A large tent for himself, a new and clean kibitke, belonging to the officer who accompanied him a light carriage to convey the paper necessary to preserve the plants and other requisites, and, in case of need, himself and his companions, were the principal articles which he took with him. The 22nd of May was fixed for the long desired accomplishment of this plan. The preparations for crossing the river, which were directed by the commandant of Inderskoe, could not be carried on so rapidly as the impatience of the travellers desired. The river is half as broad again as the Elbe at Dresden, deep, but not rapid. There was only one pretty large boat to convey the carriages and other effects, successively, to the opposite bank. The Cossacks swam over the river, with their horses. This operation seems not to be without danger, and proves the courage of this intrepid race, who are very familiar with this element. The Cossack, who intends to cross a river, drives his horse into it, plunges in after him, and swims through the stream with him, with the aid of his left arm, holding the bridle with his right hand, which he lays on the horse's back. Only the heads of the man and the horse remain above the water. It was a singular circumstance to see a carriage, with the horses to it, swim over the river. A Cossack, placed like Neptune, in the front of the carriage, guided the frail vehicle through the stream, flourishing a knute instead of the trident. Their passage was completed in a few hours, and every thing safely landed on the left bank. The author now amused himself in examining his company. The whole had a motley appearance. It was a medley of several nations, which, besides the proper Ural Cossacks, consisted of Calmucks, Tartars, Kirghis, etc.; rude sun-burnt countenances, more noble Tartar manly features, and flat Mongol effeminate countenances, with beardless chins, small sunken eyes, and high cheek-bones; some covered with cloaks made of sheeps' skin, with the rough side outwards; some in tanned horse-hides, some in short fur cloaks with hoods, and a few in a light dress and a shirt; the head covered with a large fox-skin cap, or with a conical felt hat, or without any covering. Their arms were no less different than their costume. The smallest number had fire-arms, some only a single pistol, most of them pikes, others bows and arrows; and several only a sabre, and others again none. Such was the appearance of the soldiers of the Ural, who came to protect our travellers from their hereditary and frontier enemics, the Asiatic Kirghis, on whose territory they in fact were. A troop of Kirghis, in eight or ten tents, whom they found on the other side of the river, though they were said to be of the Russian party, were ordered to take down their dwellings and depart with their herds farther into the steppe, because the officer, who accompanied the author, judged it unadvisable to have these equivocal friends in the rear. The company now proceeded in an easterly direction: but this was done without much regularity. The escort dispersed, and each took his own way. Even the cannon was at one time so far off, that the author lost sight of it, and it might easily have been taken by the Kirghis, who were said to be so formidable. Dr. Tauscher thought of remedying this confusion as well as he could; ordered the cannon to be near his carriage, and, after a march of five or six hours, reached the first watering place, a small lake of good water, where they halted. In a few hours they set out again, because the author wished to reach in the same day the vicinity of the lake, which was still twenty miles distant. The ground from this place rose to a gentle eminence, and became of a different quality. Whereas it was before sandy, not wholly destitute of water, and covered with a pretty luxuriant vegetation; it was now dry and clayey. Here and there gypsum-like stones stood out, and the vegetation was less fresh. Several of the plants which Hermann had found on his first visit to the lake, were met with here, such as the beautiful Orobanche, with light blue flowers, Allium Caspium Pall., Allium inderiense, n. sp. and a small Tetradynamist, with the boat-shaped seed vessels allied to the genus Bunias, which plant was afterwards designated as a new genus, and called by the author's name. Towards evening they reached their journey's end, namely, some ditches, about a verst from the lake, with brackish, but yet drinkable water. Here the travellers pitched their camp, planted the cannon, and placed posts on the surrounding eminences to prevent surprise. The visit to the lake was deferred to the following day. From the place where the company were encamped, the banks of the lake gradually shelved off towards the east, and the white salt surface of the lake shone from this side like new fallen snow. The lake is of the form of a long ellipse, and its circumference may be about twenty miles. It is surrounded on three sides by a row of hills, the interior of which, towards the lake, is exposed by the fall of the earth, and consists of strata of clay of different colors. The water of the lake, which in no season of the year, and in no place, exceeds a yard in depth, was now almost entirely evaporated. The whole superficies of the lake consisted of one mass of the most beautiful and pure crystals of sea salt, rivalling the snow in whiteness, without a perceptible mixture of glauber salt, and, at some depth, gradually passed into a mass not unlike rock salt. In some places, springs from the bottom of the lake had worked their way through the solid mass to the