a beautiful prairie-one of the largest tracts of good land that is, indeed, to be met with in Oregon. Returning thence to Fort Vancouver, he started in the month of March by the Kattlepontal River and Cowlitz Farm, where he stopped till the 5th of April, to Nasquala, in Puget's Sound, whence he crossed over in an Indian canoe to Victoria.

The capital of Vancouver and the port of British Columbia was not at that time what it is in the present day; and although Mr. Paul Kane carried his explorations up the Sound to nigh Frazer's River, and especially made himself acquainted with the persons, as also with the habits and manners of the Indians dwelling on the frontier lands of Oregon and British Columbia, as well as in the valley of the latter great river, he does not add much to what was known before, while he omits at the same time a great deal that is now familiar to us. He, however, notices several resources belonging to these regions which it would be impolitic to pass over. He notices sturgeon, for example, weighing from four to six hundred-weight, as caught by the Indians in considerable numbers; clams, he says, are also in great plenty, and are preyed on by the crows, who seize them in their claws and fly up with them, to let them drop on the rocks, by which they are broken to pieces. Is this a blind instinct, or a reasoning process? There are also plenty of small oysters of a fine flavour. The Indians are, it appears, very fond of herring-roe, which they collect on cedar branches sunk in the water, squeezing it into small balls and then drying it. The only vegetables which the Indians use, besides the camas and wappatoos, are said to be the roots of fern roasted. There are few whales now caught on the coast, but the Indians are described as enthusiastic in the hunt, and prizing the blubber, which they cut into strips and eat with dried fish, highly. They also catch great numbers of wild duck, by means of nets placed across the narrow valleys, through which they fly in the evening. Some of the islands in Puget's Sound are described as being covered with thousands of seals, and at other places the whole surface of the water seemed to be alive with the gambols of a small silvery fish, dancing and glistening in the rays of the setting sun. This fish is about the size of a sardine, and is caught in immense numbers, being much prized on account of its delicacy and extraordinary fatness. When dried, it will burn from one end to the other with a clear, steady light, like a candle.

On the 1st of July, Mr. Paul Kane left Fort Vancouver, in company with the brigade of boats that had come down the river from various points with furs, and returned with their outfits for the winter. The men, who were allowed a regale, the first night of starting plied their oars with vigour, but still the delay of portages was ever in the way of rapid progress. It was the 12th before they reached Walla-Walla, said to be situated in a dry, sandy desert-the Indians living almost entirely upon salmon throughout the whole year. These, in the process of drying, are said to become filled with sand, to such an extent as to wear away the teeth of the Indians; and an Indian is seldom met with over forty years of age whose teeth are not worn quite to the gums.

Our traveller took here the interesting resolution of proceeding to Colville by the Grand Coulet, which, he says, from the appearance of the two extremities, seemed to have been a former bed of the Columbia

River; and to this effect he left the boats and started with a half-breed, called Donny, and two riding-horses. By thus leaving the river, however, he was destined to suffer severely from thirst. The first lake they came to was salt, and the second swarmed so with pelicans that their dung had made the water green and thick. The country, generally speaking, was a barren, sandy desert. There seems, indeed, to be much less available land in the valley of the Columbia than in that of Frazer's River, albeit the former is by far the most extensive. After some time they arrived at an immense gully or dried-up watercourse, with banks seven or eight hundred feet high, beyond which was a basaltic amphitheatre, having in its centre a luxuriant greensward, and a small lake of excellent water. Another long basaltic wall led the way to the Grand Coulet itself, a wonderful gully about one hundred and fifty miles long, and from one mile to a mile and a half wide, and walled in in many places with an unbroken length, twenty miles long, of perpendicular basalt, a thousand feet high. There can be no doubt of its having been the bed of the Columbia previous to some geological change of comparatively recent date, by which the river was made to flow at a depth of now some four or five hundred feet below it. The bottom of the valley was level, and covered with luxuriant grass, except where broken by immense rocks, which were once so many enormous rocky islands.

The next day (August 4th), Mr. Paul Kane followed up the course of the Grand Coulet, absorbed in admiration at its beauty and grandeur, assuming as it did a new aspect of increased wildness and magnificence at every turn. There was grass of the best quality for the horses, delicious springs gushing from the rocks at every mile or two, and campinggrounds, which almost tempted him to prolong his stay at the risk of starvation. It was not till the evening of the 15th that he emerged from the gorge of this stupendous ravine, and saw the mighty river flowing at least five hundred feet below him. "This river," says Mr. Paul Kane, "exceeds in grandeur any other perhaps in the world, not so much from its volume of water—although that is immense-as from the romantic wildness of its stupendous and ever-varying surrounding scenery, now towering into snow-capped mountains thousands of feet high, and now sinking in undulating terraces to the level of its pellucid waters."

On the 8th of August, Mr. Paul Kane arrived at Colville, after a journey which was attended with no small amount of difficulties, and he remained there till the 22nd of September, when he started for the Rocky Mountains. During his stay at Colville a sad event occurred at WallaWalla. The measles having broken out among the Indians and killed many, they attributed the evil to a Dr. Whitman, whom they in consequence savagely put to death, with his wife, family, and attendants. On the 10th of October the canoes reached Boat Encampment without any accident, and our traveller was detained there till the 31st, waiting for the brigade from the east. He was at length enabled to start, with four Indians and fifteen loaded horses, encamping the first night at the Grande Battue. The road the next day, through the Pointe des Bois, was about the worst, he says, he had ever travelled. Beyond this came the ascent of the Grande Côte, which was accomplished before sunset,

although the snow reached up to the horses' sides, and the party were enabled to encamp once more near the Committee's Punch-bowl, and at the great water-parting between the west and the east.

