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