Cherokee phoenix, and Indians' advocate. (New Echota [Ga.]) 1829-1834, August 05, 1829, Image 4

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POEl'RY. From the Spit it and Manners of the Age, THEY ARE NOT i’HERE! Tliev are not there! wheie once their fpet Light answer to the music beat; ■ Wiieretheir young voices sweetly breath’d, And fragrant flowers they lightly wreath’d. Still flows the nightingale’s sweet song; Still trail the vine’s green shoots along; Still a^e tlm sunny blossoms fair; But they who lov’d them are not there! They are not there! by the lone fount, That once they lov’d by eve to haunt; Where, when the dav-star brightly set, B ■side'the silver wave they met. StiH lightly glides the quiet stream; Still o’er it falls the soft moon beam; But they who used their bliss to share Withlov’u hearts by it, are not there! They are not there! by the dear hearth, That once beheld their harmless mirth; When thro’ their joy came no vain fear, And o’er their smiles no dark’ning tear. It burns not now a beacon star; >Tis cold and tireless aslhey are. Where is the glow it used to wear? ’Tis felt no more; they are not therel Where are they then? Oh, pass’d a* . way, _ Like blossoms wither’d in a day. ' Or, as the waves go swiftly by, j O:, as the lightnings leave the sky. But still there is a land of rest; Still hath it room for many a guest; Still is ;t free from strife and care; \ And ’tis our hope that they are there! WsCEiXAAEOlJS7 SUPERSTITION, OF THE MOORS. An opinion prevails, we believe, in all the four states, that it is ordained, that the Moors shall lose their country on Friday, during the hour of prayer, by the invasion of a people clothed in red; yet, so inconsistent are they, that at this hour all the gates of eve ry city are carefully locked, as if bars and bolts could oppose the de crees of fute. They are not, how ever, mere theorists in predestination, but submit to every change of fortune with humble resignation, passing from a state of opulence to that misery, without a murmur; and when death approaches, the expiring man desires nothing more, than that his face may be carefully turned towards Mecca, and, when assured of this position, he hears his sufferings with patience, and leaves the world in peace. (“When a person is thought to be dying, he is immediately surrounded by his friends, who begin to scream in the most hideous manner, to convince him there is no more hope, and that he is already reckoned among the dead! The noise and horror of this scene cannot surely but hurry the pa tient, worn down already by sickness, to his last state. If the person be in tod much pain, (perhaps in a fit,) they put a spoonful of honey in his mouth, which in general puts him out of his misery, (that is to say, he is literally choked;) when, by being treated differently, or even left to himself, he might, perhaps, have re covered. Then, as according to their religion they cannot think the depart ed happy till they are under ground, they are washed instantly while yet warm; and the greatest consolation the sick man's friend can have, is to see him smile while lliis operation is performing, as they look on that as a sign of approbation in the deceased of what he is doing; not supposing such an appearance to be a convulsion, occasioned by washing and exposing to the cold air the unfortunate person, before life has taken its final depar ture. This accounts for the frequent instances that happen here, of people being buried alive. Many of the Moors say a third of the population are lost in this manner.” The moment a death happens in a family, the alarm is given by the Shrill screaming of the words uoulliah woo, repeated incessantly, by the re lations and every body in the house. These cries, heard at a great dis- tauce, bring every female acquainted with, or dependant on, the family, to scream over the dead, and mourn with the nearest relations of the de ceased. And it strikes one with the greatest horror, to see the aiilicted widow or mother, half dead with grief for her loss, obliged (according to the •custom of the country) to re ceive the visits of not less than a hundred different women, who come to condole with her. They each take her in their aims, they lay her head on their shoulders, and scream with out intermission for several minutes, till the afHicted object, stunned with the constant howling, and a repetition of her misfortune, sinks senseless from their arms on the floor! They likewise hire a number of nomen, who make this horrid noisqgpound the bier, placed in the initldie of the court-yard of the mansion, over which tnese women scratch their luces to such a' degree, that they appear to have been bled with a lancet at the temples. Alter the ceremony is o- ver, they lay on a sort of white chalk, to heal the w ounds and stop the blood. These womeu>are lured indifierenily at burials, weddings, and leasts; at the two latter, they sing the song, loo, loo, loo, and extempore verses. Their voices are heard at the distance of half a mile. “It is the custom of those who can afford it, to give, on the evening of the day the corpse in buried, a quantity of hot dressed victuals to the poor, who come to fetch each their portion, and form sometimes immense crowds, and confusion at the doors. This they call the “supper of the grave.” The dead are c! frays dressed for the grave; the ears, nostrils and eye lids, are stuffed with a preparation of camphor and Tich spieeS. An un married w'ornan is