THE NEW NORTHWEST TERRITORY.* The attractive and sumptuous volumes whose titles are given below describe the leading features and the rich and varied and exhaustless resources of a Northwest territory just now coming into notice, which, in imperial extent and in natural wealth, far surpasses that section of our country which was once designated by this name. It belongs partly to our own country, and partly to Great Britain. Much of that which belongs to Great Britain is of right ours, and doubtless would have been ours if Mr. Polk's administration had been as firm to maintain as it was brave to assert the doctrine of " Fifty-four forty or Fight," or if it had been as eager to hold free territory which rightfully belonged to us, as it was to wrest from poor Mexico a third of her rightful domain that the empire of slavery might thereby be extended. In his message of December 2, 1845, Mr. Polk declared, truly, as impartial history has decided, that our title to the whole of Oregon, from 42° to 54° 40′,

*THE QUEEN'S HIGHWAY, FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN. By Stuart Cumberland, F.R.G.S., with numerous Collotype Illustrations and two Maps. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

SHORES AND ALPS OF ALASKA. By H. W. Seaton Karr, F.R.G.S. With Illustrations and two Maps. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

had been "maintained by irrefragable facts and arguments." Mr. Cass went so far as to say that the just claim of the United States "extended from California to the Russian boundary," and he stood ready to press that claim at any peril of war. But compromise ruled the hour, the forty-ninth parallel was agreed upon as the boundary, and England gained, while we lost, a territory larger, if not also richer, than California, Oregon, and Washington combined. Eighty-three years before, or in 1763, Louis XV. signed away all the claims of France to Canada, saying, as he conceded to England full possession of this vast territory (larger than the whole United States, Alaska excepted), "after all, it's only a few square miles of snow." Of the character and resources of the territory in dispute in 1846, our government was about as profoundly ignorant as was the French king of Canada in 1763.

It is, indeed, only within a very few years that the provinces of Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Assinniboia, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia-Great Britain's part of the new Northwest Territory-have come to be known. Mr. Stuart Cumberland has made an important contribution to our knowledge of this vast territory-a region larger than all the New England and Middle States of our country, with Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa added. He describes its resources, mingling with his account of these interesting and often vivid descriptions of scenery, and incidents of personal adventure and experience. Representing a syndicate of English capitalists, he came to this country for the special purpose of acquainting himself with its character, its climate and its resources, and of publishing the results of his investigations and studies. He was one of the first to pass over the Canadian Pacific "the Queen's Highway from Ocean to Ocean"-after its completion, journeying from Vancouver, its western, to Montreal, its eastern terminus. Passing by his description of the eastern division of the road and of the country through which it passes, as being comparatively well known, it will be necessary to refer here only to what he says of the value of the Canadian Pacific as a new highway for commerce between the East and West, and what he says of the country traversed by this road, as it extends westward from Winnipeg. This new road furnishes much the quickest and shortest route from England to Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand. Yokohama is two hundred and fifty miles nearer Vancouver than San Francisco; and Montreal two hundred miles nearer Liverpool than New

York. England is thus brought four hundred and fifty miles nearer to her great trade with these countries than she was before this new highway was built. But not only is the distance thus shortened, the time for making this still long journey is much more shortened by reason of the fact that any route through our own country is beset by drawbacks and obstacles which the Canadian Pacific does not encounter-such as the five mile ferry at San Francisco, heavier grades, higher altitudes to climb, and many more important places at which trains must stop, involving corresponding delays. These facts will serve to show how great an advantage to England and to her commercial prosperity is the building of this road. It will be an equal advantage in giving her better facilities for protection and defence against her great rival, Russia; as her fine harbor and naval station at Esquimault, on Vancouver Island, affords her an admirable position for watching closely the movements of Russia in Asia.

