SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Tiavara, Narrative of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, in the year 1842, and to Oregon and California, in the years 1843-44. By Brevet Captain J. C• Fremont, of the Topographical Engineers, under the orders of Colonel J. J. Abort, Chief of the Topographical Bureau. With a Map and Illustrations.

Hurkoar, Wiley and Putnam. History of Civilization. By William Alexander Mackinnon, F.A.S., M.P. In two volumes. Longman and Co.

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY,

The Age of Pitt and Fox. By the Author of " Ireland and its Rulers." In three

volumes. Volume I Newby.

BIOGILAPET,

Memoir of the Naval Life and Services of Admiral Sir Philip C. H. C. Durham, G.C.B., Chevalier de FOrdre du laterite Militaire de France. By his Nephew, Cap• 'lain A. Murray, Royal Irish Fusileers Author of " Doings in China." ...Murray.

CAPTAIN FREMONT'S EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, OREGON, AND CALIFORNIA.

Tins volume is a reprint of the narrative part of the official reports to the United States by the officer employed to conduct two exploration-

es, the first involving a survey of the country between the Western frontier and the usual Southern pass of the Rocky Mountains leading into Oregon, the second embracing a journey throughout the whole extent of Oregon as far as the Hudson Bay Company's settlements on the Colum- bia, and a return-excursion into the Mexican territories of California without either " with your leave or by your leave." The object in both cases appears to have been the same—to spy the nakedness and the capa- bilities of the land. The country along the line of route was surveyed ; the latitude and longitude were taken whenever the weather permitted ; a more direct pass into California was sought for, and a scrutiny made into the best positions for military forts,—an establishment of our Hud- son's Bay Company being pointed out for United States uses as coolly as if the Oregon were not a joint occupancy, and as if the Company were unauthorized squatters, their property unworthy of a thought. From the town of St. Louis on the Missouri to the South pass of the Rocky Mountains, in latitude 42f degrees N., the route of both expe- ditions was nearly the same, except for purposes of geographical survey; the first exploring the Platte river and its branches, the second the valley of the Kansas; the main streams of each river running nearly parallel within about a degree of' latitude. After unsuccessfully striving on the second journey to find a new route into the Mexican territory, the ex- pedition fell back into the old line of road, and entered Oregon by the usual pass at the Southern end of the country. It then proceeded direct to the Columbia; passing through the basin that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the range that rims parallel to the Pacific Ocean. Having procured supplies from the Hudson's Bay Company, at Fort Vancouver, the expedition started on its return by an entirely new route along the lower or second basin of Oregon and California, till the Sacramento river was reached, just above where it falls into the Bay of Francisco. Besides a general survey, the object was to examine two or three inland lakes, and the alleged long course of the Buenaventura river. The mysterious Lake Tlamath—whose mystery consists in being a marsh in dry weather and a lake after the rains—was (what we should call) loosely surveyed; a new inland sea was discovered; and the Buenaventura shown, or at least asserted, to be useless for navigation, from the shortness of its course and its running parallel to the sea. This portion of the journey is the most adventurous and exciting of the whole. The expedition passed through a country as yet unknown : it was undertaken in the depth of winter, with hopes of reaching a milder climate in California, which were not altogether fulfilled. The expedition lost its way, (if such a thing may be said of travellers where the ways were unknown,) and got involved in the snows and difficulties of a range of mountains. Pas- ture was scanty ; the supplies were exhausted to such a degree that mules had to be killed for food ; the road had to be beaten over the snow by select parties, which a new fall sometimes covered up again ; the best horses were knocked up; and so severe had been the hardships, and so scanty or ill adapted the food, that the men began to sink on the de- scent towards the sunny land visible below them. The bodies of the hardy trappers, accustomed to endurance, seem to have outlasted their minds ; for they were capable of exertion and onward movement when reason temporarily gave way. "We began to be uneasy at Derosier's absence, fearing he might have been bewildered in the woods. Charles Towns, who had not yet recovered his mind, went to swim in the river, as if it were summer and the stream placid, when it was a cold mountain torrent foaming among rocks. We were happy to see Dere- Bier appear in the evening. He came in, and sitting down by the fire, began to tell us where lie had been. He imagined he had been gone several days, and thought we were still at the camp where he had left us; and we were pained to see that his mind was deranged. It appeared that he had been lost in the moun- tain; and hunger and fatigue, joined to weakness of body, and fear of pe • in the mountains, had crazed him. The times were severe when stout men ost their minds from extremity of suffering—when horses died—and when mules and homes, ready to die of starvation, were killed for food. Yet there was no mur- muring or hesitation."

This, however, was about the last of their perils and privations. They rapidly descended into California ; reached an American settlement, where preparations for "annexation " seem prosperously beginning; and, after refreshing themselves and procuring supplies, returned, for the most part by a regular track. Occasionally, they were involved in diffi- cult ground ; the country was often desert, ill supplied with water, and Indians were hanging on their skirts. These hardships, however, were comparatively nothing to those endured daring the latter part of their journey from the Columbia to the Sacramento. The novelty of the route, the character of the Indians, and some occasional adventures with them, give more interest to the whole of' this portion than attaches to the pre- vious parts.

