At Fort Vancouver, Mr Townsend left the trading part of the expedition, and procured a passage on board an American vessel, which carried him to the Sandwich Islands, and there he passed the winter months. He afterwards returned to the Columbia and its environs among the Rocky Mountains, to pursue his scientific researches; and his purpose being at length fulfilled, he returned by sea, touching at Valparaiso on the South American coast, and reached home after an absence of three years.

It is gratifying to learn that the researches of the two naturalists were eminently successful. Besides procuring specimens of many rare animals, Mr Townsend discovered, in the course of his expedition, about fifty-four new species, sixteen of which were quadrupeds, and twenty-eight birds. Mr Nuttall also made many important additions to botanical science.

This name, at the date of the preceding narrative, embraced that region of the Pacific slopes of the Rocky Mountains lying between the parallels of 42° and 54° N. latitude. The greater part of it is occupied by the basin of the Columbia or Oregon River, and hence the name. It is a disputed point whether the Oregon coast was first discovered by Spanish or by English mariners; and in 1790, the two governments agreed by convention to relinquish the right of exclusive possession. In 1792, a Captain Gray from Boston entered the estuary of the Columbia, naming the river after his ship; and a few months later, Lieutenant Broughton of the British navy actually sailed up the river for 100 miles, and formally took possession of the country in the name of his sovereign George III. The report given by Captain Gray of a mighty river flowing into the Pacific, led to the United States government sending an exploring expedition, under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, who crossed the Rocky Mountains and explored the valley of the Columbia in 1804-5. In this last year, the North-west Company-an association of Canadian fur-traders, started in rivalry of the Hudson's Bay Company, and afterwards (1821) amalgamated with it—after pushing their posts to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, crossed that range, and established stations on the head-waters of the Columbia and the Fraser rivers. They were speedily followed by the trappers and traders of United States fur-companies; and in 1811, John Jacob Astor, the chief member of one of those companies, established a trading-post at the mouth of the Columbia, and called it Astoria. This forms the title of a work by Washington Irving, in which he gives an account of a visit he made to this region, and describes the wild exciting life of the fur-traders. This station was sold to the British North-west Company in 1814, to prevent its being taken while the United States were at war with England. Shortly after

this, the United States set up a claim to the exclusive possession of the country, founded on priority of discovery, which claim they sought to strengthen by a treaty with Spain, in which Spain ceded to the States her rights of possession in Oregon. Great Britain resisted the claim, and the matter was for a time staved off by a temporary treaty of joint occupation. At last the United States government gave notice of the termination of this agreement, and the dispute threatened to become serious, when the question was compromised by the Ashburton Treaty, as it is called, concluded in 1846, which gave to the United States the entire country up to the parallel of 49°, and the part to the north of that line to Great Britain. The Hudson's Bay Company were allowed to retain their establishments in the part of Oregon assigned to the United States; but they have now retired, we believe, from all but two.

The British portion of the region, called British Columbia, after being held for some time by the Hudson's Bay Company, was, in 1858, established as a crown colony. The large island of Vancouver, which is separated from the mainland only by a narrow channel, was also made into a colony; but in 1866, it was united under one government with British Columbia. The United States share of the country was governed for some time as a 'territory ;' but in 1859, the southern part of it, as far as the river Columbia, in 46° N. lat., was erected into a state; and the northern part, between the parallels of 46° and 49°, forms the Territory of Washington.

The chief physical feature of the Oregon country is the Columbia, the only great river on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. It is formed of two main branches: the northern branch, which bears the name of the Columbia throughout, rises in British Columbia, in lat. 50° N., long. 116° W., and flows tortuously, but in the main in a south-west direction, to lat. 46°5 N., long. nearly 119° W., where it joins the other branch, called the Lewis or Snake River, which rises in lat. 43° N., long. 109° W., not far from the head-waters of the Missouri, and has a mainly north-west course of 900 miles. The united waters flow south to the parallel of 46°, whence the course is almost due west to the Pacific. The length from the mouth to the source of either branch is estimated at 1000 to 1200 miles. Although by far the greater part of the course of the Columbia is within the United States, the navigation is, by treaty, equally open to the British and the Americans. It is not, however, of much importance in that respect. The entrance is made difficult by a surf-beaten bar; and although vessels of 200 or 300 tons can ascend as far as the tideabout 130 miles-the navigation is there arrested by a series of falls and rapids; and above this no kind of vessel can navigate more than twenty or thirty miles together. A range of mountains, called the Cascade range, running from north to south parallel to the coast, divides the state of Oregon and the Washington Territory into two unequal parts. This range is a continuation of the Sierra Nevada

of California, and rises in some of its summits to 10,000-12,000 feet. The country between the mountains and the coast, which is on an average 100 miles wide, has a good soil, with a luxuriant vegetation, the uplands being covered with magnificent timber; the climate is mild, moist, and equable. East of the Cascade range the soil is mostly arid, the vegetation scanty, and extremes of heat and cold are experienced. The mineral wealth is said to be considerable; but the finds of gold cannot compete with those of California and British Columbia.

