CORNWALLIS'S NEW EL DORADO. * HAVING sung his song of "Yarra

Yarra," and said his say on more prosaic life in "Howard Plunket," Mr. Kinahan Cornwallis has turned to a new trade, and succeeded better, we are happy to find, in gold-seeking than in writing. What he did in California beyond shooting a grisly bear in the very nick of time and taking observations, we do not very clearly perceive ; but, as we read his chronology, a month or less in British Columbia made a man of him, " richer than all his tribe." In " a bright and blooming morning in early June" he embarked at San Francisco on board a steamer appropriately named Cortes, and in six days arrived at Esquimanit, Victoria, the city of Vancouver's Island. With a Ctesarlike activity, he embarked the same day on another steamer for the highest navigable point of Frazer River' which turned out to possess another appropriate name, Fort Hope; and there, what did he not realize "Gold glittered amongst the sands on the beach; I stooped down and gathered a few grains, and finding the bait too tempting to resist, I set manfully to work, turning over the sand with a geo- logical shovel I had brought with me from San Francisco. I was but an amateur, and had entered on the Frazer River journey more for the sake

of seing a young nation spring into life than anything else. * * * "As the Yankees would say, I was green at the business ; yet, in spite of my greenness and geological shovel, I realized, to use another of their ex- pressions, in the space of three hours, no less than fifteen dollars [three pounds] and sixty cents' worth of particles."

Next day he "gave four dollars for a pan," to serve as a sub- stitute for a rocker, and by nightfall had "realized pretty con- siderable,' which means more than two ounces of clean gold," amounting at El Dorado prices to between six and seven pounds. This was pretty well for a novice ; but the genuine gold-digger is never satisfied—" think nothing gained, he cries, while aught remains." Persuasions of comrades seconded natural inclination, and Kinahan Cornwallis, leaving two thousand a year behind him, ascended the river and did better.

"We joined the rest of our party, and found that each man, during the six hours we had been working, had realized from three to five ounces, or in other words, from forty-eight to eighty dollars ; the market value of gold being sixteen dollars the ounce."

Even this did not satisfy the " auri sacra fames." Excel- sior, though not in the sense of the writer of Yarra Yarra's brother poet, was still the cry, and higher they went.

"We found gold everywhere; and my only surprise was, that a region so palpably auriferous should have remained so long inproclaimed and hidden from the gaze of civilization. I found a very choice quartz ' speci- men,' six ounces in weight, half jutting out of the sand on the river's bank, which contained at least four ounces of the precious metal,—in fact, the larger half of the piece was solid gold, and could have been broken off from the quartz to which it was attached ; this was a sure sign to us that large masses of gold must lie somewhere higher up the river than we had yet proceeded, most probably in the recesses, and at the foot of the moun- tains themselves, and that the gold found on the banks, and which is no doubt equally abundant in the bed of the river, was merely the offscouring and broken fragments of the great gold region lying further inland. During this day's work seven nuggets,' varying from about half an ounce to five

i ounces n weight, were picked up, while the average yield of dust was no less than four ounces each man, equal to about sixty-four dollars (121. 168.) besides the nuggets. This was glorious ; but still the Yankees were any- thing but satisfied."

They moved, and luck still attended them. Our whilom lsé-

rateur records, "I, myself, with the assistance of my geological shovel, turned up sixteen small nuggets, some of them mixed with quartz, worth about two hundred and fifty dollars, and this with an amount of labour which could only be called an amuse- ment." Fifty pounds a day is not amiss but bards are proverb- ially impulsive and changeable. Mr. amiss, got tired of picking up gold; he sighed for other fields of observation, and descended the river to "breathe the air of more populous dis- tricts." The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, could yet direct a glance towards things of earth. When he returned to 'Victoria/ a land fever was raging similar to that of Melbourne a few years ago, and to be followed, no doubt, by a similar ruinous collapse: Mr. Cornwallis, however, struck into what was going on, elbow0. his way among the crowd of applicants at the land-office, got six allotments (being as many as the regulations allowed to one per-. son,) at a hundred dollars per lot, and made a better thing °I them than even of gold-finding. • The New El Dorado. or British Columbia. By Kinahan Cornwallis, An.. .tbel of Yarn. Yarra," he. With a Map and Illustration by the Author. Pablwar. by Newby. Now the real estate panic [mania] was at a high pitch, and I was just .„ impatient to get to Europe as the majority of the people were to get to • tie diggings, for I had a certain defined speculative object in view, which anxious to realize. I therefore resolved instanter' to put my three fral wt—lots into market and sell, and sell them I did within three hours ; one, mmer allotment, for five thousand eight hundred dollars, the other two, apil -flitting to another party, a speculator, for eight thousand dollars, who, puiti• them into the market at seven thousand dollars a lot immediately. after-

