THE END OF THE TRAIL.•
AT the end of Mr. Powell's book there is a map which shows the long stretch of coast country from New Mexico up to British Columbia. This is " the end of the trail," the last limit of the human migration which began with the crossing of the Caspians and ceased with the crossing of the Rockies. Here is the only remaining frontier-land of our known world ; here, in spite of railroads and commercial development and the
incessant march of American civilization, is true pioneer work waiting to be done. Here, Mr. Powell assures us, we may even find lingering the conventional romance of the Wild West; here, in California and Arizona at all events, is land which has been singularly blessed and enriched by a favouring Providence.
The country under consideration, even if it does not possess so many of the qualities of Eden as is claimed by the author's optimism, is peculiarly interesting on two accounts. It has been moulded, and is being influenced, by an amazing variety of races of men : Indians, Mexicans, Americans have played their part in its ruling ; Chinese labour and cosmopolitan tourists are among its economic questions. It is a country, therefore, of change and of pleasant paradox :—
"As the canon widens, the traveller catches fleeting glimpses of Chinamen washing for gold on the river bars ; of bearded, booted lumberjacks guiding with their spike-shod poles the course of mile-long log rafts ; of Siwash Indians, standing with poised salmon-spears on the rocks abovo the stream, like statues cast in bronze. Then the outposts of civilization begin to appear in the form of hillsides which have been cleared and set out to fruit-trees, of Japanese truck-gardens, every foot of which is tended by the little yellow men with almost pathetic care, of sawmills, and salmon canneries ; and so through a region where neat hamlets alternate with stretches of primeval forest, until in the distance, looming above the smoke pall, the sky-scrapers of Vancouver appear."
Moreover, it is a country stirred by the consciousness of urgent progress, thrilled with the heat of the struggle of a frontier- land, where the choice must be made swiftly between crops and herds, where men have begun and have not yet achieved. Of these true pioneers, some
"have saved and scrimped for years that they might be able to buy a ticket from the Middle West, or from the English shires, or from the Rhine banks to the beckoning, primeval, promiseful land. Others, taking their families and their household belongings with them, have trekked overland by wagon, just as their grand- fathers did before them for the taking of the West, trudging in the dust beside the weary horses, cooking over eamp-ilres in the forest or on the open prairie, sleeping, rolled in their blankets, under the stars. Some there are who have come overland from the Yukon, on snow-shoes, maybap ; their pitifully meagre possessions on their back, living on the food which they killed, their only sign-posts the endless line of wire-draped poles."
Mr. Powell has excellent qualifications for the writing of such a book as this. His wanderings have been too far- reaching to allow him ever to be satisfied with a merely superficial view of the affairs of a country, intimate enough to deliver him from the danger of " Baedekerism." He seems
to feel an equal interest in every aspect of his subject: he is capable of genuine enthusiasm, yet measured in the giving of his praise. But the breadth of his work has bewildered him, and he has failed to realize to the full the immensity of his
undertaking. The book is planned to follow from south to north the route taken by the writer in his car ; the journey began at El Paso and ended at Prince Rupert. This scheme involves the description of the archaeology, history, scenery, and economics of each State separately and in succession. Now it is exceedingly difficult to treat, in one light volume, of all the attributes of half a continent, without giving rise to some confusion in the mind of the reader; the difficulty becomes an impossibility when it is complicated by the reiteration which is inseparable from the geographical arrange- ment adopted by Mr. Powell. We cannot but wish that he had limited his range and dwelt longer at each point, and had used his familiar, sometimes jocular, style on a subject demanding less of the austerity and restraint which are not natural to him. Still, the book as a whole is as pleasant as is always the conversation of a travelled gentleman ; and it is illustrated with a number of admir- able photographs.
• The End of tho Trail: tho Far West from New Mexico to ltritioh Columbia, By T. Alexander Powell, F.R.O.S. With 48 Full-page Illustrations and a Map, London : George Allen and Unwin, [Pia. O. not.]
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