ver be her station, suckles her own child, and a hired nurse is a character wholly unknown in these regions. Twins at a birth are more common here than in Europe; and, provisions being abundant, a numerous family is accounted no burden.-The diseases in this country are materially different from those of Europe. Pleurisy, gout, and gravel, are rare; but fever, dysentery, and cutaneous complaints, particularly the leprosy, are common. The small-pox also makes dreadful ravages, both inocu. lation and vaccination being unknown. A singular complaint consists in having the hair and skin of an unvaried white; the lapse of years produces no change in this malady; which, however, is accompanied with no pain, and seems to engender no other disorder.

In regard to the population of the empire of Tonquin, considerable difficulty opposes the formation of any thing like a correct estimate; since the returns which are made, being connected with the imposition of taxes, are often defective, and are moreover considered as secrets of state. The most probable computation is, that the whole population of the empire amounts to about twenty-three millions; of which Tonquin alone contains eighteen, and Cochin-China one million and a half. The countries of Tsiampa and Lac-tho may be supposed to contain each between 6 and 700,000; Cambodia and Laos about a million each. The ratio of increase has, during the present age, been much retarded by the ravages of civil war. Of ten provinces of which Tonquin consists, the most populous by far is that of Xunam, situated in the centre of the country, and forming a vast plain, watered by many rivers, navigable for small craft. Backinh, the capital, contains about 40,000 inhabitants; Han-vints between 15 and 20,000; Tran-hac, from 10 to 15,000; Causang, between 7 and 8000; Vi-hoang, 6000; Hun-nam, 5000. The last two are situated on the great Tonquin river, and Hunnam was the seat of the Dutch factory. Phu-xuan, the capital of Upper Cochin-China, has at present, in consequence of being the residence of the emperor, a population of from 20 to 30,000. Qui-phu, Sai-gou, and Qui-whou, all in Cochin-China, may be set down as nearly 8000 each. A dreadful famine, which took place twenty years ago, in consequence of a drought, made sad havoc in the population; which otherwise appears to increase very rapidly. Few persons of either sex remain unmarried: a family of children is accounted an honour, and very soon proves to be an advantage, their labour yielding more than they cost; while in China, as it is well known, infants are exposed to perish, it is here common to purchase them; and in many cases in which polygamy exists, the object is not the gratification of voluptuousness, but the multiplication of progeny.

'Animals. It is generally agreed that the country of Laos is the most favourable region to the elephant; that animal being larger, stronger, and more docile here than in any other part of the world. At the age of thirty, when he has attained his full growth, he has been sometimes known of the height of sixteen feet, and of the length of thirteen. His pace is steady, and he never falls; his ordinary walk is equal in swiftness to the trot of a horse: but, on quickening it, he approaches to the rapidity of a horse's gallop; and though he may be outrun for a short distance by a fleet courser, none can keep up with him in a race of length. He marches with ease fifty miles in a day, and may be made to march one hundred. Balls enter his skin without proving fatal to him, unless they strike his forehead between the eyes. In regard to labouring cattle, a preference is given in Tonquin to buffaloes; which, from their superior strength and longer legs, are fitted to labour in marshy ground. They are likewise easily managed, being exempt from the character of ferocity which is attributed to them in their wild state. The Tonquinese horses are small, something like hussar-horses in Europe; and little pains are bestowed on fitting them either for war or for domestic purposes. They are never used for draught, and seldom for riding; the great people preferring to travel in palanquins or on elephants, and the middling ranks being apprehensive of exciting, by the display of property, the cupidity of their rulers. Hogs and poultry abound as in Europe, and goats and wild ducks are in immense quantities.

