Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego in California, including parts of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila rivers. By W. H. Emory, Brevet-major, Corps Topographical Engineers. New York, 1848. London, Delf.

Reconnoissances in New Mexico, Texas, &c. (Reports of the American Secretary at War.) Washington, 1850.

Military works are not exactly the kind of literature we look for from the United States. The gigantic European wars which ensanguined the early years of the century, make us apt to depreciate all contests that have since occurred. With Austerlitz and Jena, Leipzig and Toulouse, Salamanca and Waterloo, fresh in our memory, we scarcely heed the gallant actions of which Hungary and Northern Italy have recently been the scene. Still less do we regard, otherwise than with a smile, the easy triumphs obtained by Anglo-Americans over Indians and Mexicans. And, therefore, we were glad to find, on examining these two bulky volumes of Military Reconnoissances, that they had other claims to interest besides the narration of unequal combats between the stalwart and intrepid children of the Union and the degenerate descendants of the Spanish Conquistadores. Their military portions are quite subordinate, and they may be read as books of travel, written by highly intelligent and scientific men. They comprise the notes and reports of several American staff and engineer officers sent at different times to explore New Mexico, Texas, the country of the Navajos Indians, and other wild and little known districts south and west of the States—to which much of the territory thus travelled over has since been annexed. The most copious and interesting of the reports is that of Major (then Lieutenant) Emory, who, in June 1846, received orders to repair to Fort Leavenworth, with three junior officers, and to report himself and party to Colonel Kearney, as field and topographical engineers to his command. Colonel Kearney's column, rather magniloquently styled "The Army of the West," was destined to strike a blow at the northern provinces of Mexico, particularly at New Mexico and California. This "Army of the West" was on a very diminutive scale, consisting of two batteries of six-pounders, three squadrons of dragoons, a regiment of Missouri cavalry, and two companies of infantry. It was part of Lieutenant Emory's instructions that, when military duties permitted, he and his subalterns should give their time and attention to the observation of the regions they were to traverse. The calls upon their military services proving extremely limited, they diligently pursued their peaceable and scientific researches, to which we are now indebted for a closely printed volume of notes, a large number of drawings of scenery, plants, antiquities, Indians, &c., and a map, as large as a table-cloth, of the route of the expedition. The other and more lately printed volume, more miscellaneous, and perhaps less generally interesting in its printed contents, surpasses its companion in the merits of its pictorial portion, consisting of seventy-five plates, many of them very curious, and some of them remarkably good specimens of the new art of printing in colours.

Any common map of North America will show in an instant the route followed by Lieutenant Emory. Starting from Fort Leavenworth, which is situated a little north of the junction of the Kanzas with the Missouri, he marched in a south-westerly direction to Santa FÉ, then nearly due south through the country of the Navajos and Apaches Indians, and then west to San Diego on the Pacific. A great portion of this route was through regions previously little explored. The contrary was the case with its earliest portion, namely, from Fort Leavenworth to Bent's Fort, which has been much visited. It is not till he quits the latter place that Lieutenant Emory commences his miscellaneous notes, previously confining himself to scientific, and especially astronomical, observations. From Bent's Fort to Santa FÉ was little more than a fortnight's march. At Santa FÉ the Mexican general, Armijo, was in command, and there might probably be fighting. But on the approach of the invaders, Armijo's heart failed him: he abandoned, without a shot, his advantageous and very defensible position, and fled southwards.