ornamented as a bride, and bracelets are put on her arms and ankles. The bod) is wrap ped in tine white linen, sanctified at Mecca, which is generally procured in their life-time, and carefully pre served for their last dress. At the head of the coffin is placed a turban, if file deceased be a male, correspon ding with his rank; if a female, a large bouquet of flowers; if a virgin, the loo, loo, loo, is sung by the hired wo men, that she may not be laid in the ground without having had the bene fits of a wedding song. On Fridays, the ev« of the Mahomedan Sabbath, the women visit tile tombs of their deceased relations, under the idea, that on that day, the dead hover round to meet their friends, and to hold converse with those that are de posited near them; and on this ac count, they conceive it to be more necessary to dress the dead, that they may not in such an assembly of ghosts, complain of the neglect of their rela tions. The tombs are neatly white washed, and kept in constant repair; flowers are planted around them, and no weeds suffered to grow’. Small chapels are generally built over the tombs of persons of rank, and decora ted with flowers, placed in large Chi na vases. From Scorseby’s account of the Arctic re- regions. The Whale.—By means of the tail, principally, the whale advances through the water. The greatest ve locity is produced by pow erful strokes against the water, impressed alter nately upwards and downwards; but a slower motion, it is believed, is ele gantly produced by cutting the wa ter laterally and obliquely dow r n- wards, in a similar manner as a boat is forced along with a single oar, by the operation of sculling. The fins are generally stretched out in a hori zontal position; their chief application seems to be ihe balancing of the anim al, as the moment life is extinct, it al ways falls over on its side, or turns upon his back. They appear also to be used in bearing on* their young, in turning and giving direction to the ve locity produced by the tail. Bulky as the wdiale is, and inactive or indeed clumsy as it appears to be, one might imagine that all its motions would be sluggish, and its exei lions productive of no great celerity. The fact, however, is the reverse. A whale extended motionless on ihe sur- taec of the sea, can sink in the space of 5 or G seconds or less, beyond the reach of its human enemies. Its ve locity along the surl’aw, or perpend icularly or obliquely downwards, the same. I have observed a whale de scending alter I harpooned it, to the depth of four hundred fathoms, with the average velocity of seven or eight miles per houf. The usual rate at which whales 6wim however, even when they are on their passage from one situation to another, seldom ex ceeds lour miles an hour; and though when urged by the sight of an enemy, or alarmed by the stroke of a har poon, their extreme velocity may be at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour; Jet ve find this speed never continues longer than for a few min utes, before it relaxes to almost to one half. Hence for the space of a few- minutes, they are capable of darting through the w ater with the ve locity almost of the fastest ship under sail, and of* ascending with such rap idity as to leap entirely out of w'ater. This feat they sometimes perform as an amusement apparently of the high admiration of ilie distant spectator; but to the unexperienced fishers, who, even under sued circumstances, are oi' Leu ordered by the fool-hardy har- pooner, to ‘pull away, to the attack. Sometimes me whales throw them selves into perpendicular posture with their heads downwards, and rearing their taiis high in the air, beat tae water with awful violence. In both these cases, the sea is thrown into loam, and the air tilled with vapors; the noise in calm weath er, is heard to a great distance; and the excentric w'uves produced by the concussion on the water, are commu nicated abroad to a considerable ex tent. Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of two or three miles.— When it retires from the surface, it first lifts its head, then plunging it un der water, elevates its back like the segment ol a sphere, deliberately rounds its way towards The extremi ty, throws its tail out of the water, and then disappears. In their usual conduct, whales remain at the sur face to breathe about two minutes, seldom longer; during which time they blow eight or nine times, and then descend for an interval usually of live or ten minutes; but sometimes when feeding fifteen or twenty.— The depth which they commonly de scend, is not know'll, though from the ‘eddy’ occasionally observed on the water, it is evidently at times only tri lling. But when struck, the quantity of line they sometimes take out of the boats in a perpendicular descent, af fords a good measure of the depth-— By this rule they have been known to descend to the depth of an English mile; and with such velocity that in stances have occurred, in which whales have been drawn by the line attached from a depth of 6even or eight hundred fathoms, and have been found to have broken their jawbones, and sometimes crown bones, by the blow struck against the bottom. Some persons are of opinion that whales can remain under a field of ice, or at the bottom of the sea in shallow water, when undisturbed, for many hours at a time. Whales are seldom found sleeping; yet in cairn weather, among the ice, instances oc casionally occur. The food of the whale conists of actiniae, cliones, se- pi’a, medusa, cancri, and helices; or at least some of these genera are al ways seen to be where,any tribe of whales is found stationary and feed ing. In the dead animals however, in the very few instnnees in which I have been enabled to open their stom achs, squill® or shrimps were the on ly substances discovered. In the muutli of a whale just killed I once found a quantity ol the same kind of insects. When the wdiale feeds, it swims with considerable velo city below the surface of the sea, with ils jaws widely extended. A stream of water consequently enters it a capacious inouth, and along with its large quantity of water insects.