which has of late attracted much of lower course is compiled from the reports public attention, having previously been and charts of Lieut. Zagoskin, of the Rusone of the least known and most lightly sian Imperial Navy, with other sources. prized sections of the globe. The pur- The upper course to Fort Yukon is laid chase of Alaska, as the Russian province of down from the bearings, distances, and notes North America is called, by the United of the writer himself. A glance at the preStates Government has awakened a lively vious delineations of this territory in our interest in that region; and whatever re- best atlases will show how much our knowllates to its natural features, its inhabitants, edge of geography in that quarter has gained its existing state, and its possible re-in extent and precision by the travels of sources, comes to us with the twofold charm Mr. Whymper. of novelty and material interest. Mr. By the cession of "Alaska" Russia has Whymper was able to take with him the not only enriched her exchequer to the exrequisite qualifications for breaking ground tent of seven million dollars, but has rid in that new and, in many respects, rough herself of an isolated possessionof dubious and uncivilized quarter, as the results of value. On the other hand, upwards of his explorations in the clearly written and 400,000 square miles of territory have been cleverly illustrated volume before us suffice added to the already vast domain of Uncle to testify. His book includes recollections Sam. Much hostile criticism was spent at of an earlier expedition through our own first upon this bold and independent specuterritories of British Columbia and Van-lation of Mr. Seward. "Our new possescouver Island, which have already been sion of Walrus-sia" figured in many a made sufficiently known to us. His ram- smart epigram and mock advertisement. bles, moreover, in this later journey ex- Already, however, the tide of popular tended to several points of interest among opinion has turned, now that American enthe islands and the seaboard of the North terprise has fairly begun to develop the rePacific, and his return voyage included a sources of the country. Coal has been disvisit to San Francisco and the usual lions covered at Cook's Inlet, and an important of that most rapidly going-ahead of New- find of gold on the Tagus river has set the World communities. But all that is most tide of adventure violently in that direction. original and striking in his narrative cen- Many there are who see in this purchase tres in his experiences of life in the lately but the first move towards an American oceeded territory, and in the estimate which cupation of the whole continent. Canada his graphic pictures of its physical aspects and all British North America will, they and of its people encourage us to draw for think, sooner or later be merged in the the future. United States. Some, like our author, hold that such a transference would be for the advantage of those dependencies. However that may be, there can be no doubt of Walrus-sia being destined to cut a figure in the history of the New World. Already has the capital, Sitka, sprung from the proportions of a fishing-village to those of a thriving city of 2,000 souls, where the "locations," or plots of ground command Californian prices. For a small log-house 10,000 dollars have been asked. This city, we are told. enjoys the unenviable position of being about the rainiest place in the world. It does not, however, rain quite all the year round, for, like another country with which we have become familiar nearer home, "whiles it snaws." The climate is by no means severe, the thermometer seldom falling below twenty degrees of Fahrenheit. The puffs of the United States press concerning the agricultural resources of their new acquisition, Mr. Whymper declares are all moonshine. few potatoes and beans and such like vegetables may be grown there, but "there is not an acre of grain in the country." Next 46 Alaska Territory ". -the title by which the whole of what was lately Russian America is to be known in future-though as good a name, Mr. Whymper remarks, as any other, is, he bids us take notice, founded apparently upon a mistake. It seems to have been taken from the title of that long penisula of Aliaska, with which the maps have long made us familiar. The name has not hitherto extended to the entire territory between the British dominions and Behring's Straits. Our author's thanks are paid to Mr. Arrowsmith for the trouble taken by him to work out the crude material laid before him in the traveller's notes and observations. The map thus resulting, together with that illustrating more in detail the course of the Yukon river, prepared, it appears, to accompany the paper contributed by Mr. Whymper to the Jour nal of the Royal Geographical Society, has been obligingly lent by that body for the purposes of the present publication. The mouths of the river have here