190 Scientific Reviews. 
side of the house, where hé also slept, having already exacted the payment of our 
bill! Thus our letter of introduction turned out rather to his profit, in spite of 
his fearful anticipations on our arrival. I ought to have mentioned that he made 
me pay for a bowl of milk, although he himself drank half of it! The Hacienda 
is eight leagues from Tepic.”—P. 66, 67. | 8 
Our author seems to have been a:man of courage and determina- 
tion, and we feel assured, after reading his work, that the busimess 
on which he travelled did not fail for want of exertions on his part. 
He pursued tigers to their dens,—exposed himself to the most dans 
gerous travelling amidst warring Indians,—dived among marine 
monsters of portentous size, and that till the blood trickled from 
his mouth, ears, and nostrils. His navigation of the Rio Colorado 
is so full of novel details, that we have introduced it inte another 
part of our Journal; and at a time when the royalist Spaniards 
think that the country is again ripe for change,—when the same 
false information that a short time ago led Iturbide on to his 
ruin, is now probably bringing another expedition to disturb the 
tranquillity of the country and to injure its commerce, or to fall 
beneath the avenging arm of independence, we would finish by re= 
commending to our readers a perusal of Mr. Hardy’s Censure on 
the Mexicans, who with all their vices, we still think, will prove 
themselves to be firm patriots. 
Four Years in Southern Africa. By CowrEr Rose, Royal En- 
gineers. Colburn. London, 1829. 
Tus vélume is written in letters to a brother, and therefore 
sometimes assumes a tone of familiarity ; but while it contains 
nought “ unborrowed. from the eye,’ the object of the author. be- 
ing, as he states in his preface, to give “ all that caught its glance; 
and on which that glance lingered—all that is beautiful or stern in 
nature—the gleam of the river—the gloom of the forest—the sha- 
dow of the mountain—the swift mist of the troop of graceful ante- 
lopes—the towering strength of the elephant—and the bold bearing 
of the free-born savage.” We remember that there is but one step 
from the sublime to the ridiculous, and are prepared for what we . 
have to expect in a work which professes to delineate the indefinite 
outlines of “ the shadow of the mountain,” and vie with “ the 
towering strength of the elephant,” and are glad, on perusal, to 
find ourselves oftentimes misled by the preface, and to catch our 
selves lingering with pleasure and some instruction on the descrip 
tive parts of the work, a branch of inquiry in which the author 
excels. der 
It is a mistaken notion—and Mr Rose has fell into the same 
error—that poetry consists in undefined images, and in leaving field 
for the reader’s imagination. From the great examples of imper- 
ishable genius, and the history of more humble efforts,-we could 
bring many examples of the contrary. It has often been a pleasure 
