him meet with what he will--robbers, cannibals, jungle-tigers, and
rattlesnakes, the more the better--since we know that he will get
off alive, and come to regard them so many god-sends in the way of
book-making.

The volumes now before us are not only seasonable as respects the
world-wide curiosity in regard to California--the new-risen empire on
the Pacific--abounding, as they do, in valuable facts and statistics,
but they have in a high degree that charm of personal adventure and
experience to which we have referred. Bayard Taylor is a born tourist.
He has eyes to see, skill to make the most of whatever opens before
him under the ever-shifting horizon of the traveler. He takes us along
with him, and lets us into the secret of his own hearty enjoyment.
Much of what he describes has already become familiar to us from the
notes of a thousand gold-seekers, who have sent home such records as
they could of their experiences in a strange land. Yet even the well
known particulars of the overland route across the Isthmus become
novel and full of interest in the narrative of our young tourist.
The tropical scenery by day and night on the river, the fandango at
Gorgona, and the ride to Panama through the dense dark forest, with
death, in the shape of a cholera-stricken emigrant, following at their
heels, are in the raciest spirit of story-telling. The steamer from
Panama touched at the ancient city of Acapulco, and took in a company
of gamblers, who immediately set up their business on deck. At San
Deigo, the first overland emigrants by the route of the Gila river,
who had reached that place a few days before, came on board, lank and
brown as the ribbed sea-sand, their clothes in tatters, their boots
replaced with moccasins, small deerskin wallets containing all that
was left of the abundant stores with which they started--their
hair and beards matted and unshorn, with faces from which the rigid