started, drew back, and gazed at me with a countenance in which amazement and grief contended for the mastery. The latter presently prevailed, and exclaiming, "Oh William, this from you!" the sluices of her heart seemed to open all at once; and with a look and air of utter desolation and self-abandonment, she threw her face on the arm of the sofa and dissolved in a flood of tears. I was inexpressibly shocked and amazed. I tried to soothe her, but in vain. She wept, and wept on, speechless from sobbing, until exhausted, she sank down on the sofa, and I saw by her white lip and glazing eye that she had fainted. I screamed for help, and she was carried to her room. I saw her no more that evening. The next morning my sister Jane handed me this note.

"Of old times; of the scenes and sports of infancy and early youth; of blended thoughts; of mingled feelings; of united hearts. She led the way herself. I could but listen to the soft tones of her voice, as she poured forth her feelings in language which showed how much her heart delighted in such recollections. 'Dear, dear William,' she said in conclusion, my own and only brother, let it be always thus.' You may "What I would have said yesterday, William, could believe that my heart responded to the wish. But is it I have found utterance, I say now. My astonishment not strange that while she was thus uttering words that and grief at the ungenerous conduct of one I had deemed condemned me to despair, I was supremely happy? It faultless; at receiving insult from my only protector, was no ordinary pleasure; it was a delirium of bliss. and wrong from one whose whole life had been one act I felt as she seemed to feel at the moment, as if all my of kindness, need not be expressed in words. But I heart had ever coveted was mine. I responded to her owe it to myself and all concerned, to insist that the sentiments in a like tone of chastened and refined tensubject of yesterday's conversation shall never be re-derness; our hearts overflowed in the contemplation sumed. I will try to forget it, and deport myself towards you as if that conversation had never taken place. Help me, dear William, to forget that you have ever for a moment thought of being any thing but a brother A. N." "There is surely some strange misunderstanding here," said I. "Can I see her?"

to

"Not at this moment, certainly, for she keeps her bed to day. But I will know whether she thinks it right to afford you another interview, when she can sit up."

"To afford me another interview!" said I. "This is indeed strange. Doubtful whether it be right that I should have an interview with one with whom my whole life has been spent as with a sister!"

"A sister, William!" said Jane. "You forget that your strange words, yesterday, have put an end to that relation. But I will let her know of your wish." She left me, and soon returned with this pencilled paper.

and actual fruition of this new scheme of happiness; we revelled in all the luxury of perfect sympathy and unbounded confidence; we seemed to have found a source of enjoyment too delicate to pall, too abounding ever to fail; our spirits rose as we quaffed the nectared flow of thoughts, and sentiments, and feelings, all congenial; and we returned to the house with faces glowing with affection and happiness. Is it not strange? How can it be that this, the paramount desire of my heart, by which I know that I love her, should be reciprocated by her without a corresponding sentiment?" "If your metaphysics can find an answer to that question," said Balcombe, "I will consent that you shall believe that she does not love you. As it is, I have no doubt that her union with any other man would be more fatal to her than to you. But I see nothing unaccountable in what you tell me. Love, disguise it as you will, is the food that satisfies the heart of love; and that her conduct was the fruit of one of those strong delusions, with which love alone can cheat us, I have no doubt. I know something, William, of the joys of mutual passion; but never have I experienced, nor can I conceive, a scene of more thrilling rapture than you have described. Such things cannot last, indeed; but then what can? Illusions are dispelled, but realities perish."

"To what purpose, William, offer explanation of what could not be misunderstood? To what purpose resume a subject on which, after all that is passed, I cannot listen with propriety, nor you speak without offence? No, William, that subject must never be named between us again. You are soon to go on a distant journey; and I tell you distinctly that nothing. but a solemn promise not to renew it, shall induce me The misunderstanding is finally rectified, through the to leave my room till you are gone. Don't force me to agency of Balcombe, and the cousins are married. Bethis, dear William. It would grieve me to have my sides this love affair, there are no passages of an episoearliest and dearest friend part from me without re-dical nature-unless we choose to speak of Balcombe's ceiving a farewell, which may be the last."