— the water escapes again at the sides; but the food is entangled and sifted as it w’ere, by the whale bone, which from its compact arrangement, and the thick interval covering of hair, does not allow' a particle, the size of of the smallest grain to escape. EICHHORN, Professor in Ihe University of Gottingen. Among the professors in the institu tion, there is none whose name is so well known in the United States, as Eichhorn, the father. My imaging* lion had drawn a splended picture of his physical as well as mental being; what then w as iny surprise, on being ushered into his presence, to see a small man, of only five feet six inches in height, rather corpulent, and not having any resemblance to the pic ture fancy had drawn. His face is line, and in his youth he must have been a very handsome man, and as such he \vas doubtless regarded by the German mademoiselles, some fifty or sixty years since. Ilis liair, which is very long, is as white as snow, and is thrown back, falling over his shoulders. His eye, notwithstanding his close application, is very promi nent, not having sunk in its orbit, as is almost always the case with such intense students as he has been. Though now seventy-tln%e years old, he has much of the freshness, of mid dle age in his face, but in his walk you discover the influence of time. He received me with great politeness, and in that open manner, which in a few' minutes made me leel quite at my ease. We talked about 'Charles X. Mr. Villele, i’rench politics, the progress ol liberty iu Euiope, and the Tope, on whicn topics lie entered with a great deal ol animation. He has now almost finished the fif ty-first year of las prolessoislup, hating been chosen when he was ttHuty-tw© years of age. It is gen erally admitted by all wfio know lam, that he has been one of tbe most il lustrious examples ol mental applica tion ever Known in Germany. One who has long known lam, aud whose knowledge ol his habits is such as to leave no doubt of the truth of the statement, has informed me, that du ring the last lilty-hve years, he has been in the habit of studying sixteen hours a day. What an exhibition ol the improvement of time! 1 could not look at him without feeling that he was almost without a parallel, as an example ol assiduity. He seemed to me like a noble doric column, up on w hich time had beaten almost in vain. It is now forty-six years since he published his Introduction to the Old Testament, a w ork of immense re- search, unequalled by any within my knowledge in the English language. Mo one can read it without being as tonished at the extent of his attain ments at the early age of twenty- seven. Before him many of the ex- egels of Germany had published his torical views ol the individual books of the Old Testament; but he w r as the first writer who presented a com plete and connected history of the canonical books, in relation to their collection, original form, history of the texts, critical aids, with an analy sis of each book. The historical part of his work is without a competitor, and will probably remain so for a long lime to come. He feels as if very many of those writers who have followed him, had stolen from him! and judging from those works which 1 have read, his opinion is not without foundation.—Dwight’s Travels. JEWISH SANHEDRIN. The unanimous tradition of the Jews is, that every great council con sisted of seventy men, over whom was placed a President, as the rep resentative of Moses, thus making the whole number seventy one. There was no preference given to any tribe, yet the members of the Sanhedrin were generally priests. The tribe of Levi was less occupied with agricul ture,—more at leisure to become fa miliar with the law, and from the an nual tithes, more able to labor with out emolument in this court, than o- ther tribes; while they were also fre quently called to Jerusalem, where this assembly met. Yet the Levites and Priests, as such, had no prece dence of their brethren, and even the High Priest was not a member of this Council, by virtue of his ponfitieate, but only when qualified, and duly call ed. So that if the Priests and Le vites were not found with the neces sary attaininehts, “it was good and lawful, even for the whole Senate to consist of Israelites of three tribes.” “The King of Israel was not a member of the Sanhedrin, because it is lawful to dissent from him, or to contradict his word. The Hi"!', Priest, however, may be a member, if his wisdom correspond with his dig nity. The kings oi* the house of Da vid, though riot admitted to the Coun cils, sat and judged the people by themselves. From the Talmud it ap pears that Proselytes might attain to this honor. The qualifications re quisite in Judges are laid down both negatively and positively, by the Rab bins. 1. A man decrepit from age was excluded. 