tions that had been entertained respecting them, it is not to them that we are indebted for our knowledge that Sir John Franklin did not take the Cape Walker route.

with which the book abounds are strikingly parties which were despatched from the ves superior to the average of such subsidiary sels. Though the performance of the steamcompositions. These illustrations, drawn ers far exceeded the most sanguine expectawith great care to give the author's character to the reader at a glance, are printed in a perfectly new style-in sepia-which gives them the effect of drawing. The humorous the pathetic, the graceful, and the grand are This circumstance is not, however, to be all represented in these very beautiful and set down as matter of blame to their comsuccessful sketches; and, while a perfect no- nianders. These had a specific duty to per tion is conveyed of the varied power of the form which rendered individual exertion or artist, it is difficult at times to escape the daring impossible. Their vessels were, in conviction that the pencil of Stothard him- fact, simply steam tugs-and their power self had been employed to adorn each vol- was spent in towing the heavy sailing ships ume as it issued from the press, with blank through the ice-encumbered seas. spaces left for the hand of genius to illumi like harnessing a spirited war-horse to a pate. This is especially the case with such cumbrous wagon:-unfettered, what might sketches as the Bacchanalian Group, which was drawn by Mr. Stothard himself on the wood, and has recently been well cut in by Thompson. The specimen is highly characteristic of Stothard's style and feellng-is fresh airy, and full of grace and freedom. Upon the whole, we have not opened a prettier volume these many years.-London Times.

THE LATE SLEDGE EXPEDITIONS.

From a volume which will be laid before Parliament in a few days-and which now lies before ourselves our readers, who have

been kept well acquainted with the whole narrative that describes from its beginning the long search after Sir John Franklin and his companions--may desire that we should lay before them some further details of those sledge performances which formed so prom inent a feature in the late Expedition-and will be continued as probably most efficient

agencies in what Low remains to be done.

This was

they not have done! A satisfactory solu tion to this question may be found in the following account of one of the ice-charges made by the Intrepid steamer when free:

The

"There was no time for thinking; action, and not consideration, was necessary. ice was closing around us, and the squadron still several miles in advance; regain it we must. Through or over this neck the Intre pid must go. Sawing was useless, a mere waste of time; there was no alternative but to give it the 'stern.' 'Go a-head full speed,' was the word of command; 'stem on' she goes, the concussion is terrific; the vessel trembles from head to taffrail. The stub. born element bends and cracks, but does not

break. 'Stop her! Turn astern!' let us try it again. Go a-head with all the speed you can give her;' the greater portion of the crew is now on the ice to assist in clearing away. She comes, she comes with additional force-stand clear-the ice breaks→ hurrah! A piece thirty feet square is adrift, other heavy masses spout from underneath the main floes, making a wonderful clearThe late Arctic searching Expeditions ance, grapnels over the bow, hook on the were, without exception, the most efficient pieces, take a turn on board-turn astern' as regards their equipment and the best or- stop her'-unhook the grapnels; this manganized that have ever left our shores. It is œuvre was repeated over and over again somewhat remarkable, however, that the ex- with similar success until the noble craft tensive exploratory results of those Expedi- seemed no longer a piece of mechanism, but tions should be due, not to the ships or their thing of life; some ferocious beast boundsteam tenders, but to the sledge travelinging on, and crushing the barrier that oppos