The Indians in general, Mr Emory states, were delighted to exchange Mexican for American masters. The day after his arrival at Santa FÉ, the chiefs of the large and formidable tribe of the Pueblo Indians came to give in their joyful adhesion to the invaders. These Indians are some of the best and most peaceable inhabitants of New Mexico. Very soon after the Spanish conquest they embraced the religion, manners, and customs of their masters. A tradition was long current amongst them, they told the American officers, that the white man would come from the far east and release them from Spanish bondage. From Taos and other places deputations arrived to give in their allegiance, and to ask protection from hostile Indians; and a band of Navajos, naked savage-looking fellows, also dropped in and took up their quarters with the interpreter to the expedition, just opposite Mr Emory's lodging. "They ate, drank, and slept all the time, noticing nothing but a little cinnamon-coloured naked brat that was playing in the court, which they gazed at with the eyes of gastronomes." The Navajos are a robber tribe, dwelling in holes and caverns in lofty mountains, difficult of access, westward from Santa FÉ and the Rio del Norte, and descending at night into the valleys to carry off the fruit, cattle, women, and children of the Mexicans. To assail and subdue them in their strongholds is an enterprise which the Mexicans never dreamed of attempting, and which Mr Emory believed would be no easy task even for his own countrymen. Armijo, during his government of New Mexico, would not allow the inhabitants to make war on these banditti, whom he took advantage of as a means of intimidation and extortion, as a thief might avail of a savage dog. Any who offended him were pretty sure to have a visit from the Navajos. Three years after Mr Emory's expedition, a military reconnoissance was made from Santa FÉ to the Navajo country, under command of Colonel Washington, governor of New Mexico. Lieutenant Simpson, of the Topographical Engineers, accompanied it, and we turn to his report (included in the second volume under notice) for some particulars of this predatory tribe and its district. The object of the expedition was to enforce compliance with a treaty made with the Navajos by a United States officer, by which they had pledged themselves to give up all Mexican captives, all murderers of Mexicans, who might be secreted amongst them, and all the Mexican stock they had driven off since the establishment of the government of the United States in that province. Several head-men of the Navajos came into camp for a talk with Colonel Washington and Mr Calhoun, (the Indian agent,) and it was agreed that on the following day the chiefs of the tribe should hold a conference with the American officers. Accordingly, at noon the next day, which was the 31st August, Narbona, the head chief of the Navajos, a man of eighty, whose portrait (that of a handsome old man, with a straight nose, a high forehead, and little or nothing of the savage in his aspect,) is given by Lieutenant Simpson, came into camp, accompanied by two other chiefs, and a colloquy was held with them through Sandoval, Navajo guide and interpreter to the expedition. The Indians agreed to the demands of the white men, who promised them protection and presents, and it was settled that another council should shortly be held at Chelly, for the arrangement of further details.

This wholesale shooting, for so trifling a thing as a stolen horse, seems rather sharp practice; but perhaps it was judicious to intimidate the Navajos at first starting. They certainly showed no such formidable resistance as had been anticipated, three years previously, by Lieutenant Emory. The expedition continued its march, preceded by forty Pueblo Indians as an advanced guard, through a most formidable defile, which received the name of Washington Pass. The Pueblos were commanded by a chief of their own election, Owtewa by name, whose portrait, given by Mr Simpson, is more like that of some old weather-beaten Spanish guerilla-leader than of an Indian. Indeed, most of the portraits contained in these two volumes have much of the Spanish character of physiognomy, easily explicable by three centuries of license and oppression. Mariano Martinez, another Navajo chief, has the very features and expression of a Castilian or Biscayan peasant. He came into camp a few days after Narbona's death, embraced Colonel Washington, and declared his wish for peace, and his willingness to comply with the conditions of the treaty. Then, again embracing the American officers, "very impressively and with much endearment," he departed to seek and restore the captives and plunder claimed from his tribe. Fear had probably something to do with his humility and submission, for by this time the expedition was in the very heart of the Navajo country, close to the renowned caÑon of Chelly. The word caÑon, sometimes applied to a shallow valley, more commonly means a very deep and narrow one, or rather a ravine, enclosed between lofty escarpments. The caÑon of Chelly is of the latter description, and of most remarkable configuration. It has long been celebrated in Mexico for its great depth and for the impregnable positions it affords, as well as for a strong fort it was said to contain, and which, according to Caravajal, Mr Simpson's Mexican guide, was so high as to require fifteen ladders to scale it, seven of which the said Caravajal affirmed that he, on one occasion, ascended, but was not permitted to go higher. From their camp, within five miles of Chelly, a large party of the American officers visited the caÑon, which more than fulfilled their anticipations—so great was its depth, so precipitous its rocks, so beautiful and regular its stratification. Plate 48, "View of the caÑon of Chelly near its head," although only a rough lithograph on a minute scale, gives an imposing idea of the gloomy depths of this natural wonder. At that spot Mr Simpson estimated it to be about eight hundred feet deep.

