The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-18 00:00:00

Yittraturt. Personal Narrativeof Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua. By John Russell Bartlett. Lon don : Routledge and Co. THERE is scarcely a spot on the map of the world more likely to produce strange and novel results in social progress than California and its adjacent regions. Between the degrees of lat. 24 and 32 N., and long. 116 and 100 W. from Greenwich, there exists a territory washed by two seas, intersected by many rivers, and possessing great resources in its rich and diversified soil. It has scarcely yet received scientific investigation commensurate with its growing importance, and the great future to which its destinies would appear to point. Travellers fond of the picturesque will find every variety of scenery to excite their fancies. Strange specimens of vegetation, including all the varieties of the cactus tribe, give the out ward aspect of the landscape an effect entirely novel, unlike any to be experienced while tra velling through European mountain ranges. The geologist, also, will find it rich in trea sures ; and there is every reason to believe that only a portion of its mineralogical wealth has been disclosed. The almost simultaneous rise of California and Australia has often struck us as particu larly strange. Rapidly as they both have advanced, it is not too much, perhaps, to affirm that either of them would have pro gressed still quicker but for the counter attraction of its auriferous rival. There is a balance of power between these two rising countries well worth consideration. Each has advantages and defects that the other does not possess. California has the closer geographical proximity to civi lised States, but, on the other hand, it has not so highly advanced a population as that of its rival gold State. Each of them has the plague of refuse classes, the approaches to California being infested with hordes of banditti, over whom the rights of judicature according to the principles of Lynch, not Jus tinian, are summarily exercised, while the Australian State is deeply tainted with convict blood. In extraordinary variety of races, and in ancient recollections, the advantage lies with the great region whose oriental boundary is washed by the Gulf of Mexico. Nor can we have doubt that, if we may so speak, a strong tropical character will be affixed on future Californian society. Its growth will he consi derably influenced by its vicinage to Mexico, and by the facilities for access to West Indian speculators, and all those daring adventurers who for the last couple of centuries have looked upon the Spanish Main as their terri torial patrimony. Mr. Bartlett, the author of the work before us, was one of the United States Commission in 1850-53 for ascertaining the bounds between the United States and Mexico. When we observed the length of his text, and the pro fusion of its illustrations, we had hoped that a first-class work of travels was before us, but scrutiny soon showed us that our hopes were to be disappointed. Mr. Bartlett may be clever at affairs, but he is tedious and uninteresting as a writer. He records what is not worth recollecting ; he is not versed in science, and has scarcely average powers of describing external things. The profound is beyond his grasp—the pleasing is not within his range. Surely writers of travel in an age like this should recollect that readers in England and America require to be addressed with competent literary talent. In the days when the narrative of Lord Macart ney's embassy to China caused as much inte rest to several readers as " Layard's Nineveh" in our time, writers could be read even though their style was as ponderous as that of the for midable quartos still to be found in country called "Travels of Lord Valentia." When the various newspaper correspondents exhibit such high literary power, writers like Mr. Bartlett can scarcely hope to be read with pleasurable interest. Yet it would be scarcely possible for any one passing over such an extent of half-explored MIMN, THE PRESS. °our try to fail altogether in arresting the at tention. Premising that the work fails in its descriptive portions, we will select some of the incidents of the commission. We commence with an account of a trial " very racy of the soil," allowing the author to preface it : When the Boundary Commission landed on the shores of Texas in August, 1850, it was necessary to employ about fifty teamsters, and many labourers, cooks, ect.; and the quartermaster, whose duty it was to engage the former, was obliged to take such as offered themselves, giving the preference, of course, to such as could produce testimo nials of good character. He found many who had been in the Government employ, who had good testimonials ; but there were others who possessed no such credentials. Hence several men wha afterwards turned out to worth less characters obtained menial places in the commission. On the arrival of the several parties at El Paso ani San Eleazario, it was necessary to discharge a large Lumber, chiefly of the teamsters ; and such as were found to be of bad habits or vicious disposition were paid off and dis charged. There were also