been drawn out from the sketches of Mr. Smith, of the Western Union Telegraph Expedition. The A of the country. Such a climate, however, must, we think, put an effectual bar to any considerable or continuous traffic, or material development. A good deal has been done to penetrate and describe this corner of Northern America, not only by early voyagers and the emissaries both of the Government and the fur companies of Russia, but by Captain Bedford Pim and other officers engaged in the search of Sir John Franklin. The grave of one member of Captain (now Admiral) Collinson's expedition was seen by the author in the little burial-ground behind the post or fort of Nulato. The tale of his treacherous murder, and of its vigorous punishment at the hands of the loyal natives, was told by the Russians at this spot: to furs and mineral wealth the fisheries bid | mounted. We can feel for the trials of an fair to be the most productive branch of com- artist essaying to sketch with the thermerce. Salmon so abound in the rivers as mometer 35° below zero. Water colours during spring-time to impede the passage of were soon found to be a hopeless mockery. boats. They are driven on shore by the All hardships, however, were forgotten in wind in heaps. They often run in size to the our author's zeal for adventure, and in face length of five feet. From 100,000 to 150,- of the scenes and incidents which his note000 of these fish are exported annually to books enabled him to bring home. The the Sandwich Islands and elsewhere. Deer sight of the Yukon, a river from one to four and game of many kinds may be had for miles broad at 2,000 miles from the sea, the asking, and the bears are innumerable. frozen as it was at the time of his visit, Owing to this abundance of food, the na-filled him with thoughts of the capabilities tives are the laziest of savages. The Kalosh Indians, who inhabit the coast between the Stekine and Chilcat rivers, have a bad reputation, and are by no means a prepossessing people. They are fond of painting themselves in red, black, or blue stripes and patches. Their huts or shanties are of the common Esquimaux type, with a passage underground from the main chamber to the sleeping-room. The smoke-hole being most commonly closed by a deerskin, while men, women, children, dogs, dried skins, fish, and offal are heaped together in indiscriminate masses, the atmosphere is hardly to be imagined. Their canoes, of birch bark, and their skin "baidarkes" (kyacks), are not equal to those of Norton Sound and the northern coast. Their burials are peculiar. Graves being hard to dig in the frozen ground, most of the tribes burn their dead. The ashes are preserved in graveboxes, or portable tombs of singular and often artistic device. Specimens of these are drawn by the writer. On one of them a number of faces were painted, with long tresses of human hair hanging therefrom, each representing some victim of the deceased one's ferocity. Up the Yukon river some of the tribes heap over the bodies of the dead cairns of stones or piles of deer horns. The natural feeling for art is amusingly shown in the rude but highly characteristic carving in stone of a Russian soldier. The high cheek-bones, stolid features, and martinet figure are done with infinite life and truth. Lieutenant Barnard was landed at St. Mithere till the Commander of the post at Nulato chael's on October 12th, 1850, and remained came down in the early winter. He then accompanied this Russian up to the Yukon, travelling there by the route used by ourselves. Mr. Adams, an Assistant-Surgeon, R. N., and one seaman, were left at St. Michael's. On arriving at Nulato, Lieutenant Barnard despatched one of the employés of the Fur Company and an Indian to Co-Yukuk to make some inquiries. The Rus sian, on arrival there, fell asleep on his sledge, and in the absence of his Indian servant, was killed by the Co-Yukons. The Indian, who had gone but a little way to obtain water, on his return found his master dead, and immediately ran away affrighted. The others beckoned him back, saying they had no intention of injuring him. He, believing them, returned, and as he approached, was shot by arrows, and killed also. Our author's expedition up the Yukon river was undertaken in connexion with the The murderers-numbering, it is said, more abortive enterprise on behalf of Russo- than a hundred men- then started down for American telegraph communication. It Nulato. About forty Nulato Indians were conwas in the capacity of a volunteer artist gregated in some underground houses, near the that he attached himself to the party of mouth of the Nulato River, and not more than about thirty Europeans, under Colonel a mile from the post. The Co-Yukons surBulkley, who started from the coast in No-rounded these dwellings, heaped wood, broken vember, 1865. The usual difficulties of canoes, paddles, and snow shoes over the ensledge travel-walking in snow-shoes, contending with