ed it. To the spectator the scene was novel ders of the Dead Sea, whose imposing aspect and interesting, the men-o'-war's men hur-attract the traveler, but when they are obrah'd and laughed at the sport, while hoary tained, are naught but bitterness. Does headed experience' - those veterans who envied renown possess the subtle treahad grown grey in Arctic service, stood gap sure? Do we enter fame's proud temple, ing with astonishment at the ice-destroyer' and inscribe our names amid “the deathly smashing a floe six feet thick as if it had great," where adulation pours in like a torbeen a sheet of glass. She now makes a rent, and the voice of applause resounds in desperate and final effort, the barrier is bro tones sweeter than the harp of Orpheus ?— ken, she is through, she is free, and the We may indeed feel a momentary gratificasilent shores of Melville Bay echo the as- tion, yet it cannot allay pain, ease the troubtounding cheers of a hundred seamen as she led conscience, illuminate the dark valley of dashes with lightningspeed towards her con- death, or guide to a happy immortality.— Bort the Assistance, For three days was the Would we find happiness pure and enduring, Intrepid adrift from the squadron, but dur- we must seek it in a holier sphere, a more ing that period she performed feats unparal-genial clime. In Heaven, it dwells without leled in the annals of Arctic navigation. No alloy. There no cloud darkens the sun of human perseverance, no degree of physical peace. No gloom obscures the brightness of energy, no known mechanical power, save bliss. Love and joy are there immortal; and there the sanctified soul shall expand in all the 'strong arm of steam,' could have enabled us to regain our position."-London the progressive periods of eternal duration. Paper.

Walled Lake, 1852.

L. S.

For the Miscellany.
HAPPINESS.

THE GREAT POLAR OCEAN.

However diversified our pursuits, happimess is the aim of all our actions, the focus At the last meeting of the London Geoin which are concentrated all desires. It is graphical Society, Lieut. Osborn, a member the theme of our morning reflections, our of one of the British Arctic expeditions, arnoon-day meditations, and our evening regued, at some length in favor of the supviews. From youth to old age, we pursue port of the existence of a great Polar Ocean. it with untiring zeal and unwearied perse-He said that in Wellington channel, he had verance. Yet, after the most indefatigable observed immense numbers of whales runtoils, we find inscribed on every thing earthing out from under the ice, a proof that ly, disappointment. Do we group ourselves they had been to water and come to water, with the votaries of pleasure, and enter the for every one knew they must have room Does to blow. He further said that there were alenchanted circles of amusement? mirth float on every breeze? Still, after we most constant flights of ducks and geese, have pursued happiness in all its apparent from the northward, another proof of water forms, we find at last an ignus-fatuus; bril-in that direction, since these birds found liant, indeed, but deceptive. We are bewildered by its dazzling brightness, as we follow it through the giddy rounds of folly and fashion, till it lauds us in the sea of satiety, or the gulf of disappointment.

their food only in such water. He added that it was his deliberate opinion, from observation made on the spot, that whales passed up Wellington channel into a north

ern sea.

In reference to the abundance of Does wealth--all-alluring wealth, contain animal life, in the latitude of this supposed the desired object? It may justly be com- Polar Sea, he remarked that while, on the pared to the apples which grow on the bor-southern side of Lancaster Sound, he never

saw game enough to keep his dog. Melville | though the interior of the great Sahara has Island, one hundred and fifty miles to the not yet been fully explored, enough is

northward, abounded in deer, and musk known of it to prove that it contains large oxen. It was thus clear, he continued, that tracts of mountains and hilly country, with animal life did not depend on latitude, but rocks and valleys, lakes, rivers, and springs. increased if any thing, after passing the There are also fertile spots, at wide distances seventieth degree. Moreover, while in from each other, covered with trees and Baffin's Bay the tide made for the south-shrubs, and beautiful vegetation. Some of ward, coming from the Atlantic, in Barrow's these spots are small, while others are of Straits it made for the northward, which could only be explained on the hypothesis of a sea in that direction. All this seems to us proof on proof of a great Polar Ocean.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.

large extent, and inhabited by independent tribes, and even whole kingdoms of people. A fertile tract of this kind is called an oasis; and, by looking at your map, you will perceive that there are many oases in the Sahara of Africa.