2. An unfortunate order of men whom the ancients sup posed to be peculiarly cruel. 3. A childless man. 4.'A mere youth.— 5. A man without useful employment. 6. A man remarkably deformed. The following were the positive qualifica tions. 1. Height of stature. 2. Eminent wisdom. 3. A pleasing form. 4. Maturity of years, verging towards old age. 5. Skill in magic. 6. Acquaintance with the 70 lan guages, so that he should not need an interpreter. This skill in magic is well satirized by Cunaeus, aud the knowtedge of the 70 languages is not only incredible, but, silly, absurd, and altogether laughable. It is known, however, that the Jews supposed this to be the exact number of human lan guages.—Bible Jlepositonj. It has been calculated that the skin is perforated by a thousand holes the length ofan inch; and if ive esti mate the w hole surface of the body of a ihiddle sized man to be sixteen square feet, it must contain not less than two millions three hundred and four thou sand pores. Theje pores are the mouths of so many excretory vessels, which perform the important function ol perspiration. The lungs discharge, every minute, six grains, and the sur face of the skin from three to twenty grains, the average over the whole body being about fifteen grains of lymph*, which consists of water with a very minute admixture of salt, acetic acid, and a trace of iron.—Lr. Gra- ham’s Chemical Catechism. Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, arid gen erally meets with as many patrons ad beholders.—Hpglies. He whose first emotion, on the view of an excellent production, is to under value it, will never have one of his own to show.—Aiken. NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER, P UBLISHED in the City of Washing ton by Gales &. Seaton. The Na tional Intelligencer is an old established Journal, at the seat of the general Govern ment. It publishes, originally, regularly and fully, the proceedings and debates of Congress; also all the slate papers and documents of public interest laid before Congress, or originating in that body, and all the acts passed by them. These re- commendations, in addition to the variety of other information which is to be found in its columns, connected with the general interests of our own country, withLiteia- ture and Science, and the affairs of the world at largo; together with the charac ter of general fairness which the paper has sustained under ils present,editors, for many years, make the National Intelligen cer useful, and even valuable, to all who feel interest in the concerns of this or of o- ther countries. * The National Intelligencer is not a par ty paper, hut censures or approves, where censure or approbation seems to be due to public measures. It supported the last administration of the general government, whem the measures of that administration wer “such as to meet its approbation. It avows a determination, though it opposed the election of Gcn.^Jackson, to support the just measures of this administration, but as certainly to oppose the unjust or the proscriptive. It will be in principle opposed to any administration of the Gov ernment, whose measures shall show it to have the interests of a party at heart, rath er than the great interests ofthe Country.. —It is, in a word, what its title denotes, a National paper. For the independent and impartial course which it has pursued, the National Intelligencer has been denounced, and an attempt has been made to pul it down, right or wrong, by the strong arm of power, di rected by caucus agency. The attempt iS as vain as it would be for any modem prophet to bid the sun stand still. Thirty years old, this National paper is not yet in its prime, hut acquires strength and power with every day of ifH existence. Without ever having sought for popu larity, or courted public patronage, the National Intelligencer enjoys the widest circulation of any newspaper in the Uni ted States. It is read in every State and Territory in the Union, and in every city and town, as well as in the country,’ It is read in every capital in Europe, and posr seses sources of information exceeded by no other Journal. For the first time, an effort-is made to enlarge the^ subscription to ii by sending forth this Prospectus, which our adversa ries m politics are expected to deal so! . generously with as to let it be seen, and ffur friends so kindly as to farther our purpose with their aid and countenance. Heretofore, we have hardly wished to en large out subscription list. Intending hereafter, however, to devote ourselves wholly to the newspaper, and to a proper improvement of“thecondition ofthe Press” we invite such farther subscription as, be ing punctually paid, will remunerate our labor and expenses. The National Intelligencer is publish- ed daily, at ten doliare per annm, pay able in advance.—It is published, also/ for the more convenient circulation where a daily mail does not penetrate, three times a' week, ait six dollars per annum, payable in advance. A re mittance of either of these amount# in hank paper, by mail, will ensure the prompt regular transmission of every paper that may be ordered. Those subscribing will will please to signify whether they desire the paper for a year only, and then to be stopped with out farther notice, or wish it to be couiir terrnanded. Washington, March, 6th, 1829. LAWS OF THE CHEROKEE NATION, for the years 1826, 1827 182b, for sale at this office. 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