Progress hence was rapid, although the snow lay deep in parts. There was, first, the Grande Battue, and then the Grande Traverse, these Canadian voyageurs' names being singularly descriptive. On the 5th of November they reached the Athabasca River, which was much flooded, and Jasper's House on the 6th, and where, as on the previous occasion, our traveller got a feast on delicious mountain sheep. These animals abound in the neighbourhood. Mr. Kane says he counted as many as five large flocks grazing in different directions from the house at one time. They are considerably larger than domestic sheep; their horns are also very large, whence they are called "big-horn sheep," and their coat somewhat resembles in texture and colour the red deer, but a little darker.

From Jasper House the journey was continued in snow-shoes with dog sledges for the packs, and they reached Fort Assiniboine on the 29th of November, having travelled three hundred and fifty miles in fifteen days, amid difficulties, fatigues, and privations of all kinds, not to mention the "mal de racquet" produced by walking long distances in shoes which are from five to six feet in length! Four days' more travel, still in snowshoes, but this time with plenty of rabbits on the road, took them to Fort Edmonton, outside of which buffaloes ranged in thousands close to the fort; deer were to be obtained at an easy distance; rabbits ran about in all directions, and wolves and lynxes prowled after them all through the neighbouring woods. Seven of the most important and warlike tribes on the continent-the Crees, Assiniboines, Black Feet, Sur-cees, Grosventres, Paygans, and Blood Indians, also congregate at, and are in constant communication with, this fort.

Here Mr. Paul Kane spent his Christmas cheerfully enough, and after a trip to Rocky Mountain House in the month of April, he commenced the final descent of the Bow River, arriving at Carlton on the 4th of June, at Norway House on the 17th, and Sault St. Marie, whence he started the previous year on the 1st of October, thus bringing to a safe conclusion a long and adventurous journey through a country of which it is impossible to read his descriptions-albeit wanting in the minuteness of the naturalist and geographer-without feeling how full it is with promise to the future.

STEREOSCOPIC GLIMPSES.

BY W. CHARLES KENT.

IV. BYRON AT NEWSTEAD.

BENEATH the crumbling porch he stands,
Distraught with scorn, and grief, and love:
Just snatched up in his delicate hands
The athlete's padded glove!
His glorious features deathly pale,
He marks where, winding down the dale,
Round yonder scanty clump of trees,
Slow moves the dark funereal train-
What thrills those black plumes, here again
Brown ringlets fluttering in the breeze.
Old Gothic arch of mouldering stone,
Where myriad lichens, green and blue,
Faint microscopic tints have strown,
Of countless form and hue!
Fair from thine antique shadow now
Gleams forth that young heroic brow,
As though from hoary Delphos' fane
Responsive to the prayers of Truth,
Emerged the God of Song and Youth,
With aspect of divine disdain!

Disdain from haughty nostrils breathed,
From blue-grey eyes of heavenly fire,
From dimpling chin and proud lips wreathed,
For Cupid's archery dire:

That stern disdain for human woe,

Forbidding tender tears to flow:

Rebellious Pride, that Care and Pain,

Oft grappling with herculean grasp,

Flings powerless down each strangled asp,

Whose writhing shades yet haunt the brain.

And so with secret pangs supprest,
No grief-blurr on that radiant glance,

Broad swells that gladiator's breast,
His lithesome limbs advance.
Preparing for the mimic strife,
Fit symbol of his stormy life,

While loitering with suspended breath
Beneath that portal crossed by doom,
The porch of his ancestral home,

He sees-he hears-the March of Death.

Dull clangs the distant passing-bell,
While grinding wheel and trampling hoof
Trail faint and fainter towards that knell
Rung out from ivied roof.

'Twas she-not mother of his love,
But of all filial cares above

Each petty sign of home deceit-
From whose distorting womb was born
The sport of her unnatural scorn,
Yon golden god on earthly feet!

Strange memories of dead childhood throng
That void heart yearning o'er the past;
For thoughts less dark than sad belong
To strife that cannot last-

When, quenched with Life's inverted brand,
Run out with Time's swift-gliding sand,
Expires the wrath of angry years:
Alone before a lonely tomb

Remorseful love blends grief with gloom,
A sullen grief too harsh for tears.

One moment on the threshold there,

With clenched hands strung for sportive blows, No prescience his of after care,

Of glory, or of woes

He thinks not of his new-born fame
Presaging an eternal name

Upon Earth's grand poetic scroll,
But how all childhood's joys have flown,
How by his hearth he broods alone,

And tears unshed flood o'er his soul.

No visions of that soul foretel

The advent of its doom how near:
He lists but now-her passing-bell,
His own he may not hear:

His own-yet from yon belfry tower
How soon shall chime that fatal hour,

When, homeward from the Grecian strand,
Come closed in death those eyes of fire,
Unstrung for aye the living lyre,

And snapped the keen heroic brand.

Three lustres scarce shall glide away
Ere that brief, wayward course be run,
As though at brightest noon of day
Had set God's flaming sun.
A narrow span of tortured years,
A life each pities, none reveres,
Disdaining praise it yet doth win:
Without, in radiant verse, what seems
A paradise of glorious dreams-
A hell of darkest moods within!

Self-exile from familiar haunts,
From fair Italia onward hie,

To gain for Greece what England vaunts,
And hero blood can buy!

The freedom most by kings abhorred,
When warrior-bard, with lute and sword,

Leads on elate the patriot band;

And, rapt in life to alien shore,
There vindicate in death once more
The Liberty of Fatherland!