The elephants, in their native state, are apt to ravage the ricefields, the fruit-trees, and sugar-canes, so that the inhabitants are obliged to keep watch, and to frighten them off by torches. The tigers are numerous, and of great agility in leaping, but unable to overtake a man in running, if the ground be level. The largest in Tonquin do not exceed 3 feet and a half in height, a size much below that of the royal tiger. Inferior as they are in magnitude, they possess in Tonquin the characteristic audacity and cunning of their species; attacking, wherever they can, the young of the buffaloes, and venturing even into the dwellings of men. The inhabitants hunt the tiger with dogs, pikes, and fire-arms, when they are allowed to carry them: but they seldom attempt this dangerous sport without going forth in considerable numbers. The boar is a frequent and an innoxious inhabitant of the forests: but the wild dogs, larger than those of Europe, and marching in bodies, are very formidable. The mountain rats, likewise large and voracious, devour the product of the earth, and are hunted with arrows by the savages in the north of CochinChina, who feed on their flesh, and account it delicious. This country is infested also with the reptile tribe, some of which are venemous, and others are not; the largest is a serpent of the thickness of a man's thigh, which, taking its station, (like the Boa in India) on the branch of a tree, and falling down on the passing animal, rolls itself around it, compresses it with irresistible force, and, after having broken its bones and extinguished life, proceeds to devour the carcase. Birds abound in the forests of Tonquin, and have often a beautiful plumage. Of birds of prey the largest and most voracious is the vulture, who ventures even to attack a man when he is alone.

Vegetable Productions.-The great article of growth in Tonquin, and that which forms the food of three-fourths of the inhabitants, is rice. It is here of the very best quality, and is computed to return, in good land, forty or fifty times the value of the seed. The soil requires no rest, and yields two crops in a year; one in July and the other in November, the rice being generally four months in the ground. Maize is also cultivated here, and a most convenient plant it is in any country, being highly nutritive, of abundant produce, and fitted to a variety of soils. Of the fruit-trees, the orange is the most distinguished, being better than in Europe, or in any other part of the world. Here are not fewer than twenty different kinds of it, varying in colour, taste, and size; some being as small as walnuts, and others larger than citrons, but all pleasant and wholesome. Almost all the fruits of India are found here. The sugar-cane is common, but in a very imperfect state of culture. The same may be remarked of the coffee-tree, the natives discovering no partiality to the drink which we extract from its fruit. In the province of Xuthan, are two mountains which produce cinnamon trees superior even to those of Ceylon, but the trees of that description in the low country are very defective. Cotton-trees are abundant, and extremely useful for the purpose of clothing; mulberry-trees are also plentiful, and afford excellent foliage for the food of silk-worms. Of odoriferous wood, the most remarkable is a kind of aloe called calembac; the smallest particle of which, on being burned, perfumes a whole apartment. It is used in temples and palaces, and is sold for its weight in gold, Cochin-China being the country in which it is considered to be found in the highest perfection. Palm-trees are of great utility, partly for their fruit, partly for the durability of the timber of certain sorts of this tree when placed in the water; and also for the shelter afforded against the sun by their leaves, when manufactured into hats. The fruit of the cocoa-tree is likewise of great service, not only for food, but for the cordage which is manufactured from its fibry covering, and finally for the cups which are made from the nut. The leaves, when at ma

turity, are ten or twelve feet in length, and serve for parasols against the sun, and in some measure for the purpose of writing-paper. The bamboo tree is very common, and highly useful in Tonquin; its growth is of such rapidity, that it has been known to rise thirty feet in the space of six months. Ploughs, harrows, pick-axes, and all instruments of labour, are made of bamboo and iron; and fishing-implements, the timber-work, and the roofs of houses, are manufactured from this valuable tree.

However, as no good is without qualification, this abundance of the gifts of nature in Tonquin is accompanied by circumstances of an opposite character. Many trees have fruit and even leaves of a poisonous nature; which falling into the water in autumn, make it dangerous to drink. This is particularly the effect of the leaves of the iron-wood. Some savages in the forest make use of the juice of noxious plants for the purpose of poisoning their arrows."

Agriculture and Fisheries.-The Tonquinese government, aware of the vast importance of agriculture, is actuated by the

