A new school of novelists is evidently springing up on the western shores of the Atlantic. The pioneers are already in the field—and the main body, we suppose, will shortly follow. The style of these innovators seems a compound imitation of Gulliver, Munchausen, The Arabian Nights, and Robinson Crusoe; the ingredients being mixed in capricious proportions, well stirred, seasoned with Yankee bulls and scraps of sea-slang, and served hot—sometimes plain, at others with a hors d'oeuvre of puffs. We know not how such queer ragouts affect the public palate; but we are inclined to prefer dishes of an older fashion. Mr Herman Melville, of New York and the Pacific Ocean, common sailor, first introduced the new-fangled kickshaw. This young gentleman has most completely disappointed us. Two or three years ago, he published two small volumes of sea-faring adventure and island-rambles, of which we thought more highly than of any first appearance of the kind we for a long time had witnessed. In the pages of Maga, where praise is never lightly or lavishly bestowed, we said as much; and were glad to hope that Typee and Omoo were but an earnest of even better things. And, therefore, sadly were we disgusted on perusal of a rubbishing rhapsody, entitled Mardi, and a Voyage Thither. We sat down to it with glee and self-gratulation, and through about half a volume we got on pleasantly enough. The author was afloat; and although we found little that would bear comparison with the fine vein of nautical fun and characteristic delineation which we had enjoyed on board the Little Jule, and afterwards at Tahiti, yet there was interest—strong interest at times; and a scene on board a deserted vessel was particularly exciting,—replete with power of a peculiar and uncommon kind. But this proved a mere flash in the pan—the ascent of the rocket which was soon to fall as a stick. An outlandish young female, one Miss Yillah, makes her first appearance: Taji, the hero and narrator of the yarn, reaches a cluster of fabulous islands, where the jealous queen Hautia opens a floral correspondence with him: where the plumed and turbaned Yoomy sings indifferent doggerel; and Philosopher Babbalanja unceasingly doth prose; and the Begum of Pimminee holds drawing-rooms, which are attended by the Fanfums, and the Diddledees, and the Fiddlefies, and a host of other insular magnates, with names equally elegant, euphonious, and significant. Why, what trash is all this!—mingled, too, with attempts at a Rabelaisian vein, and with strainings at smartness—the style of the whole being affected, pedantic, and wearisome exceedingly. We are reminded, by certain parts of Mardi, of Foote's nonsense about the nameless lady who "went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie;" and at whose wedding the Joblilies, and the Picninnies, and the Great Panjandrum, danced till the gunpowder ran out at their boot-heels. Foote wrote his absurd paragraph, we believe, to try a friend's memory; Mr Melville has evidently written his unintelligible novel to try the public's patience. Of three things we are certain, namely, that the Panjandrum story is quite as easy to understand as Mardi; that it is much more diverting; and, the chief advantage of all, an infinite deal shorter.

Mardi, which we dismissed from our mind when we closed it with a yawn a day or two after its publication, has been recalled to our memory by another book, also proceeding from America, although published in London; and which, like Mr Melville's romance, blends the real and the possible with the ideal and the fantastic. Kaloolah (Heaven help these Yankee nomenclators) professes to be the autobiography of Jonathan Romer, a young Nantucket sailor, to whose narrative, during his absence in the interior of Africa, one of his countrymen, Dr W. S. Mayo, obligingly acts as editor. Most readers will probably be of opinion that the American M.D. might claim a nearer interest in the literary bantling—the first-born, we apprehend, of his own pen and imagination. But our business is with the book, and not with the author, whose name, whether Romer or Mayo, is as yet unknown to fame, but who need not despair of achieving reputation. Kaloolah combines with certain faults, which may presently be indicated, some very excellent qualities, and has several chapters, whereof any one contains more real good stuff, and ingenuity, and amusement, than the whole of the second and third volumes of Mardi, reduced to a concentrated essence. Besides, it is manifest that the two books must be viewed and judged differently—one as a first, and by no means unpromising attempt; the other, as the backsliding performance of a man who has proved himself capable of far better things.