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The gold of this colony forms as yet its chief attraction. It was first discovered in 1856 on the upper course of the Columbia; but the richest diggings which rival those of California are on the Fraser River and its tributaries. In 1861, the yield of gold was estimated at upwards of one and a half millions sterling. The Fraser River flows from north to south through the middle of the colony. The climate is, on the whole, cold and exceedingly variable. Winter lasts from September till May, the temperature being often below zero; even in summer the thermometer has been found to range from 31° to 85°, and again from 85° to 40°, within twenty-four hours. The rivers of the colony, as well as the Columbia and its tributaries, abound in salmon, of which there are said to be a dozen species. The population of the Oregon country is yet a mere handful. 1863, British Columbia numbered 63,671, of whom 50,000 were natives. Washington Territory and Oregon state may have by this time a united population of 80,000 or 100,000 whites, with perhaps half as many natives. But the region, although thus sparsely occupied, is capable of becoming the seat of a great state.

32

In

NE morning in the month of November, the Count Stanilaus de Lemberg, who had been lying awake half the night, began to observe the outline of his window faintly glimmering with the new day. His bedstead being unencumbered with curtains, he was enabled to watch the progress of the dawn, as it gradually revealed to him the objects in his room. It reminded him once more that his sleepingapartment was not furnished in that sumptuous style which a nobleman's bed-chamber is expected to display. His eye passed slowly round the walls, meeting nothing in the circuit of its wanderings but a guitar with one string broken and hanging down, a row of wooden pipes, fantastically carved, and a slouched felt hat. His floor was No. 139.

I

paved with octagon-shaped tiles, and was without an inch of carpet = his sole furniture, besides the bed, consisted of a round table, a chair, a washing-stand, a trunk, and a board upon tressels, serving for a work-bench, near the window. Finding nothing very cheerful in the contemplation of these things, Count Stanilaus de Lemberg leaped out of bed, and began to dress himself.

It was very cold, and the morning was slightly misty. The water in his jug was frozen, and his breath had congealed in feathery lines upon the window-pane. His teeth chattered, and his clothes were still damp with walking in the rain on the night before. He opened the door of the German stove, which stood out in the room, with a long tin pipe communicating with the chimney by a hole in the wind-board. The porter's wife has omitted to lay my fire ready for lighting,' thought he; but going to the closet to fetch some fagots, he discovered that the woman was not to blame. His stock of wood was exhausted, and no doubt she had refrained, from motives of delicacy, from reminding him of that fact. Yes, yes-of course,' he muttered to himself, she knows I must be aware of it, and expects me to speak first.'

Of course Count Stanilaus de Lemberg rang for her immediately, and handed her a purse, with instructions to replenish his store of fuel, as a nobleman might be expected to do. No: he merely closed the door of his stove again, and sat himself down upon the edge of his bed to reflect.

He had a great mind to go out for awhile. From his lodging in that abode of decayed gentility, the Quartier St-Germain, to the Luxembourg, was but five minutes' walk; thence to the Pont des Arts, ten minutes; and then he might cross the river, and make a long circuit by the quays; and so home again. He decided upon every street that he would pass through, settling the route beforehand, as in the programme of a royal journey. The exercise,' he argued, 'will warm me, and I can work here for an hour or two afterwards without feeling cold again.' The excellence of the idea was obvious; but he did not go.

Underneath his window, in the square courtyard of the old dilapidated mansion in which he occupied a single room on the fourth floor, he could hear the porter's son singing some ditty in an unintelligible provincial dialect, and chopping wood for some of the lodgers. The Polish nobleman was tempted to forget his high birth-of which, indeed, there was very little to remind him-and to go down stairs, and offer to help him in his work. He thought of Peter the Great, and the anecdotes of his humility; and though he had little reverence for the memory of that monarch, he felt that his example would serve as a warrant for the act he contemplated. What could warm one better than half an hour's hard manual labour? lustily the lad sang! He did not trouble himself with these sickly scruples. His health was good, and he could earn a living; what

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