gust, 1805, and reached the western base of the mountains near the end of September. The exertion was most severe for both the men and the horses; and to the men it was aggravated by such a deficiency of sustenance as amounted, during the latter part of the time, to absolute famine. They were consequently reduced to great debility, and many of them sick, by the time they escaped into the lower region, and almost all became so, the Captains included, on indulging in the unwonted luxury of eating.

The horses were now entrusted to the Indians of the country, named Chopunnish, or Pierced-nose, till the expedition should return; another cache was stored; canoes were built on the river Kooskooskee; and down that river, much infested with rapids, many of them dangerous, they descended in quest of the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. The Columbia they met coming from the north-west, on the 16th of October, and found it nearly a thousand yards wide, while the river which brought them to the junction, was nearly six hundred. At every stage numbers of Indians, of various denominations, came to behold the strange spectacle, and to barter provisions, consisting of roots, dried salmon, and dogs, for which last dainty the civilized men had acquired much more courageous stomachs than the savages. The quantity of salmon, in the process of curing, or already prepared and stowed, by the Indians, or lying dead on the banks, or returning down the river to the sea, was incredible.

The vast number of rapids the party had descended, (and which indicate a very great declination of the ground from the western base of the Rocky Mountains to the shore of the ocean,) had well prepared them for the furious currents denominated by eminence the Falls, not very far from the sea. Some of the most formidable of them were found at two points, the one at a considerable distance below the other. That their aspect must have been rather appalling, is easily conceived from the statement, that a very considerable descent is combined with a compression, by great rocks, of this im mense river, in the one instance to the breadth of from fifty to a hundred yards, and in the other to that of forty-five, In each of the cases this straitness of the rocky channel continues for the length of half a mile. Through these passes the torrent dashes and boils and whirls with indescribable tumult and violence. The rocky banks precluded all possibility of taking the canoes on land, to be carried below the falls; the most valuable of the stores were put on shore, with such of the party as could not swim; then the rest addressed themselves to the dreadful career, and in a few moments found themselves riding in safety on the gulfs below. Another

impetuous rapid ended in an absolute cataract; here, of course, the canoes were taken over land. At a short distance below this, the adventurers perceived the tide; and about a week afterwards, on the 7th of November, had a view of the Pacific Ocean. This was an exhilarating triumph; but of slight and temporary efficacy against the constant and harassing pressure of their situation; for they had heavy rain every day for a month, were several nights forced to encamp on a confined shore where they were in extreme peril from the waves, slept drenched in rain, had their clothes and bedding rotted, and most of their stores damaged or spoiled, and were buffeted about many days before they could find an eligible spot for constructing a fort for the winter. This was at length accomplished, and they remained in the station more than four months, a period, nevertheless, as full of business as their marches and voyages had been.

The multitude of remarkable objects and incidents in this most extraordinary journal, has so retarded the progress of our abstract, that we are now compelled to bring it abruptly to a termination. The portion. of the narration which relates the transactions of the winter, contains, besides numerous adventures of individuals of the party, an extensive illustration of the character and condition of the various Indian tribes in the immediate neighbourhood, and of the whole face on the waters of the Columbia. In general, they are suf ficiently cunning, self-interested, and inclined to theft; but are not particularly formidable. They are less courageous and less fierce than their brethren of the regions to the east of the mountains, and are affirmed to be very rarely at war with one another. Their persons, their dresses, their domestic manners, their habitations, their modes of traffic and navigation, and their disposal of their dead, are all described, in a plain, clear, brief, and lively manner. They subsist chiefly on fish, berries, and various roots, one of which greatly resembles a potato. Their persons are unpleasing to the last degree, a combination of repulsive circumstances being crowned by that artificial and superlative ugliness, the flattened head. Å little compressing machine is fixed on the head of each infant, and kept on as much as a year, so that it determines the form for life. That form is a broad flat forehead, in a right line from the nose to the top of the head, which top of the head is a thin ridge like the edge of a cake. Both sexes are thus finished off, but the women in a broader and thinner disk than the men.

The women and the old people are treated with more consideration by these pacific fishing tribes, than among the more dignified and martial hunting nations of the Missouri.

The

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men take a much larger share in the labours necessary for subsistence. The virtue of the women is quite as cheap as in any other part of the Continent.-All the people of the coast are very sharp and avaricious barterers, taught partly by their intercourse with the American and the English traders, who sometimes appear in those seas.

Towards the end of March our adventurers broke up their camp, to return up the Columbia. They recovered their horses left in the autumn to the care of the Chopunnish. They attempted the mountains several weeks before the snow was sufficiently reduced to leave the passage practicable, and they were compelled to pass these irksome weeks nearly in a state of famine. Resuming the march they advanced a considerable way into the mountains, and then divided into two parties, under the two commanders, in order that while Captain Clarke returned toward the sources of the Missouri, in mainly the same route by which the expedition had before traversed the mountains, Captain Lewis might make the experiment of a much more direct course to the neighbourhood of the great falls. The experiment was quite successful; the two parties ultimately met in perfect safety, after numerous adventures and perils which had happened to individuals of each; they were again afloat on the Missouri, with the current of which they often descended easily as many miles in a day as it had cost them a week of toil to ascend; and they finally came in triumph to St. Louis, where their friends received them with the greater joy, from having for a long time been convinced that they had perished.