Before commencing his own story, young Jonathan Romer introduces us to his ancestors, and asserts his right to a life of adventure. "Descended on both sides of the house from some of the earliest settlers of Nantucket, and more or less intimately related to the Coffins, the Folgers, the Macys, and the Starbucks of that adventurous population, it would seem that I had a natural right to a roving disposition, and to a life of peril, privation, and vicissitude. Nearly all the male members of my family, for several generations, have been followers of the sea: some of them in the calm and peaceful employment of the merchant-service; others, and by far the greater number, in the more dangerous pursuit of the ocean monster." After relating some of the feats of his family, and glancing at his own childhood, which gave early indications of the bold and restless spirit that animated him at a mature period, Jonathan presents himself to his readers at the age of eighteen—a stalwart stripling and idle student; the best rider, shot, swimmer, and leaper for many miles around, with little taste for books, and a very decided one for rambling in the woods with rifle and rod. At this time the academy, of which he had for four years been an inmate, is nearly broken up by what is called "a revival of religion;" in other words, a violent fit of fanatical enthusiasm, provoked and fed by Baptist and Methodist preachers. Pupils and teachers alike go mad with fervent zeal, classes are at an end, unceasing prayer is substituted for study, and Jonathan, who ls one of the few unregenerated, walks into the forest, and knocks the head off a partridge with a rifle-ball. The bird is picked up, and the excellence of the aim applauded by an old trapper and hunter, Joe Downs by name, well known along the shores of the Rackett and Grass rivers, in the northern and uninhabited part of the state of New York. Joe is not the wild, semi-Indian trapper of the south and west, whom Sealsfield and Ruxton have so graphically sketched; there is as much difference between the two characters as between a sailor in the coasting trade and a Pacific Ocean beachcomber. There is nothing of the half-horse, half-alligator style about Joe, whose manner is so mild, and his coat so decent, that he has been taken for a country parson. He despises the Redskins, sets no value on their scalps, and would not shed their blood, except in self-defence. How he had once been thus compelled to do so, he relates to Jonathan in the course of their first conversation.

"It was the way towards Tupper's lake. There had been a light fall of snow, and I was scouting round, when I happened to make a circumbendibus, and came across my own track, and there I saw the marks of an Indian's foot right on my trail. Thinks I, that is kind of queer; the fellow must have been following me; howsomever I'll try him, and make sure; so I made another large circle, and again struck my own track, and there was the tarnal Indian's foot again. Says I, this won't do; I must find out what this customer wants, and how he'll have it. So I stopped short, and soon got sight of him; he knew that I saw him, so he came along up, in the most friendly manner you can think. But I didn't like his looks; he was altogether too darned glad to see me. He had no gun, but he had an almighty long-handled tomahawk, and a lot of skins and real traps. Thinks I, may be, old fellow, your gun has burst, or you've pawned it for rum, and you can't raise skins enough to redeem it, and you want mine, and perhaps you'll get it.

"At last I grew kind of nervous; I knew the fellow would hatchet me if I gave him a chance, and yet I didn't want to shoot him right down just on suspicion. But I thought, if I let him cut my throat first, it would be too late to shoot him afterwards. So I concluded that the best way would be to give him a chance to play his hand; and if so be he'd lead the wrong card, why I should have a right to take the trick. Just then, at the right time, a partridge flew into a clump that stood five or six rods off. So I kind of 'noeuvred round a little. I drew out my ramrod, as if to feel whether the ball in my rifle was well down; but instead of returning it again, I kept it in my hand, and, without letting the vagabond see me, I got out a handful of powder. I then sauntered off to the bush, shot the partridge, and in an instant passed my hand over the muzzle of my rifle, and dropped the powder in. I picked up the bird, and then just took and run my ramrod right down upon the powder. Now, he thought, was his chance before I loaded my gun again. He came towards me with his hatchet in his hand. I saw that he was determined to act wicked, and began to back off; he still came on. I lowered my rifle, and told him to keep away. He raised his tomahawk, gave one yell, and bounded right at me. When he was just about three or four feet from the muzzle, I fired. You never see a fellow jump so. He kicked his heels up in the air, and came down plump on his head, dead as Julius CÆsar. He never winked; the ramrod—a good, hard, tough piece of hickory—had gone clean through him, and stuck out about two feet from his back. Served him right; didn't it?"

The old trapper urges Jonathan to accompany him on an expedition into the woods, promising, as an inducement, to put him "right alongside the biggest catamount he has ever seen," and to let him fight it out, with rifle, hatchet, and knife, without making or meddling in the contest. He also pledges himself to show him a fishpond, "where the youngest infants, of a genteel pickerelto family, weigh at least three pounds." Such inducements are irresistible. Jonathan packs up a brace of blankets and his shooting and fishing fixings, and goes off in the canoe with Joe Downs on a pleasant up-stream cruise, enlivened by a succession of beautiful scenery, and by the varied and original conversation of his companion. On their way they fell in with a party of Indians, amongst them one Blacksnake, a brother of the gentleman whom Joe had spitted on his ramrod. He suspects Joe of having shot his kinsman, and Joe strongly suspects him of having already attempted to revenge his death.

"'I was leaning out of the second story doorway of Jones's shop one day,' said Joe, 'looking across the river, when, whizz, a rifle bullet came and buried itself in the doorpost. I hain't the least doubt that that very identical Blacksnake sent it. Thank God, his aim was not as his will! He's a bad chap. Why, I really believe it was he who murdered my old friend Dan White the trapper. If I only knew it was the fact, I wish I may be stuck, forked end uppermost, in a coon hole, if I wouldn't send a ball through his painted old braincase, this 'ere very identical minute. Darn your skin!' energetically growled Joe, shaking his fist at the distant canoe."

