and strengthen the probability that an Indian Hercules might antiently be no less consistent with truth than an Indian Bacchus: If it be true, that we find in Bengal his symbol only, not himself; is it equally true, that where the symbol originated the personage able to wield it, might be less a singularity than has been supposed.

As we advanced northwards, towards where the rivers take their rise, the gradual elevation of the country, by which their currents are influenced, indicated an approach to cooler regions; at length it is completely ascertained, that the streams of the Ganges, the Burnampooter, the Indus, and others, are furnished by prodigious masses of ice, extending throughout immense As the political purposes of this Misranges of highly elevated ridges. These sion have been fully answered, and have accumulate their stores of frozen snow been repeatedly before us, we shall not during winter; they part with a portion here advert to them. Our readers know of their accessions, when the sun ad- that the Kingdom of Caubul was, at this vances towards them, in his yearly time, in a disturbed state; that the course; and hence those inundations, King had the mortification to witness which in the lower provinces assume the successive defeats of his army, and that appearance of seas, and even of oceans. it was only owing to dissensions among These mountains have been pene- the rebels, that he was able to pre trated by our countrymen in various serve authority over a part of his domiplaces: Turner found them in Tibet; nions. We shall, therefore, rather diCaptain Raper found them in his jour-rect our attention to the description and ney to the source of the Ganges; Mr. Elphinstone had them constantly in sight, during his sojourn in Caubul: and our readers have lately seen to what distresses they subjected our troops in another quarter, during the late operations against Nepaul.

character of these people, with which Mr. E. has favoured us; as the most instructive, and not the least pleasing portions of the volume.

Mr. E.'s observations in his second

book, by way of introduction to his early history of the Afghauns are so apof a like nature, in different countries, propriate to his subject, and to others that we cannot but deem it an act of justice to record them in his own words:

Geography and Natural Philosophy are under incalculable obligations to such Gentlemen as the present writer. The effect of political arrangement is If a man could be transported from temporary; it changes with events, ever England to the Afghaun country, without shifting, as Fortune in her most capri- passing through the dominions of Turkey, cious moods, ordains; but, services Persia, or Tartary, he would be amazed at done to science are permanent, and the the wide and unfrequented desarts, and acknowledgements of the ingenious wait the mountains, covered with perennial on those who confer them. We are snow. Even in the cultivated part of the thankful for additions to our geogra- country, he would discover a wild assemphical knowledge, but much more for blage of hills and wastes, unmarked by those to the history of our species, enclosures, not embellished by trees, and which enlarge our acquaintance with destitute of navigable canals, public roads, and all the great and elaborate productions man. We remember, when the bear of human industry and refinement. was announced as a native of India, would find the towns few, and far distant great was the hesitation of the learned; from each other; and, he would look in now, we know both of black bears, and vain for inns or other conveniences, which white: The portrait of a native in a fura traveller would meet with in the wildest dress, as a protection against winter, would have excited a smile: Mr. Elphinstone presents several such, and obtains universal credit. Formerly, a race of men, muscular, active, powerful, from bodily strength, supposed to exist in India, would have been deemed fabulous: such are now well known;

He

parts of Great Britain. Yet, he would sometimes be delighted with the fertility and populousness of particular plains and valleys, where he would see the productions of Europe, mingled in profusion with those of the torrid zone; and, the land, laboured with an industry and a judgment no where surpassed. He would see the inhabitants, following their flocks in tents,

or assembled in villages, to which the ter- | nature that do not exist in India; but, in raced roofs and mud wal s gave au appear-general, he would find the arts of life less ance entirely new. He would be struck advanced, and many of the luxuries of at first with their high, and even harsh Hindostan unknown. On the who'e, his features, their sun-Lurned countenances, impression of his new acquaintances would their long beards, their loose garments, be favourable; although he would feel, and their shaggy maufles of skins. When that without having lost the ruggeduess of he entered into the society, he would no- a barbarous nation they were tainted with tice the absence of regular courts of jus- the vices common to all Asiatics. Yet, he tice, and of every thing like au organized would reckon them virtuous, compared police. He wou'd be surprised at the with the people to whom he had been ac Auctuation and instability of the civil in-customed; would be inclined to regard stitutions. He would find it difficult to comprehend how a nation could subsist in such disorder; aud would pity those, who were compelled to pass their days in such a scene, and whose minds were trained by their unhappy situation to fraud and violence, to rapine, deceit, and revenge. Yet,

he would scarce fai! to admire their martial and lofty spirit, their hospita'ity, and their bold and simple manuers, equally removed from the suppleness of a citizen, and the awkward rusticity of a clown; and, he would, probably, before long discover, among so many qualities that excited his disgust, the rudiments of many

virtues.

them with interest and kindness; and could scarcely deny them a portion of his esteem.

