tinent was extremely unlike what he had anticipated, and the boundless luxury and display of New York are rather a perplexing form of democratic equality. But as the Baron observes, in America, wealth and the signs of wealth are not unpopular, because every man hopes that it may come to his turn to enjoy them; and the really cultivated society of America lives apart in a state of refined seclusion which is not surpassed by the Jews of the Middle Ages or the most jealous aristocracy of Europe. At Washington our traveller met one of the Governors of the Western States, who held very singular language. 'Yes,' he said, we are a great, a glorious nation. But we are unsound. We are suffering from the effects of a precocious childhood and a forced growth. We have grown too fast; and as we reach manhood, we aim at too much and 'work too hard. It is possible, but not probable, that we shall live to grow old. The Union has, I fear, no future.' And then continuing the conversation with reference to the condition of the South and the abolition of slavery, he added:

"The advocates of emancipation had feared lest the old established proprietors should succeed by indirect means in eluding the law, and in reducing this great act of philanthropy to a mere dead letter. To obviate this danger, the political franchise was granted to the negroes; one consequence of which will be, that in the future elections of a President they will prove masters of the situation, and will turn the scale. Moreover, both Democrats and Republicans outbid each other for their interest, and canvass for their votes." To all of which it is fair to add that President Grant himself is far from depreciating their importance, as is shown by the constant protection he affords them, which naturally results in a continual increase of the number of blacks at the seat of government. In the Southern States they are more or less omnipotent. In South Carolina the Vice-President of the Legislature is a man of colour. Let us see what the "New York Observer" says on this subject:

"The state of affairs in South Carolina is nearly intolerable. It arises from two causes: first, because the black population is more numerous than the white; secondly, because the old planters refuse to accept the new order of things, or to share the government of the State with the blacks; so that the latter, allying themselves to the numerous white new-comers, have the conduct of public affairs at their disposal. Out of 125 members composing the Lower House of the Legislature, 90 are black. The proportion in the Senate is nearly the same. The majority of these members is corrupt, and may be bought. Add to this that the landed proprietors of South Carolina lost everything during the war except their land; that they are entirely devoid of ready money; that the taxes have been steadily increasing during the last few years, and that they weigh with merciless severity upon the landowners. . . The article proceeds to explain how the public money is squandered.

'These details, and others of the same kind, are confirmed by all the Southerners whom I meet, and disputed by all the Northerners. What is the truth, and where is it to be found? One fact there is which is admitted on both sides; namely, that at the present time in the South the blacks are to a certain extent masters of the whites. In some States they assert their power, in others they form the majority of the Government; everywhere they possess indubitable strength: they who in the same places, only a few years ago, were regarded as the lowest of created beings. It is easy to conceive the fury, the despair, the accumulated hatred in the heart of the white man-not, indeed, towards his former slaves, but towards the North, the source, in his opinion, of all his calamities.

'We are spectators of what is now occurring in the South. At this moment Mr. Davis is making a triumphant progress through the country; his speeches electrify his hearers. They may be summed up in two words-Silence and Hope-which signifies Vengeance when the right time comes. The landowners abstain from voting and stand aloof, abandoning the soil to the negroes and to emigrants from the North. The Government has difficulty in procuring the necessary public officers: those appointed, the tax-gatherers for instance, resign immediately, either from fear or because they themselves sympathise with the South. The women, more excitable and more heroic than their husbands, fan the sacred flame of patriotism, which in the eye of the law is treason and rebellion. This is the picture drawn for me by impartial persons, by members of the diplomatic body, by those who, unfamiliar with the two factions, had travelled through the country. Some of these statements are not questioned even by adversaries of the former Confederates. But I repeat, that which all admit, the black element in the South turns the political scale. This anomaly cannot last.' (Hübner, vol. i. p. 51.)

Wherever democracy has become the preponderating power in society, the same distrust and uncertainty exist as to the future condition of the country: it may be better, it may be worse; but by the very terms of the problem the traditional and hereditary element is extinguished. Each generation subsists for itself, without gratitude to the past or care for the future. And amongst these strange predictions, not unfrequent in America, it is not uncommon to meet with men who sigh for absolute power, not in the form of monarchy, but of imperialism and a military dictatorship.

You are whirled across the continent of America in Mr. Pullman's cars at the rate of fifty or sixty miles an hour-at least so the Baron assures us-but we cannot discover the motive for incurring the excessive risk and expense of this prodigious velocity, and we rather doubt the fact. The distance from New York to San Francisco is 3,300 miles, which is performed in seven days and nights, including stoppages. If that be so, the rate of travelling is not much more than twenty

miles an hour. The company in the cars, in spite of prodigiously high fares, becomes equivocal. The men are roughly dressed and carry one or two revolvers. The women relinquish the toilettes dear to American eyes. These people are going for the most part to seek their fortunes. In one of these prodigious vehicles, which resemble ships more than carriagesfor you dine in the midst of the dust, and sleep (if you can) in the heat and noise--you cross the Mississippi on a sort of tressel bridge.

'At seven o'clock we crossed the Mississippi at foot's pace, by a bridge of bold and recent construction. It seemed to bend beneath our weight, and gave to the carriages the motion of a boat floating upon a slightly heaving sea. The silent waters of this immense river flow between low wooded banks, lit up at this moment by the last rays of the sun as if by magic. You are perhaps the more struck by the strange beauty of the landscape from the simplicity of its features. Profound melancholy and savage grandeur form its chief characteristics. It is one of those scenes which fix themselves for ever in the memory of the traveller. Scarcely do we reach the right bank when some sloping ground allows us to look back and contemplate the bridge which we have just ventured across. A spider's web, with the upper part cut horizontally, seems to stretch itself across the flaming heavens. One asks oneself, How shall this filigree support a train? At this moment a solitary engine advances, slowly and as if with hesitation. It reminds me of Blondin on his tight rope, and I involuntarily shut my eyes.' (Hübner, vol. i. p. 107.)

The terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad is at Ogden, 1,032 miles beyond Omaha and 882 miles from San Francisco. A branch line, 37 miles in length, goes from Ogden to Salt Lake City. You meet at the station an Indian chief with a helmet of feathers and a face daubed with ochre. He looks with sorrowful complacency on the Mormons getting into the train, accompanied by two or three of their wives. These people are Europeans, for the recruits of Mormonism are, alas! not American, but Welsh, English, or Scandinavian. In this company our Baron reaches Salt Lake City, and is received by one Townsend, an elder, in the worst of inns. The aspect of the city is curious. Houses buried in acacias and cottontrees; abundant fresh water brought down from the hills; an atmosphere of singular purity; a population strangely enslaved by absolutism and superstition. The tabernacle and the theatre are the chief places of resort. Baron Hübner was received with some degree of state ceremony by Brigham Young. The conversation of the patriarch is scarcely worth repeating; but his manner, and his audacious claim to a divine mission, left on the Austrian traveller, not unused to observe

Popes and Emperors, the impression that he is a man of no ordinary power. He was at that time about seventy years of age, but appeared much younger. His eyes, which do not look you in the face, indicate more cunning than intelligence; his mouth is sensual, his square large chin has an expression of firmness and almost of cruelty. Such a face at once fascinates and repels you. But with all this, Brigham Young has succeeded, after innumerable perils and struggles, which might have daunted the firmest faith and courage, in imposing his will on some 200,000 of his fellow-creatures in a sceptical age and in a free country. He has created a state in a desert, and a state founded on the denial of the principles, the morals, and the traditions of the whole civilised world. Probably at the moment at which we write, he is on his way to plant some other tabernacle in the deserts of Arizona, and his sect will perish with himself. But few men have played the part of a great impostor and a great tyrant with more complete success. His power over his devotees reminds us of the Old Man of the Mountain in the days. of the Crusades, and he is equally regardless of human suffering and abasement. The essence of Mormonism is thus summed up by our author :

:

As

'It is absolutism carried to its furthest limits and personified in the chief of a religion. On the part of the believers an entire faith in the person of the prophet. No worship, for his short sermon on Sunday and the singing at the tabernacle do not deserve that name. regards the masses, they have no conviction, no religious sentiment, or rather all their religious sentiments are concentrated in the fanatical adoration of Brigham Young.

Work and faith are the fundamental principle of his sovereignty. Work is necessarily hard and manual, to the last excess, for men must live, and they have, moreover, to pay off the debts they have contracted to the President for their journey and first establishment in the country. This excessive labour accounts for the marvellously rapid growth of the work of colonisation. A universal monopoly, embracing every thing and everybody, is in the hands of the prophet. He intervenes in everything, either personally or by his bishops, in the nearest family relations, in private affairs, in matters of business. In all difficulties recourse is to be had to the oracular voice of Brigham Young. And, to sum up all, polygamy, declared to be the duty and privilege of men, has been in practice for twenty years. Such is Mormonism." (Vol. i. p. 197.)

The first station on the road from Salt Lake City to San Francisco is at Corinne-the last new thing in America-a city of two or three thousand people which has sprung into existence in the last four years-but a Gentile city opposite the new Jerusalem, the Carthage of the new Rome. A rail

road takes you there in three hours, and in the streets of this new cave of Adullam you meet a strange mixture of white men armed to the teeth with bowie-knives and revolvers, red men stript to their shirts if they have any, and yellow men from China, who seem better able than most of their fellowcreatures to endure everything and to turn everything to advantage. The Baron was taken to a pow-wow' of Red Indians on the banks of the Bear River, and returned to dine at the Metropolitan Hotel. The strange contrasts of human life he saw on that day might have filled a chapter of Plutarch.

The

On the 8th June he leaves Corinne, crosses the alkaline plains of the great American desert, and the Sierra Nevada, and arrives on the 10th at San Francisco. The Pacific railroad, in spite of its obvious political importance and its immense convenience, has not as yet proved to be a good speculation. We doubt whether it will become so. number of persons who want to take a journey of 3,000 miles, and can afford to pay for it, is necessarily limited, and there is no intermediate population whatever. Baron Hübner evidently doubts whether the future of the Western States bordering on the Pacific can be permanently linked to that of the Eastern States bordering on the Atlantic.

We were not prepared for so gloomy an account of the climate of San Francisco. As far as Oakland, where the train stops, on the opposite shore of the bay, all is sunshine and tropical heat. In ten minutes you descend to a very low temperature and the atmosphere of Glasgow in November. San Francisco is but five miles from the Pacific Ocean, but the city turns its back on the sea. It lies buried apparently in a perpetual cold fog, more especially in the height of summer, from a peculiar condensation of moisture in the gullet of the sound; and though surrounded by sites of remarkable beauty, the city itself appears to be one of the ugliest spots on the face of the globe. But there are greater evils in the California Eldorado than its fogs and dust of ochre. The wiser part of the population have already found out that the gold, which raised them to sudden notoriety and fortune, is in reality a source of evil and danger; that mining is a curse,' because it brings with it a wild, undisciplined, and unscrupulous population, and because immense tracts of fertile soil have been literally destroyed by the efforts made to extract a little gold dust from their strata. Wealth, not once but for ever, might have been raised by patient industry from those sterilized furrows; and agriculture would have established there a class