The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-15 00:00:00

THE SUEZ CANAL.

No State is likely to derive more benefit from the Suez
Canal than Italy. The Florence Government is fully
alive to the opportunities for traffic which the complete
water route to India will place at its disposal, and it has
accordingly concluded a treaty with a society which
will undertake to supply facilities for commerce. A
service of steamers will ply between Brindisi and Alexan-
dria, making five voyages a month.

bend appears to have calculated on the same recep-
tion from them as would have been accorded to
him by his own brethren ; indeed, much more
hearty. When he reached the Rocky Mountains at
one of the furthest outlying forts an expedition was
immediately planned for penetrating into the ranges
which enabled him to see sport otherwise unattain-
able. In Colorado there are three great parks or flat
places, in a small way not unlike Cashmere in
the Himalayah Mountains, called the North, the
Middle and the South Parks. In the North, the
River Platte takes its rise, flowing north and west
for a considerable distance before it turns around
the Black Hills and sweeps away to the south of
east. Captain Townshend gives a lively description
of the mountain tracks through which he passed to
reach the North Park, which he found to be a plain
30 miles long by 15 wide, covered with a sweet
grass, but wholly destitute of trees, though these
grew thickly on the mountains surrounding the
flat. The mountain huntsmen he met were tall,
sinewy fellows, each clad in a fringed hunting shirt of
buckskin, with homespun trousers tucked into stout
hunting boots reaching nearly to the knees, or
buckskin breeches and mocassins. Their arms
generally consisted of a couple of revolvers and a
knife in a belt, in addition to a heavy single
rifle of rather small bore, the chances being even
whether these weapons were used for offence
or defence. Several parties of Indians were then
on the war-path, and these hunters had to keep a
sharp look out to save their own scalps as well as to
capture the skins of animals. " Many a glass of
whisky," says the Life Guardsman, " I drank to the
health of these bearded Nimrods, each of us ad-
dressing to the other the Indian salutation of
' Hough' as we swallowed the fiery liquid." Among
these was a very old and well-known hunter, who
has given his name to Mountains and Passes—
,Bridger. He is not remarkable, however, for the
reliance to be placed on his discoveries, as among
them, near the Black Hills, is a petrified forest, on
the petrified branches of which were petrified birds,
singing petrified songs. Pointing to Pike's Peak,
he asserted it to have been a hollow when he first
visited the country. He is described as enter-
taining a great hatred for Britishers, but Capt.
Townshend, with discernment and truth, remarks,
" Certainly as far as I could judge, the Western
people generally are extremely friendly to our coun-
trymen, and in their own rough fashion are quite
as ready to welcome them as their own more civi-
lized compatriots of the settled States." This was
everywhere his experience, bearing one thing in
mind, never under any circumstances nor any pre-
tence, to assume atone of superiority or of command,
which is instantly met by them with a self-asser-
tion and defiance, and this is the advice that Capt.
Townshend evidently gives to European gentlemen
about to rough it in the Rocky Mountains, in the
Back Woods, or on the Prairie, that they must put
aside any notions they may entertain of their own
superiority, or it may be taken out of them in a
place where the-chances are they are infinitely the
inferior. With a frank, jovial manner, and a good-
humoured way of bearing no ordinary hardships,
they may. calculate on a warm, hospitable reception
and every attention these genuine sons of nature
can bestow, mixed with much that is proud, and
little that is mercenary. We cannot help thinking
that in the category of Bridger's discoveries, come
the hunter's tales of wounded antelope. Undoubt-
edly those cases occurred narrated by Capt. Town-
shend as ocurring under his own observation, but we
find it hard to credit the Colonel's story that he once
followed a wounded antelope several miles, which
at last escaped him, although the fore and hind legs
on the same side were shot away. Americans have
invented a new verb " to velocipede," and that alone
can describe the future action of the wounded ante-
lope. If elk are destroyed at the rate the Life
Guardsman narrates they will soon be scarce in the
mountains. In a deep canyon last spring a party
of hunters managed to drive a herd of 27 elk; there
being no exit, they shot 26 of them, the last and
only remaining one breaking through the line. The
hunters left the elk, to return for them next day,
but hating neglected to take out the entrails they
found them in a state of putrefaction, and their
bones whitened the gorge, into which Captain
Townshend gazed. Although he was not successful
in shooting many, the game being wild, he saw
vast herds, and the party on its return to the fort
after he had left it killed several. The grisley
near, though scarce, is still seen on the mountains,
and fresh footprints were on one occasion observed
by him. We skip the Life Guardsman's descrip-
tion of the Salt Lake City, and his journey on-
wards to San Francisco, though not devoid of in-
terest. Our object is to follow one of the earliest
English sportsman into the Rocky Mountains, as
we feel he is but the pioneer of numbers ; indeed
the American Government might contract to give
the country between the Union Pacific Railway
and the Kansas Pacific to English sportsmen on
condition that they kept it free from Indians, and,
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Sherman has remarked that, in • his •
opinion, the
shortest way to compel the lndians to settle down
to civilized life was to send ten •
regiments of soldiers
to the Plains with orders to
they became too scarce to support the redskins.