TRAVELS IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN AMERICA. * Fox once we have

lighted upon that literary rarity, a writer of a book of travels who tells us too little about himself. Most mo- dern travellers err in the opposite way, and in a degree pretty nearly commensurate with the worthlessness of the rest of their matter. Mr. Julius Froebel, whose book is full of excellent mat- ter and most agreeable in manner, excites, but does not gratify, our desire to know something of his personal history before he became our pleasant and instructive companion. So far as we can gather from his book, he is a German emigrant to America, who combines the kindly temperament of his countrymen, and the high culture of the best among them, with the practical of an Englishman. Sufficiently independent in circumstances to de- vote himself to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; he seems to have undertaken his long and arduous journeys chiefly that lie might study the aspects and operations of nature, and con the features of nascent civilization in regions where its growth will ere long be of the mightiest. With these motives he started from New York for Nicaragua in 1850, when the project of a ship canal across the Isthmus was generally believed to be on the eve of its accomplishment. He arrived' at the American town of Chagres, a place which it is to be hoped has ceased. to exist since the opening of the Panama railway has made Aspin- wall the terminus of the Isthmus route. Reckless love of gain alone determined the choice of such a site in a locality known to be sickly in the highest degree. Chagres was built on the water's edge on low muddy ground, but it was close to deep water, and conveniently situated for unloading vessels. Here the traveller saw the worst fruits of American civilization, and did not judge the tree from that corrupt sample. He had seen the principal " hotel " of the place advertised and recommended at New York as a superior establishment " in whose spacious halls the traveller was sure to find the comforts and commodities of civilization as it exists in the temperate zone, combined with all the luxuries of the tropics." The spacious halls were two undivided rooms, each • Seven Years' Travel in Central America, Yorthern Mexico, and the Far West of the United States. By Julius Froebel. With numerous Illustrations. Published by Bentley.

forming one story of a barn-lilte framehouse, and salt pork and dried beans were the luxuries provided for its squalid company of sick men, gamblers, thieves, and robbers-

" None of the foreign residents of Chagres had thought of cultivating the smallest piece of land, or even of making the natural productions of the neighbourhood available to the daily wants of life. For the two or three cows which were kept here, the food was brought from the United States, and so was the fuel for the daily uses of the kitchen, while the trees of the forest stood close to the houses. The most common vegetables or fruits of the tropics, such as plantains, bananas, yams, mandioca, like., were unknown on the table of the hotel.' The natives did not cultivate more of these articles than they wanted for themselves, and nobody thought of an occu- pation that would not promise an instantaneous reward. " Such, in 1850, was the North-American settlement at Chagres, —a place where, as Captain B. of our brig observed, no other than an utterly reckless man could be supposed to live of his own free accord. This opinion may have contained too severe a judgment. As to me, however, never more forcibly than at Chagres did the idea strike me, how much the development of many of the noblest qualities of our nature is dependent upon the influ- ence of a home, that is more to us than a fit place for doing business,—to which on the contrary we feel attached,—which we rejoice in improving and adorning, and in which we like to recognize, more or less deeply imprinted, the traces of our taste and character, our thought and action. It is not from men alone that we are entitled to expect a reciprocation of our affections,— nature too, and all the things around us, give us a reward for the interest our heart takes in them, by exerting an ennobling influence upon the mind. Not men alone, but even things cannot be neglected and degraded by us, without the bad consequences of such an offence against the deeper laws of the moral world falling back in just retribution upon our own characters. In neglecting and degrading the things around us, we unavoidably neglect and degrade ourselves. At a place where everybody was but a temporary resident, attracted by no other motive but the lust of gain,—where every- body, from the very day of his arrival, impatiently counted the time to the moment when he would have gained enough to justify his departure, a result for which, at Chagres, a few years were thought rather a long period, —at such a place life must have a mean and debased aspect, without much hope of improvement. I do not know what may have become the character of Aspinwall, to which place many of the inhabitants of Chagres have re- moved not long after my visit, nor am I informed of the merits of social life in the gold mines of Australia. As to California, however, a considerable number of those, who went there from all parts of the world, have justly found it so desirable a home from the very beginning, that even the mining regions of that country have soon been graced with the charms of home life, and nowhere it has been better understood than in California, that one indi- vidual intending to make the country his permanent home, is worth more to the community than a number of temporary residents, however important may be the business they come to transact for a while."

The favourable opinion here expressed of California is reasserted towards the end of the volume. The author tells the European who speaks with abhorrence of a state of society such as there ex- ists, that he " only exposes his own poverty of experience and thought."

" Californian life, on the contrary, displays more encouraging phenomena to the philosopher in search of evidences of the innate good qualities and future excellence of our race than any that can be discovered any where else." Its present condition " bears a strong testimony in favour of the political and social forms and usages of the North Americans, without which the Califor- nian experiment could never have succeeded. No European nation would have had sufficient experience and skill in self-government to answer the wants of a situation such as that of Californian society in its nascent state."

Mr. Froebel agrees with most travellers who have preceded him in admiration of the natural charms of California, and says of San Francisco, which is not the most favoured spot in that lovely land, that its environs are of a highly interesting character. The chief local inconveniences in the town are the cold and unpleasant fogs which pass over it every summer afternoon with monotonous re- gularity. Winter is the most enjoyable season. A little snow or frost during the night occurs occasionally in January, but the choice plants of our conservatories are seen flowering in the gar- dens of San Francisco at Christmas.

