PUBLIC LANDS.
Washington City, Nov. 18.
An interesting document was transmitted by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Senate, in pursuance of a resolution of that house at the late Session, containing a body of information on the subject of the lands of the United States purchased from the Indians; the quantity sold; for how much sold, &c. &c. The sums which have been paid, and remain to be paid under Treaties made with the Indian tribes, to indemnify them for cessions of lands to the United States is 2,542,916 dollars. The expense of surveying the Public Lands, from 4th of March, 1789 to 31st December, 1819, has been 4,243,632 dollars. The whole quantity of land which has been sold by the United states, as well before as since the opening of the Land Offices, up to, 30th September, 1819, is 20,138,482 acres; and the amount for which it has been sold is 45,098,696 dollars. Of this amount, 22,229,180 dollars had been paid, and 22,000,657 remained to be paid, at the close of Sept. 1819. The quantity of lands surveyed in the several Land Office Districts is 72,805,092 acres, whereof 13,601,930 acres have been sold, leaving 54,203,162 acres unsold. The quantity surveyed for military bounty lands, is 12,315,360 acres. The whole quantity of land purchased from the Indians by the various treaties and cessions is estimated at 191,978,536 acres.
Extracts from the last Edinburgh Review.
"Mr. Lewis Burckhardt was a young Swiss, employed by the African Association to make discoveries in that country. He is recently dead; and the society are now publishing the result of his labours. Thoroughly aware that a great part of the failures of African discoveries proceeded from their want of previous education in the customs, manners, and languages of the east, Mr. Burckhardt prepared himself, by the study of Arabic, by a residence of six years in Syria and Egypt, by journies in Nubia, Palestine, in Arabia, and in the countries between Egypt and the Red sea, for his great purpose of penetrating into the heart of Africa. His knowledge of Arabic and the Koran, were so great, that after the severest examination by doctors of the Mohammedan law, appointed for that express purpose by Mohammed Ali, pacha of Egypt, he was pronounced to be not only a real, but a very learned Mohammedan. But as his skill in oriental manners and languages improved, his constitution became impaired; and he became as last the victim of a tour in Arabia: dying better qualified than any traveller hitherto employed by the association for the purpose of discovery in Africa."
"Some of his excursions were very unfortunate—twice, in spite of solemn bargains with shekhs and high blooded Arabs, he is deserted and pillaged in the desert. In one of these instances, the robbers leave him nothing but his breeches. These he thought tolerably secure; but he was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the manners and customs of the east. A female Arab met him with these breeches; and a very serious conflict for them ensued between the parties. The association have not stated the result.
"We are much struck by the perpetual miseries to which this traveller is subjected. In all his journies, he seems kick'd and cuff'd by the whole party, and subjected to the grossest contempt and derision, for the appearance of poverty he always thought it prudent to assume. His system was, that the less display of wealth a man makes in the east the safer he is. This may be true enough in general; but when he travelled with a caravan containing merchants who had ten or twelve camels, and twenty or thirty slaves each, he might surely have ventured on the display of one camel, and one or two slaves; for in one journey he travels upon an ass, without a slave; and in consequence his own wood to cut, his water skins to fill, and his supper to dress. He receives as much respect, therefore, as a man would do who was to rub down his own horse in England; and is well nigh overpowered by the great and unnecessary fatigues to which this violent economy subjects him. We do not remember that other travellers in Africa, proceeding with caravans, have found it necessary to affect such an extreme state of pauperism; and Mr. Burckhardt himself admits, that Ali Bey, the pretended Arabian, penetrated every where in the east by the very opposite system of magnificence and profusion, even though he was suspected not to be a Mussulman by the natives themselves."
"In his visit to the peninsula of Mount Sinai, Mr. Burckhardt meets with a substance which he considers to be the same as the manna mentioned in the books of Moses.