the vagaries and desertion of dogs, the filth and dishonesty of Indians, together with the fierce extremes of a polar winter -were duly met and manfully sur trance and smoke-holes, and then set them on fire. All of the unfortunate victims below were five or six solitary Nulatos are now in existence. suffocated, or shot in attempting to escape. Only The denizens on the banks of the noble boulders or ice-scratches were met with, though carefully watched for. The range called the "Ramparts" is entirely of azoic rock, in which a silvery greenish specimen of talcose appearance predominates." We should like to know whether this could be made, like the Laurentian beds of similar aspect, to yield the Eozoon. Slate beds are found in abundance with a northwesterly dip. The earliest vegetable remains noticed were those of the blue and brown sandstone, including casts of mollusca, lamellibranchida. A thin contorted seam of good bituminous coal crops out below the sandstones. Of pliocene remainsElephas, ovibos moschatus, &c. the plains are full. The Kottó river, emptying into the main stream above Fort Yukon, and Yukon catch somewhat of natural pride from the grandeur of a stream which even the Americans of the party were wont to compare with the Mississippi. "We are not savages," is the boast of the natives, 66 we are Yukon Indians." The break-up of the river in the middle of May was a splendid scene, but one of no little peril and hardship to the party who had to face the surging and grinding masses in their frail seal-skin canoe. Better, however, this tough and flexible material than the cedar wood or birch bark of British Colum- | bia or of the Indians of the Newicargut or the Porcupine. These rivers, when free from ice, swarm with moose, the meat of which, fresh or dried, is the staple diet all the year round. In tea the natives, as in all places touched by Russians, are most the Inglutálic, emptying into Norton fastidious. At the best British mixture their noses are turned up in scorn. Of more value, in their eyes, are English needles. Ten goose or wild-fowl eggs are Mr. Whymper has bestowed much attengiven for a single one. So highly prized, tion upon the native languages. His vocabindeed, were their civilized visitants, that ulary of the Co-Yukon dialect-spoken, on the withdrawal of the scientific force, with slight variations, for at least 500 miles the poor natives at Unalachleet, Norton along the lower river, with some words Sound, hung black cloth, in token of from the Ingeleti, a variety of the same, mourning, upon the deserted telegraph will be found full of interest, especially if poles. The cause of failure in the case of studied in correlation with the list of equiv this bold telegraphic enterprise was the alent words from the tongue of the Kotchsuccess of the Atlantic cable. It is obvi-à-Kutchin Indians at the conjunction with ously impossible for an alternative line the Porcupine river, furnished by Mr. Kenthrough those inclement Arctic regions to nicott. hold its own, saving so far as local purposes may be subserved by the rapidly developing settlement being linked on to the general lines of American and European communication. What has been gained by the enterprise, and we may add, by our author's participation in it, is a valuable as well as curious addition to our stories of Sound, are held by the Indians in superstitious dread, on account of the immense number of fossil bones existing there. From The Spectator. CON AMORE.* THIS is a collection of masterly sketches, geographical learning, and to our knowl- any one of which will repay study. Pubedge of the out-of-the-way races of manlished originally in the Westminster and kind. Mr. Whymper's studies in science other magazines as separate articles, we have enabled him to contribute some special think Mr. McCarthy has done well to notices of interest regarding the singular gather these essays together and present curved chain of volcanic mountain peaks, not long ago the backbone of an upland range uniting Asia with America, which form the Aleutian islands. His companion in adventure, Mr. Dall, has put together a few notes on the geology of the Yukon, which are here reprinted from Silliman's American Journal. It is worthy of note that no glacial indications are here met with. It is the writer's opinion, though yet unproved, that the glacial field never as it may be necessary to differ from Mr. extended in these regions to the west of the McCarthy's conclusions, it is scarcely posRocky mountains, although small single sible to do so without a sense that he conglaciers still exist between spurs of the Con Amore. By Justin McCarthy. London: mountains which approach the coast. No Tinsley Brothers. 