to carry their canoe and ascend on foot, sometimes making a circuit of many hundred fathoms.

After a voyage of six days Michaux entered the lake St. John, botanized on the shores, and collected a number of plants. At this place is the most northern establishment for the fur trade. He then ascended a river called Mistapin, though it does not take its rise from the lake of that name. He there saw a cascade which surpassed everything that he had heard of it. The river, divided into several branches, extends over a space of about 200 fathoms, and falls from a mountain in the form of an amphitheatre about 250 fathoms in height; upon the sides of this amphitheatre grow some trees which are seen through the sheet of water, curved in a vault over their summits. Falling with a tremendous sound, it dashes against the rocks, and the spray, rising in a cloud, sprinkles every object for some distance around; the torrent, repulsed in its fall by the opposite banks, forms itself into undulations, which between two rapid foaming currents leave spaces of tranquil water, where the Indians pass in canoes.' To Michaux their dexterity was inconceivable, and to us his temerity is equally so; and we shudder in beholding him pass under the two branches of the cascade, to gather plants upon the rocks beneath, and pause to contemplate this awful scene. As he ascended the river, he found a cabin where he was well received, and regaled with beaver's flesh and preserved cranberries. The beavers form themselves into societies in these remote countries. Their habitations, of a solid and ingenious structure, obstruct navigation, and travellers are often obliged to unload their canoes and lift them over the dykes they have built. As the natives pursue them, they are only found in the most northern and uninhabited tracts.

*

* Of this wonderful cascade we have not been able to meet with any other account than the above. If the thing really exists as it is here described, it is very remarkable that its fame should be confined to an almost uninhabited solitude. That a river should suddenly precipitate itself from a height of 250 Fr. toises, or 1600 English feet, is certainly not impossible, but is so very extraordinary as to require the strongest evidence to support it. We must at least therefore suspend our belief, and suppose that Mr. Deleuze might have mistaken a figure in copying from the journal of Michaux, or that the errour might have escaped the printer. ED.

After having ascended many mountains, the intervals between which are filled with stagnant water, Michaux entered on the 3d of August a little river which leads into the lake Mistapin. The weather was excessively cold, and it snowed; however, he pursued his way, and reached the lake on the 4th of September. After having reconnoitered the banks, he descended a river which falls into Hudson's Bay, followed it for two days, and was within a short distance of the bay, when the Indians believing it dangerous to advance farther to the north at this season, insisted on turning back, and assured him if the snow lasted it would be impossible to return.

Michaux had reconnoitred the position of the different places, and ascertained the highest points, and what was the communication between the different lakes and Hudson's Bay. He had determined accurately to what latitude the trees of the north extend, and he now only found in these regions a scanty vegetation, consisting of black firs, which fructify at four feet from the ground, stinted pines, birches, and dwarf service trees, a species of running juniper, the black currant, the linnaea borealis, the ledum, and several species of vaccinium ; but no longer any of the fine trees which grow in the neighbourhood of Quebeck.

They met with many difficulties on their return. The torrents were swollen; the Indians descended them with astonishing velocity, steering the canoe between the rocks; but the marshes through which they were obliged to pass were obstacles it required still greater courage to surmount. In crossing these marshes, entirely covered with the sphagnum palustre, the ledum, and the vaccinium, they sank up to their knees, and were constantly wet. Returning, he met two parties of Indians, and he derived great pleasure from accompanying them to the chase.

Michaux at length arrived at Tadoussac the 1st of October, where he took leave of his fellow travellers, who had rendered him all the services he required of them with the utmost zeal and fidelity.

We have often heard him say, that when the Canadian Indians are not at war with the American colonies, you are sure of meeting a favourable reception among them. Travellers however avoid them, as they run the risk of losing their provisions. When you meet them, if they have killed any game or are making a repast, you may sit down without saying any

thing and partake it; but if they themselves are hungry, they take all you have till their hunger is satisfied, leaving you the remains. As they frequently go without eating for several days, their meals are much longer and more plentiful than those of the Europeans. The Canadian Indians and those above the Mississippi have a particular attachment to the French, and know them at the first glance.

From Tadoussac Michaux returned to Philadelphia, where he arrived the 8th of December. He had been absent from Charleston eight months, and had employed three months and eighteen days in going from Quebeck beyond the lake Mistapin, under the 52d degree of latitude, at 160 leagues from any habitation.

