palate under the ordeal of foreign cooking were a real relish for us. On a hot morning in the tropics, we see him pulling on his stocking with a scorpion in it, and dancing in involuntary joy under the effects of the sting. Let him dance; it is all for our amusement. Let him meet with what he will--robbers, cannibals, jungle-tigers, and rattlesnakes, the more the better--since we know that he will get off alive, and come to regard them so many god-sends in the way of book-making. The volumes now before us are not only seasonable as respects the world-wide curiosity in regard to California--the new-risen empire on the Pacific--abounding, as they do, in valuable facts and statistics, but they have in a high degree that charm of personal adventure and experience to which we have referred. Bayard Taylor is a born tourist. He has eyes to see, skill to make the most of whatever opens before him under the ever-shifting horizon of the traveler. He takes us along with him, and lets us into the secret of his own hearty enjoyment. Much of what he describes has already become familiar to us from the notes of a thousand gold-seekers, who have sent home such records as they could of their experiences in a strange land. Yet even the well known particulars of the overland route across the Isthmus become novel and full of interest in the narrative of our young tourist. The tropical scenery by day and night on the river, the fandango at Gorgona, and the ride to Panama through the dense dark forest, with death, in the shape of a cholera-stricken emigrant, following at their heels, are in the raciest spirit of story-telling. The steamer from Panama touched at the ancient city of Acapulco, and took in a company of gamblers, who immediately set up their business on deck. At San Deigo, the first overland emigrants by the route of the Gila river, who had reached that place a few days before, came on board, lank and brown as the ribbed sea-sand, their clothes in tatters, their boots replaced with moccasins, small deerskin wallets containing all that was left of the abundant stores with which they started--their hair and beards matted and unshorn, with faces from which the rigid expression of suffering was scarcely relaxed. The tales of their adventures and sufferings the author speaks of as more marvelous than anything he had ever heard or read since his boyish acquaintance with Robinson Crusoe and Ledyard. Some had come by the way of Santa Fe, along the savage Gila hills--some had crossed the Great Desert, and taken the road from El Paso to Sonora--some had passed through Mexico, and, after beating about for months in the Pacific, had run into San Deigo and abandoned their vessel--some had landed weary with a seven months' voyage round Cape Horn--while others had wandered on foot from Cape St. Lucas to San Deigo, over frightful deserts and rugged mountains, a distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles, as they were obliged to travel.