ALEXANDER'S COLONIES OF AFRICA.

CAPTAIN ALEXANDER was employed by the Royal Geographical Society, under the sanction of the Colonial Office, to undertake an expedition in Southern Africa. The plan of the enterprise was to land at Delagoa Bay, and then proceed westwards till the boundaries of the colony were reached ; (though we do not divine why lie should not have started from the colony and travelled eastwards to Delagoa Bay ;) the object in view being the "extension of geographical knowledge and commerce." But " there is many a slip;" and the Captain's hopes of discovery were put an end to by the Coffee war, which was raging on his arrival at the Cape. Nothing daunted, however, by this contre temps, he offered his services to the Governor, Sir B. D'Uttoma ; was placed upon his staff; and lo ! instead of a volume of geographical discovery, we have an account of forays in Caffre Laud, preceded by a narrative of the hero's outward voyage in the Thalia frigate, which called at several of our settlements on the Western coast of Africa,. chased and boarded several vessels, supposed to be slavers, and actually touched at such terrce incognitce as Madeira, Teueriffe, St. Helena, and Ascension.

Dividing the book into two parts, the account of the sea voyage may be described as readable, light, and lively, but as adding little to our stock of knowledge ; the narrative of the adventures by land is distinguished by similar literary merits, but is per- vaded by narrow views and colonial prejudices. Captain Anzac- ANDER'S mind is not only unfitted to form any thing like a philosophical judgment upon the real nature of disputes between civilized and barbarous nations, but he appears incapable of seeing the tendency of the arguments he adduces. Having imbibed the intense feelings against the Caffres of the persons he associated with in Africa,—and who consisted of colonists smarting with the sense of the losses and injuries inflicted upon them by the enemy, of soldiers and border militia, who treated their adversaries as a slaver may be supposed to treat negroes, and of officials who looked to the war as a means of profit,—Captain ALEXANDER reechoes all the allegations of blood-thirstiness, treachery, and the other hard terms which colonists are in the habit of throwing out against the aborigines. His facts, however, fail in supporting his opinions. Sinking, as he does, all allusion to the provocation arising from commandoes, and less recognized modes of lifting Caffre cattle, it is clear from his own showing, that the origin of the war is traceable to the mismanagement, insolence, and ignorant self- will of the colonial officers ; Lord CHARLES SOMERSET, as usual, playing a conspicuous part in the piece. Nor, so far as the mode of waging war is concerned, do we perceive any such extraordinary superiority on the part of our compatriots. When the Caffres, in an attack upon a farm, had accidentally assegaied a Mrs. Taw.- LIP, " they afterwards expressed regret at having killed this wo- man." And in an attack upon a waggon, though "no mercy was shown to the men," the "merciless ruffians" displayed a degree of chivalry that would not be shown by every baud of regular troops.

" Mrs. Mahony recognized among the Kaffir') a former servant; called to binr, and asked if be intended to murder them all. He answered, Nay, Misses,' and turned away. The waggon was now violently upset; and the women and children crawled out of it, and gathering themselves up, fled towards the busk, expecting every instant to feel the sharp assegais quivering through them. Mm. %bony dropped her shawl, and, strange to say, a Katfir ran after her and re- placed it on her shoulders."

But the justice of a war is one thing, the description of it an- other : and Captain ALEXANDER'S account of the various skir- mishes with the enemy, and of the exploits of individual combat- ants, forms a striking, though not a very gratifying picture of bor- der warfare. His general narrative of the campaign is desultory and obscure ; perhaps owing to the nature of the subject. It is difficult to give unity and mass to a series of actions which are all resolvable into driving savages from their fastnesses, carrying of their cattle, burning their huts, and devastating their fields.

Of the outward voyage, the most interesting portions are the descriptions of the African settlements ; partly from their intrinsic character, partly from the mysterious interest attached to the pestiferous region from the Senegal to Congo. To readers of RANKIN'S White Mares Grave, or of the first volume of HOLMAN'S Voyage Round the World, much of absolute novelty will not be found. But Captain ALEXANDER saw new faces, looked at things in a new point of view and with a different mind ; and, Tory as lie seems to be, could not avoid seeing some gross jobs and some rich specimens of Colonial Office rule. Here are a few examples— ENGINEERING AT SIERRA LEONE.

