SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Taavu,s,

Travels in the Great Western Prairies. the Anahuac, and Rocky Mountain' Land in the Oregou Territory. By Thomas J. Farnham. In two volumes ..... —Bentley. Bromwery, The Life of Joseph Addison. By Loty Aiken. In two volumes... Longman and Co.

FARNHAM'S TRAVELS IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND OREGON.

IN May 1839, Mr. FARNHAM and sixteen others met at Independ- ence, Missouri, the rendezvous of the overland traders to Mexico. The object of this party of adventurers is not very clearly expressed in the author's phraseology : " Some of our number sought health in the wilderness ; others sought the wilderness for its own sake ; and others sought a residence among the ancient forests and lofty heights of Columbia." But, be their practical purposes what they might, they started in the fashion of the Indian traders, as a waggon- caravan ; and in due time arrived at a trading post not far distant from Taos and Santa Fe, frontier towns of Mexico. Here the party separated ; Mr. FARNHAM and a few companions departing for the river Columbia, in the Oregon territory ; which they reached after considerable suffering from hunger and the hardships of the way. Having looked a little about him, partaken of the hospi- tality of the Hudson Bay Company's posts, and visited the Ameri- can Missionary stations, our author descended the Columbia river; embarked for the Sandwich Islands in a vessel of the Hudson Bay Company ; and, no doubt, eVentually reached the seabord of the Atlantic in safety, or we should not have had his book. To the geographer this indication of Mr. FARNHAM'S course may

be sufficient. The general reader, who wishes to know the regions traversed, can take up a map of North America, and, looking for the Missouri, run his finger South till he reaches the Arkansas. Along the valley of this river the party proceeded with little devia- tion till it approached the Rocky Mountains. Entering this range by the opening through which the river leaves it, the adventurers traversed the mountains, first on the Eastern and then on the Western side, till they approached the Southern bead-waters of the Columbia ; where they passed into the plains, and thence de- scended the river to its mouth.

The route Mr. FARNHAM traversed has the advantage of novelty. We question whether the entire line has been gone over by any save Indian trader or trapper. But this advantage is neutralized, for scientific purposes, by his obvious unacquaintance with science, for he deals in latitude rarely and at second-hand, and not at all in longitude : but his hearsay information derived from hunters and others may not be without some use, though obviously vague. The character of his mind prevents him from producing a descriptive narrative of the best kind. With the fine and fustian fluency of his countrymen, he has also what is called a lively imagination, which prompts him to describe things he has avowedly never seen, and throws a doubt over the accuracy of his descriptions of what he has seen : besides which, his mannerism tints many things with its own colour, and we see them not as they are but as he thinks they ought to be. With these rather heavy drawbacks, Mr. FARNHAM has much of the readiness and readableness that distinguish Wtrass, NORMAN, STEPHENS, and most other American writers : like great talkers in life, whatever other defects they may have they are never at a loss for words. There are also passages in the work of very powerful description, when the character of the facts has made too strong an impression to allow of attempts at improvement by fine writing.

The book moreover possesses several points of intrinsic novelty

and interest, which dulness itself could not have utterly destroyed. The caravan-travelling of the South-western States, with the characters and mode of life it induces, is a peculiar thing ; and Mr. FARNHAM has presented the fullest and best account of it we have met. The privations, dangers, and risks undergone by these hardy pioneers of civilization—and, it would seem, for scanty recompense—have been touched upon by far superior writers; but the IRVINGS described from second-hand, FARNHAM from actual experience upon his own person. Part of Mr. FARNHAM'S route lay through the disputed territory of Oregon; and though much of it was among mountains, and no small portion of his journey on the plain was a race against starvation, where to pause or turn aside was death—so that he saw little beyond what lay upon the shortest cut—yet the necessity of taking it speaks volumes- for the character of the country on the Southern bank of the Columbia. Partly from observation and discourse, and partly from a sort of survey undertaken by the American Government, our traveller contrives to furnish the fullest, if not the only late account of the Oregon district, especially in his glimpses of the general condition of the people. His descriptions of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts and the conduct of their servants, though not possessing the novelty of the other parts, is not devoid of interest.

Of these four subjects, however, the first is the most attractive,

not only for its freshness but for its suggestion. It is impossible to- read the following sketch of the discipline of the trading-caravans- without seeing how they contribute to form the materials of an army, invaluable in the sort of warfare that must be urged in the- wastes on either side of the Rocky Mountains, should war at any time unhappily take place.