"Saw you ever any thing like that?" said I, as Balcombe sat gazing at the paper with a musing and abstracted countenance. Dear William!' 'Her earliest and dearest friend!' Are not those words there? Was ever any thing more affectionate, more tender? It had been just so all the time. And when she left her room (for of course I gave the promise) it was still the same. She was pale and sad, and I saw that she felt for me. In all things else her manner was the same as in the days of our most cordial intimacy. She had kept her room some days, and I was dreading the embarrassment of our first meeting. But she dispelled it all. She met me, indeed, with a slight tremor; I saw her lips quiver, but her eye was steady, and dwelt upon my face with an expression of holy and confiding affection. She walked directly up to me, put her arms about my neck, and kissed me as she had always done on like occasions. Her manner was graver and more tender; that was all the difference. She rested her cheek, too, a moment on my bosom, and murmured, "Thank you, dear William, thank you for your promise."" "Was no one present?" said Balcombe.

account of a skirmish with Indians-a duel scene between Balcombe and Howard, Ann's rejected lover-an anecdote relating to Colonel Boon, the backwoodsman-and a vividly drawn picture of a camp-meeting. This latter we will be pardoned for giving entire.

In the bosom of a vast forest, a piece of ground nearly an acre in extent, and in form almost a square, was enclosed on three sides by a sort of shed, sleping outward, and boarded up on the outside. This was divided into something like stalls, separated from each other, and closed in front by counterpanes, blankets and sheets, disposed as curtains. Some of these were thrown up, and within we saw coarse tables, stools, and preparations for eating and sleeping, such as piles of straw, beds tied up in bundles with bed-clothes, knives and forks, plates, porringers and platters, loaves of bread, skimmed-milk cheeses, jirked meat, hams, tongues, and cold fowls. Children and dogs were nestling in the straw, and mothers sat on stools, nursing their infants. The whole centre of the area was occupied by hewn logs, placed in extended parallel lines, with the ends "Oh yes! Jane accompanied her into the room; but resting on other transverse logs, so as to form rows of

rude benches. On these were seated a promiscuous | might say must be worth hearing, and taken with thankmultitude, of every age, sex, condition, and hue, crowd-fulness. At length, however, he seemed to warm by ed densely towards the front, and gradually thinning slow degrees. His voice became louder, his utterance in the rear, where some seats were nearly vacant, or more rapid, his gestures more carnest; and an occapartially occupied by lounging youngsters, chatting, sional groan from the crowd bespoke their awaking smoking, and giggling, and displaying, both in dress sympathy. Presently he began to catch his breath, to and manner, a disposition to ape the foppery and im-rant and rave and foam at the mouth, and to give all pertinence of fashion. Of this, indeed, they saw so little in these remote wilds, that the imitation was of course awkward, but none the less unequivocal,

At the open end of the area was the stand, as it is called. This was formed by raising a pen of logs to a convenient height, over which a platform of loose planks was laid, surmounted by a shelter to keep off the sun and rain. The platform was large enough for a dozen chairs, occupied by as many preachers. It was surrounded by a strong enclosure, about twenty yards square, over the whole of which a deep bed of straw was laid. This, as I understood, was intended to save the bones of those who might be unable to keep their feet, under the eloquence of the preacher, the workings of conscience, the conviction of sin, or the delirious raptures of new-born hope.

appear

the conventional tokens of enthusiasm and eloquence. The signals were duly answered by the groans, the sobs, the cries, the shouts, the yells of the multitude. Some sprang to their feet and clapped their hands; some grasped the hands of others with smiles and tears of sympathy and mutual gratulation; some fell down and were hoisted over into the pen, where they lay tossing among the straw, and uttering the most appalling shrieks. The discourse was abruptly closed; and several of the preachers came down into the enclosure, and, kneeling among the prostrate penitents, poured forth prayer after prayer, and shouted hymn after hymn, in which the whole audience joined in one wild burst of discord broken down into harmony by the very clashing of jarring sounds. The sun went down on this tumultuous scene.