A short time after his return he presented to the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia the plan of an expedition, the object of which was to explore the vast territories situated to the west of the Mississippi, and to determine exactly the position of the mountains which run across New Mexico. He set forth the advantages that the United States might derive from this enterprize, and his plan was favourably received by Mr. Jefferson. It was going to be put into execution, a subscription of $5000 was already raised, and all the arrangements were made, when citizen Genet, minister of the French republick, arrived at Philadelphia. He claimed the services. of Michaux, and entrusted him with a negotiation to an American general resident at Kentucky. He was sent with the title of civil and political agent. As there was war with Spain, they designed to seize Louisiana, and sent Michaux to the general who was to command the forces, to concert the means of execution; he was also commissioned to go upon the banks of the Mississippi to treat with the Indians, and engage them in the interests of France.

This political commission was little suited to the peaceful taste of Michaux, but he would not refuse his country the services she exacted of him, and he set off on the 15th of July, 1793. He crossed the Alleghany mountains, and descended the Ohio as far as Louisville. In three months the business relative to his mission obliged him to return to Philadelphia. To take the shortest way, it was necessary to pass through Virginia, from which he was separated by vast forests, inhabited only by savages who attack travellers. He crossed these desarts with a party consisting of twelve persons. After a

forced march of five days, the party separated at Holston. Michaux, accompanied by his guides, proceeded to Philadelphia in twenty-four days, notwithstanding the severity of the season, and the difficulty of travelling. He arrived the 12th of December, 1795, after a journey of eight hundred leagues.

He found that Genet had been replaced by Fauchet, and that the design of invading Louisiana was relinquished: he then determined to return to Charleston, that he might be in his garden in the beginning of the spring, and take advantage of seed time. He sat off on the 9th of February, and spent thirty-six days on the road, collecting every thing remarkable he met with.

The 14th of July following he sat out to revisit the interi our of North Carolina, and the highest of the Alleghany mountains. He returned October 2d, and employed himself in collecting the autumnal plants, cultivating his garden, and arranging the collections he intended to send to France.

His stay in Kentucky had been too short to collect any of its productions. He also regretted not having been able to follow the course of the Mississippi, and visit the country of the Illinois. A distance of four hundred leagues was nothing to him. He knew what resources he should find on again trying his fortune; and in this journey, which lasted nearly a year, he found a number of valuable plants. We shall not stop to relate the obstacles he had to surmount, or the adven→ tures which befel him among the Indians. We have already said enough to prove his intrepidity and his zeal for the sciences; we shall only add, that being well acquainted with the geography of the country, he went from time to time to the European settlements situated on the banks of rivers, and left boxes to be sent to his establishment, and the carriage of which was to be well rewarded if they were received at the appointed time.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

LEVITY.

Ir having become a subject of flagrant notoriety, that certain

vile abuses and detestable innovations have in these latter days sprung up in this land of simplicity and quietness, to the great annoyance and manifest discomfiture of our uncorrupted and ignorant citizens, and tending to produce a total subversion of their purity of manners and uprightness of deportment; it hath therefore become the indispensable duty of all pious and influential men to lift up their heads and their hands, yea, their hearts and their voices, in opposition to such crying and unheard of enormities.

At the head of these abominations, and far exceeding the rest by the extensiveness of its influence and the perniciousness of its operations, is the Boston Athenaeum, an open receptacle, intended as a place of accommodation and shelter for the disturbers of the town's peace, a lurking hole for the knowing ones, and a lounging place for the slothful. Now it is the intention of the undertaker of this essay to bring unto light, and to make clearer than the noon of the day, the various designs and tendencies, which are implicated and wrapped up in the existence of this pestiferous institution.

And in the first place, it operateth as a wily and a subtle enticement, inducing people to quit and neglect their honest callings and gainful occupations, whereby are amassed both comfortable livings and goodly estates; and to run after the superfluity of nonsense contained in sundry unprofitable and filthy volumes, with which the world is much vexed. It induceth people to turn poets, and literati, and other odious characters, so that many an otherwise honest man, who might have tilled the ground, or who might have bought and sold and gotten gain, is now destitute of his daily dinner, and weareth a mutilated pair of breeches. Nay, this vortex of corruption is even placed within the limits of the county gaol yard, for the very purpose, that those, who by the negligence of their ways and the literature of their doings, have brought their bodies into thraldom, might have an opportunity to persevere in the same slothful and pernicious habits, which have wrought for them this so great mischief.