The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 7, 1866.

land, is considered by Englishmen a rather " good-
ish stretch ;" but Mr. Bowles booked at Boston,
and travelled by rail due west as far as from London
to Aberdeen, and from Aberdeen back to London,
and from London to Aberdeen a second time, and
then when he got out of the railway carriage at
Atchison, Kansas, to stretch his legs and see if he
hadn't got pretty near to the region where the sun
sleeps o' nights, he found his westward journey had
scarcely commenced, and that he had before him a
e coach ride of some five times the distance
'rom. London to Aberdeen, and then another long
railway journey--going all the time due west, and
never once passing beyond the limits of that Repub-

nice

lic over which the " banner of the stars" extends its
broad shield of protection, and its promise of uni-
versal liberty.
Well,
now, we ask our English friends in all sin-
cerity, and with no desire to " draw the long bow,"
to think for a moment of America as described by
Mr. Bowles. Leaving Boston, he travelled west
two hundred miles, and there found a city of a mil-
lion inhabitants, and a commerce superior to any 011
this earth, except London and Liverpool. He tra-
velled west five hundred miles further, passing large
and populous cities every twenty or thirty miles, till
he came to the great lakes and the city of Buffalo,
which boasts a single street longer and more elegant
than the whole line from the Marble Arch to St.
Paul's. Then he went west nearly a thousand
miles further, and found a spot which, thirty-five
years ago, contained one solitary cabin, but now,
changing as if by enchantment, boasts a population
of two hundred thousand, streets miles in length,
lined on either side with marble and brown-stone
palaces, an immense and diversified industry, and a
grain trade greater than that of London itself !
He saw mountains which were kings to the Alps,
rivers with their branches navigable inland for seven
thousand miles, prairie meadows a hundred miles
broad, farms as big as all England, auriferous hills
that turn out gold and silver by millions every
year ! Just think of it ! New York, Penn-
sylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colo-
rado, Utah, Nevada, California—ten empires,
each greater in territorial extent than Great
Britain, each lying on his line of route due west,
and each and all only a portion—and comparatively
a small portion—of that splendid heritage which
the Good Father has given to the common work-
ing-men of the New World ! Truly, indeed, says
our author :

" How this Republic, saved, reunited, bound
together as never before, expands under such per-
sonal passage and footstep tread ; how magnificent
its domain ; how far-reaching and uprising its
material, moral, and political possibilities and
promises !"
Mr. Bowles writes earnestly and truthfully, but
also poetically. Here is a beautiful description of
the plains of Nebraska
It is too early yet for many of the prairie
flowers ; but the rich, fresh green of the grass satis-
fies the eye. Scattered through it we catch fre-
quent glimpses of the prairie hen, multiplying for
the hunter's harvest in November ; from its bare,
last year's stalks floats out the liquid music of
the larks ; the plover, paired as in Paradise,
never divorced even in this western coun-
try of easy virtue and cheap legislation, bob
up and down their long necks, or flutter their
wide wings in flight at every rod ; little blackbirds
accompany you in great shoals ; a lean, hungry-
looking wolf steals along at a distance with one
eye on you, and the other on the carcase of a horse
or ox, dropped in sickness or fatigue from some
passing train ; away off near the horizon scamper
most daintily and provokingly a half-dozen ante-
lopes—too near for restless palates, too far for wait-
ing rifles ; and over all and illuminating all floats
an atmosphere so pure, so rare, so ethereal, as pic-
tures every object with a pre-Raphaelite distinct-
ness, makes distant things appear near, and sends
the horizon far away in an unbounded stretch of
slightly rounding green earth."
" But I omit one great feature in the constant
landscape—the long trains of waggons and carts,
with their teams of mules and oxen, passing to and
fro on the road, going in empty, coming out laden
with corn for man and beast, with machinery for
the mining regions, with clothing, food, and luxu-
ries for the accumulating populations of Colorado,
Utah, and Montana—for all these territories and
the intermediate populations draw their supplies
from this quarter, and not from the California shore.
The waggons are covered with white cloth ; each is
drawn by four to six pairs of mules or oxen ; and the
trains of them stretch frequently from one-quarter
to one-third of a mile each. As they move along
in the distance they remind one of the caravans de-
scribed in the Bible and other Eastern books.
Turned out of the road on the green prairie, for
afternoon rest or a night's repose, the waggons
drawn around in a circle, as a sort of barricade
against Indians or protection against storm, and the
animals turned loose to feed, and wandering over
the rounding prairie for a cattle upon a
thousand hills ;' at night their camp fires burning ;
—in any position, or under any aspect, they pre-
sent a picture most unique and impressive indeed."
And here is something about the Rocky Moun-
tains :