1868. them in a durable form. His range of subjects is sufficiently wide. Between Voltaire and Victor Hugo lies the Red Sea, through which the latter has walked as on dry land, though it has brought him no further than the Wilderness. We can but briefly present to our readers the forms and faces brought before us in this volume. We advise them to study it for themselves, and we think they will agree with us that often tributes by much impartial criticism to form | hardly by Voltaire, and proceeds to a carethe judgment which in the end may differ ful criticism of some of his lighter works, from his own. The first essay is on Vol- in which he used his weapon most unspartaire, and he shows a very keen insight into ingly, maintaining that, the character of a man whose fate it has been to be extravagantly over-praised or so consistently and, all things considered, so "Few of the leading satirists of literature ever over-blamed, the vehemence in either case boldly turned their points against that which proceeding from an over-estimate of the deserved to be wounded. Religious intolerance subject of it. He was never a great philos- and religious hypocrisy, the crying sins of opher, "he was what Condorcet correctly France in Voltaire's day, were the steady obtermed an impatient spirit," and the two jects of his satire. Where, in these stories at things are incompatible. As a satirist few least, does he attempt to satirize religion? Where men have wielded a weapon with a keener does he make a gibe of genuine human affection? edge, but its blade was of no choice metal. Where does he sneer at an honest effort to serve He could expose to ridicule and contempt, humanity? Calmly surveying those marvellous as no other man could, says Mr. McCarthy, satirical novels, the unprejudiced reader will and “he was gifted with the most powerful search in vain for the blasphemy and impiety weapon in the world." Scarcely; Voltaire's with which so many well-meaning people have wit dealt with the surface, the crust of hu- charged the fictions of Voltaire." man life; it touched no vital part; much The next essay is a sketch of Goethe, of it could not live beyond the hour that admirable in the entire sympathy with which called it forth. Extravagant caricature is the author enters into the poet's artistic naoften wit committing suicide. The spring ture. Whatever came from Goethe's hands which would prove perennial must have its was to be perfect of its kind; no matter source deep down in the heart of the earth. that the work in hand was a trifle, a mere Voltaire's wit had no such spring, his genius curiosity, its setting should be absolute in no such roots; his touch crumbled the cave its beauty. He has taught us to what a of many giants, and left them shivering to point of polish, to what an exquisite fitness the blast, but it was all it could do. He and adaptability he could bring the German could perceive the results, but not the roots language, and Mr. McCarthy requires of of human systems; the prejudices, fears, us that if we would judge the works of this fallacies, doubts, and vices of poor human great master at all we should consider them nature, but not the point where they "all as strictly and liberally works of art, and touch upon nobleness." One of the com- remarks, "We do not ask that the marble monest errors, says Mr. McCarthy, "is to Apollo shall fulfil any end but that of mere ascribe to a man profound insight into hu- beauty. All we ask of the lapidary is to man nature because he is quick in ferreting bring out every beam of the diamond, every out certain special foibles or vices." No flashing tint of the opal; the painter who reputation is purchased more cheaply or is has done nothing but produce fine landreally more superficial. He concentrated scapes or beautiful faces, we admit to have his gaze on the peculiar object he wished to on the whole led no useless or ignoble exsatirize, till at length its proportions became istence; and no one feels disposed to arraign magnified to his vision:" and we may add, the public decree which sets him in a higher his sense of its proportion to the whole was rank among the labourers of the earth, than lost. It is good to have a microscopic eye, his practical brother who combines painting but when we fix our thoughts on the abscess with glazing." Assuredly, but it is imposin the back of an aphis, it is well to let the sible to forget that the bringing out of the world know it is an aphis we are dissecting. beam of the diamond, the tint of the opal, Mr. McCarthy is fully alive to Voltaire's has use in its highest form; all beauty is a merits. "His ideas," he observes, "may revelation, and every fresh revelation is in be extravagant, but his style never is;" or its turn the fertilizing element in fresh again, What an admirable pamphleteer thought, the ultimate outcome of which, let Voltaire would have made, had he been but the free play of it last never so long, is acan Englishman! What inextinguishable tion. Nor do we for a moment imagine ridicule he would have scattered over a Mr. McCarthy wishes us to forget this. Ministry or an Opposition! How irresisti- No one knows more fully how far Goethe's