Of the dramatis persona we will spenk in brief. Elizabeth, the shrinking and matronly wife of Balcombe, rising suddenly into the heroine in the hour of her husband's peril, (we have not mentioned her in our outline) as a painting, is admirable-as a portrait, appears to want individuality. She is an exquisite specimen of her class, but her class is somewhat hacknied. Of Jane, Napier's sister, (neither have we yet alluded to her) it is sufficient now to say that she is true to herself. Upon attentively considering the character of Mary Scott, who holds the most prominent female part in the drama, it will be perceived that, although deeply interesting, it cannot be regarded as in any degree original, and that she owes her influence upon the mind of the reader mainly to the incidents with which she is enveloped. There are some most effective touches, however, in her delineation. Of Ann we have already spoken. She is our favorite, and we doubt not the favorite of the author. Her nature is barely sketched-but the sketch betrays in the artist a creative vigor of no ordinary kind. Upon the whole, no American novelist has succeeded, we think, in female character, even nearly so well as the writer of George Balcombe.

The preachers were, for the most part, men whose dress and air bespoke a low origin and narrow circumstances. Conspicuous among them was a stout old man, whose gray hair and compressed lips, ensconced between a long nose and hooked chin, would hardly have escaped observation under any circumstances. He alone was on his feet, and moved about the platform with noiseless step, speaking in whispers to one or another of the preachers. At length he took his seat, and the officiating minister rose. He was a tall, slender youth, whose stripling figure lost nothing of its ance of immaturity by being dressed in clothes which he had obviously outgrown. The bony length of naked wrist and ankle set off to the best advantage his broad hands and splay feet, the heels of which were turned out, as he moved forward to his place in front of the platform. His nearly beardless face was embrowned by the sun, his features were diminutive, and only distinguished by a full round forehead, and a hazel eye, clear, black, and imaginative. He gave out a hymn, which was sung, and then offered up a prayer, which, though apparently meant to pass for extemporaneous, was obviously spoken from memory, and made up, for the most part, of certain forms of speech, taken from all the prayers and all the creeds that have ever been published, and arranged to suit the taste of the speaker, and the peculiar doctrines of his sect. Then came another hymn, and then the sermon. It was a doctrinal essay, a good deal after the manner of a trial sermon, in which not a little acuteness was displayed. But the voice was untrained, the language ungrammatical, the Napier himself is, as usual with most professed hestyle awkward, and the pronunciation barbarous. The roes, a mere non-entity. James is sufficiently natural. thing went off heavily, but left on my mind a very Major Swann, although only done in outline, gives a favorable impression of the latent powers of the speaker. fine idea of a decayed Virginia gentleman. Charles, a But he was not (to use the slang of the theatre) star." He was heard with decorous, but drowsy atten- negro, old Amy's son, is drawn roughly, but to the life. tion, and took his seat without having excited a shout Balcombe, frank, ardent, philosophical, chivalrous, saor a groan. I could not help suspecting that the poor gacious-and, above all, glorying in the exercise of his yo ng fellow, being put forward as a foil for some po- sagacity-is a conception which might possibly have palar declaimer, had had his discourse pruned of all been entertained, but certainly could not have been exuberance of language or fancy, and reduced to a mere hortus siccus of theological doctrine. A closing prayer executed, by a mind many degrees dissimilar from that by an old minister, in which the effort of the "young of Balcombe himself, as depicted. Of Keizer, a chabrother" was complimented with a patronizing air, was racter evidently much dwelt upon, and greatly labored followed by another hymn, and the temporary disper-out by the author, we have but one observation to sion of the assembly. Now come the turn of the old minister I first des- make. It will strike every reader, not at first, but upon cribed. The audience had been wearied with a dis-reflection, that George Balcombe, in John Keizer's cirCurse not at all to their taste. They were now re- cumstances, would have been precisely John Keizer. freshed and enger for some stimulus to help digestion. At first I thought they would be disappointed; for he teked for a long time in a dull prosing way, about him self and the church; and was listened to with an air which led me to conclude that he had established a sort of understanding with his hearers, that whatever he