But it is to Canada's prosperity, and especially to the settlement and development of its Northwest territories and of British Columbia, that this road will most largely contribute. This vast region-large enough almost to make two States like Texas-possesses, as Mr. Cumberland shows, great and varied resources. The valleys of the Assinniboine, Saskatchewan, Athabasca, and Peace rivers, constitute an immense area of some of the best wheat lands on the North American continent. There is nothing in Minnesota and Dakota to surpass them. Lands valuable for grazing purposes are not less extensive than those which are adapted for cultivation; while the undeveloped wealth stored away in the endless forests of this region, in the rich mines, and in the rivers teeming with fish, is practically inexhaustible. In no part of it, except, perhaps, that which lies north of the sixty-fifth parallel of latitude, is the climate so severe as to forbid its occupation and profitable tillage by man. The climate of Vancouver Island, which is as large as the State of New York and is still a terra incognita except on the coast, and of all the regions bordering the Georgian Gulf and Queen Charlotte's Sound, is very mild-as mild as that of New Orleans.

Mr. Cumberland writes intelligently and appreciatively of all these immense and as yet little known northwest provinces of the Dominion of Canada. But he should have spared his readers the dismal record of his own trials and woes as a traveller. In speaking of these, he is garrulous and unrestrained. As an instance of this, he devotes six tiresome pages to a description of the worst hotel he "ever put foot in" (at Port Moody) and to his experiences therein. The volume is very handsomely illustrated and printed; the maps are

just what is needed by the reader, and there is a good index.

The second of our two volumes tells the story of a journey of exploration along the coast of Alaska, which was extended beyond the Kenae Peninsula, to Kodiak Island, and as far as the 153d degree of longitude. Few persons, probably, are aware that the middle point between Eastport, Maine, and the westernmost part of our country, lies west of the Missouri river; fewer still would locate it west of Denver; and almost none west of San Francisco. But it is west of the City of the Golden Gate. In other words, when the traveller from Eastport, Maine, reaches a point directly north from San Francisco, he is not yet half way across our territory, but must journey a hundred miles farther on over the Pacific Ocean; for the Aleutian Isles-the loss of which Mr. Cumberland, as an Englishman, mourns, and credits to the "blundering ignorance" of his government-stretch far out towards the continent of Asia. Lieut. Karr pushed his explorations nearly to the point where this long line of islands begins. In making the circuit of the coast northward from Cape Spencer, or the canoe journey from Kaiak to Prince William Sound, he was the first explorer to follow after Cook. He made a brave but unsuccessful effort to ascend to the top of Mount St. Elias, and reached an elevation of only 7,200 feet above the sea-level. According to his estimates, it is not this mountain which is the highest in Alaska and so in North America, as has been generally supposed, but Mount Wrangel, which is situated near Copper river, about one hundred miles from its mouth. His descriptions of the numerous glaciers which he saw are extremely interesting. One, flowing into Glacier Bay, he describes as a stream of solid ice, 5,000 feet wide, 700 feet deep, and discharging into the sea at the rate of forty feet per day in the month of August. Another ice river, which he named the Great Guyot Glacier, and which he crossed in making the ascent of Mount St. Elias, he found to be twenty miles broad, and of unknown depth and length. The area of glaciers in the whole country, he estimates to be more than 18,000 square miles.

But Alaska is not made up wholly of mountains and glaciers. Of lands adapted to agricultural or grazing purposes it has almost none. But its forests contain vast and unknown wealth. And its rivers are, in the proper seasons, literally full of salmon, so that they crowd upon one another. This is true both of the large and of the small streams. Lieut. Karr writes of what he saw in a little brooklet, thus:

"It was completely crowded with salmon, and the water being not of a depth to cover them, their backs were bare. There appeared to be truly a

greater bulk of salmon than there was of water in the brook. As I approached, their wriggling and splashing almost emptied the pools of the little water that existed in them. The sight from the brookside was as of a vast fishmonger's slab, as there averaged twelve salmon to every two square yards of water."

If this is a "fish story" it is just such an one as all writers upon Alaska who have visited it when the salmon are 66 running" tell. Besides the salmon, there are immense cod banks off various parts of the coast, which so far remain unworked. A still more fruitful industry, and one which yields far greater wealth, is that of the fur trade. There are sea otter and land otter, the beaver, five varieties of the fox, three of the bear, the mink, marten, musk-rat, lynx, and wolf. The pelt of the sea otter is worth sixty dollars, and that of the black fox fifteen dollars. The

sea otters are caught in a net, generally one at a haul, sometimes three or four, rarely six or seven; and in one instance, as Lieut. Karr records, one man took twenty-four out of a net one night after a gale.