ARRANGEMENTS AND ECONOMY OF A PRAIRIE TRADING-CARAVAN.

Council Grove derives its name from the practice among the traders, from the commencement of the overland commerce with the Mexican dominions, of

assembling there for the appoint-matt of officers and the establishment of rules and regulations to govern their march through the dangerous country South of it. They first elect their commander-in-chief. His duty is to appoint sub- ordinate leaders, and to divide the owners and men into watches, and to assign them their several hours of duty in guarding the camp during the remainder of their perilous journey. He also divides the caravan into two part, each of which forms a column when on march. In these lines he assigns each team the place in which it must always be found. Having arranged these several matters, the council breaks up ; and the commander. with the guard on duty, moves off in advance to select the track and anticipate approaching danger. After this guard the head teams of each column lead off about thirty feet apart, and the others follow in regular lines, rising and dipping gloriously ; two hun- dred men, one hundred waggons, eight hundred mules ; shootings and whip- pings, and whistriogs and cheeriugs, are all there ; and, amidst them all, the hardy Yankee moves happily onward to the siege of the mines of Montezuma. Several objects are gained by this arrangement of the waggone. If they are attacked on march by the Comanche cavalry or other foes, the leading teams file to the right and left, and close the front ; and the hindermost, by a similar movement, close the rear ; and thus they form an oblong rampart of waggons laden with cotton goods, that effectually shields teams and men from theamall- arms of the Indians. The same arrangement is made when they halt for the night. -Within the area thus formed are put, after they are fed, many of the snore valuable horses and oxen. The remainder of the animals are "staked "—that is, tied to stakes, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards around the line. The ropes by which they are fastened are from thirty to forty feet in length, and the stakes to which they are attached are carefully driven, at such distances apart as shall prevent their being entangled one with another. Among these animals the guard on duty is stationed, standing motionless near them, or crouching so as to discover every moving spot upon the horizon of night. The reasons assigned for this are, that a guard in motion would be discovered and fired upon by the cautious savage before his presence could be known ; and farther, that it is impossible to discern the approach of an Indian creeping among the grass in the dark, unless the eye of the observer be so close to the ground as to bring the whole surface lying within the range of vision between it and the line of light around the lower edge of the horizon. If the camp be attacked, the guard fire and retreat to the waggons. The whole body then take positions for defence ; at one time sallying out, rescue their animals from the grasp of the Indians, and at another, concealed behind their waggons, load and fire upon the intruders with all possible skill and rapidity. Many were the bloody battles fought on the " trail, ' and such were some of the anxieties and dangers that attended and still attend the "Santa Fe trade." Many are the graves, along the track, of those who have fallen

before the terrible cavalry of the Cumanches. • • We traversed Council Grove with the same caution and in the same manner as we had the other : a platoon of four persons in advance to mark the first appearance of an ambuscade ; behind these the pack animals and their drivers; on each side an unencumbered horseman ; in the rear a platoon of four men ; all on the look-out, silent, with rifles lying on the saddles in front, steadily -winding along the path that the heavy waggons of the traders had made among the matted uuder-brush. In this manner we marched half a mile, and emerged from the Grove at a place where the traders had, a few days before, held their council.

The sort of' forts or " emporiums " which this trade has given rise to is also curious ; an itnperium beyond all imperium, resem- bling our East Indian factories in the olden time, except that these are individual establishments and recognize no superior authority. They are in the Indian territory, where might is right and will law.

