name for thefe mountains, taken collectively, feems not yet to have been determined. Mr. Evans calls them the Endlefs Mountains: others have called them the Appalachian Mountains, from a tribe of Indians who live on a river which proceeds from this mountain, called the Appalachicola. But the most common name is the Allegany Mountains, fo called, either from the principal ridge of the range, or from their running nearly parallel to the Allegany or Ohio river; which, from its head waters, till it emties into the Miffiffippi, is known and called by the name of Allegany River, by the Seneca and other tribes of the Six Nations, who once inhabited it. Thefe mountains are not confufedly scattered and broken, rifing here and there into high peaks, overtopping each other, but ftretch along in uniform ridges, scarcely half a mile high. They spread as you proceed fouth, and some of them terminate in high perpendicular bluffs. Others gradually fubfide into a level country, giving rise to the rivers which run foutherly into the Gulf of Mexico. They afford many curious phenomena, from which naturalifts have deduced many theories of the earth. Some of them have been whimsical enough; Mr. Evans fuppofes that the most obvious of the theories which have been formed of the earth is, that it was originally made out of the ruins of another. "Bones and fhells which escaped the fate of fofter animal fubftances, we find mixed with the old materials, and elegantly preferved in the loofe ftones and rocky bafes of the higheft of thefe hills." With deference, however, to Mr. Evans's opinion, these appearan ces have been much more rationally accounted for by fuppofing the reality of the flood, of which Mofes has given us an account. Mr. Evans thinks this too great a miracle to obtain belief. But whether is it a greater miracle for the Creator to alter a globe of earth by a deluge, when made, or to create one new from the ruins of another? The former certainly is not lefs credible than the latter. "Thele mountains," fays our author, "exifted in their prefent elevated height before the deluge, but not fo bare of foil as now." How Mr. Evans came to be fo circumftantially acquainted with thefe pretended facts, is difficult to determine, unlefs we fuppofe him to have been an Antediluvian, and to have furveyed them accurately before the convulfions of the deluge; and until we can be fully affured of this, we muft be excused in not affenting to his opinion, and in adhering to the old philofophy of Mofes and his advocates. We have every reafon to believe that the primitive state of the earth was totally morphofed by the firft convulfion of nature at the time of ge: that the fountains of the great deep were indeed broken st, and that the various ftrata of the earth were diffevered, and thrown into every poffible degree of confufion and diforder. Hence thofe vaft piles of mountains which lift their craggy cliffs to the clouds, were probably thrown together from the floating ruins of the earth: and this conjecture is remarkably confirmed by the vast number of foffils and other marine exuvia which are found imbeded on the tops of mountains, in the interior parts of continents remote from the fea, in all parts of the world hitherto explored. The various circumstances attending thefe marine bodies leave us to conclude, that they were actually generated, lived and died in the very beds wherein they are found, and therefore thefe beds must have originally been at the bottom of the ocean, though now in many inftances elevated feveral miles above its furface. Hence it appears that mountains and continents were not primary productions of nature, but of a very distant period of time from the creation of the world; a time long enough for the frata to have acquired their greateft degree of cohefion and hardness; and for the teftaceous matter of marine fhells to become changed to a ftony fubftance; for in the fiffures of the lime-ftone and other ftrata, fragments of the fame fhell have been frequently found adhering to each fide of the cleft, in the very ftate in which they were originally broken; fo that if the feveral parts were brought together, they would apparently tally with each other exactly. A very confiderable time therefore must have elapfed between the chaotic ftate of the earth and the deluge, which agrees with the account of Mofes, who makes it a little upwards of fixteen hundred obfervations are intended to fhew, in one inftance out of many Thefe years. others, the agreement between revelation and reason, between the account which Mofes gives us of the creation and deluge, and the prefent appearances of nature. SOIL AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. In the United States are to be found every fpecies of foil that the earth affords. In one part of them or another, they produce all the various kinds of fruits, grain, pulfe, and hortuline plants. and roots, which are found in Europe, and have been thence tranfplanted to America, and befides thefe, a great variety of nalive vegetable productions. The natural history of the American States, particularly of NewEngland, is yet in its infancy. Several ingenious foreigners, killed in botany, have visited the fouthern, and fome of the middle ftates, and Canada; and thefe ftates have also had ingenious botanifts of their own, who have made confiderable progrefs in defcribing the productions of thofe parts of America which they D D have vifited; but New-England feems not to have engaged the attention either of foreign or American botanists. There never was an attempt to defcribe botanically, the vegetable productions of the eastern states, till the Rev. Dr. Cutler, of Ipswich, turned his attention to the fubject. The refult of his firft enquiries has been published in the first volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences." Since that period, the Doctor has paid very particular attention to this, his favourite ftudy; and the public may fhortly expect to be gratified and improved by his botanical defcriptions and difcoveries. The productions of the fouthern ftates are likewife far from being well defcribed, by any one author, in a work professedly for that purpofe; but are moftly intermixed with the productions of other parts of the world; in the large works of European botanifts. This renders it difficult to felect and to give an accurate and connected account of them. To remedy this inconvenience, and to rescue the republic from the reproach of not having any authentic and feientific account of its natural hiftory, Dr. Cutler, who has already examined nearly all the vegetables of New-England, intends, as foon as his leifure will admit, to publifh a botanical work, of confiderable magnitude, confined principally to the productions of the New-England ftates. Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia, I am informed, is collecting materials for a work of a fimilar nature, to comprehend the middle and fouthern ftates; fo that both together will form a complete natural hiftory of the American ftates. As far as poffible to take advantage of thefe, as well as of other works of a fimilar kind, the natural history of the vegetables, animals, birds, reptiles, infects, fishes, &c. peculiar to the American continent, will be feparately confidered in the laft volume of this work; to which the reader is referred. POPULATION. According to the cenfus, taken by order of Congrefs, in 1790. the number of inhabitants in the United States of America, was three millions nine hundred and thirty thousand, nearly. In this number, none of the inhabitants of the territory N. W. of the river Ohio, are included. These added, would undoubtedly have increafed the number to three millions nine hundred and fifty thoufand, at the period the cenfus was taken. The increase fince, on fuppofition that the inhabitants of the United States double "once in twenty years, has been about four hundred thousand : fo that now, 1794, they are increased to four millions three hundred and fifty thoufand. To thefe must be added, the vaft influx of inhabitants into the States, from the different countries of Eu rope; with their natural increase; which taken at a moderate calculation will make the number at least five millions of fouls. The American republic is compofed of almost all nations, languages, characters, and religions, which Europe can furnish; the greater part, however, are defcended from the English; and all may, perhaps with propriety, he diftinguishingly denominated Federal Americans. It has generally been confidered as a fact, that, of the human race, more males than females are born into the world. The proportion commonly fixed on, is as thirteen to twelve, Hence an argument has been derived against Polygamy. The larger number of males has been believed to be a wife appointment of Providence, to balance the deftruction of the males in war, by fea, and by other occupations more hazardous to life than the domeftic employment of the female fex. The following table, formed from the cenfus of the United States, in which the males and females are numbered in different columns, furnishes a new proof of the truth of the common opinion, as it respects the United States*: It is remarkable, that the excess in all the States is on the fide of males, except in Maffachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. * Mr. Bruce, in his Travels, affirms, that in that tract of country from the Ifthmus of Suez to the Straits of Babelmandel, which contains the three Arabias, the proportion is full four women to one man. + In the columns of the cenfus, in which are noted all other free perfons and flaves, the males and females are not distinguished, and are therefore not regarded in this table. the males and females are not distinguished in the district of Maine, in the late ceníus. In thefe States the females are confiderably the most numerous, This difference is obviously to be afcribed to the large migrations from all these States to Vermont, the northern and western parts of New-York, the territory N. W. of Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennfylvania, and fome to almost all the fouthern States. A great proportion of thele migrants were males; and while they have ferv. ed to increase the proportion of males in the States where they have fettled, as is ftrikingly the cafe in Vermont and Kentucky, to which the migrations have been most numerous, and where the males are to the females nearly as ten to nine, they have ferved to leffen the proportion of males in the States from whence they emigrated. The number of flaves, in 1790, in all the States, was fix bundred ninety-leven thoufand fix hundred and ninety-feven. The increase of this number fince, owing to falutary laws, in feveral of the States, and the humane exertions of the government in favour of their emancipation and the prevention of any further importation, has happily been fmall, and will be lefs in future. CHARACTER AND MANNERS. FEDERAL AMERICANS, collected together from various countries, of different habits, formed under different governments, have yet to form their national character, or we may rather say, it is in a forming state. They have not yet exifted as a nation long enough for us to form an idea of what will be, in its maturity, its prominent features. Judging, however, from its prefent promiling infancy, we are encouraged to hope, that, at fome future period, not far diftant, it will, in every point of view, be relpect. able. Until the revolution, which was accomplished in 1783. Euroropeans were ftrangely ignorant of America and its inhabitants. They concluded that the new world must be inferior to the old. The count de Buffon fuppofed, that even the animals in that country were uniformly lefs than in Europe, and thence concluded that, "on that fide the Atlantic there is a tendency in nature to belittle her productions." The Abbé Raynal, in a former edition of his works, fuppofed this belittling tendency, or influence, had its effects on the race of whites tranfplanted from Europe, and thence had the prefumption to affert, that "America had not yet produ ced one good poet, one able mathematician, nor one man of genius, in a fingle art or fcience." Had the Abbé been justly informed refpecting the Americans, we prefume he would not have made an affertion fo ungenerous and injurious to their genius and |