Engineering seems at a low ebb at Sierra Leone. In the first place, the fort of Freetown is overlooked, and the cheeks of the loop-holes fur musketry are faced the wrong way, so as to give an advantage to the enemy. In the battery nearest the entrance of the river, the guns are intended to fire en barber e, or over the parapet, without embrasures ; but, for want of traversing platforms, they are several feet below the crest of the parapet, and cannot be fired at all. Then almost all the heavy stone-arched bridges had been burst and thrown down by the late rains. They had cost a great sum of money : but their construc- tion having been intrusted to ignorant people, who had filled up the back of the clumsy arches with sand and rubbish, of course the rain-water swelled and burst them. The acting governor's bridge was almost the only one which stood. Two high walls were built on each side of a rocky ravine, and between these at top were laid strong timbers and planks, to last for fifteen or twenty years. This saved an arch, of which negro masons are nut expected to know any thing.

SIERRA LEONE JOBS.

The grand abuse at Sierra Leone is the pay of the three members of the Mixed Commission Court fur the adjudication of slavers, which they earn for doing little or nothing. About one slaver is condemned in a month doling the year, and between three and four thousand Africans are liberated. Fur this, 1$1r. Smith, the Chief Commissioner, receives one thousand pounds a year snore than the Governor, or three thousand pounds in all, Mr. Macauley two thou- sand pounds, and the Registrar one thousand pounds. Here are six thousand pounds a year for a few 'limn' work. This loudly calls for reform ; for besides these handsome salaries, after eight years, a member of the Court may retire on half his salary. Do the Portuguese, Netherlands, Brazilian, and Spanish Com-

missioners receive such salaries?—Nothing like them. • • •

Mr. Pratt, in charge of the stores for liberated Africans, and from whom I procured vocabularies of many of the languages of Western Africa, showed me some of the articles which hail been sent out from England for the use of these rescued captives. What will be thought, when I mention that, in this store, I saw almost every thing, except pianoforte's. There were clocks; turning- lathes, which cost ninety guineas each ; planes worth several guineas a piece ; miners' tools and other implements of which no one in the colony knew even the name, much less the use ; also black chip bonnets for the negresees; black gaiters for Massa Quacco ; and a couple of hundred porter-pots. In short, of articles of no earthly service to the Africans, there were here thousands of pounds' worth rotting in store, and still more are sent out,—because, I suppose, some one Las a contract at home to furnish these stores; whilst coarse cloth, cottons, and a few simple tools, are all that are required to supply the wants of the Africans on their allotments. So at St. Helena, some years ago, iron trucks were sent out annually for the guns—because somebody had a contract ! It was represented that they were not required, but still they were sent out ; and they were therefore handed over to the settlers to make rollers with.

CAPE COAST JOBBING.

We left Joagre"s, and walked up to a hill to the north-east of the town, on which was a deserted work called Fort Macarthey. It consisted of a small round tower, on which a gun on a swivel was formerly mounted, and four brick and stone loop-holed walls enclosing a small area; and yet this trifling work cast the Government, it is said, six or seven thousand pounds. However, that large suns would not have been entirely thrown away, if the place had been defensible ; but a higher hill completely commands it within half. musket range. So completely was it looked into, that the defenders could never have shown themselves beyond the bottom of the wall next the enemy. A more absurd defensive work I never beheld, nor any more downright and barefaced job for plundering our country. We then walked through a part of the native town which I had not yet seen, and came upon a circular pond, covered with weeds, and with a few shallow wells by the side of it, the whole supplied by a swing or two in the centre of the pond. This is the only water which the native population have, and which is neither good nor plentiful. If a thousand or two of the annual grant of 30,0001. had been expended in constructing a proper tank fur the seven thousand people living here under British protection, it would have conferred a great boon on them, and extended British interests in the interior. But there was little else than the most lavish expenditure, and shameful misapplication of public money, in this distant colony ; at least all the old residents here joined in saying so.

