284 Geographical Collections. 



and habits, and to fix them to the soil without destroying the instinct and native 

 talent of the Kirghese for pastoral occupations. This example will sooner or later 

 make them unite tlie advantages of the cultivation of fields. 



This influence of civilization has been hitherto slow, and far from being ge- 

 neral ; nevertheless it begins under happy auspices. The contempt and aversion 

 of sedentary employment diminishes every day; and, without presuming too 

 mucli for the future, we may expect that the solid enjoyments which these oc- 

 cupations procure to the Russians who deliver themselves over to them, will not 

 be long in supplanting the sterile jealousy of their neiglibours, and causing it to 

 be succeeded by a wish to participate in these advantages, by devoting them- 

 selves to a peaceable industry. — Agricultural Journal of Moscow. 



Account of the Polish Jews. — " As none of them are engaged in agriculture, 

 they are but rarely to be found in the villages ; and being thus assembled in the 

 towns and cities, which are but few, they seem in most of them to form a very 

 large majority of their population. The men have, for the most part, much finer 

 countenances than the other Poles ; their forms are better as well as their atti- 

 tudes and paces ; and the long, flowing black dresses which they commonly 

 wear, form altogether a striking contrast with the appearance of their slouch- 

 ing, loitering, idle neighbours. Their eastern countenances and complexions, 

 and the waving beards of many, especially of those advanced to middle age, 

 presented a new and striking feature. They seemed to be always in motion, and 

 yet doing nothing ; and it was natural to inquire how such numbers of them could 

 procure the means of subsistence, especially as their wives and daughters seemed 

 to be decorated with jewels or ornaments much more expensive than were to be 

 seen among the inhabitants of the same class in the neighbouring provinces of the 

 Prussian dominions which had just been passed through. It appeared extraor- 

 dinary in a country where the laws prohibited them from possessing land — where 

 their own indisposition to a rural life prevented them from renting and cultivat- 

 ing that of others — that they should not address themselves to some manufac- 

 turing or handicraft pursuits : but such the editor had reason to believe was 

 the case ; and all of them subsist by being the retail distributors of the labour 

 of their neighbours in some way or other. They have in their hands all 

 the intermediate operations of the commerce of the country, to such an extent, 

 that every one who wants either to buy or to sell any commodity performs the 

 operation, however minute, through the instrumentality of his Jew. A lady of 

 the highest rank in Poland aflirmed, that if she wanted to purchase household 

 linen, clothes, or furniture, she was obliged to employ her own Jew, or she was 

 sure to be cheated. This kind of trafficking habit, though it leads to great 

 wealth with some few individuals of the nation, leaves a great part in the most 

 miserable state of poverty — a state which can only be encountered by the extreme 

 of frugality, approaching to a kind of half starvation ; whilst the rags and filth 

 which cover their persons are hid from the eye of the observer by the long dresses 

 of black stuff", which composes their principal but cheap garment. — Levi and 

 Sarah, a Polish Tale, from the German of J. M. Niemcewicz. 



Miscellaneous Intelligence Dr. Von Siebold, whose imprisonment in Japan 



we had the unpleasant task of announcing in a late number, has been set at liber- 

 ty, and is, we are happy to find, arrived at Batavia Mr. Caille has published a 



letter in the Moniteur of the 4th May, professing to refute all the doubts ex- 

 pressed in the Quarterly Review, with respect to the authenticity and correctness 

 of his journey to Timbuctoo, " a journey of which a rival nation," he says, 

 " entertains a little jealousy, at the unexpected success of an undertaking, in the 

 prosecution of which it has expended considerable sums, and lost so many dis- 

 tinguished men." — The Estafette (T Alger, to be published in Africa, will con- 

 tain, besides the details of the campaign, pictures of the manners, customs, &c. 

 of the African tribes, and lithographic representations of plans of battles, cos- 

 tumes and scenes of the country. 



