they perform any useful part in the sustenance of animal life.

"The cultivation of the earth, therefore, is confined to those narrow strips of land which are within the level of the waters of the streams, and wherever practiced in a community with any success, or to any extent, involves a degree of subor dination and absolute obedience to a chief, repugnant to the habits of our people. The chief who directs the time and quantity of the precious irrigating water, must be obeyed implicitly by the whole community. A departure from his orders, by a waste of water, or unjust distribution of it, or neglect to make proper embankments, may endanger the means of subsistence of many people. He must therefore be armed with power to punish promptly and immediately.

"The profits of labor are too inadequate for the existence of negro slavery. Slavery as practiced by the Mexicans, under the form of peonage, which enables the master to get the services of the adult while in the prime of life, without the obligation of rearing him in infancy, supporting him in old age, or maintaining his family, affords no data for estimating the profits of slave labor, as it exists in the United States. No one who has ever visited this country, and who is acquainted with the character and value of slave labor in the United States, would ever think of bringing his own slaves here with any view to profit; much less would he purchase slaves for such a purpose. Their labor here, if they could be retained as slaves, among peons, nearly of their own color, would never pay the cost of transportation, much less the additional purchase money.'

Our readers will remember that we have thus passed along the southern border of our new territory as far as the Snowy Mountain; and we

* Emory's New Mexico, p. 98.

are content to allow these facts to speak for themselves, while we examine briefly another feature of the same district, without which our view would be very imperfect. By examining any map of ordinary accuracy, we find in this district of country, what Fremont calls the Great Basin. With the map of this enterprising traveler we could define more accurately the boundaries of this singular and isolated region; and in the want of that, must content ourselves with such authorities as are within our reach. On most maps for want of better knowledge, it is put down as the Great Sandy Desert, and until Fremont's partial exploration its real character was unknown. This traveler has twice visited it, and yet in his last report addressed to the Senate, he speaks of it as "deserving the full examination of a thorough exploration." Fremont says explicitly that it is "a basin of some five hundred miles in diameter every way, between four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea, shut in all around by mountains, with its own system of lakes and rivers, and having no connexion whatever with the sea."† Here then we have in this basin and its broad rim of mountains between two and three hundred thousand square miles, which is about one third of the entire conquest. Fremont proves that it is not given up entirely to sterility. "Mountain is the predominating structure of the interior of the basin," and "its general character, with exceptions, is that of desert. The plains are sandy and barren. The bases of the mountain have a "belt of alluvial soil," and that with considerable uniformity. The basin has two large lakes, the one salt, and the other fresh ; and " on the east of these, along the base of the mountains, is the usual bench of alluvion, which extends to a distance of three hundred

† Fremont's Geog. Memoir, p. 7.

miles, with wood, water, and abundant grass. The salt lake is about seventy miles long, and the Utah about half that. On this bench of land the Mormons have already be gun a settlement, and made such headway, that "on the 1st of April of the present year they had three thousand acres of wheat, seven saw and grist mills, seven hundred houses in a fortified enclosure of sixty acres, stock and other accompaniments of a flourishing settlement.' The climate of the Basin is said to be excellent, and the rains generally sufficient for the purposes of agriculture.

And yet these documents, published by the Senate of the United States, declare the greater portion of this third part of their conquest to be a useless desert, having the smallest capacities for furnishing necessary subsistence for population. Probably a dozen counties in the buck eye state actually have more acres of arable land than this immense acquisition east of the Sierra Nevada. We have mountains and plains of rolling sand-hills, interspersed with here and there a patch of ground which has a soil sufficient for agriculture; and even here, in the majority of cases, the streams must be dammed for irrigation, as an indispensable condition. Were the twenty-five thousand men alive, whose lives this iniquitous war has cost the United States, the territory-aside from Upper California proper bought with their blood, would hardly furnish a sufficiency of productive land to give each of them a quarter of a section! We have not done so well as old England in her Asiatic iniquities, drinking up

"demure as at a grace, Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth; Contemptuous of all honorable rule,

Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life

For gold as at a market!"

Here is the prize we gain in a war originating in the greed for new ter

* Fremont's Geog. Memoir, p. 8.

