The voyage from which I have just returned was undertaken with the view of opening a trade with the Chinese colonies on the island of Borneo; and, that my narrative may be the better understood, I shall first give a short sketch of the situation of those colonies.

The Tennasserim coast affords several valuable products; yet its advantages in this respect are, to a certain extent, counterbalanced by a paucity of inhabitants, a want for which no natural fertility of soil or happiness of situation can compensate.

Towards the conclusion of the first part of these Observations, I took occasion to notice the supposed cause or causes of the variation of colour that is found amongst the different nations of the world; and referred to the somewhat opposite opinions of several distinguished writers on this point. I shall now proceed to offer a few remarks on the influence of climate on the tempers and dispositions of men; and we believe that nothing is more evident than its effects on these, totally unconnected with intellectual qualities, in their definite sense. The English are unequal in their spirits, being alternately animated and gloomy; so we find our climate changeable, more so, I may say, than that of any other country in the world. The Romans of these days are grave, ardent, and conscientious; the inhabitants of Naples are cheerful, thoughtless, and enthusiastic, and many of them so giddy in their manner as almost to impress us with a notion that they are under the partial influence of some inebriating liquor: differences which we can in no way account for, but as they may be occasioned by the very opposite climates of the banks of the Tiber and the Bay of Naples.

I. May that uncreated triple celestial tree which is adorned and clasped by Srí, Saraswatí, and Umá, resembling beauteous climbing plants, be propitious to you.

1. This race (or Vansa-tree) having burst forth from that moon as a root, which is in the forest-like knot of the braided hair of that Mahá Déva who has been worshipped by Brahmá, and other immortals; being watered by the pure stream of the sacred river, flourished wonderfully, and grew to an extreme height; from its crown, branches resembling streamers spread themselves, and became lofty under the white, umbrella-like shadow of such a moon.

The original inhabitants of Mount Atlas, and of nearly all the provinces of Maghrib-ul-Aksa, or the present empire of Marocco, are usually divided into two tribes — namely, the Berebbers and the Shelluhhs, both descended from the ancient Mauritanians and Gætulians; perhaps even from the Libyes of Sallust. These two tribes differ essentially from each other; and it is not without reason, that those travellers and geographers, to whom we are indebted for the best information with respect to Marocco, have asserted that the Shelluhhs are not Berebbers. The Moors, or Arabian inhabitants of the country, consider them as two nations of a different origin; as well on account of their manners and the diversity of their natural dispositions, as from the entirely distinct profile of the face, and from their dialects, which differ so much, that they cannot converse together without the aid of an interpreter. Mr. James Grey Jackson, in his Account of the Empire of Marocco, and of the District of Sus, confirms this assertion by a list of words of common use in both languages; and, most certainly, they prove nothing less than a common origin. But such differences, radical or accidental, may be met with in almost all the sister languages. It is, for instance, a curious fact, that the very leading Shelluhh words, which Mr. Jackson quotes as altogether differing from the Berebber, as woman, wife, boy, girl, &c. differ just as much, if not more, in the Swedish, Danish, German, and Dutch languages, which, most undoubtedly, are of one and the same origin. This observation holds good even with respect to the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian languages. What is more certain, and beyond all doubt, is, that the pretended Berebbers and Shelluhhs live separately and that they bear very little, if any, relation to each other. Although their habitations are sometimes very near, they never have any social intercourse; nor does an instance exist of individuals of one tribe having intermarried with the other.

On the full-moon day of the month Wes´k (Thursday, the 29th of May, 1828), the principal chiefs and other Kandyans, zealous professors of the Buddhist religion, celebrated the festival Dalada Pink´ma, when the following arrangements were made.

This province, the government of which is now administered by the British, formed in ancient times the greater part of the principality, or fiefship, of the Sétu-pattis, the chiefs or guardians of the passage leading from the continent of India to the island of Ráméswara, and thence to the opposite coast of Ceylon, called Ráma's Bridge, or Adam's Bridge. These chieftains, dating their authority from the period of the establishment of a place of pilgrimage on the island of Ráméswara, by the Great Ráma, claim an antiquity even higher than that of the Pándyans, or kings of Madura, but to whom, it would appear, that they were, in general, tributary, though now and then asserting and maintaining their independence. Of their history, however, we are not now to speak, but of the province as it was in the year 1814, when the data were taken from which chiefly the following account is compiled. It lies between the ninth and tenth degrees of north latitude, and the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth of east longitude; is bounded on the north by the provinces of Tanjore and Pudukotta, on the south and east by the sea, and on the west by the districts of Tinnevelly, Madura, and Sivaganga; and comprehends an area of nearly two thousand five hundred square miles. Its general aspect is that of high and low lands, the latter having numerous artificial lakes, constructed for the purpose of promoting cultivation; the former exhibiting a variety of dry grain-fields, while the northern districts abound with extensive groves of Palmyra trees, with scarcely a vestige of jungle. The whole is divided into seventeen districts, comprising one thousand six hundred and sixtyeight towns and principal and subordinate villages, with a population, at the period to which we allude, of about one hundred and fifty-seven thousand.

In reference to the statement, published in the last Number of the Society's Journal, of the allusion which I, as Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence, had made in my Report, at the last Anniversary Meeting, to the account given by Dr. Robertson in the Appendix to his Historical Disquisition on Ancient India, of the opinions of Mr. Baily and Mr. Playfair, as to the extreme age of the Hindú astronomical tables, I have to request, with a view of affording the readers of the Journal the most recent information upon the subject, and thereby preventing them from drawing any erroneous inference from the supposed antiquity of those tables, that you will be so good as to publish in the Journal the following statement of the very scientific and very able opinion of the celebrated M. La Place, as to the real age of the same tables. It is copied from Harte's Translation of La Place's Système du Monde, pp. 220, 221, 222. (Dublin, 1830.)