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We find the same traits modified throughout-yet the worldly difference forms a distinction sufficiently marked for the purposes of the novelist. Lastly, Montague, with his low cunning, his arch-hypocrisy, his malignancy, his quibbling superstition, his moral courage and VOL. III.-8

usual effect, which is fear. But when, following Mr. Balcombe to the finale of his argument, we say that the effect of the frequent "experience of fear" upon the mind is to engender courage, we are merely uttering the silly paradox that we fear less in proportion as we fear more.

physical pusillanimity, is a character to be met with no more "fear," than age is wisdom, than a turnip-seed every day, and to be recognized at a glance. Nothing is a turnip, or than any other cause is its own usual was ever more minutely, more forcibly, or more tho-effect. In proportion, we grant, to the frequency of roughly painted. He is not original of course; nor our "experience of danger," is our callousness to its must we forget that were he so, he would, necessarily, be untrue, in some measure, to nature. But we mean to say that the merit here is solely that of observation and fidelity. Original characters, so called, can only be critically praised as such, either when presenting qualities known in real life, but never before depicted, (a combination nearly impossible) or when presenting qualities (moral, or physical, or both) which, although unknown, or even known to be hypothetical, are so skilfully adapted to the circumstances which surround them, that our sense of fitness is not offended, and we find ourselves seeking a reason why those things might not have been, which we are still satisfied are not. The latter species of originality appertains to the loftier regions of the Ideal.

Very few objections can be urged to the style of George Balcombe. The general manner is that of a scholar and gentleman in the best sense of both terms bold, vigorous, and rich-abrupt rather than diffuseand not over scrupulous in the use of energetic vulgarisms. With the mere English, some occasional and trivial faults may be found. Perhaps it would have been better to avoid such pure technicalities as "anastomozing." Of faulty construction, we might, without trouble, pick out a few instances. For example. "Returning to dinner, a note was handed to the old gentleman, which he read and gave to Balcombe." Here it is the note which returns to dinner. "Upon his return to dinner," or something of that kind, would have rendered the sentence less equivocal. Again-“My situation is any thing but pleasant, and so impatient of it am I that I trust I do not break faith with my client when I hint to you that Mr. Balcombe will have more need of the aid of counsel than he is aware of." The meaning here is, "I am so impatient of my situation that I even warn you of Balcombe's great danger, and advise you to seek counsel for him. In so doing I trust I am not breaking faith with my client." The original sentence implies, however, that the consequence of the speaker's impatience was the speaker's trusting that he would not break faith-whereas the advice was the consequence. The trust cannot in any manner be embodied with the sentence, and must be placed in a separate one, as we have placed it.

And again. "Value depends on demand and supply. So say the political economists, and I suppose they are right in all things but one. When truth and honor abound, they are most prized. They depreciate as they become rare." Now truth and honor form no exceptions to the rule of economy, that value depends upon demand and supply. The simple meaning of this rule is, that when the demand for a commodity is great, and the supply small, the value of the commodity is heightened, and the converse. Apply this to truth and honor. Let them be in demand-in esteem-and let the supply be small-that is, let there be few men true and honest; then truth and honor, as cotton and tobacco, rise in value—and, vice-versa, they fall. Mr. Balcombe's error is based upon the pre-supposition, (although this pre-supposition does not appear upon the face of his statement) that all who esteem truth and honor, are necessarily true and honest. To sustain the parallel, then, he should be prepared to admit the absurdity that the demanders of cotton and tobacco are necessarily stocked with cotton and tobacco. Let, however, the full extent of the question be seen. Truth and honor, it is asserted, are most prized where they most abound. They would be prized most of all then were no contrary qualities existing. But it is clear that were all men true and honest, then truth and bonor, beyond their intrinsic, would hold no higher value, than would wine in a Paradise where all the rivers were Johannisberger, and all the duck-ponds Vin de Margaux.

