Russian court, and finally lands in
the soil of freedom, funds, and the income tax.

What the actual object of all this gyration may have been, is not
revealed, nor, probably, _revealable_ by a "Governor of the Hudson's Bay
territories," who, having the fear of _other_ governors before his eyes,
dedicates his two handsome volumes to "The Directors of the Hudson's Bay
Company;" but the late negotiations on Oregon, the Russian interest in
the new empire rising on the shore of the Northern Pacific, the vigorous
efforts of Russia to turn its Siberian world into a place of human
habitancy, and the unexpected interest directed to those regions by the
discovery of gold deposits which throw the old wealth of the Spanish
main into the shade, _might_ be sufficient motives for the curiosity of
an individual of intelligence, and for the anxious inquiries of a great
company, bordering on two mighty powers in North America, both of them
more remarkable for the vigour of their ambition than for the reverence
of their hunters and fishers for the _jus gentium_.

Those volumes, then, will supply a general and a very well conceived
estimate of immense tracts of the globe, hitherto but little known to
the English public. The view is clear, quick, and discriminative. The
countries of which it gives us a new knowledge are probably destined to
act with great power on our interests, some as the rivals of our
commerce, some as the depots of our manufactures, and some as the
recipients of that overflow of population which Europe is now pouring
out from all her fields on the open wilderness of the world.

This spread of emigration to the north is a curious instance of the
reflux of the human tide; for, from the north evidently was Europe
originally peopled. Japhet was a powerful propeller; and often as he has
dwelt in the tents of Shem, he is likely to overwhelm the whole
territory of the southern brother once more. The Turk, the Egyptian, the
man of Asia Minor, the man of Thrace, will yet be but tribes in that
army of the new Xerxes which, pouring from Moscow, and impelled from St
Petersburg, will renew the invasions of Genghiz and Tamerlane, and try
the civilized strength of the west against the wild courage and
countless multitudes of Tartary. Into this strange, but important, and
prospectively powerful country, we now follow the traveller. Embarking
from Liverpool in the Caledonia, a vessel of 1300 tons and 450 horse
power, he was amply pre