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 most profitably. But, on the other hand,
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,

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962

And, with respect to the profits of this exciting
occupation, the author records elsewhere :

Away we dug; it was a day of eager expectation and
success. One of our party made tweutytwo ounces, and
the others followed deeply in his wake. I, myself, with
the assistance of my geological shovel, turned up sixteen
small nuggets, some of them wise 1 with quartz, worth
about two hundred and fifty dollars, and this with an
amount of labour which could only t, . callel an amuse-
ment.

Why Mr. Cornwallis came home is partly,
though not satisfactorily, explained in the fol-
lowing passage :

Now the real estate panic was at a high pitch, and I
was just as impatient to vet to Europe as the majority of
the people were to get to the diggings, for I had a certain
defined apeculrtive object in view, which I was anxious to
realize. I therefore resolved " instanter " to put my
three first lots into the market and sell, and sell them I
did within three hours; one, a corner allotment, for five
thousand eight hundred dollars, the other two, adjoining,
to another party, a speculator, for eight thousand dollars,
who put them into the market at seven thousand dollars
a lot immediately afterwards. The other three not being
yet located, I could not have mold save at a great dis-
advantage. I therefore decided, and no doubt wisely, to
hold them over till after my return from Europe, en route
fir which I now intended proeeeding by the Republic.

There is a good deal of smart light writing of
the same nature as that which we have quoted,
and, although we cannot accept the book as an
authority upon the resources and prospects of the
colony in process of formation, we can recom-
mend it to those who are curious as to the gene-
ral features which such a region presents, and,
looking for amusement, are content to take an
off-hand sketch while waiting for more carefully-
collected materials for forming their judgment.

The Crisis in the Punjab, from the 10th of May
until the Fall of Delhi. By Frederick
Cooper, Esq., C.S. London: Smith and
Elder.
A " whiff of grapeshot "—so teaches Mr. Car-
lyle—may be sufficient, if administered at the
critical moment., to quench a revolution. And
this is true enough, when there is a Napoleon to
administer it ; tbr men of Napoleon's stamp of
character, while they have the genius to devise a
bold stroke, have also the foresight to be pre-
pared with supplementary measures, in case the
bold stroke should not have the desired result.
The authorities in the Punjab at the commence-
ment of the Indian outbreak were not, perhaps,
Napoleons, but they acted on Napoleonic prin-
ciples : they neither showed blind confidence in
the native troops nor rashly irritated them by an
appearance of impotent distrust; when they
struck, the blow was heavy, and fell once for all ;
and the consequence has been that they kept
their own district in a state of comparative tran-
quillity, enabled General Wilson to take Delhi,
and, humanly speaking, saved India. That in
some instances they may have been too ready to
strike, and that more blood was shed than was
absolutely necessary for quelling the revolt, is
probably true, and Mr. Cooper's volume appears
to us to indicate such a conclusion ; but it
would have been well for us, and scarcely less so
for the rebels themselves, if the same prompti-
tude, even accompanied with the same severity,
had everywhere been shown. We should not
have had to deplore the fate of many gallant
men whose only error was too implicit a confi-
dence in the men they had, perhaps, led to
victory, and regarded almost like their own
children; we should have saved an untold
amount of treasure and munitions of war ; and
women and children, on whose blackened re-
mains vultures have feasted, and a hellish
vengeance expended its last atrocities, would in
most instances have been removed altogether, or
at least have taken refuge in some place of
safety.
Mecan Meer, near Lahore, was the first place
in the Punjab which caught the contagion of
the mutiny. On the 12th of May Sir John
Lawrence was away at Rawul Pindee, but Mr.
Robert Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner.
called a council of war at the civil station of
Anarkullee, and moved that the four native
regiments should be deprived of their ammuni-
tion. On receipt of further news from Delhi it
was resolved to deprive them of their arms
altogether. No evidence of these suspicions,
however, was allowed to appear. "There was a
" sound of revelry by night," for a ball was to
take place at Mecan Meer, and the "beauty and
the chivalry" of the station assembled accord-