We have thus spoken at length of George Balcombe,. because we are induced to regard it, upon the whole, as the best American novel. There have been few books of its peculiar kind, we think, written in any country, much its superior. Its interest is intense from beginning to end. Talent of a lofty order is evinced in every page of it. Its most distinguishing features are invention, vigor, almost audacity, of thought-great variety of what the German critics term intrigue, and exceeding ingenuity and finish in the adaptation of its component parts. Nothing is wanting to a complete whole, and nothing is out of place, or out of time. Without being chargeable in the least degree with imitation, the novel bears a strong family resemblance to the Caleb Williams of Godwin. Thinking thus highly of George Balcombe, we still do not wish to be understood as ranking it with the more brilliant fictions of some of the living novelists of Great Britain.

For the occasional philosophy of Balcombe himself, we must not, of course, hold the author responsible. It might now and then be more exact. For example. "I am not sure that we do not purchase all our good qualities by the exercise of their opposites. How else does experience of danger make men brave? If they were not scared at first, then they were brave at first. If they were scared, then the effect of fear upon the mind has been to engender courage." As much, per- In regard to the authorship of the book, some lithaps, as the effect of truth is to engender error, or of tle conversation has occurred, and the matter is still black paint to render a canvass white. All our good considered a secret. But why so?—or rather, how so? qualities purchased by the exercise of their opposites! The mind of the chief personage of the story, is the Generalize this dogma, and we have, at once, virtue transcript of a mind familiar to us—an unintentional derivable from vice. In the particular instance here transcript, let us grant--but still one not to be mistaken. urged that courage is engendered by fear-the quibble George Balcombe thinks, speaks, and acts, as no perlies in shifting the question from "danger" to "fear," son, we are convinced, but Judge Beverly Tucker, ever and using the two ideas as identical. But "danger” is I precisely thought, spoke, or acted before.

ASTORIA.

Astoria: Or, Anecdotes of an Enterprize beyond the Rocky Mountains. By Washington Irving. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard.

inefficiently conducted and supported; and the design was never afterwards attempted until by the individual means and energy of Mr. Astor.

John Jacob Astor was born in Waldorf, a German village, near Heidelberg, on the banks of the Rhine. Mr. Irving's acquaintance at Montreal, many years While yet a youth, he foresaw that he would arrive at since, with some of the principal partners of the great great wealth, and, leaving home, took his way, alone, North-West Fur Company, was the means of interest- to London, where he found himself at the close of the ing him deeply in the varied concerns of trappers, American Revolution. An elder brother being in the hunters, and Indians, and in all the adventurous details United States, he followed him there. In January, connected with the commerce in peltries. Not long 1784, he arrived in Hampton Roads, with some little after his return from his late tour to the prairies, he merchandize suited to the American market. On the held a conversation with his friend, Mr. John Jacob passage he had become acquainted with a countryman Astor, of New York, in relation to an enterprize set on of his, a furrier, from whom he derived much informafoot, and conducted by that gentleman, about the year tion in regard to furs, and the manner of conducting 1812, an enterprize having for its object a participa- the trade. Subsequently he accompanied this gentletion, on the most extensive scale, in the fur trade car-man to New York, and, by his advice, invested the ried on with the Indians in all the western and north-proceeds of his merchandize in peltries. With these western regions of North America. Finding Mr. I. he sailed to London, and having disposed of his advenfully alive to the exciting interest of this subject, Mr. | ture advantageously, he returned the same year (1784) Astor was induced to express a regret that the true na- to New York, with a view of settling in the United ture and extent of the enterprize, together with its States, and prosecuting the business thus commenced. great national character and importance, had never Mr. Astor's beginnings in this way were necessarily been generally comprehended; and a wish that Mr. small-but his perseverance was indomitable, his integIrving would undertake to give an account of it. To rity unimpeachable, and his economy of the most rigid this he consented. All the papers relative to the mat-kind. "To these,” says Mr. Irving, “were added an ter were submitted to his inspection; and the volumes now before us (two well-sized octavos) are the result. The work has been accomplished in a masterly manner-the modesty of the title affording no indication of the fulness, comprehensiveness, and beauty, with which a long and entangled series of detail, collected, necessarily, from a mass of vague and imperfect data, has been wrought into completeness and unity.

