of the Russian American Company's vessels, and returning via Siberia to England. I have the honor, etc.,

GEO. SIMPSON.

P. S. By the Brig Nereus which arrived here from Salem a few days ago, we learn that the Providence, Frigate, accompanied by the Transport or storeship, sailed from New York for the Columbia River, as it is said, for the purpose of taking military possession there on behalf of the United States. These statements are made by the Americans here with great confidence, but I cannot give them credence, as I scarcely think that government would take so decided a step without the consent of H. M. Government, which could scarcely be obtained without your knowledge. And by recent advices from Mazatlan, we learn that a governor general has been sent by Mexico, backed by a force of 150 men to assume the reins of government in California. But reports for which there is not the least foundation are of such frequent occurrence here, that little reliance can be placed upon them. It is further stated that the United States Govt are in treaty with Mexico for the district of country, situated between San Francisco and Lat. 42°, the northern Mexican Boundary, notwithstanding the claims of Great Britain to that country, founded on the discoveries of Sir Francis Drake and the Treaty of October 1790 between Spain and England.

G. S.

V. EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE SIMPSON TO SIR JOHN H. PELLY, DATED MOWEE, SANDWICH ISLANDS, MARCH 24, 1842.

I had this pleasure [of addressing you] about ten days ago from Honolulu and immediately proceeded to another island Mowee" on a visit to the king and Royal family of the Islands.

I have had much confidential intercourse and communication with the king, Queen, and Premier, likewise with the Reverend Mr. Richards, who is the great counsellor or advisor of the Government.

I have been successful in acquiring during my short acquaintance, a great degree of influence over these good people, with whom I feel much interested, and at my suggestion it has been determined that Mr. Richards will proceed to England, so as to be there about the time of my arrival. Mr. Richards will be invested with full power to enter into treaties with Great Britain, France, and the United States, and to transact important business on behalf of the King and government of these Islands; and at my suggestion, your name and that of Mr. Colville, likewise my own, will be coupled with that of Mr. Richards in the letters of credence with which he is invested, and I now forward copies of letters, the originals of which are in my possession, in order that you may be prepared for important negotiations connected with these Islands.

VI. EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER OF SIR GEORGE SIMPSON TO THE GovERNOR, DEPUTY GOVERNOR AND COMMITTEE OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, DATED HUDSON'S BAY HOUSE, NOVEMBER 16, 1842.

Par. 2.

The voyage from Sitka to Ochotsk occupied 42 days which may be considered an average passage.

25 Maui.

20 Only portions of these extracts are here copied.

Par. 3.

In the 14th paragraph of the same despatch," I had occasion to notice that in our voyage from Sitka to Ochotsk we fell in with one of about 200 American whalers that were fishing very successfully in the Northern Pacific between Lat. 50° and 57°. The Russian Govt. look upon the encroachments of U. States citizens engaged in this branch of trade with much jealousy, and as a measure of protection of their coasts and seas - - - the Russian American Company are of the opinion they would readily favor any measure likely to prove advantageous to that Association that would have for its object the protection of that source of commerce.

27 Despatch of July 6, 1842, from Ochotsk, extracts from which are found in Foreign Office, America, 399.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

GENERAL BOOKS AND BOOKS OF ANCIENT HISTORY Ancient Italy: Historical and Geographical Investigations in Central Italy, Magna Graecia, Sicily and Sardinia. By ETTORE PAIS. Translated from the Italian by C. DENSMORE CURTIS. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1908. Pp. xiv, 441.)

In this volume Professor Pais has gathered together in English form twenty-six papers which originally appeared in the proceedings of various Italian learned societies or were separately printed for private distribution. Of these more than half deals with southern Italy and Sicily, three have to do immediately with the early history of Rome, while the remainder is allotted to various fields. Naturally many of the conclusions here reached have been already given in the author's well-known Storia di Roma. Here as there Pais often shows himself a keen and sometimes over-destructive critic of tradition, but it would be unfair to speak of his work as wholly of that kind; indeed in these papers we must recognize that there is a large amount of constructive work of a high order; it is the more to be regretted that many of the conclusions seem at best but probabilities.

The two papers which will prove of most interest to the majority of readers are the one on the Siciliot elements and its companion on the Italiot, Samnite and Campanian elements in the earliest history of Rome. In the former Pais examines the traditions of early Sicilian influences on Rome and shows how these were due to the commercial relations existing between Rome and Syracuse, which city after the battle of Curnae in 474 B. C. occupied a foremost position in Sicily and Magna Graecia until the middle of the third century at least. The synchronism established by the early Greek and Roman historians in the history of the two cities, which indeed Dionysius of Halicarnassus noted in connection with the traditional secession of the plebs in 493 B. C., leads Pais to the view that the story of this first secession, of the establishment of the plebeian tribunate, of the introduction of the cult of Ceres, and in fact of the whole series of events connected therewith, was consciously imported into Roman history from the account of Gelo's success in obtaining possession of Syracuse as the result of a (forced) withdrawal of the owners of the land, to which may be added the possible influence of a sedition at Gela, known to us from HerodSuch borrowings by early Roman historians were due to those

otus.