"How the mind runs back to one's youthful,
vague, mythical knowledge of the Rocky Moun-
tains in their actual presence ! How difficult to
realise that, •whereas, twenty years ago, they and
their location and character and the region about
them were almost unknown, now, two weeks from
home, I am sporting familiarly under their shadows,
following tediously up their sides, galloping in the
saddle around their summits, drinking from their
streams, playing snow-ball in June with their im-
perishable snow banks, descending into their very
bowels, and finding companionship and society as
various and as cultured and as organised as in New
England ; cities of thousands of inhabitants, not
only at their base, but away up in their narrow
valleys, eight and nine thousand feet above the sea
level ! All this seems dream-like, yet weary head,
and sore feet, and stern statistics testify to the
reality."

Some of the peaks near the city of Denver rise
to a height of upwards of 15,000 feet. ' And these
are not mere mountains of granite, but actually
mountains of gold and silver :-
4, This whole vast range of mountains, that
divides our continent, seems indeed crowded with
veins of rich mineral ore. They run into and
through the hill-sides as the bars of a gridiron—
every hundred feet, every fifty feet, every twenty
feet. There is no end to them in number ; there
is no apparent limit to their depth ; one hundred
feet, three hundred feet, and four hundred feet
have the miners sunk shafts, and did we descend,
but the veins of ore hold their course and their rich-
ness undiminished, of tenest enlarged."
TIIE MORMONS.

Mr. Bowles and his party spent a week among
the Mormons at Salt Lake. He describes their
city as a terrestrial paradise. He does not
marvel that , they think they are , a chosen
people ; " that they have been blessed of GOD not
only in the selection of their home, which consists
of the richest region, in all the elements of a State,
between the Mississippi valley and the Pacific shore,
but in the great success that has attended their
labours, and developed here the most independent
and self-Sustaining industry that the western half
of the Continent witnesses. • Surely great worldly
wisdom has presided over their settlement and
organisation ; there have been tact and statesman-
ship in the leaders ; there have been industry,
frugality and integrity in the people ; or one could
nottr. werietipiersse“sessununtchuhpper,m,ogsoerinev.ssees,b.,sr,uch wealth, such varied
abarmohmuzphhts ofcni rintrdausvet:erasnidntiongenuity and endurance,
at a station beforei
Early
reaching
Utah.h
iS nugarrdt
hha
They
y capitalm wereo rn morning
en-
tertainednbg
a Mormon bishop with four wives, who gave them
bitters and breakfast, with green peas and strawber-
ries. After breakfasttk his
hissa'ntship left -wife number
and took one at home,guests ont
located
aat parochialed
inth
the
visit to the other three, who were
n erfighhebociiitryh 000 f ds.
alt Lake is regularly and handsomely
laid out, with many fine buildings, and filled with
thick gardens of trees and flowers that give it a fairy-
like aspect. "No internal city of the Continent
lies in such a field of beauty, unites such rich and
rare elements of nature's formations, and holds such
guarantees of material and social greatness." Mr.
Bowles says that the Mormons—
" Wish us to know that they are not monsters and
murderers, but men of intelligence, virtue, good
manners, and fine tastes. They put their polygamy
on high moral and religious grounds ; and for the
rest, anyhow, are not willing to be thought other-
wise than our peers. And certainly we do find here
a great deal of true and good human nature and
social culture ; a great deal of business intelligence
andactivity i a great deal of generous hospitality—