In England, a report to the head of a department owes all its interest to its views and its matter ; for official retenue imparts to the Blue Book documents a uniform air, which is destructive to individual character.

The report of a United States officer is quite another thing. No sense of official dignity injures the work by restraining the pen ; and if a free and easy manner will impart animation, there should be animation enough.

This lack of any appearance of ceremony rather dashes Captain Fre- mont's narrative : not that he says anything offensive, but we trace the American cast of mind in the freedom of the handling. The report

has another fault—that of undue fulness. For some reason which we do not perceive, it is written in the manner of a journal, but evidently com-

piled from an original diary ; so that it has the minuteness of a daily re- cord without its freshness, and the generalizing manner of a narrative without its progress and comprehension. As on many days, too, there is little of occurrence to tell, it is frequently dry from over-telling. In other respects Captain Fremont's Narrative is an interesting account of a new country, to which events are just now imparting great importance; a plain and unaffected narrative of enterprise undertaken, hardships endured, and difficulties overcome, with many singular pictures of Indian character, and the wild unsettled life of the wilderness. The fol- lowing extract relates to a story of peril, courage, endurance, and wild revenge. On the return of the expedition from California, a' Spaniard and a boy met them. It seems their party had been attacked by Indians; when these two, happening to be mounted, had driven off the horses, (the object of the attack,) and followed them for sixty miles, when they left them, but rode forward themselves in hopes to meet the trading cara- van. They were kindly received, with promise of such assistance as "circumstances" would permit.

"After travelling about twenty-five miles, we arrived at the Agog de Tomaso, the spring where the horses had been left; but, as we expected, they were gone.

A brief examination of the ground convinced us that they had been driven off by the Indians. Carson and Godey volunteered with the Mexican to pursue them; and, well mounted, the three set off on the trail. " In the evening Fuentes returned his horse having failed; but Carson and Godey had continued the pursuit. " In the afternoon of the next day, a war-whoop was heard, such as Indians make when returning from a victorious enterprise; and soon Carson and Godey appeared, driving before them a band of horses, recognized by Fuentes to be part of those they had lost. Two bloody scalps, dangling from the end of Grodey's gun, announced that they had overtaken the Indians as well as the horses. They in- formed us, that after Fuentes left them, from the failure of his horse, they con- tinued the pursuit alone; and towards nightfall entered the mountains, into which the trail led. After sunset the moon gave light; and they followed the trail by

moonshine until late in the night, when it entered a narrow defile, and was diffi-

cult to follow. Afraid of losing it in the darkness of the defile, they tied up their horses, struck no fire, and lay down to sleep in silence and in darkness. Here they lay from midnight to morning. At daylight they resumed the pursuit, and about sunrise discovered the horses; and, immediately dismounting and tying up their own, they crept cautiously to a rising ground which intervened, from the crest of which they perceived the encampment of four lodges dose by. They proceeded quietly, and had got within thirty or forty yards of their object, when a movement among the horses discovered them to the Indians: giving the war-

shout, they instantly charged into the camp, regardless of the number which the

four lodges would imply. The Indians received them with a flight of arrows shot from their long bows; one of which passed through Godey's shirt-collar, barely missing the neck: our men fired their rifles upon a steady aim, and rushed in. Two Indians were stretched on the ground, fatally pierced with bullets; the rest fled, except a lad that was captured. The scalps of the fallen were instantly stripped off; but in the process, one of them, who had two balls through his body, sprung to his feet, the blood streaming from his skinned head, and uttering a hideous howL An old squaw, possibly his mother, stopped and looked back from the mountain-side she was climbing, threatening and lamenting. The frightful spectacle appalled the stout hearts of our men; but they did what humanity re- quired, and quickly terminated the agonies of the gory savage. "* *

The time, place, object, and numbers considered, this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest and most disinterested which

the annals of Western adventure, so full of daring deeds, can present Two men,

in a savage desert, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians into the defiles of an unknown mountain—attack them on sight, without counting num- bers—and defeat them in an instant: and for what? To punish the robbers of the desert, and to avenge the wrongs of Mexicans whom they did not know. I repeat, it was Carson and Godey. who did this the former an American, born in the Boonslick county of Missouri; the latter a Frenchman, bprn in St. Louis; and both trained to Western enterprise from early life."

If any scruples arose in any mind respecting this affair, they were eased on arriving at the place where the Spanish party was originally attacked.

"We descended into a sandy plain or basin, in the middle of which was the grassy spot, with its springs and willow bushes, which constitutes a camping- place in the desert, and is called the Archilette. The dead silence of the place

was ominous; and, galloping rapidly up, we found only the corpses of the two men: everything else was gone. They were naked mutilated, and pierced with arrows. Hernandez had evidently fought, and with desperation. He lay in ad- vance of the willow half-faced tent which sheltered his family, as if he had come out to meet danger and to repulse it from that asylum. One of his bands and

both his legs had been cut oft: Giacome, who was a large and strong-looking man, was lying in one of the willow shelters, pierced with arrows. Of the women no trace could be found, and it was evident they had been carried off captive. A

little lap-dog, which had belonged to Pablo's mother, remained with the dead bodies, and was frantic with joy at seeing Pablo: he, poor child, was frantic with grief, and filled the air with lamentations for his father and mother. 'Ili

padre! mi madre r—was his incessant cry. When we beheld this pitiable sight, and pictured to ourselves the fate of the two women carried off by savages so brutal and so loathsome, all compunction for the scalped-alive Indian ceased, and we rejoiced that Carson and Godey had been able to give so useful a lesson to these American Arabs, who lie in wait to murder and plunder the innocent traveller."