"Fort William, or Bent's Fort, on the North side of the Arkansas eighty miles North by East from Taos, in the Mexican dominions, and about one hundred end sixty miles from the mountains, was erected by gentlemen owners in 1832, for purposes of trade with the Spaniards of Santa Fe and Taos, and the Eutaw, Cheyenne, and Cumanche Indians. It is in the form of a paral- lelogram; tlamNorthern and Southern sides of which are about a hundred and fifty feet, :and. the Eastern and Western a hundred feet in length : the walls are six or seven feet in thickness at the base, and seventeen or eighteen feet in height. The fort is entered through a large gateway on the Eastern side, in which swing a pair of immense plank doors. At the North-west and South- east corners stand two cylindrical bastions, about ten feet in diameter and thirty feet in height. "These are properly perforated for the use of cannon and small-arms; and command the fort and the plains around it. The interior area is divided into two parts. The one, and the larger of them, occupies the North-eastern por- tion. It is nearly a square. A range of two-story houses, the well, and the blacksmith's shop, are on the-North side; on the West and South are ranges of one-story houses ; on the East the blacksmith's shop, the gate, and the outer wall. This is the place of business. Here the owners and their servants have their sleeping and cooking apartments. and here are the storehouses. In this area the Indians, in the season of trade, gather in large numbers and barter, and trade and buy, under the guardianship of the carronades of the bastions loaded with grape, and looking upon them. From this area a passage leads between the Eastern outer wall and the one-story houses, to the caral or cavy- yard, which occupies the remainder of the space within the walls. This is the place for the horses, mules, &c to repose in safety from Indian depredations at night. Beyond the caral to the West, and adjoining the wall, is the wag- gon-house. It is strongly built, and large enough to shelter twelve or fifteen of those large vehicles which are used in conveying the peltries to St. Louis and goods thence to the post. The long drought of summer renders it neces- sary to protect them from the sun. "The walls of the fort, its bastions and houses, are constructed of adobies or nnburnt bricks, cemented together with a mortar of clay. The lower floors of the building are made of clay, a little moistened, and beaten hard with large wooden mallets; the upper floors of the two-story houses and the roofs of all are made in the same way and of the same material, and are supported by heavy transverse timbers covered with brush. The tops of the houses being flat and gravelled, furnish a fine promenade in the moonlight evenings of that charming climate. The number of men employed in the business of this establishment is supposed to be about sixty. Fifteen or twenty of them,in charge of one of the owners, are employed in taking to market the buffalo robes, Sic. which are gathered at the fort, and in bringing back with them new stocks of goods for future purchases. Another party is employed in hunting buffalo meat in the nei,glibouring plains; and another in guarding the animals while they cut their daily food on the banks of the river. Others, under command of an experienced trader, go into some distant Indian camp to trade. One or more of the owners and one or another of these parties which chances to he at the post, defend it and trade, keep the books of the company, &c. Each of these parties encounters dangers and hardships, from which persons 'within the borders of civilization would shrink. "The country in which the fort is situated is in a manner the common field of several tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the Whites. The Eutaws and Cheyennes of the mountains near Santa F6, and the Pawnees of the great Platte, come to the Upper Arkansas to meet the buffalo in their annual mi- grations to the North ; and on the trail of these animals follow up the Ca- menthes. And thus, in the mouths of June, August, and September, tin. are in the neighbourhood of these traders from fifteen to twenty thousann savages ready and panting for plunder and blood. If they engage in battling- out old causes of contention among themselves, the Messrs. Beuts feel com- paratively safe in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's pro- perty and lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William : every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison anbaists; may begirt the fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent -them from feeding their animals upon the plains ; may bring upon them starvation and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death. All these are expectations which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the weakness of the post prevents from becoming realities. But at what moment some chieftain or White desperado may give them tie requisite knowledge, is an uncertainty which occasions at Fort William many well-grounded fears for life and property."

The earlier hardships of Mr. FARNHAM'S band appear to have been in some measure occasioned by want of proper precaution, or of sufficient means ; for they commenced on the regular trading line between the frontiers of the United States and of Mexico. Here the adventurers were reduced to a porridge made of one-eighth of a pint of flour per man ; the band being also exposed to considerable toil, and to violent tornadoes. In the region of the Rocky Mountains, privation is unavoidable, and starvation sometimes overtakes even the hardy trapper ; as the principal dependence is upon the game killed, which is sometimes scarce from accident, and in some places the ground is too barren to support animals. Mr. Fan/males small party were reduced to live upon cub-bear soup ; which he describes as most nauseous, even to a starving man. When this supply was exhausted, they were compelled to kill their dog; and thirst was added to hunger and fatigue.

"For these, and several other palpable reasons, we drove on speedily and silently, with every eye watchful, every gun well primed, every animal close to his fellows, till ten o'clock at night. We then halted near a place where we had been told by the French trappers we could find a spring of water. The day had been excessively warm, and our thirst was well nigh insufferable. Hence the long search for the cooling spring to slake its burnings. It was in vain. Near midnight, therefore, it was abandoned by all ; and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets, hungry, thirsty, and weary, and sunk to rest upon the sand. Another dreadful night ! Thirst, burning thirst l The glands cease to moisten the mouth; the throat becomes dry and feverish; the lungs cease to be satisfied with the air they inhale; the heart is Sick and faint; and the nerves, preternaturally active, do violence to every vital organ. It is an incipient throe of death."