" It is an important feature of the climate of California in general that it has a most favourable influence upon the energy of the mind as well as of the muscular system : the climate excites to activity. In this character it corresponds to that of the Mexican table-land and the interior of Western Texas, but nowhere have I observed it extending, in its full and undiminished

in . influence, down to the sea-coast, except in Ca ornia, even in the nouthern

district. There—in a region where the orange, the olive, the date, and the fig grow—men feel as active and energetic as in the central and northern sections of Europe. This feature of the Californian climate cannot remain without an essential influence upon the future destiny of this favoured re- gion."

To return to Central America—in 1850, when Mr. Froebel first visited San Juan del Sur, the Pacific terminus of the Nicaragua transit road, three or four men were erecting its one human habitation—a but of branches. While our traveller was there, two gentlemen landed. from a vessel in the bay, and asked him the way to San Juan del Sur. " We are in its main street here," he answered, " and there," pointing to the hut, " you see its principal hotel." These gentlemen had made a voyage of several thousand miles from San Francisco, in their own vessel, for the purpose of purchasing stores at an imaginary city, where there was not food enough to sustain the life of six persons for a single day. They took the matter coolly enough, merely remarking, that at San Francisco the plan of the town of San Juan del Sur, with the names of the streets and the situation of the public buildings, had been circulated, and that building lots had been offered for sale. Mr. Froebel saw the little place again on his

return from California in October 1855, when it looked quite snug and comfortable, and seemed to consist of about a score of houses, dotted about among the trees that had been spared. from the primitive forest. It was then the head-quarters of Walker the filibuster.

Central America was made for better things than to be a prey to men like Walker, or to be kept in perpetual anarchy with the mutual jealousy of England and the United States. Its natural advantages, exclusive of those belonging to its unique position,

are immense. Its climate, except in a few places on the coast, is superior to that of any part of the United States, save California, and, like its soil and its sites, presents a diversity, suitable to every constitution, taste, and occupation. It is rich in the most valuable productions of the animal and mineral kingdoms, and is capable of producing the best vegetable commodities of every zone : its people, though as yet incapable of self-government in politics or industry, possess very useful qualities, and are emi- nently fitted, by the gradations of caste arising from the mixture of three great races, to correspond to the wants of a topographical character so diversified. Then, it lies in the midst of the main stream in which the expanding civilization of our age has begun to move.

" All these combined advantages are without a parallel, and I have no hesitation in avowing that, according to my conviction, Central America, everything taken into consideration, is the most favoured spot on the sur- face of the globe, and is destined to act an important and glorious part in the history of the future. "The North Americans, who in such matters are gifted with the instinct of the pioneer,—an instinct by which they discover the most eligible site for a new town, in what direction it will extend, and in what street the building lots will be most valuable,—the North Americans have understood the splendid character of Central American prospects; while, if anything is beyond the conception of common sense, it is the system followed by Eng- land in this magnificent country. If England, instead of having contri- buted systematically to the utter ruin of those helpless republics, had fol- lowed the opposite course, lending assistance to their liberal party—a party which has always been in favour of foreign immigration, religious tolerance, and other means of improvement and progress—ft confederation of Central American States would now exist, strong enough by the influx of popula- tion, intellect, and capital from abroad, to preclude any idea of an annexa- tion to the United States, or of the reintroduction of slavery. All the civil wars down to the invasion of William Walker would have been avoided, and prosperous communities would now be in a condition to buy ten times the amount of British goods which the bankrupt inhabitants of ruined cities and neglected plantations can ever afford to purchase. Mosquitia and Yucatan might have formed two acceding States of the confederation, and I cannot see why British Honduras should not have contributed to raise the number to eight. England would not have lost ; she would have gained in every respect by such a development of Central American politics—a development which has been and still is in the hands of the British Government. By following such a course, England would have avoided many disagreeable transactions and useless difficulties with the United States, while the result would have heightened British influence in American affairs in a manner too noble and too legitimate not to be approved in the United States by all the adversaries of slavery, of filibusteruim, of imprudent territorial exten- sion, and of political iniquity. Such a result would have harmonized the true interests of England with those of the United States, with those of Central America itself, and with those of civilization in general.

" Even now it is not too late. Whatever complications in reference to Central America may still exist, or may yet originate, the aim of England should always be the establishment and prosperity of an independent Central American confederacy, strengthened by the immigration of hands, intellect, skill, capital, and enterprise, as they cannot fail to be attracted by improve- ments such as the Honduras Inter-oceanic Railway; by the facilities thus offered in every sphere of intercourse with the rest of the world, by the opportunity of profitable investments, and by the inviting nature of the country, its beautiful scenery, its fertility and climate."

We have dwelt so much on topics of the broadest interest that we have little room left for lighter matter with which Mr. Froe- bel's volume abounds. It is rich in observations of natural his- tory, some of which are very curious. In certain parts of the American steppes and deserts the author frequently observed ant- hills formed exclusively of small stones of the same species, such as quartz or feldspar, which the little animals had picked out from the coarse sand. A man showed him a bag of red garnets, any quantity of which might be collected from ant-hills in the country of the Navajo Indians. These facts seem to suggest that the gold-seeking ants spoken of by Herodotus may not be wholly fabulous.