Such would be the impressions made on an European traveller, by ordinary could not, therefore, but desire to beintercourse with the Afghauns; he come acquainted with a people presenting such distinct features.. But, we have an additional inducement to this; as it is well known, that the late Sir W. Jones suggested the possibility that they might, according to their own traditions, derive their origin from the Jews, expelled from Judea under Nebuchadnezzar. The Afghauns call themselves Pooshtoon; but the Arabs call them Solimaunee; whether from their possessing the mountains of Solimaun, or from the name of some chief of their nation; or from some obscure recollection of the Jewish King Solomon, is entirely uncertain. Mr. E. deems their traditionary history fabulous: he finds traces of them, however, in the ninth century; but, it should seem that they were at that time idolators. After having served in the armies of Ma

But, an English traveller from India, would view them with a more favourable eye. He would be pleased with the cold climate, elevated by the wild and novel scenery, and delighted by meeting many of the productions of his native land. He would first be struck with the thinness of the fixed population, and then with the appearance of the people; not fluttering in white muslins, while half their bodies are naked, but soberly and decently attired in dark coloured woollen clothes; and wrapt up in brown mantles, or in large sheep skin cloaks. He would admire their strong and active forms, their fair complexions and European features; their in-hommetan Lords, they at length, dustry, and enterprise; the hospitality, sobriety, and contempt of pleasure, which appear in all their habits: and, above all, the independence and energy of their character. In India, he would have left a country where every movement originates in the government or its agents, and where the people absolutely go for nothing; and, he would find himself among a nation where the controul of the government is scarcely felt, and where every man appears to pursue his own inclinations, undirected and unrestrained. Amidst the stormy in

dependence of this mode of life, he would regret the ease and security in which the state of ludia, and eveu the indolence and timidity of its inhabitants, enable most parts of that country to repose. He would meet with many productions of art and

achieved an Empire of their own, which included all Persia, to the limits of the present Russian and Turkish dominions, northward and westward; and, southward and eastward, from the Oxus and the Jumna to the Indian Ocean. Mr. E. shews, in a note, the insufficiency of the reasons assigned by our admirable Oriental Scholar for supposing their descent from the family of King Saul.

The customs of the Afghauns, though some of them are sufficiently peculiar, do not assist us in determining the question of their descent. A loose form of Government, is not exclusively their own the assembling of principal men, or elders, (here called à Jeerga,) to

Toy, the duty of his furnishing assistance to their royal master ;-and when he declined interfering, a hint was dropped of the possibility of the Queen sending her veil to him, which would lay him under an obligation indissolubly binding.

Without tracing these manners any further, we remark that Mr. E. discovers in the limited powers of the Sovereign, and the authority enjoyed by the clans, together with the prevailing influence of general opinion, ample materials for the construction of a well regulated Empire. It is curious to contemplate the reveries of a Briton, who discerns British principles, prevalent among a race so distinct and distant.

But even if we admit the inferiority of the Afghaun institutions to those of the more vigorous governments of other Asiatic countries, we cannot but be struck with the vast superiority of the materials they afford for the construction of a national constitution. The other nations are better adapted to a bad than to a good government. They can all be brought to contribute their whole force to the sup port of a despotism, within the time that is required to over-run their territory; and ages must pass away, before the slaves of India or China could be made capable of taking a share in the government of their country; but if a King, of sufficient geAnother incalculable advantage of the nius to form a design of cordially uniting present system is, that although it encouhis subjects, should spring up among the rages little disorders, it affords an effec- Afghauns, he would necessarily fall on a tual security against the general revolution beautiful form of government, as the only and calamities to which despotic countries one by which he could possibly accomin Asia are so frequently subject. In Per-plish his design. An ordinary monarch sia or India, the passions of a bad king are might endeavour to reduce the tribes to felt through every part of his dominions; obedience by force; but one Afghaun and the civil wars which occur almost as King has already had the penetration to often as a King dies, never fail to throw discover that it would require a less exerthe kingdom into a state of misery and dis- tion to conquer all the neighbouring kingorder: part of the inhabitants are exposed doms, than to subdue his own countrymen. to the licence and cruelty of the contend- A monarch such has I have supposed ing armies, and the rest suffers, nearly in would therefore be obliged (as the King is an equal degree, from the anarchy that at present †) to concert his measures with follows a dissolution of the government the hereditary Khauns; and the necessity which has hitherto maintained the public of consulting the interests of the whole, tranquillity. The consequence is, that a would induce them to carry on their de-. tyrant, or a disputed succession, reduces bates in a general assembly: such an arthe nation to a state of weakness and decay, rangement would be congenial to the hafrom which it cannot wholly be retrieved, bits of their internal government, and conbefore its recovery is checked by the recur- formable to the practice which the King rence of a similar calamity. In Afghau- now observes with the Dooraunee Sirdars; nistaun, on the contrary, the internal go-and it would form a council of the nobivernment of the tribes answers its end solity, connected both with the King and the well, that the utmost disorders of the royal government never derange its operations, nor disturb the lives of the people. number of organised and high-spirited republics are ready to defend their rugged country against a tyrant, and are able to defy the feeble efforts of a party in a civil war. Accordingly, if we compare the condition of the two, kingdoms, we find Persia in a state of decay, after twenty years of entire tranquility; while Afghaunistaun continues the progressive improvemen* which it has kept up during twelve years of civil warfare. New aqueducts are constantly made, and new lands brought into cultivatiou: the towns and the country round them, indeed, as well as that on

A

people, though more immediately with the King. In most Ooloosses, the Khauns can levy no taxes, and can take no public measures, without the consent of the elected Mulliks, who are obliged, in their turn, to obtain the consent of their divisions. The King might try to strengthen the Khauns, and by their means to draw a supply from a reluctant people, but unless he began with greater means than the Kings have yet possessed, his attempt would probably be attended with as little

* Ahmed Shauh.

+ No measure was determined on in Shauh Shuja's time, without a council of the Dooraunee lords.