patriotic motives which led to the adaptation of many striking events. and heroic deeds in Greek history to the conditions of early Rome. While it is not improbable that the cult of Ceres and the tribunate of the plebs came from Syracuse, or were strongly influenced by Syracusan institutions, and although it is impossible to deny that Pais may be right in his other contentions, still here as in the case of many of his conclusions we cannot escape the fact that the data are insufficient to warrant certainty. The paper relating to the Italiot, Samnite and Campanian influences on early Rome deals briefly with questions of agriculture, metrology, military organization, civil and political institutions, law and religion. The most important conclusion here is that the laws of the Twelve Tables were largely derived from the Thurian code of about 446 B. C.

The limits of this notice permit only the mention of a few of the other papers. In the opening chapter toponomic evidence is employed to prove that the Ausonians once occupied not only a large part of southern Italy but also much of central Italy as well, including Latium. Again Pais argues in his paper entitled Eryr l'erruca? that the Elymi were of the same stock as the Sicani; in his discussion of the early history of Ischia he proposes a probable correction of Strabo V. 247 C τα χρυσεία to χυτρεία, and makes some valuable observations on early trade relations with Africa; the following paper maintains the thesis that Naples did not lose Ischia in 326 B. C. when she fell into the hands of the Romans, but in 82 B. C. when she capitulated to Sulla. In the last paper in the volume, by arguments which certainly deserve careful consideration, Pais arrives at the conclusion that Strabo, contrary to Niese's view which has generally been accepted, wrote his geography, based on materials collected by him in Alexandria and Rome, from the point of view of a Greek of Asia Minor and in the interests of Greeks of that region not much later than 7 B. C., in some remoter part of the Asiatic provinces, possibly at the court of Pythodoris, the talented queen of Pontus; twenty-five years later it was worked over and published.

We must regret that the original date and place of publication are not given with each paper, or in default of this, that more account has not been taken of work done since the papers first appeared; then we should not find for example on page 404, note 4, an unqualified acceptance of Landgraf's hypothesis-long since discredited-of the authorship of the Bellum Africanum. Mr. Curtis's translation, in spite of a few slips, is on the whole well done and readable; there are a few obvious errors in proof-reading; but barring these matters the book is well made and attractive.

CLIFFORD H. MOORE.

The History of the World: a Survey of Man's Record. Edited by Dr. H. F. HELMOLT. Volume V. South Eastern and Eastern Europe. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1907. Pp. xi, 650.)

IN his preface Dr. Helmolt declares: "the present volume may fairly claim to be a fuller and more accurate account of Southeastern and Eastern Europe than any which is to be found in the older universal histories." We may grant this, for it represents the fruits of later investigation than the corresponding parts of Lavisse and Rambaud, but, on the other hand, it is far from being as well written. Few indeed will wish to wade through all its pages. Some of the contributors err on the side of too many names and facts, others on that of obscurity and sweeping statement. Still, whatever their faults, they have given us a work which has been put together with the painstaking care of modern German scholarship and which offers us much information, some of it not easily accessible in Western languages. They have thus fairly earned our gratitude.

Of the separate sections, number 1., the Greeks after Alexander the Great, by Professor Rudolf von Scala, is the best. His description of the spread of Hellenism and of its influence not only in Roman but in medieval and in Turkish times is often highly interesting. It is a pity, however, that doubtless so as not to leave a gap in a History of the World he felt it necessary to tag on a futile page on the Kingdom of Greece (from 1832). Section 11., Turkey in Europe and Armenia, is scholarly but too often vague and rhetorical, and the translation increases its shortcomings. For instance we read that under the reign of Suleiman II. (p. 154) "sword and pen were never dry. Messages of victory alternated with songs, and intellectual rivalry outshone the trophies of captured weapons. . . . Everywhere greatness, power and splendour . . . a splendour which defied the sharpest introspection (for the German word Blick) to discover the germs of decay in the roots of the flourishing growth which bore these trophic blooms." Again, to take another example, almost at random, the three meagre, unsatisfactory paragraphs on the Omens (German Vorboten) of the Crimean War are rendered still more confused by the careless substitution of the word “Hungary" for "Russia" in the first line of the second paragraph, and by the statement that in the dispute about the Holy Places the Porte decided "in favour of Greece ", when what the original says is the Greeks", here a very different matter.

Sections III.-VI., dealing with the Albanians, Czechs, Serbo-Croatians, the Danube Peoples, etc., contain much that will be new to most readers. If none of the articles are very notable, at least they offer us in compact form a large amount of rather inaccessible information, though it is perhaps not quite as new in itself as the editor thinks. Although different writers are not free from national prejudice, they

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XIV. —7.