistibly ludicrous. and never did anything disreputable during the There is always, too, a particular charm in hear- day! ing good anecdotes in a foreign language. The point is the more interesting from the obscure method of arriving at it; and the knowledge the result of the travels it recounts, is a little you acquire of the various modes of using the peculiar idioms of the language causes a pleasure quite distinct from that of the story itself. Frei Jozé never repeated a story twice in the week he was with us; and Senhor L. who, has known him for years, says he had never before heard many of the anecdotes he now related. and afterwards a parish priest: he told tales of his convent life just like what we read in Chaucer of their doings in his time. Don Juan was an innocent compared wirh Frei Jozé; but he told us he had a great respect for his cloth,

He had been a soldier, then a friar in a convent,

book by Mr. Wallace, published by Mr. Van Voorst. Its subject is the Palm-Trees of the Amazon ;* forty-eight of which are exhibited in clear and lively sketches, accompanied by descriptive letterpress. It is essentially a bo tanical book, but contains some incidental pictures of the scenes among which the palms are found, as well as of the palms, and the people to whom they are all in all.

*Palm-Trees of the Amazon and their Uses. By Alfred Russel Wallace. With forty-eight Plates. Published by Van Voorst.

From Chambers's Journal.

"I TELL YOU I SAW IT MYSELF."

WHEN any one uses this expression regarding some wonderful thing, adding or not adding "with my own eyes," he is understood to mean that the thing, however incredible it may have previously appeared, is certain: he can admit no further dispute about it. It is strange how so many sensible persons should be prepared thus to assume that the sense of sight is incapable of being deceived, when we all know how the sight of two or three hundred persons will be deceived over and over again, in a single evening, by a common conjuror. There appears to be an almost universal ignorance of a principle which affects all so-called evidence of the senses namely, that while we think we are in good faith reporting what we have witnessed or come to the knowledge of by these means, we are only perhaps stating a prepossession of our minds, or false hypothesis, regarding the things so witnessed or observed. Suppose, for instance, that a clown comes home from an exhibition of the Wizard of the North, relating that he saw a man make pancakes in the crown of a hat, all his intelligent auditors would feel assured that he had only seen certain operations performed which seemed to result in that phenomenon, and was laboring under a false hypothesis as to these operations, the pancake having been in reality cooked in another room in the usual way. His seeing the pancake brought out of the hat after some eggs and meal had been put in, was, in short, no proof that he had seen the pancake cooked there: that was only a false hypothesis regarding the actual facts witnessed. He has, in the language of Mr. John Stuart Mill, "mistaken for perception what was only inference."

to see some experiments, and is at once convinced that tables do move without human agency. "It is true, because he has seen it.” Now what he has seen is only this that a group of his friends sat round a table, with their hands placed upon it, all declaring that they neither pressed nor pushed. He has not ascertained that they did not press or push. He only infers from their declarations that they did not do so, the fact being, as we all know now from Professor Faraday's ingenious test that they did use muscular force, albeit it might be unconsciously. So our sensible and previously sceptical observer has only been forming or sanctioning an hypothesis, when he thought he was reporting a clear and indubitable fact.

Where there is any inclination to believe in marvellous or extraordinary things, it is surprising how easily one comes to allow himself to be deluded into the conviction that he has witnessed an alleged fact.

"The

It is quite a recognized principle among legal men who have occasion to sift evidence professionally, that most witnesses relate, not what they saw or heard, but only the impression they derived from what they saw or heard, the greater part of what they say being inference, while they fully believe it to be matter of fact. simplest narrative," says Dugald Stewart," of the most illiterate observer, involves more or less of hypothesis; nay, in general, it will be found that in proportion to his ignorance, the greater is the number of conjectural principles involved in his statements. A village apothecary (and, if possible, in a still greater degree, an experienced nurse) is seldom able to describe the plainest case, without employing a phraseology of which every word is a theory; whereas a simple and genuine specification of the phenomena which Some of the mystic wonders which have of mark a particular disease -a specification unlate years been attracting so much attention, af- sophisticated by fancy or by preconceived opinford in their history from first to last, lively illusions may be regarded as unequivocal evidence trations of the moderate value to be placed on of a mind trained by long and successful study what is thought to be the direct evidence of the to the most difficult of all arts, that of the faithsenses. A man of tolerable judgment, but ig-ful interpretation of nature."* norant of the philosophy of evidence - perhaps

one who has distinguished himself by professions "Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the of "disbelief in everything" beforehand - goes Mind," quoted in "Mill's System of Logic.'