Three days later, Lieutenant Simpson, attended by his assistant engineers and draughtsmen, and escorted by sixty men and several officers, went to reconnoitre the caÑon. The account he gives of it is most curious and interesting. At its mouth the walls were low; but as he proceeded, their altitude increased, until, at about three miles from the entrance, they assumed a stupendous appearance. The floor of the ravine, which in some places was no more than one hundred and fifty feet wide—although generally more than double that width—is a heavy sand. "The escarpment walls, which are a red amorphous sandstone, are rather friable, and show imperfect seams of stratification—the dip being slight, and towards the west. Almost perfectly vertical, they look as if they had been chiselled by the hand of art; and occasionally cizous marks, apparently the effect of the rotary attrition of contiguous masses, could be seen on their faces." Having proceeded about three miles, the party turned into a left-hand branch of the caÑon. This branch was one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards wide, and its walls of the same towering height as those of the main line of ravine. Two or three patches of corn, with melons and pumpkins growing amongst it, were met with on the way; and then, after following this left-hand branch for half a mile, Mr Simpson turned to his right up a narrow secondary branch, enclosed between vertical walls three hundred feet high, which in some places are without a seam in their surface from top to bottom.

It would be necessary to transcribe the whole of Mr Simpson's minute account of his visit to the caÑon and its branches, in order to convey to the reader a just idea of that most extraordinary and gigantic fissure. Even then the idea obtained might be incommensurate with the grandeur of the subject, if the description were unaided by the three plates, dashed off with a bold, rough pencil, in which Simpson's draughtsman has given us a better notion of the grim aspect and huge proportions of the ravine than words could well supply. Having explored the lateral branches, without seeing any sign of the celebrated fort, the party then continued their progress up the main channel, passing some ruined villages, perched on shelves of the rock wall. Near one of these, about five miles from the entrance, they observed, in the bed of the caÑon, the ordinary Navajo hut, (a common Indian lodge of conical form, constructed of poles united at the apex, and covered with bark, bushes, and mud,) and, hard by it, a peach orchard.

After this meeting, the party passed more ruins of considerable villages, mostly built on shelves, and accessible only by ladders. Fragments of curiously-marked pottery were picked up, of which drawings are given. The walls, still of red sandstone, increased in the magnificence of their proportions, at intervals presenting faÇades hundreds of feet in length, and three or four hundred in height, beautifully smooth and vertical. About eight miles up the caÑon, a small rill, previously lost in the deep sand, reappeared above ground. At last, at nine and a half miles from the entrance, the horses of the Pueblo Indians who accompanied him not being strong enough to go farther, and the much talked-of presidio or fort not appearing, Mr Simpson resolved to return to camp. The height of the walls, at the point where he turned back, he ascertained to be five hundred and two feet, and still increasing. The length of the caÑon he conjectures—he does not mention on what grounds—to be about twenty-five miles. Its average width, as far as he ascended it, was two hundred yards.

