REVIEWS. 
199 
the public, to avoid anything- like exaggeration. Indeed, he himself states 
that he has met with nothing extraordinary in the course of his explorations. 
No tomahawking or hairbreadth escapes from Indians are to be found in these 
pages. Indeed, on the contrary, with two or three exceptions, the pages 
of the volume before us do not record anything that might not have occurred 
to a person travelling in the Austro-Italian Tyrol. Though, of course, had 
the Earl of D unraven taken a different route — which at the time was blocked, 
owing to disputes between the American Government and the Indians — he 
might not have had an opportunity of discoursing so pleasantly on the 
subject of the Great Divide. Still his account is full of interesting 
matter, and in no respect is it so good as in description of scenery. The 
author appears to have a wonderful power of sketching out in words the 
scenes which passed before him. And in no case is this better shown than 
in his graphic description of the wondrous view obtained from Mount 
Washbourne, the peak par excellence of the Yellowstone mountains. 
“From it has been traced out the geography of the country. The main 
divisions, the great centres of trade, together with the natural features that 
sway the fates of men and nations, radiate thence ; and by a citizen of the 
United States the spot should be regarded as sacred ground. From it he 
can overlook the sources of the Yellowstone, the Wind Diver, and the Mis- 
souri, and of the Snake and Green Divers, principal tributaries the one of 
the Columbia, the other of the Colorado. These waters flow through every 
variety of climate, past the dwellings of savage hordes and civilised nations, 
through thousands of miles of unbroken solitude, and through the most 
populous haunts of mercantile mankind ; now shaded by the great pine-trees 
of the forest, again shadowed by tall factory chimneys; here clean and 
undefiled from the hand of Nature, there turbid and contaminated by contact 
with man ; and from Mount Washbourne I believe that the head- waters can 
be seen of mightier rivers — rivers passing through more populous cities, 
through the hunting-grounds of more wild tribes, through greater deserts, 
through countries more rankly fertile, through places more uncivilised and 
savage, by scenes stranger and more varied, than can be viewed from any 
other point on the surface of this earth. ” 
The engravings are numerous, but in most instances they lack the interest 
that would have arisen had they represented the country rather than the 
explorers themselves. Still they are not without cleverness both of design 
and execution. In some cases, too, the author’s style is coarse, and we 
had almost said ungentle manly. For instance, in describing the habits of 
a female Indian he observes: “For his helpmate is reserved a smaller but 
more vivacious species of game, in the pursuit and capture of which she 
must take great delight, to judge by the interest portrayed in this case on 
the countenance of the lady, as with unerring eye and unfaltering hand she 
through the thick tangles of her husband’s hair hotly pressed the bounding 
fugitive, or like the relentless blood-hound surely tracked to his lair the 
slow-crawling and unmentionable one.” However, the defects in the volume 
are small; and though the book can hardly be termed scientific, still it does 
contain some references to geology and chemistry, and it is an honest and 
clever account of the author’s experiences of men and things. 
