The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 2, 1858. St. John, often speak of God as an unapproach able light and warmth, the fountain of all illumi nation in the understandings and of all pure ardour in the hearts of men. Now, however much Protestants may object to the use of visible symbols, all honest Protestant controversialists have been careful to distinguish between the use of images in Paganism and in Latin Christianity. The Pagan worshipped images ; the Papist worships through images. The Pagan is an idolater ; the Papist is in danger of idolatry. Now, of visible symbols some may be more dangerous than others. The image of a human being is dangerous in the extreme ; as Protestants urge, the learned may know it to be a symbol, but the vulgar worship the image itself. Fire is a less dangerous symbol, because its symbolical character is more manifest. Accordingly we find that the ancient Persians, while they used this symbol of the Deity, entertained the greatest horror of idolatry. The inscription found at Behistun has made this matter more clear than it NW before. We may therefore easily believe Mr. Framjee when he says, " Ask a Parsee " whether he is a worshipper of the sun or fire, "and he will emphatically answer, No." We are further told that Zerdusht is a most austere and impressive moralist. It should cer tainly be allowed that this religion, along with Mahommedanism, stands on a very different ground from the Paganisms of Greece and Rome —still more from the degraded superstitions of Africa or the South Sea. The latter might be called passive, the former active, religions—that is to say, the latter are only sensuous imagina tions spontaneously produced by the mind of man when stimulated by superstitious terrors or by poetical enthusiasm ; the former are systems con structed by a single earnest mind grappling with the problems of the universe. The latter, there fore, are on a level with the ordinary condition of the popular mind; the former are on a level with the greatest individual mind of the nation in the moment of its highest elevation. Hence the latter have commonly been positively mis chievous, the former inadequate, but yet to a certain extent beneficial. Mahommedanism and Zoroastrianism should rather be compared to English Unitarianism than to Paganism. Each of these three creeds is a belief in one God and one prophet. They may all be expressed in the Mahommedan formula. The Zoroastrian says, "There is no God but God, and Zerdusht is his prophet" ; the English Unitarian says, " There is no God but God, and Jesus Christ is his in pro phet" The systems seem also to resemble each other their effects. They perish in stagnation and indifference ; they are the religions of pro sperity and pecuniosity ; they are thin, nar row, agreeable to the theorist, but of small practical energy. They eschew mystery, but with mystery divinity departs. The New El Dorado; or, British Columbia. By Kinahan Cornwallis. London : Newby. THE discovery that there was gold in British Columbia created much excitement amongst all our British colonial adventurers. In California a goldseeker has to encounter all sorts of charac ters, and in the Australian gold regions he has to endure an Indian climate ; but in British Columbia he has (or, rather, will have) the advantages of English authority and a temperate region. It is scarcely possible yet to form a fair conjecture of the mighty resources still undeve loped in Columbia. It is a tract of country lying to the west of the Rocky Mountains, and hounded by the Pacific Ocean, ranging between 49 and 55 deg. north latitude. It is about 420 miles long, and its breadth varies from 250 to 300 miles. Its area is said to be about 200,000 square acres. It has two gold-bearing rivers, the Frazer and the Thompson; the climate is favourable ; it has valuable fisheries, excellent timber, and bitu minous coal; and, even without its gold, the region is well adapted for colonization. These are great resources, which may be eventually worked m os t p ro fit a bl y. B u t , on th e o th er h an d, it must not be overlooked that there are un favourable reports as to the immediate prospects of Columbia. It is reported, for example, that there is an almost total absence of food supplies, and that the Indian tribes of the district suffer sorely from want and starvation, and the character of these wild tribes is said to be more than ordinarily ferocious It is, therefore, too soon to form a sound esti mate of what the value of Columbia may even tually be. It has not yet been properly surveyed and explored, and it is obvious that with the stimulus of gold digging its colonization would obtain an artificial stimulus of considerable force. There is yet no work published on British Columbia containing authentic and accurate details, collected by a competent observer, and the most reliable data upon the province are to be found in the Parliamentary reports. Mr. Kinahan Cornwallis is, we surmise, an ' Irishman, and he seems to have had some practice in writing, but his merits would lie in some other branch of literature rather than in the solid and prosaic one of Travels. Ilia style partakes of an odd mixture of colloquial free-and easy, and a flashy rhetoric, gaudy and incorrect. The volume is dedicated "by permission" to Sir Bulwer Lytton, in language worthy of the servile dedications of the days of Charles II.