The Oregon dispute is not mentioned by Captain Fremont ; nor, to judge from his unconscious proceedings, would a question of territorial right appear to trouble him much under any circumstances. As an ac- count of Oregon and the route from the States thither and through it, as well as an exposition of the strong points of the country and its agri- cultural and military capabilities, this volume must be taken as the latest authority. These, however, are rather of a special than a general in- terest ; to which we may possibly return. In the mean time, we will take our few remaining extracts from the more living sketches..

THE FOURTH OF JULY IN THE WILDERNESS.

I halted earlier than usual, about forty miles from the junction ; and all hands were soon busily engaged in preparing a feast to celebrate the day. The kindness of our friends at St. Louis had provided us with a large supply of excellent pre- serves and rich fruit-rake; and when these were added to a maccaroni soup, and

variously-prepared dishes of the choicest buffalo meat, crowned with a cup of coffee, and enjoyed with prairie appetite, we felt, as we sat in barbaric luxury around our smoking supper on the grass, a greater sensation of enjoyment than the Roman epicure at his perfumed feast. But most of all it seemed to please our Indian friends; who, in the unrestrained enjoyment of the moment, demanded to know if our "medicine days came often." No restraint was exercised at the hospitable board, and, to the great delight of his elders, our young Indian lad made himself extremely drank.

SLEEPING OUT.

My companions slept rolled up in their blankets, and the Indians lay in the grass near the fire; but my sleeping-place generally had an air of more pretension. Our rifles were tied together near the muzzles, the butts resting on the ground, and a knife laid on the rope, to cut away in case of an alarm; over this, which made a kind of frame, was thrown a large India-rubber cloth, which we used to cover our packs: this made a tent sufficiently large to receive about half of my bed, and was a place of shelter for my instruments; and as I was careful always to put this part against the wind, I could lie here with a sensation of satisfied en- joyment, and hear the wind blow and the rain patter close to my head, and know that I should be at least half-dry. Certainly I never slept more soundly.

PASSING A CANOE* IN AN INDIA-RUBBRE BOAT.

An ugly pass lay before us. We had made fast to the stern of the boat a strong rope about fifty feet long ; and three of the men clambered along among the rocks, and with this rope let her down slowly through the pass. In several places high rocks lay scattered about in the channel; and in the narrows it required all our strength and skill to avoid staving the boat on the sharp points. In one of these, the boat proved a little too broad, and stuck fast for an instant, while the water flew over us ; fortunately, it was but for an instant, as our united strength forced her immediately through. The water swept overboard only a sextant and a pair of saddle-bags. I caught the sextant as it passed by me, but the saddle-bags became the prey of the whirlpools. We reached the place where Mr. Prenss was standing, took him on board, and with the aid of the boat put the men with the rope on the succeeding pile of rocks. We found this passage much worse than the pprreevious one, and our position was rather a bad one. To go back was im- le; before us, the cataract was a sheet of foam; and shut up in the chasm bj the rocks, which in some places seemed almost to meet overhead, the roar of tthhee water was deafening. We pushed off again; but, after making a little dis- tance, the force of the current became too great for the men on shore, and two of them let go the rope. Lajennesse, the third man, hung on, and was jerked head- foremost into the river from a rock about twelve feet high; and down the boat shot like an arrow, Basil following us in the rapid current, and exerting all his strength to keep in mid-channel—his bead only seen occasionally like a black spot in the white foam. How far we went, I do not exactly know; but we suc- ceeded in turning the boat into an eddy below. "'ere Dien," said Basil Lajeun- esse, as he arrived immediately after us, " je crois Bien que j'ai nags un demi mile." He had owed his life to his skill as a swimmer; and I determined to take him and the two others on board, and trust to skill and fortune to reach the other and in safety. We placed ourselves on our knees, with the short paddles in our 'hands, the most skilful boatman being at the bow; and again we commenced our rapid descent. We cleared rock after rock, and sho t past fall after fall, our little boat seeming to play with the cataract. We became flashed with success, and familiar with the danger; and, yielding to the excitement of the occasion, broke forth together into a Canadian boat-song. Singing, or rather shouting, we dashed along; and were, I believe, in the midst of the chorus, when the boat struck a con- cealed rock immediately at the foot of a fall, which whirled her over in an instant. Three of my men could not swim, and my first feeling was to assist them and save some of our effects: but a sharp concussion or two convinced me that I had not yet saved myself. A few strokes brought me into an eddy, and I landed on a pile of rocks on the left side.

* " Canon "—A Spanish term, signifying a passage through a narrowed channel, analogous to our "funnel."