THE SEARCH FOR FRANKLIN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

SIR-IN one of your leading articles of last Saturday, (19th inst.), relating to the search for Sir John Franklin, and a projected new expedition by Spitzbergen, the writer "calls most earnestly upon the public to interfere in time between the projectors and the madness of their enterprise." As I think the projection of this expedition must be traced back to myself, I consider it due to me and the public to ask, as a matter of justice, the favor of your inserting the following

lines.

reached far beyond the limits of the present search, and would have got into some labyrinth of ice and islands abreast of Behring's Strait, or further west, on the flats of the coast of Siberia.

Based on this reasonable view it was that about the same time (two years ago) I ventured to throw out the suggestion whether it might not be well, instead of despatching all the expeditions through the almost impassable narrow channels and well-nigh continually choked-up seas west of Baffin's Bay, to send one through the Great Polar Sea, on the Asiatic side, which, from its extent, can never be in the same way choked up with ice, and, according to actual experience of the most In the first place, the writer argues that Sir trustworthy character, always presents lanes John Franklin cannot have got beyond Wel- of open water. When vessels by the score lington Channel, but must have perished on were sent to Baffin's Bay, I was inclined to this side of it. Now, the whole of this latter think that one or two out of the many might region has been searched so minutely that the be spared for the latter object, particularly remains of the perished expedition could not considering the very slight expense of Sir E. have escaped the attention of the searching Parry's Spitzbergen expedition (9,977.) as parties. Surely, two vessels and upwards of compared with the many 100,000l. which have 130 men must leave some trace or other be- been spent on the other side, as well as that hind. The writer may argue that storm and it would offer to those who only look to the snow-drift, with the wild animals and other £. s. d. the prospects of pecuniary gain from destructive elements, would soon erase every new whale-fishing grounds discoverable in that one of such traces in the Arctic regions; but region. this view is not at all justified by experience. Lieutenant M'Clintock, when in 1851 he found in Melville Island the remains of Sir Edward Parry's encampment in 1820, which were consequently 31 years old, thus describes them :

66

The experience and news of the last two years leave the case exactly as it then stood, for even Sir Edward Belcher has not got a distance worth speaking of beyond Sir John Franklin's first winter's quarters; and therefore, when assuming the two missing vessels We found here everything mentioned by to have vanished on this side of Wellington Sir Edward Parry as having been left by his Channel, without leaving any traces behind, the party when his broken cart was abandoned. sober fact will always stare us in the face that The very slow progress of decay in this the whole region between Queen's Channel climate was strikingly evident on inspecting (the upper part of Wellington Channel) and the site of Sir Edward Parry's encampment, Behring's Strait, or Siberia, remains to this in June, 1820. The wood appeared almost day untraversed and unsearched, while it has unchanged; the bones of ptarmigan (off also been fully demonstrated that the narrow which his party supped) were merely bleach- waters to which the search has hitherto been ed; and the pieces of cloth, canvas, rope, confined are totally impracticable for effective and twine strewed about still retained much|navigation. of their original strength and coloring." When such delicate little objects as ptar- connected with my plan, referring the reader migan bones are so easily found again after more than 30 years, can it then be said with reason that two large vessels, with upwards of 130 picked men, would utterly vanish like so many pieces of camphor?

I will not here repeat or discuss any point

simply to my various communications addressed to his Admiralty, the Geographical Society, the Athenæum, etc.; but I would beg to put one question to those of my opponents who are ever so ready to throw ridicule upon From the above circumstance, the rela- that noble and practically useful science, tions and friends of the lost expedition will be inductive geography, by the light of which in a position to judge whether or not the lat- many features of our planet are discovered ter have perished on this side of Wellington which would otherwise remain hidden for Channel. years. Thus the existence of the Australian So long as two years ago it was the decided gold was prognosticated thousands of miles opinion of the venerable hydrographer of the from the spots where it was actually trodden Admiralty- Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort on without being seen; thus the approximate that, should Sir John Franklin have gone position of the magnetic South Pole was laid up Wellington Channel, he would have down in the quiet study of a man who, I be