A few more words and we have done. The only redeeming feature of this hard bargain, is found in that part of Upper California which lies between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific coast, and as this part of the territory is better understood than the rest, we shall be as brief as possible concerning it. In round numbers, this district contains between seventy-five thousand and one hundred thousand square miles; that is, it includes territory equal to nearly twice that of Ohio or New York. Humboldt says it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

The valleys of the American, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, are very fertile. Fremont, in order to reach the Arkansas, was compelled to follow the San Joaquin

some distance, and keep the rocky rampart of Sierra Nevada on his left, some five hundred miles, in order to find a pass over them. This made the journey to the Arkansas two thousand miles, which, in due east course, was about nine hundred miles. During that journey, even in California, he found many sandy and barren plains, proving the country not to be altogether so many square miles of fertility. Facts will prove that many leagues of worthless land mar the excellence of this country. For instance, Fremont says that the extensive valley of the San Joaquin "presents every variety of soil, from dry and unproductive to well watered and luxuriantly fertile." Besides these sterile tracts in the level country, we must also substract the broad and rocky slopes of the mountains which hem it in its whole length. The climate is remarkably fine, if we except the single draw back on the highest capabilities for agriculture, its tendency to aridity. It is not so faulty in this respect as Lower California, and the country east of the mountains already described. Yet the agriculturalist can not rely with any degree of certainty on the rains of heaven. To be above the fear of drought, he must irrigate, for which there are facilities in many parts of the territory.

Our government, no doubt, attaches the highest importance to the bays and harbors, which are said to be very capacious and safe. Of these the public are sufficiently informed already, and of their prospective importance in the trade with Eastern Asia. The day when this shall be the case is too remote to call for remark here. Until a railroad can be constructed across the continent, these harbors will not be of much service in that trade, and such obstacles exist to a project of this kind, that it may reasonably be doubted whether even American enterprise will dare to grapple with them for a long time to come. Nature has lifted

ramparts of rock heaven-high between us and California, which we do not say may not yet be hewn down, but which we do believe will long remain untouched. And before any such scheme can be available or permanent, the savages must be civilized, or removed, or exterminated; but judging from the history of the savages, as seen in our slave states, this last would be the smallest of obstacles, and easily shoved aside.

And now, glancing at the country over which we have passed so rapidly, searching twelve hundred miles from the head-waters of the Arkansas before we found a country which at all deserves the name of being productive and valuable, who of us believes that California on the Pacific, cut off from our remotest settlements by a vast desert, and broad, high mountains, can be bound long to Washington as a center? Let it grow and become important, in a section of the world where its habits and interests will be peculiar to itself, separated by a journey of three thousand miles from the center of power, who believes such a prize will long stay in our grasp? Indeed, as we have looked at the subject of American conquests, we have thought of a fear which was once expressed by sea-faring men concerning that huge iron steamer, the Great Britain, that her length was so great that she was liable to break in two on the back of some high wave, or with her stern on one wave and stem on another, with her center unsupported, she might go to pieces by her own weight. Is there no danger of the same sort to our country, reaching now from Maine to California, a huge, weary length? Should there come some such a storm as the rabid nullificationists of the South are threatening, we confess to the painful fear, that on the back of that wave we should break in two. Or should the ill-fated vessel rest on two mountain waves,

one stirred by freedom, the other by slavery, we should tremble lest she should fall to pieces by her own unwieldy weight!

Such are our prospects in California, and such the fears to which this base war has made us heirs—a war conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity-a war commenced for the extension of slavery, and costing us, who abhor such a result as we do death, TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND MEN, AND One hundreD AND SIXTYSIX MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, BESIDES

THE IMMENSE burdens SADDLED ON US BY THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. But if our deductions prove not false concerning the utter unfitness of these conquests for the purposes they were intended to subserve, we thank Him, whose power has been displayed sublimely in heaving up these mountains into such a rugged and unproductive confusion, as shall forever banish from this territory a system which traffics in the image of God, and whose presence, any where, is an unmitigated curse.