ds The other three not being yet located, I could not have sold save' war

et a great disadvantage. I therefore decided, and no doubt wisely, to

hold them over till after my return from Europe, en route for which I now intended proceeding by the Republic [steamer]."

The personal narrative in connexion with British Columbia- only occupies about one half the book, and would fill a much smaller s_pace if the author's wildly copious fancy, exuberant ill/Web digressions after the manner of Fitzgerald in the " Re- jected Addresses," and reflections upon all things, were thrown off so as to leave only real facts and information. The other part of the book is of a very miscellaneous description. There are re- miniscences of the author's personal adventures or observations in various places, especially sketches of California ; there are ac- counts of Canada, and the "territory" lying between the Western boundaries of that colony and the Rocky Mountains, including the Red River settlement, together with a description of the country which certainly seems to have proved to Kinahan a "new El Dorado." "Yet of all these regions (if we rightly read him,) he knows no more actually than the reader can learn if he chooses to set about it : certainly not much even of British Columbia, for his practical knowledge of that country was limited to the banks of the Frazer, between two and three hundred miles from the sea, and the embryo city of Victoria ; and that only in "the leafy month of June." Nevertheless he proceeds to describe and pane- gyrize the region throughout its extent and in all its seasons ; and in a more promising style than those who know it better than he can do. Take a sample of the sobriety of his representations. "From Frazer's River down to Peru the rivers all bear down treasures of a natural wealth perfectly inestimable ; thus demonstrating the vast re- sources, collateral and direct, of that land where Fortune stands beckoning, and lavishes her bounteous gifts upon all who come. There is a strong and growing demand for all kinds of labour at almost fabulous rates of remune- ration. There are the finest openings for trade speculations that ever ex- isted. Credit, of course, as in all new countries, is, and will continue to be ainthdant, dna dispensing with the necessity for capital; all that is re- quired being the wide-awake faculty,—a stout heart and a strong arm. Hen who have been groping in the hazy squalor of poverty for years in this country, and might remain so for ever, may at once make a plunge into the arena of wealth and all its attendant glory, by embarking for the golden shores of our dazzling El Dorado. "There are 600,OSO square miles of the richest and most splendid country in the world, even looking at it in an agricultural point of view only, spread out before him, when he stands on the auriferous region of which we speak. The salubrity of the climate sustains health and prolongs life, as is universally testified by those who have resided there, and who have displayed and borne out their good opinion of it by making it their final home—this is especially applicable to the retired officers of the Hud- son's Bay Company."

For any practical purpose this we fear, is about as trustworthy as an auctioneer's advertisement. Taken under chosen circumstances it may not be false ; but taken altogether it is very far from true. We hope for his own sake that the riches of Mr. Cornwallis may not turn out "fairy gold." We fear that if many should be tempted by the statements and recommendations that pervade his book to emigrate to the new El Dorado, the majority- would find themselves the dupes of an excited imagination and a flowery style. if the golden accounts of Mr. Kinahan's experience are literally true we must remember that he only landed at some half dozen spots in his navigation of the Frazer, and that no point is better established in regard to surface deposits, than their rapid ex- haustion; especially when ransacked by such thousands of practised seekers, as Mr. Cornwallis describes as pouring in from California. Digging is very hard and exhausting work, not only requiring a strong constitution but practice in labour. The old Australian digger rightly said to William Howitt, "before a man leaves home he had better take a few days spell at well-digging, and if he does not like it, he had better not come out here. Luck too has something to do with success. But neither strength, cr the habit of muscular labour or luck is a sufficient qualification ; there are moral (or immoral) requisites also. A man must have a reck- less, daring, unscrupulous character, with a turn for the " promp- tua iii mann" ; he must be ready to cast aside the habits and even the ideas of civilized life, to take hunger, thirst, and exposure as they come, and to rough it not only physically, but intellectually and morally. Here is one of our author's comrades. " The five hundred-dollar man [the man had gained that sum—a hundred founds, in the day] was a hard, gaunt, stringy, dried-up looking Kentuck- !an, with a gutta-percha-coloured face, sunk into which, on either side of lin nose, twinkled two all alive and piercing grey eyes. His hair was long Fid light, and crisped up with the dry heat of the weather, so much so that it gave me the idea of extreme fragility and brittleness. He carried a coPle of revolvers, and a bowie knife, with the point of which he took the f'PPortunity of picking his teeth immediately after supper, following which gave us a long yarn about an old 'claim' of his at Ilangtown, which pelded sixteen hundred dollars the first day, and about an Indian whom shot in the white of the eye' day afterwards for stealth his blanket. II his crime, next g