lieve, had never been out of his own country; beyond Spitzbergen with the aid of steam. and Columbus, but for studying geography, And as to the objections raised on the score would not have discovered a new world. If of darkness and cold, and that Sir George those who ridicule the notion of a Polar sea Back is asserted to have "told the scientific being more open and more navigable than gentlemen that it would be impossible to work the narrow waters on the American side were the ropes," and further, on the asserted opininhabitants of Labrador or Kamschatka,-ion of Captain M'Clure, that "death is the which dreary countries lie in exactly the same inevitable lot of the company of any ship latitude as the British Islands,-what would which may be involved in the Polar pack," their opinion be of the physical features of the writer must be ignorant of the fact that the latter? Why, if they employed the same these mere surmises are directly contradicted reasoning which they employ for the Arctic and disproved by the actual experience of regions, they would boldly affirm that Great the American expedition under Lieutenant Britain was, in the same degree as those coun- De Haven. His two slender vessels, of only tries, covered with ice and snow, and inhab- 144 and 91 tons-no screws, be it rememited by ice-bears. They would disbelieve that bered- — were involved in the Polar pack for there existed such a town as Hammerfest in a no less than nine months, during the worst latitude the same as Boothia Felix, where Sir part of the year (from the middle of SeptemJohn Ross was imprisoned for three years, ber, 1850, to the middle of June, 1851), and surrounded by all the horrors of an Arctic they were drifted, imbedded in the pack, out winter, without any such towns near him. of Wellington Channel, through Baffin's Bay, They would scorn the idea of rain at Christ- down to the Atlantic Ocean -a distance of mas at Bear Island, while the mercury was upwards of 1,000 miles. Yet, to that gallant frozen for five months in Melville Island, in commander, at least, and his crews, the rope exactly the same latitude. But all these are question and darkness offered no such diffiactual well-known facts, and, with these facts culty at all. And, although thus imbedded in before us, can any reason be assigned as to the Polar pack for no less than nine months, the impossibility of similar differences existing the American expedition, so far from finding beyond Bear Island towards Siberia? "inevitable death," did not lose one single But it is simply an error to say that "Cap-man; and so little injured were the two vestain Buchan (and also Sir Edward Parry) sels that no sooner were they liberated from was despatched to Spitzbergen to make the the pack than they boldly steered northwards, very attempt which is now contemplated," for whence they had come. There may be perthe route of my plan, Sir, lies on the east side sons who only believe what they have done of Spitzbergen, and not on the west side of themselves, or seen with their own eyes, and it, where all the former navigators have been, to them De Haven's expedition, or those of and which I consider the wrong side, as much the Russians and others, may have little or no so as if a vessel going from New York to value; but to the "Scientific Geographers" Archangel, instead of choosing the wide sea the latter certainly form the only authority east of Iceland (between it and Norway), for the geography of one-half of the Arctic were to steer on the west side of that island regions.

(between it and Greenland), where to be I am conscious that I suggested my plan sure, she would be obstructed by immense with an honest purpose, and, as such, deserved masses of ice, I can safely affirm, without fear an honest judgment; and, whether it will of contradiction, that the sea east of Spitz- ever be adopted or not, I trust I may be perbergen has never been fairly tried, and that mitted this opportunity to protest against an for nearly 200 years no English vessel what- ex parte, unfair, and erroneous interpretation ever has been steered in that direction. of that plan. Even Captain Beechey, R. N., who is among the foremost of my opponents, in his Narrative of Captain Buchan's Voyage, readily admits the practicability of navigating the seas

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your very ob't humble servant,
AUGUSTUS PETERMANN.

9, Charing-Cross, Nov. 21.

WIFE MURDERING IN LONDON.

From the Morning Chronicle, 23 Nov.
WIFE MURDERING IN LONDON.

nomenon.