It would have saved Mr Downs some trouble and suffering if he had yielded to the impulse, and expended half-an-ounce of lead upon Blacksnake, who, about a week later, sneaks up, with two companions, to the trapper's pine-log fire, and shoots the unfortunate Joe, but is shot down himself, the very next moment, by Jonathan Romer, whose double-barrel settles two of the murderers, and then descends with crushing force upon the cranium of the third. Joe not being dead, although very badly wounded, his young companion conveys him to a cave, whose hidden entrance the trapper had revealed to him the previous day, and there tends him till he is able to bear removal. With his committal to the hands of a village surgeon, Mr Romer's backwoods adventures terminate, a source of regret to the reader, since they are more lively and attractive than some subsequent portions of the book, evidently deemed by the author more interesting and important, and therefore dwelt upon at greater length. Indeed it is our opinion that the author of Kaloolah is mistaken, as young authors constantly are, in the real scope and nature of his own abilities, and that he would shine much more in a novel of backwoods life, or nautical adventure, than in the mixed style he has selected for his first attempt, which is a sort of mosaic, distinguished rather for variety and vividness of colour than for harmony and regularity of design.

Jonathan reaches home in time to receive the last adieu of his mother, a worthy but eccentric old lady, who had fitted out her son, on his departure for school, with a winding-sheet, amongst other necessaries, that he might be buried decently should he die far from his friends, and that he might be reminded of his mortality as often as he emptied his trunk. It was a curious conceit, but, as Jonathan observes, she was from Nantucket, and they are all queer people there, and filial affection induced him long to preserve the shroud. Mrs Romer dead, her son applies to the study of surgery, gets himself into trouble by a body-snatching exploit, has to levant to New York, and there, finding he is still in danger from the friends of the disinterred corpse, who have set the police upon his track, ships himself on board the fine fore-topsail schooner, "Lively Anne," bound for the Western Islands, and commanded by Captain Coffin, an old shipmate of his father's. In this smart little craft, he sees some country and more water, until, upon the voyage from the Azores to Malaga, a white squall or a waterspout—which of the two he could never ascertain—capsizes the schooner and dashes him senseless down the hatchway, whence he was just emerging, in alarm at the sudden uproar on deck. On recovering himself, he finds the vessel dismasted, the deck swept of all its fixtures, and the captain and crew missing. Doubtless they had been hurled into the waves by the same terrible force that had shattered the bulwarks and carried away boats, casks, and galley. The horizon was now clear, not a sail was in sight, and Jonathan Romer was alone on a helpless wreck in the middle of the wide ocean. But he was a man of resource and mettle, whom it was hard to discourage or intimidate; and finding the schooner made no water, he righted her as well as he could, and resigned himself to float at the will of the wind until he should meet a rescuing sail. This did not occur for some weeks, during which he floated past Teneriffe in the night, within hail of fishermen, who would not approach him for fear of the quarantine laws. At last, sitting over his solitary dinner, he perceived a ship heading up for the schooner.

"As she came on, I had full time to note all her beautiful proportions. She was small, apparently not above 300 tons, and had a peculiarly trim and clipper-like look. Her bright copper, flashing occasionally in the sunlight, showed that she was in light sailing trim; whilst from the cut of her sails, the symmetrical arrangement of her spars and rigging, and her quarter-boats, I concluded she must be a man-of-war. Passing me about half a mile astern, she stood on for a little distance, then, hoisting the bilious-looking flag of Spain, she tacked and ran for me, backing her main-topsail within twenty yards of my larboard beam. Her quarter-boat was immediately lowered, and half-a-dozen fellows, in red caps and flannel shirts, jumped into it, followed by an officer in a blue velvet jacket, with a strip of gold lace upon his shoulders, and a broad-brimmed straw hat upon his head. I ran below, stuffed all the money that I had in gold—about a thousand dollars—into my pockets, and got upon deck again just as the boat touched the side."

The precaution was a good one: the saucy Bonito, Pedro Garbez master, was bound from Cuba to the coast of Africa, with a cut-throat crew and an empty slave-deck. Owing to an accident, she had sailed without a surgeon, and Romer was well received and treated so soon as his profession was known. When he discovered the ship's character, he would gladly have left her, but means were wanting, for the Bonito loved not intercourse with passing craft, and touched nowhere until she reached her destination—Cabenda Bay, on the western coast of Africa. There being no slaves at Cabenda, it was resolved to run a few miles up the Congo river.

"We at length reached Loonbee, and anchored off the town, which is the chief market or slave-depot for Embomma. It consists of about a hundred huts of palm-leaves, with two or three block-houses, where the slaves are confined. About two hundred slaves were already collected, and more were on their way down the river, and from different towns in the interior. After presents for the King of Embomma, and for the Mafooka (a sort of chief of the board of slave-trade,) and other officials, had been made, and a deal of brandy drunk, we landed, and in company with several Fukas, or native merchants, and two or three Portuguese, went to take a look at the slaves. Each dealer paraded his gang for inspection, and loudly dilated upon their respective qualities. They were all entirely naked, and of all ages, sexes, and conditions, and all had an air of stolid indifference, varied only in some of them by an expression of surprise and fear at sight of the white men."

