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Neutral Relations of England and the United States. By Charles G. Loring. Boston. W. V. Spencer. 8vo. paper. pp. 116. 50 ets.

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$2.00.
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Croquet. By Captain Mayne Reid. Boston. James Redpath. 16mo. pp. 48. 50 cts.

The Presbyterian Historical Almanac, and Annual Remembrancer of the Church, for 1863. By Joseph M. Wilson. Volume V. Philadelphia. Presbyterian Board of Publication. 8vo. pp. 494. $2.00.

[February,

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Heat considered as a Mode of Motion: being a Course of Twelve Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in the Season of 1862. By John Tyndall, F. R. S., etc., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. With Illustrations. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 480. $1.50.

[February.

Light on Shadowed Paths. By T. S. Arthur. New York. G. W. Carleton. 12mo. pp. 355. $1.25.

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pp. 333.

The History, Civil, Political, and Military, of the Southern Rebellion, from its Incipient Stages to its Close. Comprehending, also, all Important State-Papers, Ordinances of Secession, Proclamations, Proceedings of Congress, Official Reports of Commanders, etc., etc. By Orville J. Victor. Vols. I. and II. New York. James D. Torrey. 8vo. pp. viii., 531; viii., 537. $6.00.

A Glimpse of the World. By the Author of "Amy Herbert." New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 428. $1.25.

Shoulder - Straps. A Novel of New York
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The Triumphs of Duty; or, The Merchant-
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ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIII.-MARCH, 1864.-NO. LXXVII.

THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICK NOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Constantinople,—all of which she saw, part of which she was.

She was not petite, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large and black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque, your first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed cap-à-pie, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you shall now see.

Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature before it was given to our peninsula by Cortés. Cortés discovered the peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it California then. But Mr. Hale shows that twenty-five years before that time, in a romance called the "Deeds of Esplandian," the name of California was given to an island "on the right hand of the Indies." This romance was a sequel, or fifth book, to the celebrated romance of "Amadis of Gaul." Such books made the principal reading of the young blades of that day who could read

Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes antiquarians, does not go into any of the details of the life and adventures of the Queen of California as the romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to supply from it this reticency of his essay.

The reader must understand, then, that, in this romance, printed in 1510, sixty years or less after Constantinople really fell into the hands of the Turks, the author describes a pretended assault made upon it by the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of Amadis and Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes of chivalry with whom the novel of “ Amadis of Gaul" has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans, as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes which describe California and its Queen.

66

First, of California itself here is the description:

"Now you are to hear the most extraordinary thing that ever was heard of in any chronicles or in the memory of man, by which the city would have been lost on the next day, but that where the danger came, there the safety came also. Know, then, that, on the right hand of the Indies, there is an island called Cali

*

restrial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons. They were of strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage and great force. Their island was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild beasts which they tamed and rode. For, in the whole island, there was no metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought

at all. It seems clear enough, that Cor-fornia, very close to the side of the Tertés and his friends, coming to the point farthest to the west then known,-which all of them, from Columbus down, supposed to be in the East Indies,-gave to their discovery the name, familiar to romantic adventurers, of California, to indicate their belief that it was on the "right hand of the Indies." Just so Columbus called his discoveries "the Indies,"-just so was the name "El Dorado" given to regions which it was hoped would prove to be golden. The romance had said, that in the whole of the romance-island of California there was no metal but gold. Cortés, who did not find a pennyweight of dust in the real California, still had no objection to giving so golden a name to his discovery.

When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, in which he hoped to pass through what we now know as the Isthmus of Panama, and sail northwestward, he wrote to his king and queen that thus he should come as near as men could come to "the Terrestrial Paradise."