surface, forming perpendicular openings of considerable depth, so that the long pikes of the Cossacks could not reach the bottom. The quantity of the salt, thus wonderfully prepared by nature, is so great, that it might, perhaps, supply all Europe, if the geographical situation of the lake were favorable to it. As a new layer of salt is produced every year on the surface, like the annual growth of trees, there would be no fear that this repository would ever be exhausted. It was, indeed, part of the author's plan to make the tour of the whole lake, and thus obtain a complete knowledge of its situation, and the peculiar productions of its vicinity; but the commanding officer of his escort assured him that this could not be done without exposing themselves to the danger of an attack from the Kirghis. He, therefore, contented himself with exploring half the right side of the lake with a small escort, sending his companion Hermann to do the same on the left bank, which is the most difficult of access. Even Pallas says, that he had obtained from the brine a number of insects in good preservation; Dr. Tauscher also enriched his collections from the same source, with many rare and beautiful kinds of beetle. Our travellers did not find, in these parts, the rare and dangerous venomous spider of southern Russia, which Pallas says he found swimming uninjured in the salt waters. It is remarkable that he found in the brine, in very great numbers, several species of insects, which he very seldom found in the steppe itself. This was the case, for instance, with the Calandra picea, Pall., which he saw alive, by thousands, in the salt water. Among the few kinds which he caught in the desert, the very scarce Myocellata, Pall. gave him much pleasure, though he found only a single -specimen. His collection of plants was richer and more important. The saline plants were not advanced enough for him to make any remark upon them. The origin of the lake may be explained in a plausible manner, from its situation and the nature of its environs. The plateau called the Inder Mountain, elevated above the river and the surrounding steppe, is from two to three hundred versts in circumference, and is traversed in the middle by the river Ural. The soil, particularly that part of the plateau beyond the river, consists of rock salt, which is covered with a stone resembling alabaster. The lake owes its origin to subterraneous springs, which penetrated through the solid mass of rock salt, and found a vent in the funnel-shaped hollow of the rock. The water proceeding from the melting of the snow in spring, which collects in the deeper part of the lake, perhaps also contributes. Here, too, the pretty general law of nature is confirmed, according to which alabaster or gypsum is usually found near masses of salt. This, as here, is the case at Ilesk, near Orenburg; in the rock salt mountains of Arsagar and Tschaptschatschi; in the Volga and Ural steppe; and in the rock salt works at Wieliczka in Poland. As we have already stated, it was Dr. Tauscher's intention to spend three days in examining the lake and its environs: circumstances induced him to shorten this period. The commanding officer reported to him that he had been informed by Kirghis spies, who were of the party of the Russians, that a troop of four hundred Kirghis had assembled a few leagues distant, and threatened the company with an attack. In the second night, the fore posts stationed round the camp were, in fact, disturbed by a party of Kirghis, who, however, departed when they found them resolute. He was by no means disposed to engage, without need, in contests with these marauders: besides, he had entirely attained the object he had proposed; he therefore judged it best to return to the opposite bank, and, early on the morning of the third day, surrounded by his escort, carried his resolution into effect. As they approached the watering place, half way on the road, where they halted when they came, the author saw a number of people, of strange appearance, encamped near it. They were surprised at this, because, at their previous visit, they had not seen a human being. On inquiry, Dr. Tauscher learnt that a Kirghis sultan, or nobleman, was about to occupy with his troops the inclosed market-place at Orenburg. The sultan, on his side, had inquired of our author's escort, who he was; and, on being informed, amicably offered him his hand, and invited him, in the Tartar language, which his companion interpreted, to pass the night in his tent. Notwithstanding our author's great desire to accept this proposal, he judged it best to return, without delay, to the fort on the other bank, in order to dry the plants which he had collected. He continued his route to the opposite bank, but was followed by the court chaplain of the Kirghis sultan, who offered to remain as a hostage in the fort, till Dr. Tauscher should have arrived on the other side of the river. For the reasons above mentioned, the Doctor sent him also back; and learnt, in the sequel, how fortunate it was that he did so. In the same night that the Kirghis chief hospitably offered him his tent, he was attacked by an hostile tribe of his own nation, and robbed of all his herds of horses, camels, and sheep. Thus, the author, in all probability, escaped the misfortune of being carried as a slave into the interior of Asia, to Chiva or Bucharia. SWEEPINGS FROM A DRAWER. 1. A prudent man will avoid whatever gives occasion for remark; for whatever is talked of much, will be talked of unfavorably. 