In one of these unfortunate groups of dingy humanity, Romer was struck by the appearance of a young girl, whose features widely differed from the usual African stamp, and whose complexion, amongst a white population, would not have been deemed too dark for a brunette. Her gracefully curling hair contrasted with the woolly polls of her companions; her eyes were large and expressive, and her form elegant, but then emaciated by fatigue and ill-treatment. This is Kaloolah. On inquiry of the slave-dealer, a great burly negro, wielding a long thong of plaited buffalo hide, Romer learned that she is of a far distant nation, called the Gerboo Blanda, who dwell in stone houses on an extensive plain. The slave-dealer knows them only by report, and Kaloolah and her brother, who is near at hand, are the first specimens he has seen of this remote tribe. He had bought her two months' journey off, and then she had already come a long distance. And now that he had got them to the coast, he esteems them of small value compared to the full-blooded blacks; for Kaloolah has pined herself away to a shadow, and her brother, Enphadde, is bent upon suicide, and cannot be trusted with unfettered hands; so that for thirty dollars Romer buys them both. The Bonito having been driven out to sea by the approach of a British cruiser, he passes some days on shore with his new purchases; during which time, with a rapidity bordering on the miraculous, he acquires sufficient of their language, and they of his, to carry on a sort of piebald conversation, to learn the history of these pale Africans, and some particulars of their mysterious country.

"The Gerboo Blanda, I found, was a name given to their country by the Jagas, that its true name was Framazugda, and that the people were called Framazugs. That it was situated at a great distance in the interior, in a direction west by north, and that it was surrounded by negro and savage nations, through whom a trade was carried on with people at the north-west and east, none of whom, however, were ever seen at Framazugda, as the trade had to pass through a number of hands. Enphadde represented the country to be of considerable extent, consisting mostly of a lofty plateau or elevated plain, and exceedingly populous, containing numerous large cities, surrounded by high walls, and filled with houses of stone. Several large streams and lakes watered the soil, which, according to his account, was closely cultivated, and produced in abundance the greatest variety of trees, fruits, flowers, and grain. Over this country ruled Selha ShounsÉ, the father of Enphadde and Kaloolah, as king. It was in going from the capital to one of the royal gardens that their escort was attacked by a party of blacks from the lowlands, the attendants killed or dispersed, and the young prince and princess carried off."

Thirty dollars could hardly be deemed a heavy price for the son and daughter of the great ShounsÉ, and Jonathan was well pleased with his bargain, although it was not yet clear how he should realise a profit; but meanwhile it was something to be the proprietor of their royal highnesses of Framazugda; something too to gaze into Kaloolah's bright black eyes, and listen to her dulcet tones, as she warbled one of her country's ditties about the Fultul, a sweet-scented lily flourishing beside the rivulets of her native mountains. The verses, by the bye, are not to be commended in Mr Romer's version; they perhaps sounded better in the original Framazug, and when issuing from the sweet lips of Kaloolah.

Instead of a week, the Bonito was month absent, having been caught in a calm. Captain Pedro Garbez promised the Virgin Mary the value of a young negro in wax-lights for a capful of wind, but in vain; and he was fain to tear the hair from his head with impatience. Meanwhile Jonathan had caught a fever in the swamps of Congo, and Kaloolah had made his chicken-broth, and tended him tenderly, and restored him to health, although he was still so altered in appearance that Garbez knew him not when he mounted the side of the slaver. All speed was now made to buy and ship a cargo. The account of the latter process is interesting, and, we have no doubt, perfectly authentic; for although the author of Kaloolah has chosen to interlard, and perhaps deteriorate his book by strange stories of imaginary countries, animals, flowers, &c., it is not difficult to distinguish between his fact and his fiction, and to recognise the internal evidence of veracity and personal observation. A short extract may here with propriety be made, for the benefit of anti-slavery philanthropists.

"The first slaves that came on board were taken below the berth-deck, and arranged upon a temporary slave-deck placed over the water-casks, and at a distance of not more than three feet and a half from the deck overhead.... The slaves were arranged in four ranks. When lying down, the heads of the two outer ranks touched the sides of the ship, their feet pointing inboard or athwart the vessel. They, of course, occupied a space fore and aft the ship, of about six feet on either side, or twelve feet of the whole breadth. At the feet of the outside rank came the heads of the inner row. They took up a space of six feet more on either side, or together twelve feet. There was still left a space running up and down the centre of the deck, two or three feet in breadth; along this were stretched single slaves, between the feet of the two inner rows, so that, when all were lying down, almost every square foot of the deck was covered with a mass of human flesh. Not the slightest space was allowed between the individuals of the ranks, but the whole were packed as closely as they could be, each slave having just room enough to stretch himself out flat upon his back, and no more. In this way about two hundred and fifty were crowded upon the slave-deck, and as many more upon the berth-deck. Horrible as this may seem, it was nothing compared to the 'packing' generally practised by slavers. Captain Garbez boasted that he had tried both systems, tight packing and loose packing, thoroughly, and found the latter the best.

