_Washington City, Nov. 18._
An interesting document was transmitted by the Secretary of the
Treasury to the Senate, in pursuance of a resolution of that house
at the late Session, containing a body of information on the subject
of the lands of the United States purchased from the Indians; the
quantity sold; for how much sold, &c. &c. The sums which have been
paid, and remain to be paid under Treaties made with the Indian
tribes, to indemnify them for cessions of lands to the United
States is 2,542,916 dollars. The expense of surveying the Public
Lands, from 4th of March, 1789 to 31st December, 1819, has been
4,243,632 dollars. The whole quantity of land which has been sold
by the United states, as well before as since the opening of the
Land Offices, up to, 30th September, 1819, is 20,138,482 acres;
and the amount for which it has been sold is 45,098,696 dollars.
Of this amount, 22,229,180 dollars had been paid, and 22,000,657
_remained to be paid_, at the close of Sept. 1819. The quantity of
lands surveyed in the several Land Office Districts is 72,805,092
acres, whereof 13,601,930 acres have been sold, leaving 54,203,162
acres unsold. The quantity surveyed for military bounty lands,
is 12,315,360 acres. The whole quantity of land purchased from
the Indians by the various treaties and cessions is estimated at
191,978,536 acres.
_Extracts from the last Edinburgh Review._
"Mr. Lewis Burckhardt was a young Swiss, employed by the African
Association to make discoveries in that country. He is recently
dead; and the society are now publishing the result of his labours.
Thoroughly aware that a great part of the failures of African
discoveries proceeded from their want of previous education in the
customs, manners, and languages of the east, Mr. Burckhardt prepared
himself, by the study of Arabic, by a residence of six years in
Syria and Egypt, by journies in Nubia, Palestine, in Arabia, and in
the countries between Egypt and the Red sea, for his great purpose
of penetrating into the heart of Africa. His knowledge of Arabic and
the Koran, were so great, that after the severest examination by
doctors of the Mohammedan law, appointed for that express purpose
by Mohammed Ali, pacha of Egypt, he was pronounced to be not only a
real, but a very learned Mohammedan. But as his skill in oriental
manners and languages improved, his constitution became impaired;
and he became as last the victim of a tour in Arabia: dying better
qualified than any traveller hitherto employed by the association
for the purpose of discovery in Africa."
"Some of his excursions were very unfortunate--twice, in spite of
solemn bargains with shekhs and high blooded Arabs, he is deserted
and pillaged in the desert. In one of these instances, the robbers
leave him nothing but his breeches. These he thought tolerably
secure; but he was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the manners
and customs of the east. A female Arab met him with these breeches;
and a very serious conflict for them ensued between the parties. The
association have not stated the result.
"We are much struck by the perpetual miseries to which this
traveller is subjected. In all his journies, he seems kick'd and
cuff'd by the whole party, and subjected to the grossest contempt
and derision, for the appearance of poverty he always thought
it prudent to assume. His system was, that the less display of
wealth a man makes in the east the safer he is. This may be true
enough in general; but when he travelled with a caravan containing
merchants who had ten or twelve camels, and twenty or thirty slaves
each, he might surely have ventured on the display of one camel,
and one or two slaves; for in one journey he travels upon an ass,
without a slave; and in consequence his own wood to cut, his
water skins to fill, and his supper to dress. He receives as much
respect, therefore, as a man would do who was to rub down his own
horse in England; and is well nigh overpowered by the great and
unnecessary fatigues to which this violent economy subjects him. We
do not remember that other travellers in Africa, proceeding with
caravans, have found it necessary to affect such an extreme state
of pauperism; and Mr. Burckhardt himself admits, that Ali Bey, the
pretended Arabian, penetrated every where in the east by the very
opposite system of magnificence and profusion, even though he was
suspected not to be a Mussulman by the natives themselves."
"In his visit to the peninsula of Mount Sinai, Mr. Burckhardt meets
with a substance which he considers to be the same as the manna
mentioned in the books of Moses.
"'A botanist would find a rich harvest in these high regions, in the
most elevated parts of which, a variety of sweet scented herbs grow.
The Bedouins collect to this day the manna, under the very same
circumstances described in the books of Moses. Whenever the rains
have been plentiful during the winter, it drops abundantly from the
tamarisk (in Arabic, Tarfa;) a tree very common in the Syrian and
Arabian deserts, but producing, as far as I know, no manna any where
else. They gather it before sunrise, because, if left in the sun
it melts; its taste is very sweet, much resembling honey; they use
it as we do sugar, principally in their dishes composed of flour.
When purified over the fire, it keeps for many months; the quantity
collected is inconsiderable, because it is exclusively the produce
of the Tarfa, which tree is met with only in a few vallies at the
foot of the highest granite chain. The inhabitants of the peninsula,
amounting to almost four thousand, complain of the want of rain
and of pasturage; the state of the country must therefore be much
altered from what it was in the time of Moses, when all the tribes
of Beni Israel found food here for their cattle.'"