aspiring spirit, that always looked upward; a genius bold, fertile, and expansive; a sagacity quick to grasp and convert every circumstance to its advantage, and a singular and never wavering confidence of signal success." These opinions are more than re-echoed by the whole crowd of Mr. Astor's numerous acquaintances and friends, and are most strongly insisted upon by those who have the pleasure of knowing him best. Supposing our readers acquainted with the main In the United States, the fur trade was not yet suffifeatures of the original fur trade in America, we shall ciently organized to form a regular line of business. not follow Mr. Irving in his vivid account of the primi- Mr. A. made annual visits to Montreal for the purpose tive French Canadian Merchant, his jovial establish- of buying peltries; and, as no direct trade was perments and dependants-of the licensed traders, mis-mitted from Canada to any country but England, he sionaries, voyageurs, and coureurs des bois-of the shipped them, when bought, immediately to London. British Canadian Fur Merchant-of the rise of the This difficulty being removed, however, by the treaty great Company of the "North-West," its constitution of 1795, he made a contract for furs with the Northand internal trade; its parliamentary hall and ban-West Company, and imported them from Montreal quetting room; its boatings, its huntings, its wassail- into the United States-thence shipping a portion to ings, and other magnificent feudal doings in the wilder- different parts of Europe, as well as to the principal ness. It was the British Mackinaw Company, we market in China. presume,-(a Company established in rivalry of the “North-West,”) the scene of whose main operations first aroused the attention of our government. Its chief factory was established at Michilimackinac, and sent forth its perogues, by Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin, to the Mississippi, and thence to all its tributary streams-in this way hoping to monopolize the trade with all the Indian tribes on the southern and western waters of our own territory, as the "NorthWest" had monopolized it along the waters of the North. Of course we now began to view with a jealous eye, and to make exertions for counteracting, the influence hourly acquired over our own aborigines by these immense combinations of foreigners. In 1796, the United States sent out agents to establish rival trading houses on the frontier, and thus, by supplying the wants of the Indians, to link their interests with ours, and to divert the trade, if possible, into national channels. The enterprize failed-being, we suppose,

By the treaty just spoken of, the British possessions on our side of the Lakes were given up, and an opening made for the American fur-trader on the confines of Canada, and within the territories of the United States. Here, Mr. Astor, about the year 1807, adventured largely on his own account; his increased capital now placing him among the chief of American merchants. The influence of the Mackinaw Company, however, proved too much for him, and he was induced to consider the means of entering into successful competition. He was aware of the wish of the Government to concentrate the fur-trade within its boundaries in the hands of its own citizens; and he now offered, if national aid or protection should be afforded, “to turn the whole of the trade into American channels." He was invited to unfold his plans, and they were warmly approved, but, we believe, little more. The countenance of the Government was nevertheless of much importance, and, in 1809, he procured, from the legis

lature of New York, a charter, incorporating a Company, under the name of the "American Fur Company,” with a capital of one million of dollars, and the privilege of increasing it to two. He himself constituted the Company, and furnished the capital. The board of directors was merely nominal, and the whole business was conducted with his own resources, and according to his own will.

cable to establish a line of communication across the continent, and first inspired Mr. Astor with the design of "grasping with his individual hands this great enterprize, which for years had been dubiously yet desirously contemplated by powerful associations and maternal governments."

His scheme was gradually matured. Its main features were as follows. A line of trading posts was to be established along the Missouri and Columbia, to the mouth of the latter, where was to be founded the chief mart. On all the tributary streams throughout this immense route were to be situated inferior posts trading directly with the Indians for their peltries. All these posts would draw upon the mart at the Columbia for their supplies of goods, and would send thither the furs collected. At this latter place also, were to be built and fitted out coasting vessels, for the purpose of trading along the North-west coast, returning with the proceeds of their voyages to the same general rendezvous. In this manner the whole Indian trade, both of the coast and the interior, would converge to one point. To this point, in continuation of his plan, Mr. Astor proposed to despatch, every year, a ship with the necessary supplies. She would receive the peltries collected, carry them to Canton, there invest the proceeds in merchandize, and return to New York.