"'If you call this loose packing,' I replied, 'have the goodness to explain what you mean by tight packing?'

"'Why, tight packing consists in making a row sit with their legs stretched apart, and then another row is placed between their legs, and so on, until the whole deck is filled. In the one case each slave has as much room as he can cover lying; in the other only as much room as he can occupy sitting. With tight packing this craft ought to stow fifteen hundred.'"

The Bonito was not above three hundred tons. Such are the blessings for which the negroes are indebted to the tender-mercied emancipators who have ruined our West Indian colonies.

"'When it comes to closing the hatches,' (in the event of a gale) said Captain Pedro, 'it is all up with the voyage. You can hardly save enough to pay expenses. They die like leeches in a thunderstorm. I was once in a little schooner with three hundred on board, and we were compelled to lie-to for three days. It was the worst sea I ever saw, and came near swamping us several times. We lost two hundred and fifty slaves in that gale. We couldn't get at the dead ones to throw them overboard very handily, and so those that didn't die from want of air were killed by the rolling and tumbling about of the corpses. Of the living ones some had their limbs broken, and every one had the flesh of his leg worn to the bone, by the shackle irons.'

"'Good God! and you still pursue the horrible trade?'

"'Certainly; why not? Despite of accidents the trade is profitable, and, for the cruelty of it, no one is to blame except the English. Were it not for them, large and roomy vessels would be employed, and it would be an object to bring the slaves over with every comfort, and in as good condition as possible. Now, every consideration must be sacrificed to the one great object—escape from capture by the British cruisers.'

"I had no wish to reply to the captain's argument. One might as well reply to a defence of blasphemy or murder. Giddy, faint, and sick, I turned with loathing from the fiends in human guise, and sought the more genial companionship of the inmates of my state-room."

These were Kaloolah and Enphadde. To conceal the beauty of the former, perilous amidst the lawless crew of the slaver, Jonathan had marked her face with caustic, producing black spots which had the appearance of disease. This temporary disfigurement secured her from licentious outrage, but not from harsh treatment. Monte, second captain of the Bonito, was an ex-pirate, whose vessel had been destroyed by Yankee cruisers. To spite Romer, whom he detested as an American, he threatened to send Kaloolah and her brother amongst the slaves, and took every opportunity of abusing them. Chapter xxi. passes wholly on board the slaver, and is excellent of its kind. The Bonito is chased by a man-of-war, but escapes. At daybreak, whilst lying in his berth, Romer hears a bustle on deck, followed by shrill cries and plunges in the water. The following is good:—

"I jumped from my berth and stepped out upon deck. A dense fog brooded upon the surface of the ocean, and closely enveloped the ship—standing up on either side, like huge perpendicular walls of granite, and leaving a comparatively clear space—the area of the deck and the height of the main-topmast crosstrees. Inboard, the sight ranged nearly free fore-and-aft the ship, but seaward no eye could penetrate, more than a yard or two, the solid-looking barrier of vapour. A man standing on the taffrail might have seen the catheads the whole length of the deck, whilst at the same time, behind him, the end of the spanker boom, projecting over the water, was lost in the mist. I looked up at the perpendicular walls and the lofty arch overhead with feelings of awe, and, I may add, fear. Cursed, indeed, must be our craft, when the genius of the mist so carefully avoided the pollution of actual contact. His rolling legions were close around us, but vapoury horse and misty foot shrank back affrighted from the horrors of our blood-stained decks."

