to mining speculations, until competition had lowered the profits to the usual standard. This being inevitably the case," &c.

There is no doubt, that, in all those employments in which capital and industry are alone required, no greater profit can for any length of time be got from one portion of capital than from another. There is here a general level of profit, to which all capital naturally falls, because there is nothing to prevent its freely flowing from one employment to another; and when this proposition is thoroughly considered, it will be found to mean no more than this, that, in an open market, equal portions of capital must always be of the same value; which we can no more deny, than that one quarter of corn must always be of the same value as another quarter, or that one pound of gold must be always of equal value of another pound of the same weight and fineness. But the same principle may not hold good where something else is necessary to produce the article in question besides labour and capital. In the case of metals, no command of labour and capital will produce a supply of them, unless we are lucky enough to find out where they are deposited. In this, however, we may not succeed, and the mines actively worked may not, in the mean time, be able to bring up the supply to the level of the demand. In this case, they will yield extraordinary profits, and nothing will prevent this but the discovery of more abundant mines, which depends not on the regular application of capital and industry, but on chance. How many centuries had gold and silver circulated in the world, at a very high value, before the discovery of the American mines, and those mines were found out by mere accident! The application of capital to mining is limited; all the capital of the world, for example, could not produce gold and silver in Great Britain; by the application of a given quantity of capital to the manufacture of cloth, we are sure of a given produce; but, in mining, the result is quite uncertain; and, with all our efforts, we may never be able to make the supply equal to the demand; and, in this case, extraordi

nary profits will be derived from this branch of industry. The mines, in short, will yield a rent, or a surplus, above the ordinary rate of wages and profit; and nothing can prevent this but the discovery of richer mines, which, as we stated before, is an event altogether uncertain.

On the 9th of December Captain Hall again arrived at Lima, where great changes had taken place. The independent cause was completely triumphant ; the castle of Callao had struck its flag; the harbour, now open and free to all the world, was crowded with shipping, unloading rich cargoes; and the bay, to a distance of a mile from the harbour, was covered with others waiting for room to land their merchandize. All on shore was bustle and activity. The shops were filled with British goods; the pavement thronged with busy merchants of all nations; and loaded carts and mules actually blocked up the thorough-fares. Several severe measures were in the mean time adopted against the old Spaniards. The new rulers of South America complained that they were restless and dissatisfied, and refused to co-operate in the new system, to which they were inveterate enemies. A decree was accordingly issued, banishing them the country. Similar measures, it may be observed, were adopted in all the different Governments in Chili, Buenos Ayres, Colombia; and lately, according to accounts received, the Government of Mexico has had recourse to the same decided measure. Thus the many have at last prevailed over the few.

Leaving Callao, on the 17th of December he touched at Payta, Guayaquil, the Galapagos Islands, Panama, Acapulco, and San Blas of California. Entering the river of Guayaquil, the vessel, by the help of a faint air and the tide, shot rapidly up through the woods, which stood dark and still, like two vast black walls, along the banks of the stream. We have the following curious account of the Guayaquil ladies:

I had a letter of introduction to a gen

tleman, who received me in the easy style of the country; at once undertook to put us in the way of procuring fresh provisions and other supplies; carried me to the Governor's, to pay the usual visit af

and adjusting their shawls as they approached the church; while another party, still muttering over their last ave, were pressing outwards, and, as soon as the threshold was passed, flying off in all directions."

Captain Hall was at various evening-parties; and he gives a most lively picture of a dinner-party, at which there sat down about forty guests. The master of the house served as waiter, assisted by four or five gentlemen. During dinner, the patriotic toast," Union and Liberty," was drunk; after which there was, during the remainder of the dinner, a constant discharge of toasts and sentiments. The following is the account of this curious scene:

Meanwhile the dinner went on, as if nothing remarkable was passing; the plates and dishes were changed by the servants, and their volunteer assistants,

with singular dexterity, and in spite of the vast confusion. The bottle passed more and more rapidly; the noise increased; the bawlers became more numer ous; and by the time the dinner was well over, the party fell to pieces, and all seemed uproar and confusion; groupes of four and five, and sometimes twice that number, might be seen clustered together, all speaking or singing at once. I never was more astonished than at see

ing so many men, on all other occasions perfect models of decorum, suddenly lose their formality, and act like so many professed topers and merry-makers. At first I thought this must needs end in blows, and stood prepared to avoid the bottles and glasses which were likely to be flying about. But after a little while, it was easy to discover more sounds of ⚫ mirth than of anger; and the ladies, who must have been accustomed to such scenes, sat very composedly, viewing it all with great delight. Something like order was presently restored by the feats of a merry Biscayan, who dressed himself like a cook, by throwing off his coat and waistcoat, turning up the sleeves of his shirt above the elbows, and pinning a napkin across his breast. Those who knew him of old were immediately aware of what he was going to do; and roared out pastel! pastel! (a pie! a pie!) upon which all singing, drinking, and talking were put an end to, and every one crowded round to see this famous pie made. The Biscayan first indicated by signs that a large dish was to be supposed before him, into which he pretended to place a number of ingredients, naming

each as he affected to put it in his pie These ingredients consisted principally of his friends, some of whom he inserted in whole; of others merely some ridicu.

lous quality, or characteristic peculiarity; and as he chose only such persons as were present, the laugh went round against each in his turn. His satire was sometimes very severe, especially against the ladies; and at length he pretended, after a long and witty preface, to cut up the curate, who was sitting opposite, and thrust him into the dish, to the unspeakable delight of the company. No one enjoyed the laugh more then the worthy

curate himself.