Mr Simpson was assured by Martinez that he and his companions were the first American troops that had visited Chelly. His visit, he considers, has solved the mystery of the wonderful caÑon, and dissipated the notion previously entertained that upon a plateau, near its mouth, stood a high insulated fort, to which the Navajos repaired when danger approached. The report was very likely to be originated by the elevated position of some of the old Mexican villages, and also, perhaps, by the lofty shelves of the rock walls, to which the sure-footed Navajos may have fled when enemies were at hand, and to scale some of which would have taken more than the "fifteen ladders" spoken of by Caravajal. We cannot but regret that Mr Simpson did not prosecute his researches till he reached the extremity of the main caÑon. However unnecessary in a military point of view, the results of such an expedition could not have been otherwise than highly interesting to science, and especially to the geologist. We can hardly doubt that the perusal of his report will stimulate adventurous travellers to an early exploration of the wonderful caÑon. It offers, indeed, a wide field for speculation, and abounds in points of the strongest interest. Its origin—whether a natural fissure or from aqueous agents (Mr Simpson seems to incline to the former hypothesis)—its ruins, broken pottery, and other antiquities—its minerals and plants, are all fresh and fascinating subjects for investigation. The Navajos, too, are a people well worth making acquaintance with; presenting, as they do, a singular mixture of barbarism with ingenuity and civilisation. From what Mr Simpson had seen of them, he fully expected, on ascending the caÑon, to find they had better habitations than the wretched wigwams we have already described. But no others did he discover, save ruined houses and villages, of whose origin the Navajos could give no account; and he was struck by the anomaly, that dwellers in miserable mud lodges should be the best blanket manufacturers in the world. "The sarape Navajo," says Gregg, in his Commerce of the Prairies, "is of so close and dense a texture, that it will frequently hold water almost as well as gum-elastic cloth. It is, therefore, highly prized for protection against the rains. Some of the finer qualities are often sold among the Mexicans as high as fifty or sixty dollars each." Gregg also speaks of the Navajos producing "some exquisite styles of cotton textures," and of their ingenuity in feather embroidery; but Mr Simpson could discover amongst them no traces of either of these two arts, although they are fond of decorating their persons with plumage of birds, and display much taste in its selection and arrangement. Mr Simpson particularly noticed their wickerwork bowls and vases, which, like the blankets, held water, and were superior to anything of the kind he had seen in the States. The credit of making these was attributed, not to the Navajos, but to the Coystero Indians.

After quitting the neighbourhood of the Navajos, Lieutenant Emory and "The Army of the West" marched due south, following the course of the Del Norte for a distance of more than two hundred miles from Santa FÉ. Turning off from the river, after parting with their waggons by reason of the badness of the road, their progress continued, without anything of particular interest occurring, until they reached the neighbourhood of the river Gila, when a number of Apache Indians, a tribe celebrated for their thievish propensities, came into camp, headed by their chief, Red Sleeve, swore eternal friendship to the Americans, and everlasting hatred to the Mexicans. Henceforward, they protested, the white man might pass alone and unharmed through their country: if on foot, he should be mounted—if hungry, they would give him food. Carson, the guide, only twinkled his keen eye, and declared he would not trust one of them. They were eager to trade.

The Apaches are a nomadic tribe, living in huts of twigs, easily constructed, and abandoned with indifference. In the saddle from infancy, they are perfect horsemen, and usually well mounted—their horses being kept in excellent condition by the abundant pasture that clothes the pleasant hills between the Del Norte and the Gila. Round the skirts of these they hover, overlooking the plains of Chihuahua and Sonora, and watching for those caravans whose slender escort encourages an attack. They are inveterate thieves, faithless and treacherous; but their treatment by the Mexicans was ill calculated to improve their character, or to turn them from their evil courses. The Mexicans slew them unmercifully whenever they could catch them, and used every species of stratagem to decoy them into their power.

What wonder if tribes which have met such perfidious and cruel treatment are eminently distrustful of the white men! Two poor wretches, with whom the head of the American column fell in, could not believe their senses when suffered to ride away unmolested. They spoke no Spanish, but a language described by Mr Emory as resembling the bark of a mastiff; and it was thought they belonged to the tribe of Tremblers, so called from the emotion they display at meeting white men. Some distance down the Gila, a second band of Apaches was met. They were anxious to have "a talk," and the Americans wished to trade; but it was difficult to dispel Indian mistrust. Alone and unarmed, Mr Emory went to meet them at the top of a hill, where their chief, although well mounted, and surrounded by six or eight of his armed followers, showed great trepidation on receiving the weaponless white man. Mr Emory remained as a hostage, whilst a young Indian, bolder than his fellows, went into camp. The ice thus broken, intercourse followed. Amongst others, a middle-aged and particularly garrulous Apache lady visited the American bivouac.