The phenomenon was doubtless attributable to the hot air generated in the crowded 'tween-decks. The cries and plashings that had startled Jonathan were soon explained. Virulent ophthalmia raged on board, and Monte was drowning the blind, whose value of course departed with their eyesight. A blind slave was "an encumbrance, an unsaleable article, a useless expense. Pitch him overboard! Twenty-five to-day, and a dozen more to-morrow!" But retribution was at hand, threatened, at least, by a British brig-of-war, which appeared when the fog cleared, at about a mile and a half to windward. During the chase, Monte, casually jostled by Kaloolah, struck her to the deck, and a furious scuffle ensued between him and Jonathan, who at last, seeing some of the crew approaching, knife in hand, leaped overboard, dragging his antagonist with him, and followed by Enphadde and Kaloolah. After a deep dive, during which Monte's tenacious grasp was at last relaxed, the intrepid Jonathan regained the surface, where he and his friends and enemy easily supported themselves till picked up by the brig. The swift slaver escaped. Monte was put in irons, Romer and his Framazugdan friends were made much of by Captain Halsey and the officers of her Majesty's brig Flyaway, and landed in the picturesque but pestilent shores of Sierra Leone. Then Kaloolah and her brother propose to seek their way homewards, and Jonathan takes ship for Liverpool. Previously to his departure, there are some love passages between the Yankee and the Princess of Framazugda. These are not particularly successful. Sentiment is not Dr Mayo's forte: he is much happier in scenes of bustle and adventure—when urging his weary dromedary across boundless tracts of sand, or waging deadly combat with the fierce inmates of African jungles. His book will delight Mr Van Amburgh. There is a duel between a lion and a boa that we make no doubt of seeing dramatised at Astley's, as soon as a serpent can be tamed sufficiently for the performance. That Dr Mayo's lions are of the very first magnitude, the following description shows:—"His body was hardly less in size than that of a dray-horse; his paw as large as the foot of an elephant; while his head!—what can be said of such a head? Concentrate the fury, the power, the capacity, and the disposition for evil of a dozen thunderstorms into a round globe about two feet in diameter, and one would then be able to get an idea of the terrible expression of that head and face, enveloped and set off as it was by the dark framework of bristling mane!" This pleasing quadruped, disturbed in its forest solitude by the advent of Jonathan and the fair Kaloolah, who have wandered, lover-like, to some distance from their bivouac, at once prepares to breakfast upon them. Jonathan had imprudently laid down his gun to pluck wild honeysuckles for his mistress, when the lion, stepping in, cuts him off from his weapon. Suddenly "the light figure of Kaloolah rushed past me: 'Fly, fly, Jon'than!' she wildly exclaimed, as she dashed forward directly towards the lion. Quick as thought, I divined her purpose, and sprang after her, grasping her dress, and pulling her forcibly back, almost from within those formidable jaws. The astonished animal gave several jumps sideways and backwards, and stopped, crouching to the ground, and growling and lashing his sides with renewed fury. It was clearly taken aback by our unexpected charge upon him, but yet was not to be frightened into abandoning his prey. His mouth was made up for us, and there could be no doubt, if his motions were a little slow, that he considered us as good as gorged." Pulling back Kaloolah, and drawing his knife, Romer awaits, with desperate determination, the monster's terrible onslaught, when an unexpected ally arrives to the rescue. "It seemed as if one of the gigantic creepers I have mentioned had suddenly quitted the canopy above, and, endowed with life and a huge pair of widely distended jaws, had darted with the rapidity of lightning upon the crouching beast. There was a tremendous shaking of the treetops, and a confused wrestling and jumping and whirling over and about, amid a cloud of upturned roots and earth and leaves, accompanied with the most terrific roars and groans. As I looked again, vision grew more distinct. An immense body, gleaming with purple, green, and gold, appeared convoluted around the majestic branches overhead, and, stretching down, was turned two or three times around the struggling lion, whose head and neck were almost concealed from sight within the cavity of a pair of jaws still more capacious than his own." A full-grown boa, whose length is estimated by Mr Romer at about a hundred feet, (much less than many he subsequently saw, but still "a very respectable-sized snake,") had dropped a few fathoms of coil from the gigantic tree around which he was twined, and enveloped the lion, who soon was crushed to death in the scaly embrace. Jonathan makes no doubt that the serpent was about to swallow his victim whole, according to the custom of his kind; and it is certainly to be regretted that the entreaties of Kaloolah, combined with the "strong sickly odour" diffused by the boa, prevented his remaining to witness a process of deglutition which, considering the dimensions of the morsel to be swallowed, could not have been otherwise than curious.

Wrecked a second time, Romer again reaches the coast of Africa, in company with an old sailor named Jack Thompson. They fall into the hands of the Bedouins, and suffer much ill treatment, an account of which, and of various adventures and escapes, occupy many chapters, and would have borne a little curtailment. Romer is wandering about with a tribe, upon whom he has passed himself off as an Arab from a distant region, when he is compelled to join in an attack on a caravan. Kaloolah is amongst the prisoners. She has been captured by a party of slave-hunters, and is on her way to Morocco, where her master hopes her beauty will fetch a good price from the Emperor Muley Abderrahman. In the partition of the spoil, she falls to the share of an old Arab, who is ill satisfied with the acquisition. "He was extremely chagrined at the turn of fortune which threatened to throw into the wrangling elements of his domestic felicity a feminine superfluity—or, as he expressed it, 'another tongue in his tent.'

"'Bismillah!' he exclaimed; 'God is great, but this is a small thing! She is not a man; she is not a black—she cannot work; but won't she eat and talk! They all eat and talk. I take a club sometimes, and knock them down; beat them; break their bones; but they still eat and talk! God's will be done! but it is too much to put such a thing upon me for my share! She is good for nothing: I cannot sell her.'"