e seemed to glory in his crime, and was on the whole, as bru-

Wized specimen of humanity, and the digger, California and the world bad ever presented to my individual inspection. However, his dollars were as good as any one else's, and that is the grand criterion in a new gold cowry.

As for the colonization which Mr. Cornwallis hints at in the Page quoted, the labour of agriculture, though more certain in its returns, is almost as laborious and quite as distasteful to any who are not trained to work. That the climate is healthy and some of fileand Premising we believe ; but we equally believe that the

representations of Mr. Cornwallis are greatly exaggerated ; and that an indiscriminate rush of people to British Columbia, would end in the misery if not the destruction of the majority. The subject of the book gives it an importance, which its au- thorship would scarcely command. Moreover, it appears with a sort of official sanction. In a flaming dedication it is inscribed BY PERMISSION

to the Secretary- of the Colonies. Surely this is condescending a shade too far ? "What is all very well for Sir Edward Lytton Bul- wer Lytton, the individual, is scarcely in accordance with a Se- cretary of State. No man, indeed, is directly responsible for par- ticular portions of a book of which he accepts the dedication. Still a patron ought to make himself acquainted with the general scope and nature of the work, unless he is well acquainted with the character of the author. A bishop should see that a book is orthodox. The President of the College of Physicians should not accept a dedication from a quack. We have seen that Mr. Kina- han Cornwallis left for speculative purposes a place that was cer- tainly to him an El Dorado, seeing that he must have made there some twenty thousand dollars in a few weeks. What the particu- lar spec he speaks of is we do not clearly understand, though we read of several schemes which would be benefited by the counte- nance of a Colonial Minister. One project, (and the most feasible, though only available for practised travellers,) is an improved di- rect line of communication to British Columbia across the conti- nent of America ; another is a grand speculation of extensive lines of steamers, and a third contemplates "submarine cables" to communicate "with the cities at the antipodes," besides the per- vading recommendations to people to rush to the "New El Do- rado." The sensible qualities of Mr. Kinahan Cornwallis are very well known to all who have opened his books. Indeed it is not necessary to go further than the title-page of his present volume to get an inkling of them. Here is the poetical address which he dedicates to the country he has made so much of.

"To the clime of Columbia, Britain's new born,

Where the rays of the sun gladly usher the morn,

And the landscape deck out with a smile ;

'Where the hearts of the countless beat hopefully high, And gold doth the moments beguile ; Where the frown of the mountains, the blue of the sky, Contrast in their beauty with forest and plain ;

'Where the green perfumed prairie rolls in the breeze, And mankind ever struggle for gain ;

Where the sight of the ore even fails to appease

Man's inordinate yearning for gold,—

Still making each eagerly struggle the more For the treasure ungatheed—untold. To that clime go, ye people, ye sons of the west, 'Tis a land of exuberant plenty and joy ; Go, ye children of cities, by fortune opprest, Where gold may be gathered which knows no alloy ; Far and wide doth it lie on that beautiful shore ; May it gladden and laurel the pathway of time Left the wanderer to traverse who reaps from its mine.

'Tis the bauble of earth ;—'tis the gift of the clime, Of millions the spoil,—It is mine—It is thine."