besides most excellent strawberries and green peas,
and the most promising orchards of apricots, peaches,
plums, and apples that these eyes ever beheld any-
where "

time, and in Canada, too, there have been rival
trades with China and Japan, with England, ocean
steamers to supplant those of Inman and Cunard;
agricultural and other exhibitions, and the Recipro-
city Treaty, under which the United States tried its
best to over-reach Canada, and Canada tried its
best to over-reach the United States. Further west
there have been rivalries also, but the sparseness of

the population, and the comparative in-signiiicance
of the interests involved, have not given to them

great prominence. Latterly, in the Tar West, the
United States have taken the lead—have, in fact,
left British America behind in the generous race

that has been maintained ever since the close of the
war of 1812. Some Americans are constructing
the North Pacific Railroad from St. Paul to the
Columbia. The United States are constructing the
Union Pacific Railroad from Kansas city to Sacra-

mento city and San Francisco. British America,
recreant to its traditions, to its character, its inte-
rests, and the interests of Great Britain, is keeping

quiet and cool. It has become distrustful of its
power and destiny ; it has ceased to be acted on
by the example of its neighbour, and by-and-bye,
unless something is done, its neighbour will cease
to be acted upon by the wholesome stimulus of
spirited and intelligent competition."
Regarding the ridiculous proposition to sell the
territory in question to Canada, our author says :

"Let Canada make the most of the country it
possesses, and let public opinion rouse the Hudson's
Bay Company to the discharge of their public duty.
For two hundred years have the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany caught vermin for their skins, and it would be
intolerable were they suffered to close a huckster's
bargain with Canada for £1,000,000, or for any
price, when the effect of handing over the country
to Canada would be to add to the dead weight al-
ready borne by that province, and in effect to close
the Hudson's Bay territory against the world for
probably two centuries to come."

The " Fertile Belt" is thus described :
" The area of this remarkable strip of rich soil
and pasturage is about 40,000,000 acres. It was
formerly a wooded country, but by successive fires
it has been partially cleared of its forest growth,
but abounds with the most luxuriant herbage, and
generally possesses a deep rich soil of vegetable
mould. The winter of this region is not more
severe than that of Lower Canada. The snow is
never very deep, and in the wildest tracts the natural
pasture is so abundant that horses and cattle may
be left to obtain their own food during the greater
part of the winter. It is a broad agricultural region,
capable of sustaining many millions of people, and
abundantly supplied with iron ore, and an inferior
variety of coal, and as it spans the 800 miles which
separate Lake Winnipeg from the Rocky Mountains,
it more than compensates for the timbered desert
between the Lake of the Woods and Lake Superior.
The whole of the ' Fertile Belt' is well fitted for
settlement and agricultural colonisation. All
common cereals and green crops have been grown
successfully at the different posts of the Hudson's
Bay Company within the district."
For obvious reasons our quotations from this
most excellent brochure must be brief. But we
cannot close its pages without transcribing this
passage, wherein Mr. Rawlings speaks of the
lethargy of England regarding its interests on the
American Continent :
" We must not, we cannot permit this suicidal
lethargy to continue ; we should appeal to the
country, to the Parliament, to the Government.
Agitate ! agitate ! agitate ! as the supporters of re-
form are doing, and you will compel action. Can
the great commercial world look on in silence,
when they see this continued dilatoriness? We
answer emphatically, No ! Beyond lies the Pacific,
with all its auriferous wealth. Are we to lose the
chance of an overland connection with it ? Is
America to possess our splendid trade with India,
China, Japan, Australia, Victoria, and British
Columbia? Are we to have no share in it? Are we
with our eyes open to the consequences, with our
mental vision clearly defining the breadth, extent,
and full meaning of this great exclusion, to stand
mute, dumb, unimpassioned, and silently cold as
statuesque marble ? '
We quite agree with Mr. Rawlings that on the
answers to these questions depend the issue whether
Great Britain shall continue to exercise an influence
in the New World, or whether the Great Republic
shall eventually swallow up and absorb the whole
of North America.