many very good men, who, having families at San Antonio, engaged only for the trip, and who, on being paid off, returned immediately to that place. After describing the bad characters alluded to in this passage, Mr. Bartlett proceeds to record what took place at El Paso, and re counts how Mr. Edward Clarke, the assistant quartermaster of the commission, was foully murdered. The officers then resolved to have the criminals brought to trial, and after great exertions they succeeded in discovering them. Now for the trial, which is the best passage in the two volumes : In selecting the jury, six were taken from the Mexican citizens of Socorro, and six from the Boundary Commission, as there were no other Americans in the place. The pre siding magistrate, Justice Berthold, was a highly respect able citizen, long resdent there, of French origin. It is doubtful whether in the whole history of trial by jury a more remarkable scene than the one here presented was ever exhibited. The trial took place in one of the adobe or mud-built houses peculiar to the country, which was dimly lighted from a single small window. Scarcely an individual was present who had not the appearance and garb of men who spend their lives on the frontier, far from civilisation and its softening influences. Surrounded as we had been, and now were, by hostile Indians, and con stantly mingling with half-civilised and renegade men, it was necessary to go constantly armed. No one ventured half a mile from home without first patting on his pistols ; and many carried them constantly about them, even when within their own domiciles. But, on the present occasion, circumstances rendered it necessary for safety, as well as for the purpose of warning the desperate gang who were now about to have their deserts, that all should be doubly armed. In the court-room, therefore, where one of the most solemn scenes of human experience was enacting, all were armed save the prisoners. There sat the judge, with a pistol lying on the table before him ; the clerks and attorneys wore revolvers at their sides; and the jurors were either armed with similar weapons, or carried with them the unerring rifle. The members of the commission and citizens, who were either guarding the prisoners or pro tecting the court, carried by their sides a revolver, a rifle, or a fowling-piece, thus presenting a scene more characteristic of feudal times than of the nineteenth century. The fair but sunburnt complexion of the American portion of the jury, with their weapons resting against their shoulders and pipes in their mouths, presented a striking contrast to the swarthy features of the Mexicans, muffled in checkered serapes, holding their broad-brimmed glazed hats in their hands, and delicate cigarritos in their lips. The reckless, unconcerned appearance of the prisoners, whose unshaven faces and dishevelled hair gave them the appearance of Italian bandits rather than of Americans or Englishmen; the grave and determined bearing of the bench ; the varied costume and expression of the spectators and members of the commission, clad in serapes, blankets, or overcoats, with their different weapons, and generally with long beards, made altogether one of the most remarkable groups which ever graced a court-room. Two days were occupied in the examination and trial ; for one immediately followed the other. In the mean time, a military guard of ten men had been promptly sent to our aid by Major Van Horne, the commanding officer at EPPaso, on my requisition : so that the open threats which had been made by the friends of the prisoners during the first day of the trial were no longer heard ; for they now saw that the strong arm of the law would triumph. The second day, a member of the commission who manifested a deep interest in the prisoners was requested by one of them to act as his counsel ; but his efforts to prove au alibi, to impeach the testimony of some of the witnesses, and to establish the previous good character of the defendant, proved utterly futile. The prisoners were then heard in their own defence ; but they could advance nothing beyond the mere assertion of their innocence. At the close of the testimony an attempt was made by one of the friends of the prisoners to postpone the trial, for the purpose, as he stated, of obtaining counsel and evidence from El Paso. But the court had been apprised of the existence of a plot for attempting a rescue that night, and accordingly the request was refused. The evidence being closed, a few remarks were now made by the prosecuting attorney, followed by the charge of the judge, when the case was given to the jury. In a short time they returned into court with a verdict of guilty against William Craig, Marcus Butler, and John Wade ; upon whom the judge then pronounced sentence of death. The prisoners were now escorted to the little plaza or open square in front of the village church, where the priest SATURDAY, met them, to give such consolation as his holy office would afford. But their conduct, notwithstanding the desire on the part of all to afford them every comfort their position was susceptible of, continued reckless and indifferent, even to the last moment. Butler alone was affected. He