586 



Monthly Review of literature, 



[MAY, 



climate, and the poverty of the country, 

 narrowly escaping the maws and paws of 

 bears, and starvation from cold, and occa- 

 sionally from hunger. This painful and 

 laborious journey took up the better part of 

 a twelvemonth. Subsequently ho visited 

 Siberia twice, and resided four years at 

 Avatcha in Kamtchatka; so that, though 

 his book takes the form of a journal of one 

 particular tour, in the years 1812 13, the 

 author expresses the general results of the 

 whole of his experience. His last view of 

 Siberia was so recently as 18278. The 

 communications are of a very welcome kind, 

 for Kamtchatka is little known, and few are 

 likely to visit it from motives of curiosity. 

 The tone of them is quiet and simple, 

 and irresistibly conciliates the reader's con- 

 fidence in the general faithfulness of his ac- 

 counts. 



In the neighbourhood of St. Peter and St. 

 Paul, he met with mounds and dikes to a 

 great extent ; and also in many other parts 

 of the country. These were plainly artificial 

 works, and indicate at some period a very 

 considerable population. The author refers 

 them, not to native Kamtchatkans, for they 

 never could have had inducement enough, 

 but to colonists subsequent to the conquest 

 of the country by the Russians. They are 

 still in good order, and were evidently in- 

 tended to preserve the low lands for hay and 

 pasture against inundations. The seat of 

 government has been removed from Nijn 

 to St. Peter and St. Paul ; and the Russian 

 soldiers are all withdrawn from the peninsula 

 into Siberia. The native population has long 

 been gradually reducing, and does not now 

 amount to more than seven or eight hundred, 

 sadly corrupted from the simplicity, honesty, 

 and mildness which Mr. Dob.ll remarked in 

 them on his first acquaintance an effect 

 attributed to the felons which have been of 

 late sent among them from Siberia, at whose 

 recommendation the author does not know ; 

 but he thinks it an unwise measure, and one 

 that has done mischief in various ways. 

 Mr. D. represents Kamtchatka as not by 

 any means unsusceptible of cultivation. That 

 corn and vegetables were producible, he had 

 the evidence of his own senses ; but the na- 

 tives are content with tha produce of the 

 chase, and will be so as long as game abounds. 

 The rivers, too, and the coasts, swarm with 

 fish, and all live upon fish, men and do^s. 

 Spirits, tobacco, and tea, are their luxuries, 

 and these they readily obtain in exchange for 

 furs. Mr. D. shall speak for himself. 



Providence h-v> been bountiful to this peninsula, 

 which only wants population and industry to render 

 it rich and flourishing. Even the bleak moss-co- 

 vered moors, where there is not a bush to regale the 

 eye, afford nourishment to innumerable herds of 

 reindeer. Nature indeed has done much for Kamt- 

 chatka, but man nothing; or if he has interfered, it 

 would appear that he has only done so to pervert or 

 destroy the liberal donations of Heaven. Wherever 

 one travels, the marks of misrry, desolation, and 



depopulation present themselves. Shortly after the 

 battalion of soldiers was sent thither from Siberia, 

 the small-pox, an epidemic fever, the venereal, to- 

 gether with the introduction of ardent spirits, almost 

 swept from the face of the soil the Kamtrhatdale 

 race. The miserable remnant does not actually 

 amount to more than seven or eight hundred souls. 



I have always regretted that the soldiers were sent 

 back to Siberia, as a great many of them, being 

 married, took with them their wives r.nrt children. 

 It would have been much better to disband them in 

 Kamtchatka, in order to cultivate the soil, and in- 

 crease the population of a spot so much in want of 

 inhabitants. Certainly the fisheries, and particu- 

 larly the whale fishery, which might be established 

 at Kamtchatka, if properly managed, are of them- 

 selves a source of great wealth. Besides, that coun- 

 try is in the near neighbourhood of the richest and 

 the most populous parts of the globe. In ten or 

 twelve days, a passage may be made to any part of 

 the Japanese islands ; in thirty or forty days, to the 

 Sandwich Islands, to Macao, to the Philippines, or 

 any of the Indo-Chinese Islands ; in sixty days, to 

 the north-west coast of America, California, or the 

 Islands of the great Pacific ocean. There is no place 

 more advantageously situated for commeice, and no 

 place that enjoys so little. 



The Kamtschatdales themselves seem to feel the 

 want of more inhabitants, and the value they would 

 be of to their country. 1 asked the Toyune of Ouka 

 if he should be pleased at seeing a vessel arrive at 

 his little port with a cargo of tea, sugar, nankin, and 

 other luxuries. " Those things," said he, " to us, 

 who have so little, would be very acceptable ; but I 

 should be more pleased if they would send me a 

 cargo of men ; for, out of twelve or fifteen souls, 

 which compose my ostrog, I have only five or six 

 men who are able to hunt and fish." This shrewd 

 answer showed his penetration and good sense. 



Memoirs of Simon Bolivar, President 

 Liberator of the Republic of Colombia, $r., 

 by Gen. H. L. V. Ducoudray Hohiein, '2 



vols., 12wo., 1830 What credit is to be 



given to General H. L. V. Ducoudray Hoi- 

 stein, we have no means of ascertaining. He 

 represents himself, through life, as a passion- 

 ate admirer of liberty, all the world over : 

 as having actually served in France through 

 the revolution, and after 1800 as attached to 

 the staff of Napoleon. The " sacred cause'* 

 of South America drew him, he says, to Car- 

 tagena ; but of what took him from France, 

 before the Emperor's deposition, he says not 

 a word. At Cartagena the local government 

 offered him service, and conferred on him the 

 highest military rank in its power to grant* 

 He was at one time commander in chief of 

 the forts of Boca Chica, and after a series of 

 disappointments, jealousies, and dissatisfac- 

 tion, in 1810 he quitted the service, in disgust 

 ac Bolivar's tyranny and distrust of his pa- 

 triotism. Since then he has resided in the 

 United States, keeping a sharp eye upon Boli- 

 var's actions, and we may add, if not a ma- 

 lignant, certainly not a favourable one. Gen. 

 Ducoudray would have us regard himself 

 as a stern and sturdy republican, devoted to 

 the liberties of mankind, both practically and 

 in the abstract ; as a man drawn aside by 

 no personal bias, but judging every man in 