163

POWDER, a perfect ENCELADUS, the terror and curse of the whole neighborhood, who beats and mauls every woman he can get SINCE the commencement of the present near, and who was convicted at the Thames month, the metropolitan police-courts have sat office of knocking down and trampling upon nineteen days; and during that period, our one inoffensive married woman, and kicking reports of the proceedings of these tribunals and bruising another-who, in the agony of record no fewer than sixteen cases of the fear, was afraid to look the fiend in the face, same crime. This is a startling social phe- and almost declined to give evidence, rememIt is well worth while for the bering the sufferings which he had inflicted moral statistician to inquire into this enor- on her. On the same day, BROOKE was conmous and abnormal growth of a single crime.victed at Hammersmith of smashing his wife. History tells us of certain mental epidemics Nov. 8 presents us with the disgusting case of -generally of folly or fanaticism; and, in M'NAMARA, whose wife, ten days afterwards the records of popular delusions, we some-was scarcely able to quit the hospital to give times come across strange revelations of a evidence. This man had beat and cut his new sin being pursued with the avidity of a victim till she was found apparently lifeless, fashion or a frolic. But generally there is and weltering in a pool of blood. Nov. 11, something, if not to excuse, yet to account we meet at Worship-street with a wretch for, the rise and progress of a wide-spread named WALKER, who, on some trifling dismoral malady; and we can usually connect a pute, assaults a female, stamps upon, and popular prejudice or mania with some ordi- kicks her, tears all her clothes off her, leavnary and intelligible principle of human ing her an offence to public decency-and action some fatally attractive individual ex-all this in the presence of a large mob, who, ample, or some morbid political or religious by their passive acquiescence, assented to this bias. All our attempts, however, to suggest a practical vindication of the rights of man. cause fail us when we come to examine the Nov. 12, at Southwark, MASON is convicted fact of the hideous prevalence, among the of a savage battery of his wife. Nov. 13, at lower classes of the metropolis, of the crime Hammersmith, KENNEDY comes home drunk, of wife beating- though "beating" is scarcely and kicks his wife. Nov. 19, at Worshipthe word for a complex system of atrocities, street, one DELANE is convicted of a furious in which we find the husband, almost as a assult on his wife. He had been in the conmatter of course, mauling, kicking, bruising, stant habit of beating her-it was his custom; and stamping upon his wife. We have gone but on this occasion, because she had just over these nineteen court days of November, been confined, he introduced two prostitutes and extracted from our columns the particu- into his house, and half-murdered the poor lars of sixteen savage and murderous assaults creature for their amusement. committed by men upon women, and generally by husbands on their wives. The details are, in most instances, too revolting for recapitulation; and we therefore group to gether, as rapidly as we can, the results.

Finally, in

our yesterday's impression, we reported no fewer than four cases of sickening brutality and murderous assaults-all committed by husbands on their wives; and this morning we record another instance of savage ferocity This on the part of an "athletic laboring man towards an "elderly married woman." completes the list of sixteen reported cases, in nineteen days, within the limits of the Metropolitan Police jurisdiction.

On Nov. 1, we recorded the case of GRINNEY, charged at Lambeth with cutting his wife's throat. The woman was so dangerously injured that it was not till yesterday that she could be brought from the hospital to give There is little need of rhetorical amplificaevidence. The fellow is, it will be seen, committed for trial-the matter being far too tion to deepen the horrors of this hideous serious for summary jurisdiction. On the catalogue. The facts are more than enough. same day, at the Thames office, we gave the The sickening tale of blood and bruises, uncases of M'CARTHY and BURKE, two Irish manly violence, and poor, defenceless, unsavages, who, mad with gin, simply ran a complaining suffering-of eyes smashed out, muck on the whole neighborhood, and limbs dislocated, throats cut-of kicks and knocked down and kicked every woman that stripes, and murderous atrocities-is so moNov. 2, at the same notonous that the details of one case may came in their way. Court, one LINDSAY was charged with a fe- almost serve for all. All that is needed is to rocious assault on a poor prostitute, who, not give to each its surrounding specialities. accepting his advances, was fearfully beaten Here, for example, the tacit approval of on the face and eyes. Nov. 4, we had one neighbors lends a peculiarly revolting aspect of to the matter. There, we have the fearfully HOOKER, convicted at Hammersmith kneeling on, and strangling his wife. Nov. 5, suggestive fact that the particular assault is only we read of a savage of the name of MAY-one in a series of similar brutalities, persisted