Handbook to the new Gold-fields | Page 3

between the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, there is certainly not more than one hundred miles of road, which, as we learn from the government map, are mostly practicable for loaded waggons. Hence it is evident that the new gold district will be easily accessible both for English merchandise from England, and for the provision market of Vancouver's Island.
In explanation and refutation of the prejudice which almost universally exists against the climate and soil of North America generally, but especially of the divisions included in the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories, we cannot do better than quote the following just remarks from the Reverend Mr Nicolay's treatise on Oregon. He says:--
"A predisposition towards one opinion, or bias to one side of an argument, too often warps both the judgment and the understanding; and one man in consequence sees fertile plains where another could see only arid wastes on which even the lizards appear starving, while the other looks forward to their being covered with countless flocks and herds at no very distant period of time. Both Cook and Vancouver, having previously made up their minds against the existence of a river near parallel 46 degrees, passed the Columbia without perceiving it, and the former even declared most decidedly that the strait seen by Juan de Fuca had its origin only in the fertility of the pilot's brain. As they were discovered to be in error, so it is not impossible that others not less positive in their assertions may be convicted of the same carelessness of examination as those navigators, so remarkable in all other respects for their accuracy, and so indefatigable and minute in their researches, that little has been left to their successors but to check their work.
"With respect, however, to the attributed barrenness of great part of the territory, so peremptorily insisted on by many, there is some excuse for the earlier travellers from whom that opinion is derived. Ignorant of the best routes, and frequently famishing in the immediate neighbourhood of plenty, they most justly reflect back to others the impressions they received; but in so doing, though they speak truth, they give very erroneous ideas of the country they think themselves to be describing most accurately, and of this very pregnant examples are found in the travels of Lewis and Clarke, and the party who came overland to Astoria: both struck the head waters of the Saptin, both continued its course to its junction with the main stream, both suffered--the latter party intensely; but had they, by the fertile bottoms of Bear and Rosseaux Rivers, found access to the valley between the Cascade and Blue Mountains--or, keeping still further west, crossed the former range into that of the Wallamette, they would have found game, been banished from their pages, and the Oregon would have appeared in her holiday attire--
"A nymph of healthiest hue--"
and the depth of ravines and the elevation of rocks and precipices would have been changed into the unerring evidences of fertility and luxuriance of vegetation afforded by the dense forests and gigantic pine-trees of the coast district. We can scarce estimate the transition of feeling and change which would have been produced in their estimate of the country, if they could have been suddenly transported from their meagre horse-steak--cut from an animal so jaded with travel as to be in all probability only saved from death by starvation and fatigue, by being put to death to save over-wearied men from famine, and this cooked at a fire of bois de vache, with only the shelter of an overhanging rock--to the fat venison and savoury wildfowl of the woods and lakes, broiled on the glowing hardwood embers under the comfortable roof of sheltering bark, or the leafy shade of the monarch of the forest; while the cheerful whinny of their well-fed beasts would have given joyful token that nature in her bounty had been forgetful of nothing which her dependent children could desire.
"While such and so great is the power of circumstances to vary the impressions made upon the senses, some hesitation must be used in their reception until fully confirmed, or they must be limited by other accounts, as unbiassed judgment may direct, especially as the temperament of individuals may serve to heighten the colouring, whether sombre or sunny, in which circumstances may have depicted the landscape. It is not every traveller who can, with Mackenzie, expatiate on the beauty of scenery while in fear of treachery from fickle and bloody savages; or like Fremont, though dripping from the recent flood, and uncertain of the means of existence even for the day, his arms, clothes, provisions, instruments, deep in the whirlpools of the foaming Platte, stop to gaze with admiration on the `fantastic ruins' Nature has `piled' among her mountain fastnesses, while from his