Scattered through Mr Emory's journal, and especially after passing Santa FÉ, and whilst following, with occasional deviations, the course of the Gila, are many notes and observations of much interest to the naturalist. Traversing the plains near the little town of Socoro on the Del Norte, Mr Emory noticed, as the chief growth of the sandy soil, the iodeodonda, or Larrea Mexicana—a new plant, which, when crushed, gives out a most offensive smell of creosote. It grows to about the height of a man on horseback, and is the only bush which mules, even when extremely hungry, refuse to eat. On the 8th October, shortly before attaining one of the southernmost points of his journey, Mr Emory found himself surrounded by a vegetable world totally different from that of the United States. The variety of enormous cacti was so great that it was impossible, with his slender means of transport, to carry away a complete collection of them. Just after turning off from the Del Norte, he passed through a valley where grew a new variety of the evergreen oak, with leaves like the holly, and which was covered with round red balls, the size and colour of apricots, the effects of disease, or of the sting of an insect. Three days later he fell in with the famous mezcal, (an agave,) "about three feet in diameter, having broad leaves, armed with shark-like teeth, and arranged in concentric circles, which terminate in the middle of the plant in a perfect cone. Of this the Apaches make molasses, and cook it with horse meat." In the districts where this plant flourishes, artificial craters are found, into which the Indians throw the fruit, with heated stones, to remove the sharp thorns and reduce it to its saccharine state. In the course of one of his botanical rambles, during a day's halt, rendered necessary by severe marches, Mr Emory came upon a settlement of tarantulas, which, on his approach, rushed fearlessly to the front of their little caves and assumed an attitude of defence. He threw a peeble at them, and it would be hard to imagine, he says, concentrated in so small a space, so much expression of defiance, fury, and ability to do mischief, as the pleasant little colony presented.

From the 1st to the 9th of November, we find frequent mention in the "Notes" of an extraordinary species of cactus, to which Dr Engelmann of St Louis, in an interesting botanical letter appended to Mr Emory's work, proposes to give the name of Cereus Giganteus. Under this name we find it depicted at page 96, in a plate where a mounted Indian, halted at its base, gives, by comparison, an imposing idea of its height. It also forms a most singular and striking feature of several of the landscapes scattered through this volume—of one particularly, on the Gila, where it has the effect of a chain of artificial columns or signal-posts. One of its most curious characteristics appears to be its invariable perpendicularity both of stem and branches; the latter, as soon as they bud out from the main trunk or from each other, hastening to turn their heads heavenwards, and to spring up in an exactly parallel direction to the parent stem. "The stem," says Dr Engelmann, "is tall, 25 to 60 feet high, and 2 to 6 feet in circumference—erect, simple, or with a few erect branches." Mr Emory's first mention of this pillar-like plant is as follows:—

The name of pitahaya is given to this cactus by the Californians; but that, according to Dr Engelmann, is a general name applied in Mexico and South America to all the large columnar cacti which bear an edible fruit. "We encamped in a grove of cacti of all kinds," writes Mr Emory on the 4th November; "amongst them the huge pitahaya, one of which was fifty feet high." The next day "we followed the Gila for six miles. The pitahaya and every other variety of cactus flourished in great luxuriance. The pitahaya, tall, erect, and columnar in its appearance, grew in every crevice from the base to the tops of the mountains, and in one place I saw it growing nearly to its full dimensions from a crevice not much broader than the back of my sabre. These extraordinary-looking plants seem to seek the wildest and most unfrequented places." Although the course of the Gila is nine degrees to the north of the tropics, the vegetation, as exhibited in a plate at page 112, has something very tropical in its gigantic luxuriance and strange character. The geological features of the country are of corresponding peculiarity. On the 8th November, the course of the expedition was traversed by "a seam of yellowish-coloured igneous rock, shooting up into irregular spires and turrets, one or two thousand feet in height. It ran at right angles to the river, and extended to the north and to the south, in a chain of mountains as far as the eye could reach. One of these towers was capped with a substance many hundred feet thick, disposed in horizontal strata of different colours, from deep red to light yellow." A sketch of this singular chain of natural spires and towers is annexed to Mr Emory's description by one of his companions. At this part of the journey, although beaver "sign" and tracks of game were seen, few animals made their appearance. On the 6th November, the only creatures observed were lizards, scorpions, and tarantulas. Five days after, however, Mr Emory secured a long-sought bird, an inhabitant of the mezquite tree, having indigo-blue plumage, with top knot and a long tail, and whose wings, when spread, exhibit a white ellipse. "Strolling over the hills alone," says Mr Emory, "in pursuit of seeds and geological specimens, my thoughts went back to the States; and when I turned from my momentary aberrations, I was struck most forcibly with the fact that not one object in the whole view, animal, vegetable, or mineral, had anything in common with the products of any State in the Union, with the single exception of the cotton-wood, which is found in the Western States, and seems to grow wherever water flows from the vertebral range of mountains of North America."

