54 REVIEWS — THE GREAT DESERTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



good Abbe" among those unpretending men-of-all-work, who cater for 

 the book-manufacturers of Paternoster Row, and pen their veracious 

 chronicles 



'• Of most disastrous chances. 

 Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 

 Of hair-breadth 'scapes," 



and all without ever missing the familiar Cockney music of Bow-bells. 

 We say, but for the author's previous adventures. But there are 

 other credentials also, which surely lie beyond the inventive art of 

 the Book-maker, in those fifty-eight showy Zylographs which give 

 such an air of well-authenticated accuracy to the volumes' There are 

 portraits of natives, pictures of strangest scenery, engravings of 

 inscriptions, native implements, pottery, &c., bringing home to our 

 firesides the wonders of the great deserts ; or, failing in this, illustrating 

 the latest economic development of free trade in the Grand Art of 

 Book-making. 



Our first glance at the Abb6's illustrations suggested a strange fami- 

 liarity in their choice picturings, such as was scarcely to be expected 

 in his revelations of the mysteries of a " virgin land ;" and the result 

 of a little research to which this tempted us, may perhaps help the 

 reader to some idea of the requisite process in the newly developed 

 manufacture, whereby two goodly volumes of fascinating travel may 

 be got up, with the help of a good name, and a reputable dedication, 

 by any one who has access to a moderately furnished library. And 

 first for the ethnology of the volumes. Volume II. figures for its 

 frontispiece, a genuine " Comanche " in highly characteristic attitude, 

 on horseback, and with his long lance in rest upon his left arm. 

 But the original may be seen by any one curious on the subject, in 

 a quarto plate, not of Comanches, but Navajos, drawn by H. B. 

 Molhausen, the artist of the U. S. Exploring party for a Railway 

 route to the Pacific ; Washington, 1855, p. 31. Like most of the 

 other borrowed illustrations, the figure, which is one of a group, is 

 reversed, anjl the features are so poorly copied as to be worthless for 

 all ethnological purposes. The same Washington Report in like 

 manner supplies the Mojave Indian, introduced at p. 40, vol. II., but 

 still worse drawn, and if possible, more worthless for anything but a 

 child's picture book. At an earlier date there issued from the 

 Washington Bureau certain " Reports of the Secretary of War, with 

 reconnaisances of routes from San Antonio to El Paso," and theae, 

 being little likely to couie under the eye of ordinary readers, have- 