The grumbling old Bedouin did sell her, however, to Jonathan, for three or four cotton shirts. Flight now becomes necessary, for Hassan, son of the chief of the tribe, seeks Jonathan's life, and Mrs Ali, the chief's wife, persecutes him with her misplaced affection, and is spiteful to Kaloolah, whom she looks upon as the chief obstacle to its requital. Upon this head our Yankee is rather good: "Respect for the sex," he says, "and a sentiment of gentlemanly delicacy, which the reader will appreciate, prevents me from dwelling upon the story at length. It was wrong, undoubtedly, in Seffora to love any other than her old, rugose-faced, white-bearded husband; but it is not for me to blame her. One thing, however, in her conduct can hardly be excused. True, I might have treated her affection with more tenderness; I might have nursed the gentle flowers of passion, instead of turning away from their fragrance; I might have responded to that 'yearning of the soul for sympathy'—have relieved, with the food of love, 'the mighty hunger of the heart;' but all this, and more that I might have done, but did not do, gave her no right to throw stones at Kaloolah." To avoid the pelting and other disagreeables, the lovers take themselves off in the night-time, mounted on heiries—camels of a peculiar breed and excellence, famed in the desert for endurance and speed. On their road they pick up, in a Moorish village, an Irish renegade; at some salt-works, they find Jack Thompson working as a slave; and soon afterwards their party is increased to five persons, by the addition of Hassan, a runaway negro. With this motley tail, Mr Romer pushes on in the direction of Framazugda. Here the editor very judiciously epitomises six long chapters in as many pages; and, immediately after this compressed portion, there begins what may be strictly termed the fabulous, or almost the supernatural part of the book. Previously to this there have been not a few rather startling incidents, but now the author throws the rein on the neck of his imagination, and scours away into the realms of the extravagant; still striving, however, by circumstantial detail, to give an appearance of probability to his astounding and ingenious inventions. Some of the descriptions of scenery and savage life in the wilderness are vivid and striking, and show power which might be better applied. Of the fabulous animals, the following account of an amiable reptile, peculiar to central Africa, will serve as a sufficient specimen of Yankee natural history:—

"It is an amphibious polypus. If the reader will conceive a large cart-wheel, the hub will represent the body of the animal, and the spokes the long arms, about the size and shape of a full-grown kangaroo's tail, and twenty in number, that project from it. When the animal moves upon land, it stiffens these radii, and rolls over upon the points like a wheel without a felloe. These arms have also the capability of a lateral prehensile contraction in curves, perpendicular to its plane of revolution, and enable the animal to grasp its prey, and draw it into its voracious mouth. It attacks the largest animals, and even man itself; but, if dangerous upon land, it is still more formidable in the water, where it has been known to attack and kill an alligator. This horrible monster is known by the name of the Sempersough or 'snake-star,' and is more dreaded than any other animal of Framazugda, inasmuch as the natives have no way of destroying it, except by catching it when young, in cane traps sunk in the water, and baited with hippopotamus cubs(!) Fortunately it is not very prolific; and its increase is further prevented by the furious contests that these animals have among themselves. Sometimes twenty or thirty will grasp each other with their long arms, and twist themselves up into a hard and intricate knot. In this situation they remain, hugging and gnawing each other to death; and never relaxing their grasp until their arms are so firmly intertwined that, when life is extinct, and the huge mass floats, they cannot be separated. The natives now draw the ball ashore, cut it up with axes, and make it into a compost for their land." (!!)

Is Dr Mayo addicted to heavy suppers? We can just fancy an unfortunate individual, after a midnight meal on a shield of brawn and a Brobdingnagian crab, which he has omitted to qualify by a subsequent series of stiff tumblers, sinking into an uneasy slumber, and being rolled over by such an incubus as this vivacious waggon-wheel. Doubtless there is a possibility of a man dieting himself into this style of writing, whereof a short specimen may excite a smile, but whose frequent recurrence is necessarily wearisome, and which obviously escapes criticism. But the author of Kaloolah is not contented with brute monstrosities. He chronicles reports that reach his hero's ears, of nations of human monsters, with teeth filed to a sharp point (no uncommon practice amongst certain negro tribes,) with tusks projecting like those of a wild boar, and with pendant lips that continually drop blood. All this is childish enough; but Jack Thompson, who is a dry dog, caps these astounding fictions with a cannibal yarn from the Southern Hemisphere.

"'I've been among the New Zealanders,' quoth Jack, 'and there they use each other for fresh grub, as regular as boiled duff in a man-of-war's mess. They used to eat their fathers and mothers, when they got too old to take care of themselves; but now they've got to be more civilised, and so they only eat rickety children, and slaves, and enemies taken in battle.'

"'A decided instance of the progress of improvement, and march of mind,' said I.

"'Well, I believe that is what the missionaries call it,' replied Jack; 'but it's a bad thing for the old folks. They don't take to the new fashion—they are in favour of the good old custom. I never see'd the thing myself; but Bill Brown, a messmate of mine once, told me that, when he was at the Bay of Islands, he see'd a great many poor old souls going about with tears in their eyes, trying to get somebody to eat them. One of them came off to the ship, and told them that he couldn't find rest in the stomachs of any of his kindred, and wanted to know if the crew wouldn't take him in. The skipper told him he was on monstrous short allowance, but he couldn't accommodate him. The poor old fellow, Bill said, looked as though his heart would break. There were plenty of sharks round the ship, and the skipper advised him to jump overboard; but he couldn't bear the idea of being eaten raw.'"