—" as a " slight but reflected evidence (!) of his (Sir "B. Lytton's) able political administration." Throughout the volume we meet with several other phrases just as odd as " reflected evidence in the foregoing sentence. A passage like the following is enough to set a critic's teeth on edge. We print it exactly as it appears in the volume, with its want of punctuation and flagrant con- tempt for grammar : Well, indeed, may emigration from the mother country be advocated, while millions of able and intelligent men and women drag out a feeble existence, vegetating on the merest pittance necessary for actual subsistence, and when to attain that is too frequently a difficult struggle. Well may emigration be encouraged when thousands are every day being ushered into our jails for petty thefts for bread. When millions prey upon each other by the force of sheer hungry necessity, and are hurried swiftly down the tide of life and crime into premature graves. When the widow may wail, and her breatlless, homeless children die on her breast without any helping hand being extended until it is ;vv late. When monopoly is tyranny sucking the life blood of the people, and of trade, and men's hearts are as callous as stones. When the thirst and the struggle for gold is a work of life or death amongst the mass of our population, and the ever unsatisfied yearning and aim of the wealthy —the moneyed monopo list. When the weak man strong in gold, crushes the strong man weak in gold, and all the world worship money, &c. &c. A ranting tirade of this sort, even if the rhetoric were well done, is quite out of place in a hook of travels. - - There are, however, better things in the volume. We cannot exactly make out why it was that Mr. Kinahan Cornwallis went to the new El Dorado, or why it was that he came back so soon. About one-third of his book may be put down as original, and the rest is little better than mere compilation. Thus, he occupies ten pages (82 to 92) with epitomized extracts from Sir George Simpson's account of his journey from Fort Garry, and from page 316 to the end is a lengthy appendix, containing a " Blue book." Without meaning, therefore, to be harsh, we arc bound to say that the work has an air as if it was got up in great haste to catch the market. At the same time, we cannot for get that it is useless to expect books of a high finish or of a profound character from those who visit new colonies. Officials will not commit themselves in printed works addressed to the public; they reserve their knowledge for the authorities at home ; and it would be absurd to expect that professional writers of books of travels will risk their health and strength in going to new countries, where society is not advanced, and where there are no comforts or conveniences of any kind for tourists. We must, therefore, be thankful for what we get, and " The New El Dorado" may be fitirly de scribed as a tolerable specimen of " Literature of the Diggin's." It has matter of the same kind as will be found in works of a similar class upon other gold regions; but we cannot praise Mr. K. Cornwallis as a close or accurate observer. We shall select for extract some of the most readable passages in his volume. Arrived at the gold regions in Columbia, he thus describes sonic of their characteristics: — Already miners were at work along the river's banks, and the !orbd sun shot out his rays of fire in dazzling brightness, and hope-inspiring effulgence far and wide, over the river and over the grass land, lighting up the itiontitains in beauty of many shades, and displaying the mighty foliage of the forest in gilded loveliness — giving gaiety and animation to everything; and while im.pying tin the hearts of men, making all nature glad mid rove. It tees such a morning—the first after my arrival —when I again lid to work witlt my geological shovel, 961 not half a mile from the tent, and about three miles ab)ite Fort Hope. The river was a little lover Clan on the previous day, and miners were busy, either sin;ly or i t twos, risking the washing stuff; it raiitires two to work a rocker well, one to dig and the other to wash ant collect the " bits." Some who had not brou;ht rockers with them, were engaged in making them out of green timber : the bottom, however, a thin metal plate punetured with lutes, had to he purchased, and at an exorbitant price—one of my fellow boarders have given forty dollars for one ; it thing that in England would cost about eighteen pence, and in San Franciseo two dollars an.l a half. Bat the necossity for a rocker in wet diggings is all but absolute. For my own part, I gave four dollars for a p. ), and worked that in lieu of a rocker, making about four bits each washing, equivalent to two shillings sterling : this continued throughout the day, so that by nightfall I had. realized " pretty considerable," which means inure than two ounces of clean gold. In spite of the proverb of a rolling stone gathering no moss, 1 was impelled by firer of reports coming down river of great