bly people would have been forced to think master-pieces have influenced the whole anything he laughed at deserving of laugh- mind and literature of Germany, shooting ter! " A man's true nature, he adds, bright rays of light, unconscious of its inquoting Goethe, is best divined by observ- tensity, over the mental condition of the ing what he ridicules; and judged by this whole of our own generation. He has thorstandard, he thinks posterity has dealt oughly analyzed the attitude in which 66 66 66 Goethe stood to his work, having "recourse to the strength of his intellect to counterbalance the weakness of his character and the sensitiveness of his nerves. He dramatized his emotions: made them stand out objectively from him, and thus removed them away from himself. When grief became painful, he worked it off into a poem, and contemplating it artistically, no longer felt it as belonging to his own being." Every emotion is crystallized into a stanza. In this essay Mr. McCarthy does not occupy himself with the graver works of Goethe, but with his minor poems and ballads, believing them to be the true revelation of the man himself. "He had no living confidant, and could only express his soul through his genius fully to himself." True, perhaps, of the inner nature of every great poet or artist, it comes out at times in Tennyson, as in Goethe, even to the injury of dramatic force, or the intense heightening of its power, as when Goethe makes Tasso say of Antonio: "Da stehet von schönen Blumen With flowers so fair to see: Will take the flowers from me." We have only to transfer such gross misinterpretations to verses of deeper meaning, and the result is not far to seek; but the popularizing mania, the determination to make knowledge or a counterfeit of knowledge cheap, is the canker at the very heart of our English system of education. There are, as Mr. McCarthy justly observes, distinct intellectual reasons why Goethe should never attain English popularity. "You must have mastered a certain amount of knowledge before you can understand him. Simplicity of style is a key-note of popularity, but not simplicity of style combined with intense subtlety of thought, and this combination is the characteristic of all save the most trivial of Goethe's poems." Even as it might be truly urged to be the characteristic of all great genius, it is equally true that all real greatness has in it a mag trans-netic power to attract and draw up to itself, but the mind brought under its influence must bear the painful steps of the ascent. "Er besitzt, Ich mag wohl sagen, alles, was mir fehlt, Doch haben alle Götter sich versammelt, Geschenke seiner Wiege dazu bringen, Die Grazien sind leider ausgeblieben! -which Miss Swanwick has so aptly lated: "He possesses, I may truly say, All that in me is wanting. But, alas! We wish it were within the power of our which follows. In the brief space of seventy limited space to do justice to the essay pages Mr. McCarthy has contrived to give us a far better insight into the mental We know instinctively that Goethe was ap-growth of Germany's much loved poet plying the inimitable description not alone or primarily to Antonio, but to the whole class whose mental calibre must have made them scourges to him and offences in his eyes. Mr. McCarthy complains bitterly of the translation through which English readers are made familiar with Goethe's minor poems, and perhaps the attempt to render Goethe popular has not been without distinct injury to both author and reader. Certainly, if an Anglicized Homer be an anomaly, an Anglicized Goethe is worse. It is possible to present action in a new dress and not destroy its force, but Goethe plunges all thought into his own crucible, to reproduce it crystallized, and the process is vitiated and all coherence of the particles lost by the admixture of one foreign element. We have before us in these pages many instances of this dissolving process, but a short and simple instance must suffice, where Schiller than we could obtain in fifty volumes of mere detail. He watches Schiller as he gradually emerges from the stormy protest of his youth, when he startled Germany and more than Germany by The Robbers; traces his calm appreciation of his own error when, finding the world a wider place to live in than his youthful imagination had pictured, "he comes to study men and women more closely, as he withdraws from his eyes the veil which his own personality drew around them." Here lay the se cret of his strength his intense sympathy with humanity in all its phases, in its darkest forms resembling still the "plants in mines that struggle toward the sun." Schiller's works are not the mere offspring of his brain dissevered from himself, but the revealings of a spiritual nature, which fed not upon itself, but on every form of human life and thought with which it was brought into contact. The student of Schiller while reading this essay will probably find his |