Colorado : a Simonet Trip. By Bayard Taylor. (Low, Son,
and Marston).—After travelling over all the rest of the globe, Mr. Bayard Taylor is doing justice to his native country. His present sketches of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains will no doubt be more appeciated by Americans than by Europeans. The distance from us is too groat, and we shrink from crossing the Atlantic in order to expose ourselves to still severer hardships after we cross the Missouri. Americans, how- ever, will be interested to hear that Colorado will soon be recognized as their Switzerland, and that one particular view of the Rocky Mountains is superior to any picture of the Alps in variety and harmony of form, in effect against the dark blue sky, in breadth and grandeur. Still, there is mu& to be done before Switzerland can be supplanted, and Mr. Bayard Taylor's journey is not described in the most glowing colours. We cannot enter into the details which impressed us the most, but the general effect is that there was an utter absence of comfort. When once Mr. Bayard Taylor begins to cross the Berthoud Pass, an element of danger is added, and whenever a stream has to be forded this element is sure to reappear. However, Mr. Bayard Taylor bears himself through- out with courage and good-humour, and we have conclusive evidence that he was not drowned, or dashed to pieces, or eaten by mosquitoes. Amongst other things, he tells us that a "square meal" consists of black coffee, strips of pork fat, and half baked biscuits, and that even such meals are not always to be had. He inveighs against the custom of calling each place of more than three houses a city, and thinks that there is some hope of steady and healthy growth for a town which is not expected to become "the greatest town in the West, Sir." In Kansas, he says, people wash more frequently than elsewhere, because it is more needed, and he noticed one man who carried a toothbrush in his pocket. Among the linguistic peculiarities of Colorado there is a curious phrase for shouting ; a man is said to "let a yell out of him." Mr. Bayard Taylor has long been known to us as a keen observer and a pleasant writer ; these two characteristics are well combined in his latest work.
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