yields nearer the mountains, as well as by seeing the canoes inakine their way past ins for a higher part of the river, to juin in the purchase of a canoe for eighty dollars, with five others ; and accord ingly, everything connected with the Yaukee•Celiforuia and gold-hunting element being dune with a rush, we set off at seven o'clock on the next morning for Fort Yale afterwards to advance as we deemed best. Two or three miles below the latter, however, at a point called Hill's Bar, a sandy flat about five hundred yards in length, we went ashore, having heard reports before starting, of good returns there. We found the place crowded with Indians, at least five hundred of thou, men, squaws, and children ; with about eighty miners ut work on the bar. These were averaging from fifteen to tweet)-five dollars a day each man. Provisions were exceedingly dear and scarce, flour selling at eighty dollars the barrel, bacon at seventy five cents per pound, and butter at a dollar per pound. A party of twenty miners hail set out on the previous day to prospect for thy tlisgings in the interior, under the guidance of a batch of Indians, who said there was plenty (hihew) of gold to be foetid, hut no tidings of their success had yet been heard of. The population were sub sisting chiefly upon deer's flesh and salmon, both of which were abundant. My companions went in for a dig " as they termed it, at this place, but being anxious to explore new sputa, did not nenain beyond noon on the day following, during which time 1 ate a " green bear " steak—the first of the kind I had ever partaken of, and wsx.hy of being ranked with the shark cutlets, and pieces of a whale's tail, not omitting the morsel of horse flesh, which I had previously demolished in other regions (Aland and water. We shall take another passage : The howling of a wolf and the cries of other animals of the wilderness were hea.d from time to time coming faintly from the distance, but did not excite our fears ; at any rate, our revolvers were ready, and our Indian pilot was as (Flail of hearing, whether asleep or awake, as Paddy might say, as he was sure and composed as to our safety and his own. We were up and " hard at it" soon after daybreak on :he following morning. We found gold everywhere; and my only surprise was, that a region so palpably auriferous should have remained so long unproclaimed and bidden from the gaze of civilization. I found a very choice quartz " specimen," six ounces in weight, halt jutting out of the sand on the river's bank, which contained at least four ounces of the precious metal,—in fact, the larger half of the piece was solid gold, and could have been broken off from the quartz to which it was attached ; this was a sure sign to us that large masses of gold roust lie somewhere higher up the river than we had yet proceeded, most probably in the recesses, and at the foot of the mountains themselves, and that the gold found on the banks, and which is no doubt equally abundant in the bed of the river, was merely t'ae uffecouring and broken frag ments of the great gold region lying further inland. During this day's work seven " nuggets," varying from about half an ounce to five ounces in weight, were picked up, while the average yield of " dust " was no less then four ounces each man, equal to Asia sixty-four duller& 11'21. 165.), besides the nuggets. This was glorious; but still the Yankees were anything but satisfied ; it seemed as if the num they got the more they expected to get ; and if they could only find out and reach this " source," of which we talked so much, they would have nothing to do but use their picks and shovels in gathering as much gold as they could get horses and canoes to carry. We appearei to be the first who bad tried this " spot ;" but it was known that another party of six had ascended the river higher than we were, but they were reported to have diverged iota the interior, And found diggings at the foot of the Cascade Mountains, many miles in a south• westerly direction, and away from the river altogether. We therefore entertained strong hopes of being ourselves the sole discoverers Or this prime mine of wealth, amid leaving the rich diggings behind us, pushed on for richer diggings and " bigger strikes " still, on the very day following the yield last quoted, assured in our own minds, and moreover with experience in our favour, that we could not but be gainers by the movement, and perhaps —as, indeed, we sanguinely hoped, and I as reliantly as any of them—solve the grand problem as to where the gold came tram. So with this hope impelling us, and this achievement strongly before us, we moved away from the newly•baptized Willow Bank, which, by-the-bye, had been and still promised, it we could do no better elsewhere, to be a very good bank for us; and while the word " Excel soir " rang out from the lips of one on board, rowed swiftly along a boinewliai rapid and now slimily river, the navigation of which was kith intricate end dangerous, towards—the mountains now transformed into—visiimaxy , , golit, and sper i row, prac with The B Tm Cob our a gc tern end Col adv reg con lop to by deb am Its It 1 the val mii rep art we it fa) Co an th Wi Wi fel • ■