On the 9th November, the expedition, which had long been struggling over precipitous mountains and through deep caÑones, emerged upon the plain, and for a moment all considered the difficulties of the journey at an end. The real gain was confined to the howitzers, which, dragged by main force of men and mules over a terribly rugged country, had by this time had every part of their running gear repeatedly broken and replaced. The artillerymen rejoiced at the level which lightened their labour. It was, however, but an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. Grass ceased when the mountains were left behind, and the mules were fain to feed on willow and cotton-wood. And soon there were short commons for men as well as for beasts. Their first day's march over the plain brought them into the vicinity of two Indian tribes of a very different stamp from the predatory Navajos and perfidious Apaches. The Maricopas and Pimos almost realise those virtuous and heroic savages whom we had hitherto thought to exist nowhere but in Fenimore Cooper's novels. They gallopped into the American camp in a frank confident style, delighted to find they had to do with white men instead of with their enemies the Apaches, of whose approach a report had been spread. There was a Pimo village nine miles off, and in three hours its inhabitants crowded into the camp, laden with corn, beans, honey, and water-melons, and opened a brisk trade. It was Mr Emory's observing night, but the throng, and, the perpetual galloping to and fro, interfered greatly with the correctness of his observations. He was struck by the unsuspicious character of these people, who would leave their packs in the camp and absent themselves for hours. Theft was apparently unknown amongst them. With the mounted party, which first came in, was a man on foot, who appeared able to keep pace with the fleetest horse, and who, on recovering his breath, announced himself as interpreter to Juan Antonio Llunas, chief of the Pimos. With him for a guide, Mr Emory and other officers visited some neighbouring ruined buildings, concerning whose origin he could give them no information except a wild tradition in which he himself did not believe. They then proceeded to the Pimos village, the interpreter going a pace which kept their mules at a long trot.

This is rather a surprising account of the agricultural accomplishments of a tribe of North American Indians. It is to be remarked, however, of all these tribes, that their progress is generally confined to one of the arts of civilised life. We have seen the Navajos, whose costume is brilliant and complete, dwelling in wretched wigwams, and scarcely cultivating a few scanty patches of corn. The Pimos, who, as tillers of the ground, are superior in some respects to the Mexicans, go naked, save a breech cloth and a cotton blanket, whilst their women wear the blanket only, pinned around their loins. And beads and red cloth are as much prized by them as by any savages on the face of the earth. For these coveted articles, for blankets, and for cotton cloth, the Americans obtained a supply of corn and beans, and two or three bullocks, but no horses or mules. These were not plentiful amongst the Pimos, who extravagantly prized the few they had. One dashing young fellow, with ivory teeth and flowing hair, dashed full speed into camp on a wild unruly horse, which flew from side to side as he approached, alarmed at the unusual appearance of the white men.

Soon after quitting the country of the friendly Pimos and Maricopas, the Army of the West came upon the trail of an enemy, and at night fires were seen upon the opposite side of the Gila, which were thought to be those of the Mexican general, Castro. Mr Emory took a few dragoons and went to reconnoitre. It was not Castro, but a party of Mexicans conveying five hundred horses to Sonora for his use. This was a precious capture, for long marches and scanty forage, besides frequent want of water, had dismounted most of the American cavalry. Unfortunately, the prize horses were unbroken, and ill adapted for immediate service. They were good for meat, however, for by this time the expedition was on horseflesh rations. On the 28th November, "Major Swords found in a concealed place one of the best pack-mules slaughtered, and the choice bits cut from his shoulders and flanks—stealthily done by some mess less provident than others." The next day, it is recorded by Mr Emory that a horse was killed for food, which was eaten with great appetite, and all of it consumed; and when the expedition reached the beautiful valley of the Agua Caliente, all waving with yellow grass, and halted at the farm of an American named Warner, so sharp set were they that Mr Emory assures us that seven of his men ate, at one single meal, a fat full-grown sheep. Near Warner's rancheria is the fountain whence the valley derives its name. From the fissure of a granite rock, there gushes forth a magnificent hot spring, of the temperature of 137° Fahrenheit. The volume of water is very large, and for a long distance the air is loaded with the fumes of sulphuretted hydrogen. Flowing down the same valley is a cold spring, of the temperature of 45°; and, without the aid of machinery, the cold and warm water may be mingled to the required temperature.

