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Incidents of an Oberland Journey round the World.

A few scenes and incidents from Sir George Simpson's "Narrative of an Overland Journey round the World," will, we are sure, prove welcome to our readers, and introduce them to a work of great interest and value. The traveller traversed three continents, Europe, Asia, and America, and crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We quote his own account as follows.

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The Rocky Mountains.

ABOUT seven hours of hard work brought us to the height of land,the hinge, as it were, between the eastern and the western waters. We breakfasted on the level isthmus, which did not exceed fourteen paces in width, filling our kettles for this our lonely meal at once from the crystal sources of the Columbia and the Saskatchewan, while these feeders of two opposite oceans, murmuring

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over their beds of mossy stones as if to bid each other a long farewell, could hardly fail to attune our minds to the sublimity of the scene. But, between these kindred fountains, the common progeny of the snow-wreaths, there was this remarkable difference of temperature, that the source of the Columbia showed forty degrees, while that of the Saskatchewan raised the mercury to fifty-three and a half degrees, the thermometer meanwhile standing as high as seventy-one in the shade. From the vicinity of perpetual snow, we estimated the elevation of the height of land to be seven or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the surrounding peaks appeared to rise nearly half of that altitude above our heads. Still this pass was inferior in grandeur to that of the Athabasca Portage. There, the road, little better than a succession of glaciers, runs through a region of perpetual snow, where nothing can be called a tree presents itself to relieve and cheer the eye. There, too, the relative position of the opposite waters is such as to have hardly a parallel on the earth's surface; for a small lake, appropriately enough known, as the Committee's Punch Bowl, sends its tribute from one end to the Columbia, and from the other to the M'Kenzie. In addition to the physical magnificence of the scene, I here met an unexpected reminiscence of my own native hills in the shape of a plant, which appeared to me to be the very heather of the Highlands of Scotland; and I might well regard the reminiscence as unexpected, inasmuch as in all my wanderings of twenty years, I had never found any thing of the kind in North America. As I took a considerable degree of interest in

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