The great audacity of Dr Mayo's fictions preclude surprise at the boldness of his tropes and similes. The tails of his lions lash the ground "with a sound like the falling of clods upon a coffin;" their roar is like the boom of a thirty-two pounder, shaking the trees, and rattling the boulders in the bed of the river. Of course, allowance must be made for the vein of humorous rhodomontade peculiar to certain American writers, and into which Dr Mayo sometimes unconsciously glides, and, at others, voluntarily indulges. His description of the conjuring tricks of the Framazugdan jugglers comes under the latter head.

"Some of them were truly wonderful, as, for instance, turning a man into a tree bearing fruit, and with monkeys skipping about in the branches; and another case, where the chief juggler apparently swallowed five men, ten boys, and a jackass, threw them all up again, turned himself inside out, blew himself up like a balloon, and, exploding with a loud report, disappeared in a puff of luminous vapour. I could not but admire the skill with which the tricks were performed, although I was too much of a Yankee to be much astonished at anything in the Hey, Presto! line."

A countryman of Mr Jefferson Davis is not expected to feel surprise at anything in the way of sleight of hand, or "double shuffle;" and there was probably nothing more startling to the senses in the evaporation of King ShounsÉ's conjuror, than in the natural self-extinction of the Mississippian debt. It is only a pity that Jonathan Romer did not carry his smart fellow-citizen to the country of the Pholdefoos, a class of enthusiasts who devote their lives to a search for the germs of moral, religious, and political truth. Mr Davis would have felt rather out of his element at first, but could not have failed ultimately to have benefited by his sojourn amongst these singular savages.

On coming in sight of her father's capital, Kaloolah is overcome with emotion, and sinks weeping into her brother's arms. "I felt," says Jonathan, "that this was a situation in which even the most sympathising lover would be de trop. There were thronging associations which I could not share, vibrating memories to which my voice was not attuned, bonds of affection which all-powerful love might transcend, and even disrupt, but whose precise nature it could not assume. There are some lovers who are jealous of such things—fellows who like to wholly monopolise a woman, and who are constantly on the watch, seizing and appropriating her every look, thought, and feeling, with somewhat of the same notion of an exclusive right, as that with which they pocket a tooth-pick. I am not of that turn. The female heart is as curiously and as variously stocked as a country dry-goods store. A man may be perhaps allowed to select out, for his own exclusive use, some of the heavier articles, such as sheetings, shirtings, flannels, trace-chains, hobby-horses, and goose-yokes; but that is no reason why the neighbours should be at once cut off from their accustomed supply of small-wares."

We venture to calculate that it takes a full-blooded Yankee to write in this strain, which, reminds us, remotely, it is true, of some of Mr Samuel Slick's eccentric fancies. Dr Mayo has considerable versatility of pen; he dashes at everything, from the ultra-grotesque to the hyper-sentimental, from the wildest fable to the most substantial matter-of-fact; and if not particularly successful in some styles, in others he really makes what schoolboys call "a very good offer." But the taste of the day is by no means for extravaganza travels, after the fashion of Gulliver, but without the brilliant and searching satire that lurks in Lilliput and Laputa. Mr Herman Melville might have known that much; although we have heard say that certain keen critics have caught glimpses in his Mardi of a hidden meaning—one, however, which the most penetrating have hitherto been unable to unravel. We advise Dr Mayo to start afresh, with a better scheme. Instead of torturing his inventive faculties to produce rotatory dragons, wingless birds, (propelled through the air by valves in their heads,) and countries where courtiers, like Auriol in the ring at Franconi's, do public homage by standing on their hands; let him seek his inspiration in real life, as it exists in the wilder regions of the vast continent of which he is a native. A man who has strayed so far, and seen so much, can hardly be at a loss. The slaver's surgeon, the inmate of the Bedouin's tent, the bold explorer of the deadly swamps of Congo, had surely rambled nearer home before a restless fancy lured him to such distant and dangerous latitudes. Or are we too bold in assuming that the wilds and forests of Western America have echoed to the crack of his rifle, and that the West Indian seas have borne the furrow of his vessel's prow? It is in such scenes we would gladly find him, when next he risks himself in print: beneath the shade of the live oak or on the rolling prairie, or where the black flag, with the skeleton emblem, floats from the masthead. He has worked out his crotchet of an imaginary white nation in the heart of Africa, carrying it through with laborious minuteness, and with results hardly equal to the pains bestowed: let him now turn from the ideal to the real, and may our next meeting be on the Spanish main under rover's bunting, or west of the clearings, where the bison roams and the Redskin prowls, and the stragglers from civilisation have but begun to show themselves.