The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-11 00:00:00

THE SUN.

MONDAY. OCTOBER 11, 1858.

The expeditionary force but just now taking its
departure for British Columbia, on board the
Thames City, 1,800 tons, from Gravesend, affords
apt and striking evidence of the powers and re-
sources of modern civilisation. A detachment of
engineers goes out, under the command of Lieut.-
Colonel RICHARD CLEMENT MOODY, R.E., lately
appointed by the QUEEN to be the Chief Commis-
sioner of Lands and Works in the new Colony.
Accompanied by Captain LITARD and Lieutenants
PALMER and LEMPRIERE, Lieutenant-Colonel
MOODY not only fakes out with him an
efficient body of non-commissioned officers and
Sappers and Miners; but all the appliances
Science and Art have placed within the grasp of
civilised man. The expedition, in fact, carries out
with it to the raw new colony, to this unworked
and virginal soil of British Columbia, the materials
of the ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. They take out with
them PORTABLE RAILROADS. They have a supply
Of PORTABLE BOATS for river navigation. They
have PRINTING PRESSES. They have STEAM
ENGINES to be employed among other things in
working saw-mills. They have all the
chemical and _ mechanical etceteras of the
PHOTOGRAPHIC APPARATUS. They take with
them, moreover, we are told, an enor-
mous assortment of sapping and mining and
other TOOLS—each a talisman of civilization open-
ing up some new wonders to human industry and

social enterprise.
Since COLUMBUS first landed upon the transat-
lantic shores what strides have been taken onwards
by the European Races ! Then the aboriginals
were awe-stricken by the apparition of those float-
ing citadels bearing the Spanish navigators on
before the winds of heaven in their galleons
and caravals. Now the wonder of a ship
is not in its sailing, but in the marvel of its gliding
over the ocean without a stitch of canvass,
borne onwards by the invisible power of the
steam engine turning the magical worm of
the screw propeller. Then the Indians of
America were astonished by a sight like that
of the Centaurs of classic mythology, when
they gazed in wonder upon the movements of the
Iberian horsemen. Now their descendants in
British Columbia ifill have somewhat greater cause
for amazement when they see these wonder-working
invaders from England carried to and fro with be-
wildering velocity by that Fiery Dragon of Science
the Steam Engine—taking pictures from nature
with the pencil of the sunbeam—talking through
hundreds and hundreds of miles of copper wire with
a tongue of lightning.

The Anglo-Saxons, nowadays, set out upon an
enterprise to clear their way through an American
forest—armcd not merely with the primitive axe of
the woodman, but with the potent force of the
steam sawmill. The march of civilisation, day
after day, in truth, is becoming appreciably and
wondrously accelerated.

Never before this, however, has the civilisation of
modern times gone forth so elaborately armed from
the first with all the peaceful weapons of engi-
neering science for the conquest of Nature in a
new and gigantic Colony. The history of the
rise and development of British Columbia,
therefore, will be, without doubt, one of the
most interesting chapters in the annals of human
progress. It deserves to be watched with unwink-
ing vigilance from the date of its earliest commence-
ment, from the moment when the Sappers and
Miners are first landed from the Thames City on
the coast of the mainland over against the island of
Quadra or Vancouver—from the time of their being
marched up the country by Colonel MOODY, in the
direction of the new gold, fields, It is a chapter in