2. The most generous man, in making a gift, never parts entirely with the sense of property; and will be offended if, in his presence, you use the gift entirely as your own. 3. Matters external to us, and resting in opinion, cause more vanity than those which are within us and certain. Probably more pride is felt in knowing, than in being, the duke of Wellington. 4. How many persons mistake talking about literature for literary talk! 5. Nothing is more common than for persons to suppose that they know all about an obscure transaction, because they know something not known to others. We know what we know, but we don't know what we don't know. 6. The conclusions of morality are as certainly reached through the avenues of vice, as through the paths of virtue. 7. There is often as much difference between works and their author, as between the sweetness of honey and the sting of the bee. 8. Southey's descriptions are wrought; 9. The mind is a disease of the body. Scott's are cast. Spirit is a disease of matter. 10. The highest wisdom of the mind is to acquiesce in doubt-to admit that the reason of a thing cannot be given-that a fact or its cause cannot be known. 11. Most people's God is the reflection of their own spirit against the skies; and the comfort of cultivating God is the complacency of viewing that self-image. 12. W is a Scot, exact and close-so honest that he is almost a rogue. 13. The issues of happiness and misery, of success and failure, both in this life and that which is to come, seem rather to depend on the strength and weakness of the mind and temper, than on purity of heart and rightness of intention. There was a truer philosophy in the Roman Greek view which made valor virtue,* than n ours, which makes it consist in goodness. He who surveys the course of life and the history of man in all their breadth and fulness, will be tempted to name prudence piety and power morality. 14. It is dangerous to inquire too closely after what is concealed. He that gropes in a dark room may chance to put his fingers into something nasty. 15. There are many men who will permit you to use them even to the baseness of contempt, who yet will not suffer you to take a liberty with them. Because a horse will let you ride him, it does not follow that you may tickle his heels. 16. No man, whatever may be his personal gain, ever grew solidly rich, who was not personally frugal. 17. What is called impudence is generally either ignorance or forgetfulness. 18. If you hear a man sincerely expressing an intense admiration of virtue, or a soul-felt appreciation of its excellence, you may be quite sure that he has not got it. 19. There are few cases in which a gift does not cost more than a purchase. 20. Men will generally dislike you more for placing yourself upon an equality and familiarity with them, when your place is above them and distant from them, than your superiors will dislike you for encroaching upon them, because defeat in personal rivalry is more galling than in rivalry of place. 21. A bad man may possess the world; a good man doth possess the universe. 22. Modesty sometimes takes the air of presumption; self-conceit more often assumes the appearance of diffidence. 23. The passions are but various forms of mental insanity. 24. The vices and defects of others constitute the mirror in which we should see our own failings. * Virtus, properly, signified manliness; vir, from which it was formed, was itself derived from vis The Greek Arete, was a cognate word to Ares, Mars, if it was not derived from it. RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS OF A HOME TRAVELLER. No. I. A TRIP TO THE WHITE HILLS, AND ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON IN A STORM. You may stand on the shores of Casco Bay, and see, in the sunshine of any clear day, the glit. tering peaks of the White Hills, with Mount Washington shooting up above all the rest, like a white-haired patriarch among his children, themselves hoar with age. But, as the bard of Melrose Abbey has so beautifully said, If you would view this scene aright, for, even at the distance just named, when the night is clear and unclouded, and the sharp northwest wind has driven off even the faintest curl of vapor which sunset had illumined, you may see the sheen of their broken outline, (showing like the beginnings of those arrowy streaks of the aurora borealis, which at times shoot up in the north so brilliantly,) as they glitter beneath the rays of the clear, cold moon. Such a picture, constantly before their eyes, the people of that beautiful little city, which lies upon the shores of the island-studded Casco, have come to look upon as one of the chief charms with which nature has invested their landscape; and they show it to travellers as one of the memorabilia of the tour that takes in their city as a temporary resting-place. It was at this spot that a party of some ten or twelve of us were watching anxiously, one midsummer afternoon, for the dull and heavy mass of leaden clouds which had for three days hung over us, dispensing plentiful showers of rain, to pass away, and release us from the tedious quarantine we were enduring, on our way to visit the White Hills of New Hampshire. At about noon, it had ceased to rain, and, soon after, we thought we could discern a faintly defined streak of light in the extreme point of the western horizon. Watching as we were, with intense anxiety, for the first symptom of relief from the horrible weather which so long had bound us, judge of the extent of our joy as we saw that line of light extending itself from west to north, and then the whole of the ebon mass of cloud which hung over us, lifting gradually up from