Besides one or two small draughts of the river, at the falls, there is a large and handsome map of the whole course of the expedition, but it is deficient in names of positions; and the routes through the mountains should by all means have been marked in colours, for the mere purpose of distinctness. Art. II. The Book of Job, literally translated from the Original Hebrew, and restored to its natural Arrangement: with Notes critical and illustrative; and an Introductory Dissertation on its Scene, Scope, Language, Author, and Object. By John Mason Good. F.R.S. &c. 8vo. pp. xcii. 492. Price 16s. Black, Parry, and Co. 1812.

FOR the explanation and illustration of the Book of Job, a

large store of materials has been provided, by the labours of Interpreters and Biblical Critics, especially by those of the school of Schultens. But, though they may have diminished, they have not by any means removed, the difficulties with which a translator of this portion of the Hebrew Scriptures will meet in the course of his progress. The antiquity, the language, the

matter, and the manner, of this interesting composition, will all prove to be sources of embarrassment to him; and as a clear conception of the original is essential to the production of an accurate version, we must regulate our expectations, and qualify our judgement, of the translation, by the standard which the original affords.

Mr. Good presents himself before us, on the present occasion, as the executer of no very easy task. To what degree of excellence he has attained in the department of sacred literature, in which he now offers himself to our notice, we shall endeavour to ascertain by an examination of his work; and that our readers may judge for themselves of the merit of his performance, we shall furnish them with various specimens of his renderings, accompanied with selections from his notes. His direct object, he informs us, is to offer a translation more strict, in regard both to the letter and the spirit of the original, than has hitherto been produced in any language, admitting fewer circuitous renderings, and fewer deviations from the Hebrew text; to preserve more particularly the real value of certain emphatic particles; and to depart, as little as possible, and never without an obvious reason, from the common version, which he frequently, though not very critically, denominates The standard version.'

It would be unfair, in estimating the value of the present translation, to omit noticing the very scanty leisure which its Author could secure for its execution. It is the result of various unconnected hours and half-hours, devoted to Biblical criticism and Oriental literature. While, however, we are disposed to make the requisite allowances for the circumstances in which this version was undertaken and finished, we must not permit ourselves to forget, that its publication is presumptive of its worth, especially as it follows so closely the versions of the same poem, by Miss Smith and Bishop Stock. After all, the intrinsic goodness of the book, is the only consideration at a critical tribunal.

The Translation is preceded by an Introductory Dissertation, divided into five sections, in which the scene of the poem, its scope, object, and arrangement, its language, its Author, and era, and the doctrines which it incidentally develops, are severally discussed.

The Dissertation commences with a very beautiful and just eulogy on this noble composition.

Nothing can be purer than its morality; nothing sublimer than its philosophy; nothing simpler than its ritual; nothing more majestic than its creed. It is full of elevation and grandeur; daring in its conceptions; splendid and forcible in its images; abrupt in its transitions: and, at the same time, occasionally interspersed with touches of the most exquisite and overwhelming tenderness.'

In Mr. Good's opinion it is a regular Hebrew epic. Other writers view it as a dramatic composition. It is perhaps more nearly allied in literary character to some of Plato's dialogues, than to either the Iliad of Homer, or the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles.

The scene of the poem is laid in Arabia Petræa; and the persons who are named in it, it is said, were Idumeans, or Edomite Arabs. It is in vain, we apprehend, to think of nicely settling the geography of the book, and of fixing with precision on the place of Job's residence. Wells remarks, that the land of Uz might denote the country round about Damascus, so as to comprehend a great part of Arabia Deserta, and to extend itself to Arabia Petræa. Geography. Vol. I. 93. We concur with Mr. Good in maintaining the real existence of Job: the manner in which his name is introduced into other parts of the Bible, leaving no room to question this point, which ought not to be sacrificed to any opinions connected with the machinery or supposed design of the poem.

The poem appears to much greater advantage in the arrangement which Mr. Good has adopted, than in the form which it assumes in the common version. It is divided into six parts :An exordium, containing the introductory history and decree concerning Job; which comprises the first two chapters of the common division;-A first series of argument, extending from the beginning of the third to the end of the fourteenth chapter ;A second series of controversy, which extends from the fifteenth to the close of the twenty-first chapter;-A third series of argument, reaching from the twenty-second to the close of the thirtyfirst chapter;-The summing up of the controversy by Elihu, included in the six following chapters;-And the acquittal and restoration of Job, the subject of the last five chapters. This judicious and natural division had already been suggested by Schultens and Grey; a circumstance which Mr. Good should not have neglected to record.

The subject of the poem, in Mr. Good's view, are the trial and triumph of the integrity of Job. Scott, in different parts of the notes to his fine poetical version of this book, represents it as intended to vindicate the Divine government. In fact, it combines both these objects.

The fourth section, on the Author and Era of the poem, will afford but little satisfaction to an inquirer determined on assenting to propositions only through the sufficiency of evidence. There can be no doubt, says Mr. Good,

That the writer of this poem was a Hebrew, but a Hebrew who, from close intercourse with Arabia, or a long residence in some part of it, had introduced a considerable proportion of the Arabian dialect into his native tongue; and that he must have flourished and have