The country where such hardships are to be endured is not a territory to be coveted for purposes of settlement ; yet this seems to be the general character of the region South of' the Columbia. The land is for the most part desert ; less, it would appear, from the nature of the soil than of the climate. There are probably oases everywhere ; and near the Columbia the country improves, and some successful attempts are made at cultivation by the Hud- son's Bay Company, the Missionary stations, and a few American settlers ; but the yield of the crops is not great, and their harvests by no means certain. Mr. RICHARDSON, an American trader, returning from Oregon, gave a stern account of it to our author on his outward road—" Not so productive as New England ; fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre was an extraordinary crop ; corn [In- dian corn ?] and potatoes did not yield the seed planted ; rain fell incessantly five months of the year ; the remainder was unblessed even with dew ; the Indians and Whites residing there had the fever and ague, or bilious fever, the year through," &c. Mr. FARNHAM attributes Mr. RICHARDSON'S evil report to a desire to lure away the people to return with him through "the dangerous plains towards the States" ; but the facts of Mr. FARNHAM go far towards supporting the general correctness of the description. What can be worse than this sketch?

"We pursued our journey over the grey, barren wastes. This region is doomed to perpetual sterility. In many portions of it there appears to be a fine soil. But the trappers say that very little rain or snow falls upon it; hence its unproductiveness. And thus it is said to be with the whole country lying to the distance of hundreds of miles on each side of the whole course of the Colorado of the West. Vast plateux of desolation, yielding only the wild wormwood and prickly pear ! So barren, so hot, so destitute is it of water that can be obtained and drunk, that the mountain-sheep, and hare even, animals which drink lees than any others that inhabit these regions, do not venture there. Travellers along that stream are said to be compelled to awry it long distances upon animals, and draw it, where it is possible so to do, with a rope and skin bucket from the chasm of the stream. And yet their animals frequently die of thirst and hunger ; and men often save their lives by eating the carcasses of the dead, and by drinking the blood which they from time to time draw from the veins of the living."

This description seems to be taken about the Southern boundary- line of Oregon : the following is certainly within the country; but we cannot tell the precise locality, from the absence of any observations by Mr. FARNHAM as to the latitude or longitude of his halts.

"Seven or eight miles to the North, rose another bete, a perpendicular shaft, fifty or sixty feet in height, resting upon a base of hills which rise about three hundred feet above the plain. Beyond these butes, to the East, the country seemel to be an open plain. To the South of them extends a range of dark mountains, reaching far into the dimly-discerned neighbourhood of Long's Peak. The whole circle of vision presented no other means of life for man or beast than a few small patches of dry grass and the water of the stream. Many of the sandy bluffs were covered with the prickly pear and wild worm- wood. Generally, however, nothing green, nothing but the burnt, unpro- ductive waste appeared, which no art of man can reclaim." These descriptions apply to the land South of the Columbia, and sufficiently explain why the incipient Yankee settlers will not be satisfied with that line : but Mr. SPAULDING, an American mis- sionary, gives a worse account of the Northern part; severity of climate being added to the other evils.

"Mr. Spaulding, an American missionary, made a journey across this valley to Fort Colville, in March 1837; in relation to which he thus writes to Mr. Levi, Chamberlain of the Sandwich Islands—' The third day from home we came to snow, and on the fourth came to what I call quicksands, plains mixed with pine-trees and rocks. The body of snow upon the plains was interspersed

with bare spots under the standing pines. For these our poor animals would plunge whenever they came near, after wallowing in the snow and mud until the last nerve seemed almost exhausted, naturally expecting a resting-place for their struggling limbs: but they were no less disappointed and discouraged, doubtless, than I was astonished, to see the noble animals go down by the side of a rock or pine-tree, till them bodies struck the surface.'

"The same gentleman, in speaking of this valley, and the country generally, lying North of the Columbia, and claimed by the United States and Great Britain, says, It is probably not worth half the money and time that will be spent in talking about it.'"