He then amused the company with mimicry; and the last feat which he performed was one which certainly would not have been permitted a year or two before in a country so bigotted. Having taken a table-cloth, he dressed himself as a priest, and, assuming the most ludicrous gravity of countenance, went through a part of the ceremony of high mass, to the infinite delight of the company, who shook the house with peals of laughter.

More than half-a-million of dollars, besides other large sums, were embarked on board the Conway, destined for London. Captain Hall left Tepic on the 5th of May, for San Blas, having been of late rather looked upon with a suspicious eye by the inhabitants. At San Blas he found the heat oppressive, the thermometer being in the day between 90 and 95, and at night between 80 and 85. He was also tormented with

insects, the plague of all hot climates. He maintained a most friendly intercourse with the inhabitants of San Blas; and he gives an account of a scene of domestic calamity, to which he was an unwilling witness, from the reputation he had acquired as a physician," medecin malgré lui,”which is deeply affecting, and is related in terms the most pathetic and interesting. He gives the following dreadful account of the commencement of the rainy season:

During eight hours, deluges of rain never ceased pouring down for a moment; the steep streets of the town soon became the channels of continued streams of such magnitude, as to sweep away large stones, rendering it everywhere danger. ous, and in some places quite impossible

to pass. The rain found its way through the roofs, and drenched every part of the houses; the loud rumbling noise of the torrents, in the streets, never ceased; the deafening loudness of the thunder, which seemed to cling round the rock, became distracting; while the continued flashes of the forked lightning, which played in the most brilliant manner, from the zenith to the horizon, on all sides, were at

once beautiful and terrific. I never witnessed such a night. As the day broke, the rain ceased; and during all the morning there was a dead calm; the air was so sultry that it was painful to breathe it; and though the sky remained overcast, the sun had power to raise up clouds of steam, which covered the whole plain as far as the base of the mountains.

On the 15th of June, Captain Hall left San Blas, and anchored in Rio Janeiro on the 12th of September, after a voyage round Cape Horn of nearly 8000 miles.

Owing to the popular form in which Captain Hall has most judiciously presented the substance of his Journal to the public, there is necessarily little of a scientific character in the work; but that little is interesting. While at Valparaiso, in 1821, he made a number of astronomical observations, principally on a comet, which remained in sight from the 1st of April to the 8th of June, and performed a series of experiments with Captain Kater's pendulum, for the purpose of determining the figure of the earth. The

observations on the comet have furnished Dr Brinkley of Dublin with sufficient data for computing the elements of its orbit, which are, accordingly, given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1822. The result of the experiments with the invariable pendulum at Valparaiso is not given; but from those performed at the Galapagos and San Blas, it appears that the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds, at the former place, is 39 01717 inches, and at the latter, 39-03776 inches; while the compression of the earth, as deduced from the experiments at Galapagos, is, and from those at San Blas, 77, the numerator expressing the difference between the equatorial and polar diameters of the earth, and the denominator the

length of the diameter at the equator. These results, so different from each other, and so contrary to the ideas which, till lately, prevailed respecting the figure of the earth, only tend to confirm the conclusion, that the meridians are neither equal nor of the same figure, and that, by consequence, the earth is much more irregular than philosophers have hitherto imagined. In the present case, however, a portion of the anomaly must, no doubt, be ascribed to the circumstances in which the experiments were performed, and which rendered it next to impossible to attain that minute accuracy so extremely desirable in this nice and difficult inquiry.

Upon the whole, we consider Captain Hall's work as, independent of its other great and various merits, peculiarly seasonable at the present moment. It is eminently calculated to dispel, not only a great deal of nitely greater consequence, much of the ignorance, but, what is of infithe prejudice that has prevailed respecting South America. It is the production of a man of intelligence, observation, candour, and impartiality, and, by plain and undeniable facts, establishes the incontestible advantages, moral, political, and commercial, which have already resulted to the great body of the people where independence has been established, and a free trade opened. The standard of liberty is, in fact, no sooner raised, than the work of regeneration begins. Indolence, bigotry, and superstition, almost instantaneously, and, as it were, by some magical influence, give place to industry, enlightened sentiments, and a desire to receive and to communicate knowledge. Captain Hall is no theorist ; he tells us what he saw, and communicates to us, not the result of his speculations, but of his personal observation and experience. The delightful pictures, too, which he has

drawn of the manners of the South ful interest in their favour; and as Americans, must produce a powerno one can read his book without being charmed with the skill and address of the writer, so no one can rise from the perusal of it without a conviction of the perfect authenticity of every word it contains. The unexampled rapidity with which the