desire of rendering the occupation honourable and advantageous. The sovereign, like the emperor of China, observes the annual custom of ploughing a field in the presence of an assembled multitude, who deposit on the favoured ground some of the soil of every province in his empire; under the belief that fertility emanates from the labour of the sovereign, and is communicated, by a kind of sympathy, to the kindred element at any distance. Notwithstanding this imperial patronage, agriculture is at a very low ebb among the inhabitants of Tonquin. Their harrows are of wood, of the same shape as in Europe; their ploughs are lighter; they make no use of manure; and they cultivate the soil to very little depth. The management of plants and trees is rather better understood, and considerable knowledge is discovered in recovering the trees from injuries which would otherwise bring them to decay. Taken, however, in a comprehensive view, the productive powers of the rich and extensive territory of Tonquin are as yet very inadequately called forth; and a population, greater by many millions than the present, might be easily supported from its soil. The waters also afford a rich supply of food, and excite the industry of the fishermen on the coast, the rivers, and the inland lakes. In the maritime provinces, it is computed that the number of fishermen is equal to that of husbandmen; and in this respect, as in the management of trees, the Tonquinese are farther advanced than we might imagine from their general rudeness and ignorance. They have marked with attention the changes produced in the situation of fish by the seasons, the weather, the time of the day or night, as well as by local position; and they are indefatigable in turning all this knowledge to account, in their various methods of catching them.

'Nowhere,' says the author, is the management of nets and lines better understood. One of the modes of nocturnal fishing, is to frighten the fish by fires carried along the surface of the water, and to attract them into boats by a painted board, sloping downwards, on which they leap in terror and fall into the vessel. Sprats are caught in quantities, by sinking a bed of large and tough tree-leaves, and pulling it up after a multitude of these small fish have settled on it. Or when a fish, which from his size may be called the whale of the Tonquinese seas, has discovered and begun to devour a bank of sprats, the spouting of the water from the sides of his mouth is a signal to the fishermen, that they are in time to make a rich capture from among those whom their voracious pursuer has not yet destroyed. This large animal is not dangerous to fishermen, and is reverenced by the Tonquinese as a kind of divinity. One of the most singular fish in these seas is a kind of lobster, of a light gray colour, having inside a black liquid, which he throws on the small fish and obscures. their sight; after which he finds it easy to push or drag them with

his fins into shallow water, where, in a kind of bed formed by rocks, which admit the sea only at high water, thousands of small fish are often found. The discovery of one of these nets affords a rich prize to the fishermen.--Another of the singularities of Tonquin fishing is found to take place on the muddy levels at the side of the great river, where the soil is too loose to tread with the feet, and too deficient in water to admit the smallest boat. The Tonquinese, placing himself in a low seat fixed to a plank, and crossing one leg under him, uses the other as an oar, plunging it into the mud, and pushing himself forwards with a rapidity which, strange as it may seem, surpasses (in the case of a practised person) the pace of a stout walker on level ground. After having advanced two or three miles, he fixes reeds firmly in the earth, which entangle the fish at low water. This fishery constitutes the sole occupation of the natives of several villages; and each inhabitant has his particular lot of ground, separated from the others by public authority."

Dextrous, however, as the Tonquinese approve themselves in fishing, they are miserably deficient in seamanship. Although their coast is so extensive, and many hundred thousand of them derive their subsistence from a sea-life, their method of navigation still bespeaks the infancy of the art. In the exercise of rowing, however, they are persevering; and they beguile the tediousness of labour, like the Greeks, with a boat-song, in cadence with the stroke of the oar. Resembling other natives of warm climates, they are excellent swimmers; and they venture out into the open sea for several leagues in a raft, which, when they happen to be driven off, they find little difficulty in regaining. It is said that, some centuries ago, the navigation of this empire, as well as of other eastern regions, was more extensive than it is at present, but gradually decreased after the establishment of Europeans in the East, and their indiscriminate capture of all Asiatic vessels. Even in its best days, however, it must have been extremely imperfect, the Cochin-Chinese being incapable of taking a degree of latitude, unacquainted with the use of the compass, and afraid of going out of sight of land.

Arts, Manufactures, and Trade.-In regard to progress in the arts, the Tonquinese are still less advanced than several of their Asiatic neighbours. They are ignorant of the method of applying the elements to purposes which appear the most simple to Europeans, being unapprized of the effects of windmills, ovens, fire-engines, &c. They are not, however, unsuccessful in imitations, and they work to good purpose on a model. Their tools are extremely deficient; and those among our readers, who are aware how greatly the progress of society is quickened by the division of labour, will consider it as an additional proof of the backwardness of the Tonquinese, that every thing connected with the food and maintenance of a family is done at home, to the