We here pass over Mr. Irving's lucid, although brief account of the fur-trade in the Pacific, of Russian and American enterprize on the North-western coast, and of the discovery by Captain Gray, in 1792, of the mouth of the river Columbia. He proceeds to speak of Cap. tain Jonathan Carver, of the British provincial army. In 1763, shortly after the acquisition of the Canadas by Great Britain, this gentleman projected a journey across the continent, between the forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of northern latitude, to the shores of the Pacific. His objects were "to ascertain the breadth of the continent at its broadest part, and to determine on some place on the shores of the Pacific, where Government might establish a post to facilitate the discovery of a north-west passage, or a communication between Hudson's Bay and the Pacific Ocean." He failed twice in individual attempts to accomplish this journey. In 1774, Richard Whitworth, a member of Parliament, came into this scheme of Captain Carver's. These two gentlemen determined to take with them fifty or sixty men, artificers and mariners, to proceed up one of the branches of the Missouri, find the source of the Oregon, (the Columbia) and sail down the river to its mouth. Here a fort was to be erected, and the vessels built necessary to carry into execution their purposed discoveries by sea. The British Government sanction-vessels, having nothing beyond their individual interests

ed the plan, and every thing was ready for the undertaking, when the American Revolution prevented it.

Another point was also to be attended to. In coasting to the North-west, the ship would be brought into contact with the Russian Fur Company's establishments in that quarter; and as a rivalry might ensue, it was politic to conciliate the good will of that body. It depended chiefly for its supplies upon transient trading vessels from the United States. The owners of these

to consult, made no scruple of furnishing the natives with fire arms, and were thus productive of much injury. To this effect the Russian government had remonstrated with the United States, urging to have the traffic in arms prohibited-but, no municipal law being infringed, our government could not interfere. Still it was anxious not to offend Russia, and applied to Mr. Astor for information as to the means of remedying the evil, knowing him to be well versed in all the concerns of the trade in question. This application suggested to him the idea of paying a regular visit to the Russian settlements with his annual ship. Thus, being kept

The expedition of Sir Alexander Mackenzie is well known. In 1793, he crossed the continent, and reached the Pacific Ocean in latitude 52° 20′ 48". In latitude 52° 30′ he partially descended a river flowing to the South, and which he erroneously supposed to be the Columbia. Some years afterwards he published an account of his journey, and suggested the policy of opening an intercourse between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and forming regular establishments "through the interior and at both extremes, as well as along the coasts and islands." Thus, he thought, the entire com-regularly in supplies, they would be independent of the mand of the fur trade of North America might be casual traders, who would consequently be excluded obtained from latitude 48° north to the pole, excepting from the coast. This whole scheme Mr. Astor comthat portion held by the Russians. As to the "Ameri- municated to President Jefferson, soliciting the countecan adventurers" along the coast, he spoke of them as nance of Government. The cabinet "joined in warm entitled to but little consideration. "They would in-approbation of the plan, and held out assurance of every stantly disappear," he said, "before a well regulated protection that could, consistently with general policy, trade." Owing to the jealousy existing between the be afforded.” Hudson's Bay and North-west Company, this idea of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's was never carried into execution.

In speaking of the motives which actuated Mr. Astor in an enterprize so extensive, Mr. Irving, we are willing to believe, has done that high-minded gentleman The successful attempt of Messieurs Lewis and Clarke no more than the simplest species of justice. "He was was accomplished, it will be remembered, in 1804. already," says our author, "wealthy beyond the ordiTheir course was that proposed by Captain Carver in nary desires of man, but he now aspired to that hono1774. They passed up the Missouri to its head waters, rable fame which is awarded to men of similar scope of crossed the Rocky Mountains, discovered the source mind, who by their great commercial enterprizes have of the Columbia, and followed that river down to its enriched nations, peopled wildernesses, and extended mouth. Here they spent the winter, and retraced their the bounds of empire. He considered his projected essteps in the spring. Their reports declared it practi- | tablishment at the mouth of the Columbia, as the em