To be very sure of what he is about to say, and to say it in the fewest possible words, are golden rules which every young author should inscribe, in letters of the same metal, upon the most prominent panel of his study. Had the Hon. Henry Coke done this when he stepped out of his stirrup, on his return from his Ride to California, he would have spared himself the painful throes which appear to have attended the commencement of his literary labor—would have spared his readers, too, the triviality and platitudes which deface some of the earlier pages of his otherwise spirited narrative of a most adventurous expedition. We reckon it amongst the remarkable and hopeful signs of the times, that young men of family and fortune voluntarily abandon the luxurious ease of home for such break-neck and laborious expeditions as that whose record is before us. Whatever the faults of the nobles of Great Britain, effeminacy is certainly not of the number. It is, indeed, from no feather-bed journey or carpet-knight’s tour that Mr. Coke has recently returned. Take the map, reader, and trace his route. From England to Jamaica, Cuba, Charleston, New York and St. Louis, the great and rising capital of the Western States. We omit the minor intermediate places at which he touched or paused. Thus far all was plain sailing and easy civilized travel. The rough work began when St. Louis was left behind. Across the wide wastes of Missouri territory, through the inhospitable passes of the Rocky Mountains, the traveler passed on to Oregon City and Fort Vancouver, thence took ship to the Sandwich Islands, returned to San Francisco, visited the gold diggings, steamed to Acapulco, rode across Mexico, and came home to England after an absence of a year and a half, during which he had been half round the world and back again.