the entire sweep of that horizon; and, as its lower edge neared the zenith, momentarily increasing the rapidity of its retreat, leaving a clear, azure field below, until, at length, the sun, descending to his daily rest, was left unobscured, and the full gush of his rays fell, like a sudden shower of flaming gold, upon all the hills and valleys! Wheeling slowly down the path of his orbit, he reached his setting, unobscured by a single wreath of cloud or vapor, and sank below the distant snowy peaks that made our horizon, with not a ray lost to our gazing eyes. When the sky had first begun to clear, these white mountain spires had been the earliest objects in the wide extending landscape to develope themselves; and never seemed they clearer or more conspicuous than then, as they stood out in almost sudden and unusually bold relief, upon the western sky, with the full flood of sunlight pouring over them, while to us the sun was still obscured; and, no sooner had the last level beam of the glorious orb shot along the loftiest of their summits, then, as if by magic, most beautiful formations of amber clouds, their edges touched all along with intensely shining gold, appeared directly above the path he had been treading, and continued there, assuming divers grotesque shapes, and seeming to sport in fantastic gyrations amidst the sunlight from below, until, as twilight deepened, they all passed gradually away before the gentle breeze, which seemed to be sweeping off with its zephyrs all impurity from the sky, making it beautiful for the moon and stars. Meanwhile, the bosom of the bay, which had received beneath it the heavy deposit of all that nighty avalanche of clouds which we had watched so long in its career, was sending back the rays of the silver queen of night, who was at the full, and to that quarter of the heavens did we next turn our straining gaze. Slowly ascending to the zenith That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, soon began to let fall her rays upon the yet palpably discerned panorama of distant hills-for they look loveliest in the clear twilight-and we retired from the scene, upon which we had for so many hours been gazing, leaving their snowy coronals yet visible as they were towering aloft in the still and solemn midnight. It was a scene never to be forgotten by one of that group, and, as may be fairly inferred, was looked upon as a fitting commencement of our purposed visit to the White Hills of the north-and so indeed it was; for every step we took, afterwards, upon that tour, proved equally memorable. Early on the next morning, (all our arrangements having been complete for two whole days,) the vehicles drove up to the door of our excellent landlady's hospitable mansion, and the process of packing ourselves and our luggage commenced. Men, women, and even children, (largish onesno sensible folk go on parties of pleasure with habies,) rods, creels, guns, and baskets-trunks, portmanteaus, carpet bags, and hat cases-overcoats, cloaks, upper-benjamins, and umbrellas—all were made away with at last, and off we sat, rather à la Gilpin— Ten precious souls, and all agog, To dash through thick and thin! Leaving Portland, we passed through many pretty manufacturing and farming villages in Maine and New Hampshire, and stopped for the night at Conway, which is most picturesquely situated, being surrounded by hills, and its neighborhood abounding with woodland and river prospects, most delightfully attractive to such of our number as had the happiness of being skilled with the pencil, the pen, the gun, or the angle. But we were all obliged to yield some portion of our individual preferences, at this stage of our journey, on account of the impossibility of getting accommodations for the whole of us, either in the way of comfortable quarters for so many, or in that of the requisite conveyances. So we contented ourselves with one night's experience of our good landlord's hospitality, enjoyed a fine sunrise view of the pleasant village of Conway, and pushed on. CHAPTER II. ARRIVAL AT BARTLETT, AND MISTRESS HALL'S. MOUNTAIN FARE. CLOUDLAND PHENOMENA, AGAIN. A COUNCIL CALLED. A NIGHT AMONG THE HILLS. We reached Bartlett after a very interesting ride of nine hours, with a full view of the whole White Mountain range almost constantly before us, at about two o'clók in the afternoon, and found ourselves quite harmonious upon one point, at least-and that was, the necessity of immediate preparations for dinner. We could not have chosen our quarters better, with this view, had we had it in our power to make a selection from among a thousand; and this was all the more fortunate, as our good hostess, Mistress Hall's, was the only "place of entertainment for man and beast" that sensible men and epicurean beasts would think of staying at on the whole road, from mine host Abbot's, at Conway, to the Crawford Cabin in the Notch. What a dinner the good lady provided forus! Had I the pen of a Scott, I would essay to give the reader some notion of its details; for Ihave observed that there was no topic upon which Sir Walter was wont to dwell in more loving detail, and with more overflowing unction, than this; but I pretend to no such advancement in trencher lore as the genial poet of Abbotsford could fairly boast, and so admirably display. Suffice it, that we ate a most hearty and traveller-like dinner, without thinking of the lack of silver forks, damask napkins, finger bowls, or hot water plates. If there was no Poulet à la financière, there were tender pullets, much more to our fancy; if there was no Macaroni à l'Italienne, there was |