That the climate of Alaska, along the coast, is far less severe than is generally supposed may be seen in the fact that all manner of edible berries grow there in the greatest abundance. Strawberries growing wild here reach their perfection both in size and quality. Currants, gooseberries, blueberries, blackberries, and cranberries are also found in profusion. The mosquito, too, is as much at home in Alaska, and as attentive to the genus homo, as are they of the Jersey marshes. Lieut. Karr found a humming bird singing gaily in Icy Bay! The temperature along the coast never rises very high, and never, even in the coldest weather, falls to zero. There is no doubt that as Alaska comes to be better known, it will prove to be an acquisition to our national domain, as great in the variety and value of its resources as it is in its territorial extent. Lieut. Karr has done much to increase our knowledge of the country, and his publishers have put forth his book in a form which is made very attractive in type, paper, illustrations and binding. All who have ever visited or who propose to visit this great Northwest Territory, should get and read these volumes; while to the general reader they cannot fail to be interesting and instructive.

GEORGE C. NOYES.

WILL THERE BE A NEW CHINA? *

China is essentially a country of agriculture, possessing only a soil and a history. She has no science; no arts but the most commonplace;

* CHINA: A STUDY OF ITS CIVILIZATION AND POSSIBILITIES. By James Harrison Wilson, Brevet Major General U. S. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

no manufactures but the simplest; no commerce but that which has been forced upon her; no railway system, and no other means of internal transit, except the slowest methods by river and canal; no defences which could withstand attack by modern military arts, having a coast as defenceless as that of the United States; with abundant mineral resources, she has no mines; with large supplies of coal, her people are so poor in fuel that each fallen leaf and every bit of dry herbage is hoarded to cook the scanty meals of the common poor. The ordinary Chinaman is a fatalist. He toils through all his life for scanty clothing, a little rice, and a grave. Happily for him, his wants are few, for his resources are yet fewer. And yet he is strong, vigorous, healthy, prolific, and in his way happy.

The population of China is a matter of foundly ignorant. All statements of travelwhich even the Chinese government is pro

lers, missionaries, and officials are alike mere estimates, based upon entirely insufficient data, varying from 500 millions to 300 millions of people, which latter number Gen. Wilson believes to be nearest the truth. He further expresses the opinion that the country is not over-crowded, as many have supposed, and that if the natural resources of China were

developed under the stimulus of occidental science and arts, the country could give a more generous support to a much larger number of people. But the stimulus of occidental science and arts, mining, manufacturing, transportation by railways, agriculture with machinery, oriental customs and an absolute reconstrucmeans presently a complete disruption of tion and rehabilitation of oriental thought, not simply in its applications and fruitions, but in its elements, and even in its language. This means more than rejuvenation, it means a new birth. In some degree this rejuvenation, or this renaissance, has occurred in Japan. The problem for China to-day is, How can China be born again?

The most typical thing in China is its great wall. To each new traveller it is a new wonder. Thus General Wilson found it :

"It is from twenty-five to thirty feet high, fifteen to twenty feet thick, and revetted, outside and in, with cut granite masonry laid in regular courses with an excellent mortar of lime and sand. Every two or three hundred yards there is a flanking turret, thirty-five or forty feet high, projecting beyond and overlooking the face of the wall in both directions. The most astonishing thing about it is, however, that it climbs straight up the steepest and most rugged mountain sides, courses along their summits, descends into gorges and

ravines, and, rising again, skirts the face of almost inaccessible crags, crosses rivers, valleys, and plains in endless succession from one end of the empire to the other-from the seashore on the Gulf of Peehile to the desert wastes of Turkestan.

It is laid out in total defiance of the rules of mil

there would be no farther need for horses,

carts, etc.

