THE LITERARY SPECTATOR.
LIEUTENANT BRAND, R.N., has given an account of his South American gallops in a single octavo*. He starts as the rival of Captain Head : we know not which " has it," the Engineer or the Naval officer : each has the credit of having crossed the Conti- nent helter-skelter, at the pace of jockies at Newmarket. Captain Head had the start in one respect—he got to print first. A race across the Pampas has now therefore less of novelty than it had. The Lieutenant has, however, his claims to notoriety ; as may be seen by the first sentence of his Conclusion. " Thus have I taken my readers four sea voyages, two journies across the continent of South America, one through the Banda Oriental, remained seven weeks at Lima, three in Chile, one at Mendoza, eight at Buenos Ayres, one at Monte Video, and one at Rio de Janeiro, travelled upwards of twenty thousand miles by sea and land, and brought them back to England within twelve months from the time of my starting." This averages upwards of fifty miles a day for three hundred and sixty-five days. The Lieutenant does not let us into the nature of his business, neither does he take the trouble to ac- count for his speed ; except, indeed, in his return across the Andes, when he raced between ninety and a hundred and twenty miles per day (a distance of about eight hundred miles) in order to catch the packet—just as a man runs down Lombard-street, greatly distressed in wind, to overtake the mail. We must say, 1hr a person who goes at this rate, the Lieutenant is a respectable and intelligent character. He goes too fast to see or to write much : nevertheless, lie is a pleasant travelling companion ; and he has not spent eighteen years " buffetting the wide world's stage," as he calls it, for nothing. He has been a great traveller, or rather, as they say of horses, he is a great goer. He has visited the " sickly shores of Madagascar" ; he has "burnt " in the deserts of .Namaqua Land, (in; Southern Africa,) and " frozen " on the shores of Nova Scotia : he may add now, that he has slid on his back down twelve hundred yards of snow over the preci- pices of the Andes ; consoled himself, after riding a hundred and fifty miles in the day across the plains of the Pampas, with " hot punch out of his old tin pot" ; and learned how to bleed himself, wear flannel, and physick his travelling companions. The reasons he assigns for galloping so fast are curious and sailor-like : first, lie says, " there is nothing to impede your straight-forward pro- gress" ; next, " there is a peculiar pleasure and buoyancy of spirits in riding over a dreary waste with nothing to attract your atten- tion " ; again, while your horse is in a full gallop, a fine opportunity is afforded for castlebuilding. (The Lieutenant was castlebuilding we opine, when he was thrown off upon some stones and sprained his hip, as he entered the post of Porte Zuelo.) The post-house rises, he observes, in the horizon of the desolate plain, like a strange sail seen from a ship at sea : but is that a reason for riding at the rate of fifteen knots an hour ? The simple truth is, that the horse is willing to go, and the rider has no inducement to stop ; and thus the mystery of these rapid journies is out. With respect to Mr. BRAND'S route, we had not much to learn from a mere traveller: it is but justice, however, to say, that that little we did not know he has told us ; for instance, whether the crossing of the Andes by the main pass of Uspallata was actually practicable during the season when it is said to be closed—i. e. during the winter there, or summer here. He actually crossed these magnificent mountains at this very time, and during a most inclement season. It is evidently a service of extreme danger; probably as great as a close sea-fight in a frigate for five-and-twenty minutes. Mr. BRAND not only traversed the pass at this dangerous time, but he re-crossed the mountains on the first return of spring, when the snow had indeed melted, but before the torrents had settled in their channels. We must say, that we are grateful to him for his sketches in the Andes, and for some solid information he has brought home. Not so for his sidewind strictures on other travellers : if he has errors to correct and exaggerations to reduce, why does he not do it in the downright manner of an upright man-of-war's-man, instead of hinting about this certain traveller, and that certain traveller, and quoting sentences from books which he never names, in order to find fault with them ? It is a false tenderness towards the author he considers he has reason to blame, and a great injustice to writers who have written on the same subject, and whom he does not name. We were suspicious for some time that a part of his insinuations applied against Miers's book on Chile : now, as we held this writer's book in esteem, it was unpleasant to us to conceive that his authority was called in question by a competent witness, but whose testimony was given in such a way that we had no means of examining it. But let this pass. Lieutenant BRAND is a man who should be of our Traveller's Club ; and we doubt not that much entertainment and much instruction might be elicited from him : we should not mind spending an evening with him even amidst the snow of the Andes, over his " old tin of hot punch."
Mr. BRAND has an eye for forms: his plate of the descent down the Cuesta de Concual on the snow, gives a living idea of this terrific inclined plane. In spite, however, of these beautiful horrors, we prefer his account of the happy journey in the spring. This, for instance, is a point of view a painter might take.
" On arriving half-way up, and coming to a small flat, which serves as a resting-place, we perceived a troop of mules descending, which detained
* Journal of a Voyage to Peru 5 a Passage across the Cordillera of the Andes, in the Winter of 1827. performed on Foot in the Snow; and a Journey across the Pampas. By Lieutenant Charles JIrand, R,tt. Colburn, London, 1828. us some time, as we were obliged to wait until they had passed us. The snow still lay in deep ruts, and we were surrounded by high snow-capped mountains in all directions. It was a novel and beautiful sight to look up at the mules defiling down the various zig-zag paths from such an awful height, appearing like so many sheep. As they approached the dif- ferent patches of snow, that lay in their paths, the peons made a great noise to encourage them over, which was echoed back in solemn repeti- tions by the huge and awful mountains around us ; then vibrating and dying away in the distant vallies, it left upon the mind of the traveller a strong impression of his solitary and dreary situation."
And when he speaks of the ascent of his own companions whom he had preceded, his expressions are little short of beautiful ; yet they are those of a man who has no style at all for common ob- jects. Thus does he describe in a few words the gradual ascent of his peons.
" Here I stood observing the mules as they came up ; first, a man's head would appear like a little black spot rising up from the glittering snow, which had a most singular and beautiful appearance, while looking down upon it ; like thousands, or fields of crystals, in the form of sugar loaves, showing various prismatic colours sparkling in the glaring sun ; in the midst of these would rise up a mule's head, and by degrees the whole came up, travelling, as it were, amidst sparkling diamonds. We arrived at the summit at half-past ten, making an ascent, I should say, of at least five thousand feet since six o'clock."
Perhaps, however, the liveliest scenes occur in crossing the tor- rents : a description of one of his transits we shall take an oppor- tunity of extracting. We shall only add, that though we are gratified at seeing piety in a sailor, we would hint to Mr. BRAND, that an overstrained expression of it leads to the suspicion of hy- pocrisy; and the intrusion of these sentiments is at any rate a mark of bad taste.
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