Of a similar character is the Great American Desert; but its surface is still more varied with what may be termed "geographi cal features." There are plains-some of them more than a hundred miles widewhere you can see nothing but white sand often drifting about on the wind, and here and there thrown into long ridges such as those made by a snow storm. There are other plains, equally large, where no sand appears, but brown bawen earth, utterly des

THERE is a great Desert in the interior of North America. It is almost as large as the famous Sahara of Africa. It is fifteen hundred miles long, and a thousand wide. Now if it were a regular shape-that is to say, a parallelogram-you could at once compute its area, by multiplying the length upon the breadth; and you would obtain one million and a half for the result-one million and a half of square miles. But its out-titute of vegetation. There are others, lines are as yet very imperfectly known; and altho' it is fully fifteen hundred miles long, and in some place a thousand in breadth, its surface extent is probably not over one million of square miles, or twenty-five times as big as all England! Do you not think that it has received a most appropriate name, when it is called the GREAT AMERICAN DE

SERT!

again, on which grows a stunted shrub, with leaves of a pale silvery color. In some places it grows so thickly, interlocking its twisted and knotty branches that a horseman can hardly ride among them. This shrub is the artemisia—a species of wild sage or wormwood-and the plains upon which it grows are called by the hunters who cross them the sage prairies. Other plains are Now, my friend, what do you understand met with that present a black aspect to the by a desert? I think I can guess. When traveler. These are covered with lava, that you read or hear of a desert, you think of a at some distant period of time has been vast level plain, covered with sand, and with- vomited forth from volanic mountains, and out trees, or grass, or any kind of vegeta- now lies frozen up, and broken into small tion. You think, also, of this sand being fragments like the stones upon a new-made blown about in thick yellow clouds, and no road. Still other plains present themselves water to be seen in any direction. This is in the American Desert. Some are white, your idea of a desert; is it not? Well, it is as if snow had fallen fresh upon them; and not altogether the correct one. It is very yet it is not snow, but salt! Yes, pure tus, that in almost every desert there are white salt-covering the ground six inches these sandy plains, yet are there other parts deep, and for fifty miles, in every direction! of its surface of a far different character, Others, again, have a similar appearance ;equally deserving the name of DESERT. Al- but instead of salt you find the substance Vol. 6, No. 6-17.

which covers them to be soda-a beautiful freshly painted. These stripes mark the effloresence of soda.

There are mountains, too—indeed. onehalf of the desert is very mountainous ;— and the great chain of the Rocky Mountains—of which you have no doubt heard runs sheer through it from north to south, and divides it into two nearly equal parts But there are other mountains besides these; mountains of every height, and sometimes in their shape and color presenting very striking and singular appearances. Some of them run for miles in horizontal ridges like the roofs of houses, and seeming so narrow at their tops that one might sit astride on them. Others again of a conical form,stand out in the chain apart from the rest, and look like teacups turned upon their mouths in the middle of a table. Then there are

sharp peaks that shoot upward like needles, and others shaped like the dome of some great cathedral-like the dome of St. Paul's, These mountains are of many colors. Some are dark, or dark green, or blue when seen from a distance. They are of this color when covered by forests of pine or cedar, both of which trees are found in great plenty among the mountains of the Desert.

There are many mountains where no trees are seen, nor any signs of vegetation along their sides. Huge naked rocks of granite appear piled upon each other, or jutting out over dark and frowning chasms. There are peaks perfectly white, because they are covered with a thick mantle of snow. These can always be seen from the greatest distance, as the snow lying upon them all the year without melting proves them to be of vast elevation above the level of the sea.There are other peaks almost as white, and yet it is not by snow. They are of a milky hue, and stunted cedar trees may be seen clinging in seams and crevices along their sides. These are mountains of pure lime stone, or the white quartz rock. There is mountains again, upon which there are neither tree nor leaf to be seen; but in their stead, the most vivid colors of red and green, and yellow and white, running in stripes along their sides, as though they had been

strata of different colored rocks, of which the mountains are composed. And there

are still other mountains in the Great American Desert, to startle the traveler with their strange appearance. They are those that glitter with mica selenite. These, when seen from a distance flashing under the sun, look as though they were mountains of silver and gold.

The rivers, too; strange rivers are they.Some run over broad shallow beds of bright sand. Large rivers-hundreds of yards in Follow them width, with sparkling waters. down to their course. What do you find?Instead of growing larger like the rivers of your own land, they become less and less, until at length their waters sink into the sands, and you see nothing but the dry channel for miles upon miles. Go still farther, and the water again appears, and onward increases in volume, until thousands of miles from the sea, large ships can float upon their bosom. Such are the Arkansas and the Platte.