wept bitterly, and excited much sympathy by his youthful ap pearance, being but twenty-one years of age. His com panions begged him " not to cry, as he could the but once l " The sun was setting when they arrived at the place of execution. The assembled spectators formed a guard around a small alamo, or poplar-tree, which had been selected for the gallows. It was fast growing dark, and the busy move ments of a large number of the associates of the con- demned, dividing and collecting again in small bodies at different points around and outside of the party, and then approaching nearer to the centre, proved that an attack waa meditated, if the slightest opportunity should be given. But the sentence of the law was carried into effect. The entire proceedings were intensely interesting, and the scene of a character which none present desired ever again to witness. The calm but determined citizens on the one side, and the daring companions of the condemned wretches on the other, remained throughout keenly on the watch: the first for the protection of life, and the support of good order in the community ; the other with the malicious eyes of disappointed and infuriated demons, who, to rescue their companions, would have been willing to sacrifice a hundred additional lives. In reading of murders and violent deeds like these, persons are often apt to conceive too un favourably of the countries in which they occur. They forget the records of crime in several of the southern capitals of Europe, and they shut their eyes to the facts constantly recorded in some of the Southern States of America. The difficulty of finding a police force against characters such as infest the Californian and Texan " borderers," or ban ditti, may be pronounced impossible. They can be extirpated only by the presence of numerous cities and towns. In such countries travelling for years to come can never be safe except with armed parties. Lynch law would appear to be equivalent in such a state of things to our " Suspension of Habeas Corpus' Desperadoes like the American and British outcasts who swarm through the woods and hills of Texas and California can expect only the fate of wolves, and, like the wolves, they must recede before civilisation. In describing the residence of Mr. Joseph Osborne, near San Francisco, Mr. Bartlett writes : Mr. Osborne's place was the most beautiful and pic• turesque I had seen in the valley. In fact, it was the only house wherein there was any attempt at taste and comfort; for the country was too new to expect much in this way yet. But even his was a small and unpretending cottage after the New England fashion. The valley here is about four miles in width. Where it opens on St. Pablo Bay it is about six miles, but it gradually contracts towards the north. At the entrance it is an open plain, destitute of trees, and covered with luxuriant grass; but here it assumes a new aspect, such a one, too, as 1 had not before seen in the country. It is now studded with gigantic oaks, some of them evergreen, though not so close toge ther as to render it necessary to cut any way to prepare the land for cultivation. These magnificent oaks are found sometimes in long lines, and again in clusters of twenty or thirty, forming beautiful groves; then again a space of ten or twenty acres will occur without a single tree. If this romantic valley were transferred to the oldtr countries of Europe it would be taken for the domain of a prince or a nobleman. It answers to the idea one has of the old and highly-cultivated parks of England, where taste and money have been lavished with an unsparin or g hand through many generations. As one emerges from enters each grove he involuntarily expects some venerable castle or mansion to appear, or to find himself among some secluded villages. lint in the entire length of the valley there are no houses to be found within a less dis- tance than five miles of each other, and theie too of the moat humble and unpretending character. What is singular, and to me unaccountable, in these groves of large trees is, that there are no young ones, none but the venerable and full-grey/1i oaks, which, doubtless, for cen turies have held exclusive sway over this wide-spread and beautiful domain. Nor is there any undergrowth of other trees and shrubs. I can only account for this dellciency by attributing it to fires since the occupation of the counby by the Spaniards ; or by supposing that the immense herds of catle, whicfur a cetury past have occupied the valley, have browsed upon the n shrubs and young trees until they destroyed them, and afterwards kept down the shoots a they sprang up. Writers who mention facts of ordinary oc currence as if they were singular phenomena di s play their own superficiality. Nothing can be more flimsy and futile than the reflections in the foregoing passage. There is nothing " unaccountable " in the a bsence of young trees from old oak woods . The thing is seen every day. When oak timber is verging npon fifty years or so, young trees are as oftenand a pre sent as otherwise. But after a century half, with the interwoven branches over head, and the extended ramification beneath, the smaller timber utterly perishes and gerraina