But the Chinese officials are not so deaf in the military ear. They know what attack and defeat mean, and they are becoming more and more aware of their defenceless condition which invites attack. It begins to be apparent that a nation might as well not have armies as to have them in places remote from the danger, and without the means of transport. It is becoming evident that munitions of war and the means of defence include very much beside war-ships, fortresses, fire-arms, and soldiers, and that the resources of a country, if utilized for defence against attacks made by modern methods of warfare, must be organized, and mobilized, and applied in equally skilful combinations governed by modern science. If China has ships, she must build them. If she needs guns, she must make them. Her resources for defence lie wholly within herself. In the development of resources for defence lies their development for all other purposes, and in that lies the hope of rejuvenation which can place China in that position among the nations of the world which her native capacities entitle her to occupy. In this case, as in multitudes of others everywhere in the world, ideas are more potent than things. Let once the stupendous, immaterial, impassive, and as yet almost impassable wall of self-appreciation, prejudice, and formality, be breached, so that some illumination may enter, and the rest will follow with almost certainty. Unless this is done, the situation of China contains the elements of her dismemberment and destruction, at no very distant time.

SELIM H. PEABODY.

RECENT EDUCATIONAL BOOKS.* Antonio Rosmini Serbati, the contemporary of Pestalozzi and of Froebel, is the most important figure in modern Italian philosophy. So says the "Encyclopædia Britanniea." He was a devoted priest of the Catholic church, a philanthropist, a profound thinker and a voluminous writer upon metaphysical subjects. He seems to have breathed

* ROSMINI'S METHOD IN EDUCATION. Translated from the Italian by Mrs. William Grey. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.

THE PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION PRACTICALLY APPLIED. By J. M. Greenwood. New York: D. Appleton & Co. THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. From the Forum Magazine. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE VENTILATION OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS. By Gilbert B. Morrison. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

ON TEACHING ENGLISH. By Alexander Bain. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE ART OF READING LATIN. By W. G. Hale. Boston: Ginn & Company.

THE NEW EDUCATION. By George Herbert Palmer. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

some of the same air that inspired Pestalozzi and Froebel, and, with little or no knowledge of their ideas and work, he set forth in theoretical form the fundamental ideas which they, and particularly Froebel, worked out practically. The present work, on "Method in Education," is but a fragment of a very comprehensive plan which he seems to have had in mind, which was no less, as his translator declares, than the exposition of the theory and methods "in which the education of the human being was to be carried on through all the stages of life, on the principle of natural development," from birth to maturity and beyond. The book is not easy reading, but will appeal strongly to that class of teachers, fortunately rapidly growing in numbers, who realize that all true methods in teaching must be based upon clear ideas as to the nature of the human mind and the orderly development of its faculties.

The step from the profoundly speculative to the practical, perhaps one might say the mechanical, in education, is not so very long. A much larger class of teachers, however, will read and profit by such works as Greenwood's "Principles of Education Practically Applied." Applied." This book, of modest dimensions, is in the nature of a manual of instruction for the teachers in a system of city schools. It differs, however, from some manuals of the earlier period of so-called graded schools, in abjuring all procrustean methods and in insisting upon a recognition of individuality in school children. Teachers are exhorted to acquaint themselves with the temperament and environment of their pupils, with a view to a more perfect adaptation of their methods. The broad classification of schools is into city and country schools. The proportion by numbers is about seven-tenths country and three-tenths city. The organization of country schools and city schools is essentially different, and this difference is almost inevitable by the nature of the case. In the city, individuality must be largely ignored, for economical reasons; while in the country, classification and gradaThe ideal school possibly avoids the defects tion are extremely difficult to be maintained. and combines the excellences of both extremes, and is in a manner a combination of the two. Happily for the coming generations, the two classes of schools are approaching each other in principles and methods, though both will always, no doubt, be kept somewhat apart from the standard mean by the peculiarities of condition. The rigid system of classification and promotion which characterized so large a portion of our city schools when that system was first inaugurated, is giving way to more rational ideas; and this little work, by the superintendent of the schools of a great city, gives cheering evidence that the crisis in