There are other rivers that run between bleak and rocky banks-banks a thousand feet high, whose bald, naked “bluffs” frovn at each other across the deep chasm, in the bottom of which roars the troubled water. Often these banks extend for hundreds of miles, so steep at all points that one cannot go down to the bed of their stream; and often the traveler has perished with thirst, while the 10ar of their water was sounding

in his ears.

Snake.

Such are the Colorado and the

Still, others go sweeping through the broad plains, tearing up the clay with their mighty floods, and year after year changing their channels, until they are sometimes a hundred miles from their ancient beds.— Here they are found gurgling for many leagues under ground-under vast rafts formed by the trees which they have borne downward in their currents. There you find them winding by a thousand loops, like the sinuosities of a great serpent, rolling sluggishly along, with waters red and turbid as

though they were rivers of blood. Such are sands of others of all sizes-from fifty miles the Brazos and the Red.

Strange rivers are they that struggle thro' the mountains, and valleys, and plateau lands of the Great American Desert.

in breadth, to the little spot of a few acres, formed by the fertilizing waters of some gurgling springs. Many of these are without inhabitants. In others again, dwell Not less strange are its lakes. Some lie tribes of Indians, some of them numerous in the deep recesses of hills that dip down and powerful, possessing horses and cattle; so steeply that you cannot reach their shores; while others are found in small groups o while the mountains around them are so three or four families each, subsisting miserbleak and naked, that not even a bird ever ably upon roots, seeds, grass, reptiles and crosses their silent waters. Other lakes are insects. In addition to the two great settloseen in the broad, barren plains; and yet a ments we have mentioned, and the Indians, few years after, the traveler finds them not there is another class of men scattered over they have dried up or disappeared. Some are this region. These are white men--hunters fresh, with waters like crystal; others brack-and trappers. They subsist by trapping the ish and muddy; while many of them are beaver, and hunting the buffalo and other more salt than the ocean itself. animals. Their life is one continued scene In this Desert there are springs-springs of peril, both from the wild beasts which of soda and sulphur, and salt waters; and they encounter in their lonely excursions others so hot that they boil up as in a great and the hostile Indians with whom they caldron, and you cannot dip your finger into come in contact. These men procure the them without scalding it. furs of the beaver, the otter, the muskrat, There are vast caves piercing the sides of the marten, the emine, the lynx, the fox, the mountains, and deep chasms opening in- and the skins of many other animals. This to the plains-some of them so deep that is their business, and by this they live.you might fancy mountains had been scoop- There are forts or trading posts, established ed out to form them. They are called "bar-by adventurous merchants, at long distances rancas." There are precipices rising straight from each other; and at these forts the trapup from the plains, thousands of feet in pers exchange their furs for the necessary imheight, and steep as a wall; and through plements of their perilous calling. the mountains themselves you may see great clefts cut by the rivers, as though they had been tunneled and their tops had fallen in, They are called "canons." All these singular formations mark the wild region of the

Great American Desert.

It has its denizens. There are oases in it; some of them large, and settled by civilized

men.

One of these is the country of New Mexico, containing many towns, and 30,000 inhabitants. These are the Spanish and mixed Indian races. Another oasis in this country around the Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Here is also a settlement, established in 1846. Its people are Americans and Englishmen. They are the Mormons; and, though they dwell hundreds of miles from the sea, they will in time become a large and powe ful nation of themselves.

There is another class of men who trav

erse the Great Desert. For many years there has been a commerce carried on between the oasis of New Mexico and the United States. This commerce employs a considerable amount of capital, and a great number of men, principally Americans.— The goods are transported in large wagonsdrawn by mules or oxen; and a train of these vagons is called a "caravan." Other caravans- -Spanish ones-cross the western wing of the Desert, from Sonora to Califor nia, and thence to New Mexico. Thus, you see, the American Desert has its caravans as well as the Sahara.

These caravans travel for hundreds of miles through countries in which there are no inhabitants, except the scattered and rovBesides these great oases, there are thou- ing bands of Indians; and there are many