“How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven; In full-orbed glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled by the sky! How beautiful is night!” What mystery hangs over this last-born of continents! whose plains are sea-beds, at whose vast upheaval the waters of ocean must have rushed furiously in all directions to regain their level. A land of mystery, from the days of Herodotus until now. How we long to join those yearly caravans, which, after leaving behind them the whole northern region of the coast, travel for sixty days southwards through the burning Sahara,—reaching springs but once a-week,—crossing alternately now mountain-ridges, now seas of sand; until, passing from oasis to oasis, they at length penetrate into the region of Soudaan,—the heart of Africa, the death-place of Clapperton, and Richardson, and Overweg,—and behold the great central lake of Tchad, the most inaccessible point on the globe, yet to within a few miles of whose shores the dying energies of Clapperton brought a boat,—whose waters have been navigated by his European comrade, and on whose bosom, perchance, that bark still floats, with the flag of England flying from its mast! Such were the quick musings of the moment of imaginative pleasure which elapsed, as we cut open preface and contents, and plunged into the book itself. In a trice, the argument of the book is plain to us. After a residence of several years on the shores of North Africa—during which time he seems to have mastered the various dialects of the Arab tribes, and of course studied their manners—Mr Davis, the reverend author, catches sight of an excellent opportunity for visiting the interior. “Sidy Mohammed Bey,” he says, “the heir-apparent of the throne of Tunis,—a prince possessed of excellent qualities, among which extreme kindness and affability are not the least prominent,—was on the point of making a journey into the interior, in order to regulate some public affairs; and, upon application, he very kindly took me under his immediate protection.”