Like all other visiters of that region, Mr. FARNHAM speaks in high terms of the Hudson's Bay Company's management ; of their liberal dealings, regular and far-seeing methods, strict con- duct towards the Indians, and the hospitality of their agents. Long experience and great wealth enable them to undersell and overbuy all competitors ; and they seem to have almost driven the Ameri- cans out of the field, as these do not, it would appear, treat their people liberally. The settlements of the Company have been established in the Northern parts for many years; but now they have spread far into the Southern district.

PORT HALL AND ITS HISTORY.

Fort Hall was built by Captain Wyeth, of Boston, in 1832. for the purposes of trade with the Indians in its vicinity. He had taken goods into the lower part of the territory to exchange for salmon. But competition soon drove him from his fisheries to this remote spot ; where he hoped to be permitted to pur- chase furs of the Indians without being molested by the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, who-e nearest post was seven hundred miles away.

In this he was disappointed. In pursuance of the avowed doctrine of that Company, that no others have a right to trade in furs West of the Rocky Mountains, whilst the use of capital and their incomparable skill and perse- ranee can prevent it, they established a fort near him, preceded him, followed him, surrounded him everywhere, and cut the throat of his prosperity with such kindness and politeness, that Wyeth was induced to sell his whole interest, existent and prospective, in Oregon, to his generous but too indefatigable, skilful, and powerful antagonists. From what I saw and heard of Wyeth's management in Oregon, I was im- pressed with the belief that he was beyond comparison the most talented business-man from the States that ever established himself in the territory.

The business of this post consists in exchanging blankets, ammunition, guns, tobacco, &c. with the neighbouring Indians, for the skins of the beaver and hind otter; and in furnishing White men with traps, horses, saddles, bridles, provisions, Su. to enable them to hunt these animals for the benefit and sole use of the owners, the Hudson's Bay Company. In such cases the horses are borrowed without price; the other articles of the " outfit " sold on credit till the termination of the hunt ; and the only security which the Company re- quires for the return of their animals, is the pledge of honour to that effect, and that the furs taken shall be appropriated at a stipulated price to the pay- ment of arrears.

Goods are sold at this establishment 50 per cent lower than at the American pmts. White trappers are paid a higher price for their furs than is paid the Indians; are charged less for the goods which they receive in exchange ; and are treated in every respect by this shrewd Company with such uniform justice, that the American trappers even are fast leaving the service of their country- men, for the larger profits and better treatment of British employment. There is also a company of men connected with this fort under the command of an American mountaineer, who, following the various tribes in their migratory expeditions in the adjacent American and Mexican domain, collect whatever furs may chance to be among them.

By these means, and various others subsidiary to them, the gentlemen in charge of this trading establishment collected, in the summer of 1839, more than thirty packs of the best beaver of the mountains.

HOSPITALITY AT PORT VANCOUVER.

The dining-hall is a spacious room on the second floor, ceiled with pine above and at the sides. In the south-west corner of it is a large close stove, giving out sufficient caloric to make it comfortable.

At the end of a table twenty feet in length stands Governor M.Laughlin, directing guests and gentlemen from neighbouring posts to their places ; and chief-traders, traders, the physician, clerks, and the farmer, slide respectfully to their places, at distances from the Governor corresponding to the dignity of their rank in the service. Thanks are given to God, and all are seated. Roast beef and pork, boiled mutton, baked salmon, boiled ham, beets, carrots, tur- nips, cabbage, and potatoes, and wheaten bread, are tastefully distributed over the table among a dinner-set of elegant Queen's ware, burnished with glitter- ing glasses and decanters of various-coloured Italian wines. Course after course goes round, and the Governor fills to his guests and friends; and each gentleman in turn vies with him in diffusing around the board a most generous allowance of viands. wines, and warm fellow-feeling. The cloth and wines are removed together; cigars are lighted • and a strolling smoke about the premises, enlivened by a courteous discussion Of some mooted point of natural history or polities, closes the ceremonies of the dinner-hour at Fort Vancouver. These are some of the incidents of life at Vancouver.

CAREFUL MANAGEMENT.

This shrewd Company never allow their territory to be over-trapped. If the annual return from any well-trapped district be less in any y ear than formerly, they order a less number still to be taken, until the beaver and other for- bearing animals have time to increase. The income of the Company is thus rendered uniform, and their business perpetual.