This remarkable spring, destined, perhaps, at no remote period, to become the Saratoga of the Pacific States, rises in the heart of California; and, after marching away from it, the American troops might daily expect an encounter with the enemy. This occurred two days later. The Americans were victorious over greatly superior numbers, but with the loss of several officers killed and badly wounded. Mr Emory refers his readers to General Kearny's despatch for the account of the affair, but himself furnishes an elaborate topographical sketch of the positions and movements of the contending parties, in what he calls the "action" at San Pasqual, which seems to have been a smart but very brief combat. The next day the Californians were driven with the utmost ease from a hill which they occupied, abandoning it on the approach of only six or eight Americans. By this time the Army of the West was, without exception, "the most tattered and ill-fed body of men that ever the United States mustered under her colours." The dragoons were diminished to a single squadron, provisions were exhausted, horses dead, mules on their last legs, men emaciated and reduced to a third of their numbers. For want of proper conveyances, it would have taken half the fighting men to transport the wounded; so it was held expedient to wait till these could ride. After dark on the 8th December, a naval lieutenant, Kit Carson the guide, and an Indian, set out for San Diego, thence twenty-nine miles distant, to ask reinforcements. There was but slender hope of their passing the enemy's pickets, which occupied all the passes to the town. Nevertheless they succeeded; and, during the night of the 10th, two hundred sailors and marines came into camp. Next morning the Californians, panic-struck at this accession to their enemies, fled precipitately, leaving most of their cattle behind them; and, on the 12th, the way-worn expedition entered San Diego.

English readers will find little to interest them in Mr Emory's narrative of some subsequent military operations in California, of sundry skirmishes, and of the capture of Pueblo de los Angeles. This, however, fills but a few pages. In the volume there is much to reward perusal, whether by the antiquarian, the geologist, the botanist, or the reader for mere amusement's sake. The same must be said of Lieutenant Simpson's report, to which we are indebted for the curious account of the caÑon of Chelly and the Navajos Indians; and also of the report of Captain Marcy, who, during the summer of 1849, marched, with an escort of thirty dragoons and fifty infantry, from Fort Smith, in Arkansas territory, to Santa FÉ, and back again. The objects of the movement were to afford protection to the American citizens then emigrating to the newly-acquired provinces of New Mexico and California, to ascertain and establish the best route from the old to the new states, and to conciliate, as far as possible, the various Indian tribes inhabiting the extensive region through which lay his road. The whole distance gone over was about two thousand miles; and Captain Marcy's notes and observations are valuable to travellers and emigrants in that direction. The Comanches and Kioways (famous horse-stealers both of them) were the principal Indian tribes he met with; and, of the degree of civilisation prevailing amongst them, we may form some notion by an extract from his journal of the 19th June:—

"The Comanche women are, as in many other wild tribes, the slaves of their lords; and it is a common practice for their husbands to lend or sell them to a visitor for one, two, or three days at a time. There is no alternative for the women but to submit, as their husbands do not hesitate, in case of disobedience, to punish them by cutting off an ear or a nose. I should not imagine, however, that they would often be subjected to this degradation; for, if we may judge of them by the specimens before us, they are the most repulsive-looking objects of the female kind on earth—covered with dirt, their hair cut close to their heads, and with features ugly in the extreme. The men who visited us this morning were armed with the bow, quiver, and shield; and they gave us an opportunity of witnessing the force with which they can throw the arrow. As we were about to slaughter an ox, one of the Indians requested to use his bow for that purpose; and, approaching to within about twenty yards of the animal, strained his bow to the full extent, and let fly an arrow, which buried itself in the vitals of the ox, passing through and breaking two ribs in its course. It is thus that they kill the buffalo, upon which these Indians, who are called the Upper Comanches, or 'buffalo-eaters,' mainly depend for a subsistence."