We will take a few miscellaneous extracts—

MODERN OTHE LLOS.

I hastened to visit the slave yard, where, when a captured vessel arrives, the cargo is placed. A square building, inhabited by a smith, is surrounded with walls and sheds. In these last sleep the late captives, who are supported at the rate of twopence per day, kept clean, and (the men) at work on the roads for three months, and then sent to the allotments; still supported for six months in all, and furnished with tools to the amount of one pound ten shillings each man. Many of the children are taken by the white and coloured inhabitants of Freetown as apprentices or servants for seven years, on the payment of ten shillings. The men bad all gone out to wink when I went into the yard, but I found many women from the schooner lately captured by the Lynx, sitting and lying. on the mats : in one of the sheds breakfasts had just been served on broad flat tin vessels, and consisted of rice and palm-oil, yams, &c. But there is one grand abuse here : there is no proper separation between the sexes at night. •• Why not ?" was inquired. " One Goberna not allow this," (intercourse) was the answer, " but him go England." The women are generally protected by the men of their own nation ; and when a negro leaves the yard to go to his allotment, he selects, if he can, a negress in the family way, not being at all particular who is the father of the child, for a negress in that state gets superior allowances, and it is a feather in the negro's cap to have a pregnant wife.

HOTTENTOT CAPABILITIES.

Hottentots have a natural aptitude for war. They are a reckless people, light- hearted, light made, and hardy. With their high cheek-bones, narrow eyelids, projecting chin and lips, and smoke-dried complexion, they are far from being a handsome race. But, to use a homely phrase, they have a " rough and ready " look about them ; march and fire very well ; have an uncommonly been sight ; rival North American Indians in tracking an enemy by his marks, though several days old, on the ground and on the bushes; are indifferent to the shelter of tents; can eat six pounds of meat and two of bread at a sitting, and then, with the assistance of a girdle, go three days without food ; and, in short, are excellent materials for light troops, and are rapidly trained to war, whether on foot or on horseback.

PITIFUL ECONOMY AT ST. HELENA.

Three stone steps led to a narrow green-trellised verandah, shading a gable in which a door opened to the billiard room, where is still, as in Napoleon's time, the small table lighted by four windows. The room is painted green with black mouldings, and a few black chairs with gilt ornaments round the walls. A paper pasted on a board, and which T imagined might be the rules of the game, contained a list of refreshments such as champagne. madeira, pert, claret, &c. which could be had here. I grieve to record that Napoleon's roo ns were strip- ped of their furniture, and the premises let to three persons for the purpose of farming, immediately after the demise of the Emperor. I burned with shame and indignation, when on opening a door at the end of the billiard-room, I entered the small apartment with two windows on the right, between which the Emperor breathed his last, and found it half filled with a winuowing-machine, and the floor, into a decayed part of which I fell up to the knee, covered with straw. Beyond this, empty and dark, was the dining-room ; and adjoining it, the room where the body of Napoleon had been laid out, I found converted into an eight-stalled stable, and occupied by cart-horses.

What ! could these few apartments not have been spared ? And particularly, since no orders had been received from the British Government regarding them, why were they not preserved in exactly the same state in which they were left? How interesting to have seen them as when occupied by the illustrious dead! If it was desired to convert the ground of Longwood into a farm, why could not the out- houees and square of wooden sheds (erected for the temporary accom- modation of the suite,) have been removed to a distance? But it is not too late : the walls and roof still remain which sheltered Napoleon in his island prison. Let the rooms be at least cleaned and guarded by souse veteran and pensioned soldier ; and we shall not longer be reproached for heaping insult on the memory of the extraordinary man whose astonishing vigour of intellect, and most singular fortunes, raised him to be dictator of the European continent.

In private life, men guilty of this conduct about relicts of much less value, would assuredly have been punished : but narrowness and baseness of mind seem the best recommendation to Ministers of all parties. The display of lofty or generous sentiments in a subordinate suggests "odious comparisons ;" but the mere con- ventional advantages of any "booby lord " enable him to show off fairly against men whose nature may be on a par with his own, but whose breeding is inferior.