THAT the baneful effects of religious controversy far exceed the good effects, and that it deserves for this reason to be discountenanced by the friends of truth, is a very prevalent opinion. These evils are indisputably very great, and very much to be deplored. Controversy often results in the lasting alienation of Christians from each other, not only of the immediate disputants, but of all who take sides with them. The more remote effect upon the world is perhaps an evil of still greater magnitude. It is questionable whether there is any other objection to Christianity which has so much influence in strengthening unbelief, as the controversies of the church. The unfairness and bitter ness of these conflicts bring Christ ianity itself into doubt, and the doctrines contended for, often the most essential parts of the system, into undeserved odium. Nor are the true ends of controversy very frequently attained as a compensation for these terrible evils of the conflict. The errorist, who, if he had been left to his own reflections and

studies, or to the silent influence of time, might have come to the light, is hopelessly wedded by controversy to his own opinions, at least forever

set against the faith of his opponent. Nor does the cause of truth always come out of these conflicts unharmed. After the smoke and dust of battle have passed away, we discover that the victory has not been won without a fearful sacrifice, and it is often quite doubtful whether, after all, the advantage is on the side of truth. Bad results are suffi ciently apparent, but the good contended for, the refutation of error, and the establishment of truth in the convictions of men, is not so manifestly attained.

What shall we, then, say of the defenders of orthodoxy in the Christian church? Shall we deny their title to gratitude? Shall we say that the peace and purity of the church are not indebted to their la bors? Shall we frown upon all controversy among Christians?

We might, perhaps, be driven to this extreme, if we were forced to take the controversies of the church, as they have been for the most part conducted, as a type of what they are by necessity. The unchristian manner in which religious controversies have generally been carried on, has given them, by way of eminence, the name of polemics; as at the first the Apostle James denomi

nated them, wars and fightings." This they ought never to be; yet this they have been for the most part. The parties commonly accuse each other not only of error, but of dishonesty; and unhappily there is, in most cases, too much reason for these mutual criminations. Persuaded that he is the champion of the truth-set for the defense of the gospel-each conceives himself at liberty to use any weapon within his reach to defend his own positions, and to carry the war into the enemy's territory. He esteems nothing sacred that stands in the way of what he considers the vindication and triumph of "the faith once delivered to the saints." He is prepared to stab the reputation of his antagonist in any vulnerable point, if that will impair the force of his argument with the community, and to lacerate his feelings by unjust imputations and abusive language, in retaliation for similar insults, and even without such provocation. He does not scruple to supply what is wanting in the cogency of his argument by the pungency of his wit. He makes himself remembered as an enemy, rather than as a fair and honorable disputant. He exposes the purity of his faith to suspicion by his unchristian spirit, and hatred of him is naturally transferred to his creed. Some allowance, it is true, is to be made for mutual misapprehension. Occupying different positions, and viewing the subject from different points, having rushed to the encounter without proper consideration, it is not surprising that the parties should differ in stating the questions at issue between them. This would naturally happen were there no intention to misrepresent; and it is proved to be common by the complaints of unfairness called forth by every controversy. No one acknowledges himself fairly represented by his opponent-all complain of wrong-and to suppose they misapprehend each other, is the

most charitable explanation of the wrong-otherwise we must either deny its existence, or refer it all to intentional misrepresentation. Allowance must also be made for the force of custom. Although the manner of the controvertist is very apt to be determined by his inward spirit; yet it may be influenced, also, by the custom of conducting controversies with asperity. This custom, long established, has become the law of controversy-the mold into which it naturally runs and shapes itself. The controvertist deems him. self at liberty to employ any of the weapons which use has sanctioned. Hence the harshness of his manner is not an infallible index of a malignant spirit. He may have a kinder and purer heart than we should suspect from the style of his pen.

But whatever may be the exact amount of criminality chargeable upon theological disputants, the terrible injury inflicted by their conflicts upon the cause of Christ, can hardly be exaggerated. The memhers of Christ have been riven asunder, not by difference of opinion, not by free discussion of their differences, but by disputation conducted with acrimony and unfair

ness.

Misrepresentations, arising, sometimes from misapprehension, sometimes, no doubt, from design, have been, from time to time, incorporated into the literature of the sects, until they have established what threatens to be a lasting prejudice. If Christians had from the first conducted their controversies with urbanity, and while they manifested an earnest desire to commend the truth to universal belief, had shown as conscientious a regard for the laws of controversy-exaggerating nothing, and setting down nothing in malice-expressing toward their opponents none but generous feelings, the whole effect would have been good-the evils, which have made controversy the dread of the church, would never have been