The introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal, has been stated to have resulted from the admirable skill in counterfeiting signatures, which was possessed by a monk named Saavedra. About the year 1540, this monk forged apostolic bulls, royal decrees, and bills of exchange, with so much accuracy that they passed for genuine. He also succeeded so well as to pass himself off for a knight, commander of the military order of St. Jago, the income of which amounted to three hundred ducats, which he received for a year and a half. In a short time he acquired, by means of the royal deeds which he counterfeited, three hundred and sixty thousand ducats. He might have remained undetected through life, had not his successes tempted him to undertake a still more hazardous fraud, which led to his detection; falling in with a Jesuit travelling to Portugal, with an apostolical brief for the foundation of a Jesuit’s College, he concerted a plan for introducing the Inquisition. Saavedra forged letters from Charles V. to the King of Portugal, and a papal bull for establishing the Inquisition there. This bull appointed Saavedra legate. Following up his deception, he assumed the character of a Roman cardinal, and made a visit to Portugal. The king despatched a distinguished nobleman to receive him. Saavedra spent three months at Lisbon, after which he travelled through the kingdom; but he was at last detected by the Inquisitor-General of Spain, and was sentenced to the galleys for ten years. The eighteenth century was closed with a literary fraud, concocted in Germany, to which circumstances gave a temporary success. So little is known of the interior of Africa, that any thing which seems likely to add to our knowledge upon this subject can hardly fail to excite attention. Public curiosity was, therefore raised to the highest pitch, when a work was announced, with the captivating title of “Travels in the Interior of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, from the years 1781 to 1797; by Christian Frederick Damberger.” Translations of a work which promised to remove the veil, that had so long covered central Africa, were immediately undertaken in England and in France; and each translator laboured indefatigably, in the fear of the market being forestalled by his rival. The delusion, however, was quickly dispelled; the work being discovered to be the manufacture of a printer of Wittemberg, by name Zachary Taurinius, who had before tried his skill in forging a Voyage to the East Indies, Egypt, &c., and a Voyage and Journey to Asia, Africa and America.