REVIEWS—RED RIVER AND ASSINIBOINE EXPLORATIONS. 175 
Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857, 
and of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 
1858. By Henry Youle Hind, M.A., F.R.G.S., Professor of 
Chemistry and Geology in the University of Trinity College, 
Toronto. 2 vols., 8vo. London: Longman & Co. 1860. 
In the year 1858 there was issued from the press of the Provincial 
Government, a Canadian Blue Book, “ printed by order of the Leg- 
islative Assembly,” and embodying the ‘report on the exploration of 
the country between Lake Superior and the Red River Settlement.” 
In 1859 a second Llue Book, printed by the same authority, reported 
the result of another exploratory expedition, to survey the valleys of 
the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan rivers. Both reports were illustrated 
with maps, sections, and wood-cuts of geological and other objects of 
interest ; and attracted fully as much attention as the most interesting 
of blue books usually do. A review in our own pages, directed the 
attention of our readers to some of the most attractive of their varied 
contents; and the Canadian press generally published notices and 
extracts from them. But it is an old saying that Parliament can 
print blue books, but it is beyond its power to make people read them ; 
and we doubt if the ‘Red River” and “ Assiniboine” Blue Books 
furnished any very notable exception to this popular dictum. Extracts 
and digests in the periodical press sufficed to gratify popular enquiry ; 
a few copies were bound and placed on the shelves of both public and 
private libraries, both here and at home, and the remainder, it is to be 
feared, experienced the usual fate of Blue Books, however valuable. 
But the enterprising leader of those expeditions wisely conceived that 
the subject treated of in his two reports merited a wider and more 
enduring interest ; and the two handsome and copiously illustrated 
volumes, now issued from the London press, suffice to show what 
good editing and liberal publishing zeal can effect. A soldier returned 
from a rough campaign. tattered, travel-stained, and way-worn, does 
not differ more marvellously from the hero set forth by the most 
fashionable of army tailors for a review or presentation at Court, 
than does the Blue Book of our Canadian Parliamentary press 
from these gay volumes, with their chromo-xylographs, wood-cuts, 
maps, and sections. The very wood-cuts which had already figured 
in the first issue are scarcely recognisable in their new and greatly 
‘improved aspect, under the combined effects of good paper and 
London printing. 
